Why did Chrisitianity succeed?

Account for the success of Christianity in the Late Antique World.

It is difficult to talk meaningfully about the success of Christianity during Late Antiquity, given that it was not a unified entity either at the beginning or at the end of the period. This essay will argue that Constantine’s adoption of Christianity - the key to its “success” in terms of numerical and geographical spread – brought about changes in its nature, and created massive divisions within it. The essay is organised in three sections. The first considers the relationship between Christianity and the Roman Empire. Constantine’s adoption of Christianity as the state religion of the Roman Empire would revolutionise its political and economic situation. Christianity’s relationship with paganism and pagan society would be complex, however, and Constantine’s emphasis on correct belief allowed divisions to develop within Christianity. These will be explored in the second section of the essay, a case study focussing on Christianity in the East, which will explore doctrinal divisions and their political implications in the reign of Justinian. The final section considers Christianity’s institutional diversity, looking first at the development of monasticism in the East, and then at Christianity’s institutional adaptations in the turbulent environment of the West, focussing on the changing role played by bishops, the development of regional churches, and the rise of the Papacy.



What was Christianity and why did Constantine choose to make it his state religion?
Christianity began as a small – and by no means unique – sect within Judaism , reformist and messianic in nature, originating in the imperial backwater of Judea and spreading through the urban centres of the eastern Roman Empire. For the first few centuries of its existence Christianity was largely under the radar of the Roman Empire, with considerable local variation in how it was treated . Christians presented these centuries as having been times of relentless persecution, and the idealisation of martyrdom contributed to the identity and ideology of Christianity . In reality it came to the forefront of imperial attention during the third century when its numbers increased and it began to develop more of a leadership structure and financial strength through the practice of almsgiving . The state’s edicts of persecution indicated Christianity’s increasing success . Constantine’s conversion was mythologized by Eusebius, who tells us of his visions and his victory over Maxentius at Milvan bridge, however his adoption of Christianity might have been a tactically astute decision: it had shown itself to be resilient in the face of persecution and to have popular appeal; this could be both neutralised and harnessed to provide a uniform ideology for the Empire; and its god might bring good fortune to Constantine in his efforts to conquer the East.


Constantine’s sponsorship of Christianity brought about major changes for the religion. First, after the Edict of Toleration the numbers and geographical spread of Christians expanded dramatically in the major cities of the Mediterranean and through North, East and Central Europe . Secondly, Christianity’s relationship with power was now different: it had accommodated itself with Roman institutions and the Roman conception of authority. While previous Emperors had been revered as pagan gods, Constantine presented himself as being the first Christian Emperor, creating a new image of kingship that fused together Roman and Christian ideals. Christianity was the new and influential language through which autocracy was legitimated, and within which the monarch was represented as being a spiritual leader. Thirdly, following the normal practice of the Roman Emperors, Constantine sponsored his new state religion on a lavish scale . He constructed magnificent churches in Antioch, Constantinople, Milan and above all in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher at Jerusalem. These dramatic changes in the urban environment were “sermons in stone”, reflecting a spiritual victory that had already been won by Christ on the cross, their wealth symbolising both the approval and strength of the Christian God and the Godly alliance between Christianity and the Empire . The vast wealth of the Church was inconsistent with early Christians’ emphasis on poverty , and created an alternative motivation for involvement in its religions hierarchy . Christianity’s nature was changing due to its close but unequal alliance with Roman structures and the person of the Emperor himself; the Jewish sect was being absorbed into the Roman world, becoming a Roman-style religion, an institutionalised part of the Roman Empire.


Christianity’s survival before and development after Constantine’s adoption is due in part to its ability to assimilate itself into and adopt elements of the pagan religions. Before Constantine Christianity had faced stiff competition from a plethora of religions and mystical cults, diverse and often local . Like Christianity, some of these were being absorbed from their origins in other parts of the Empire, and its peripheries. Both Mithraism, from Persia and the cult of Isis , from Egypt, had elements in common with Christianity. The Roman religious environment tended towards syncretism, and Christianity to an extent overlapped with pagan religions: third century depictions of Christ in the Catacombs of Domitilla in Rome show Christ as Orpheus, taming the wild beast in man, and the popular image of the Roman banquet was to become associated with the Eucharist. Christianity’s ability to adopt and transform elements of the Roman culture is exemplified by the Church of San Clemente, originally one of many Mithraic temples, layers built on top of which reappropriated the building as a Christian church. Christianity also existed alongside paganism throughout much of the fourth century. Constantinople, newly created by Constantine, contained a plethora of pagan statues as well as its recent Christian constructions, in a studied attempt to retain a degree of neutrality . Pagan ceremony was banned in the year 341, but its vigour was demonstrated by a three year reprise under Julian the Apostate (361-363), during which paganism presented itself as being a unified religion so as to better counter Christianity. Christianity’s persecution of paganism towards the end of the century was coherent with the normal Roman approach (and may be contrasted with Christians’ third century pleas for toleration) , although by and large gradualism and not violence was the hallmark of the Christian revolution .


The depth to which Christianity succeeded in penetrating Roman society – in the fourth century at least - is questionable. At the same time that Christianity was adopted, a new and self-confident Roman elite was forming . Its art, literature and ceremonies show that its members conceived of themselves using the familiar pagan imagery, rather than that of the newly arrived Christianity . An example of this was the popular pagan “Feast of the Kalends”, to celebrate New Year . Evidence is scarce for the beliefs and practices of the Empire’s more lowly inhabitants. Some elements of Christian belief - which was in some ways novel - would have been attractive to a pagan audience: these included personal salvation; an emphasis on egalitarianism and charity ; and there were similarities between Christianity and popular mystical cults. Other aspects of Christianity could have been difficult to swallow: a god being crucified; the worship of a criminal; its monotheism ; the idea that a god would actually be interested in people as individuals ; and its linking religiones with personal morality and the quest for truth . The prevalence of group conversions indicated that Christianity was for many more of a political necessity than a heartfelt belief . By the end of Late Antiquity however, Christianity of one kind or another would become established as the fundamental belief of the vast majority of people in Eastern and Western Europe .


The need of the Roman state to create a uniform Empire-wide belief was to have enormous implications for the nature of Christianity. Personally presiding over the quest for religious orthodoxy, Constantine convened a meeting at Nicaea in order to clarify what Christians believed (in the light of the sectarian rivalry of the Arian controversy), and to come to an agreement on the date of its main festival, Easter. Before Constantine, Christians had been trying to impose unity through a hierarchy of priests and efforts to delimit the contents of their religious canon , and Eusebios refers to the Christian churches, suggesting a plurality of Christian approaches and beliefs . For Constantine the idea of orthodoxy would allow the creation of religious unity, making Christianity a more cohesive ideology for his diverse and divided Empire, furnishing it with a symbolic harmony . In conjunction with a defined textual canon and an easily transferable basic institutional structure , the existence of orthodoxy would make Christianity a potentially universal religion. However the creation of orthodoxy was simultaneously the creation of heresy. In conjunction with the inherently debateable central tenets of Christianity, especially regarding the nature of Christ and the religion’s relationship with the Old Testament, this would contribute to many centuries of religious schism - punctuated by further Councils - with each version of Christianity thinking that their belief was the correct one. That said, such disagreements did channel a lot of intellectual (and persecutory) energy into the competing Christian identities, and this may have helped the Christianities – plural - to define themselves against each other and so to thrive .


By the sixth century Christianity in the East was split into competing regional churches. Justinian was faced with the challenge of having to reconcile his “orthodox” version of Christianity, shared by the population of Italy (if not their Ostrogothic masters, who were Arian), with the heresy of Monophysitism, adhered to by the populations of Egypt and Syria, not to mention Justinian’s wife Theodora, and linked to separatist sentiments especially within Egypt. Justinian’s self-image as the new Constantine and his desire for renovatio promoted his ambition to reconquer Italy, which meant that he could not afford to be seen to be making concessions to the heretics of the East. His neat solution was to condemn Nestorianism, another heresy, by issuing the Three Chapters, hoping to create unity on the principle that “my enemy’s enemy is my friend”. This backfired as one of the condemned authors had actually been explicitly approved by the earlier Council at Chalcedon. The Western Church viewed Justinian as having innovated beyond the agreed orthodoxy. This episode deepened divisions between the East and the West – already divided not least by language - virtually to a point of no return. The political implications of doctrine were also illustrated by Justinian’s use of the Visigoths’ Arianism as a justification for invading North Africa, and that of the Ostrogoths for reclaiming Italy. While Justinian’s attempt to create religious unity had failed disastrously, he was successful at spreading Christian belief through missionary activity, part of Christian activity from its earliest days , and which in the East was closely linked to imperial expansion .


Christianity’s institutional diversity and adaptability were crucial to its survival. Monasticism began in the deserts of Egypt, developing from the phenomenon of Holy Men and their followers seeking God through solitude and ascetism. Monasticism itself was diverse, although in the West many monasteries would come to follow St Benedict’s Rule. Monasticism came to be incorporated within the body of the church, Gregory the Great being the first monk to become Pope, in 590. The role of monasteries as centres of learning, writing and education in the classical languages was crucial to the survival and transmission of the classical – pagan – inheritance, as the still vigorous culture of Rome continued its synthesis with Christian thought. Cassiodorus, for example, would emphasise the usefulness of classical intellectual techniques as preparation for higher studies in theology. The Christian attitude towards the classical past would remain ambivalent, however, as demonstrated by Justinian’s closure of the neo-Platonic Academy at Athens in 529 (although ancient Greek philosophy remained an integral part of higher education in the East), and the gradual displacement of classical studies from the ecclesiastical syllabus in the West .


Christianity had to make a number of major institutional changes to survive in the turbulent environment of the West:


First, as the Roman state withdrew, bishops - often the sole institutional survivors of romanitas - stepped in to assist with the administration of towns and cities . They took over key civilian roles such as the distribution of food, the construction of new churches, and even military leadership. Given that churches and ecclesiastical authority were focussed on urban centres, it was in the interests of bishops to maintain urban government.


Secondly, the Churches became increasingly regionalised. An example of this is the church in Gaul, where Christian institutions developed autonomously of the state, and even of each other, and kept their distance from Rome . During this period there was no political unity in Europe – it did not have a political centre as such. Similarly was no real unity in the variety of developing Christianities within it. Instead the Christianity of Late Antiquity can be viewed as being a symbolic network, its interconnections being created by: shared texts (Christianity defining itself as being a “religion of the book”); the movements of relics; shared styles of music, art and architecture; and by very occasional contact with Rome .


Most importantly, the papacy was to become the most powerful single institution within the church. Stepping into the power vacuum created by the withdrawal of the Roman empire to the East, the popes asserted their supremacy using the Christian arguments that the Pope spoke in the name of St Peter and the Pauline notion that there was one body of the church, coupled with the idealisation of Rome as being the true centre of the Empire. Figures like Gregory the Great stepped into the shoes of the Roman emperors, inheriting aspects of their authority, and making use of imperial imagery and titles such as pontifex maximus. (Contrast the East where the Patriarch of Constantinople would be the right hand man of the Emperor) . The Papacy had become a political power. Crucially, the Papacy aligned itself with the Caroligians, to whom it granted permission to oust the Merovingians. The rise of the Franks in Gaul would help to secure its position and its role in defining medieval Europe, culminating in the coronation of Charlemagne as Emperor by Pope Leo the Third, challenging the position of Byzantium as the legatee of Rome , and achieving the identification of Western Christianity with authority that is the hallmark of the medieval world .


It is not possible to apply the terms “success” or “failure” to Christianity during the period of Late Antiquity. Christianity’s numbers increased exponentially and it became widely spread geographically (curtailed significantly by the rise of Islam). However the nature of the religion changed greatly, principally due to its being absorbed into, used by and coming to inherit aspects of the Roman Empire. Christianity also split into many doctrinal permutations, and developed in a variety of institutional forms, meaning that a unified narrative is not possible. So when considering Christianity in Late Antiquity there is no constant or unified entity to which we can attribute “success” or “failure”. One final thought: while this essay has emphasised the diversity of Christianity, its different expressions during this period had one thing in common, namely that they all flourished on or near the shores of the Mediterranean (Christianity’s centre of gravity lying in the Eastern Mediterranean) . During a time when distance and technology limited cultural interaction , the trade networks that criss-crossed the Mediterranean – mare nostrum – also facilitated the transmission of beliefs and ideas, allowing its Christianities to interact both with other ways of thought and with each other. In this sense the nature of the Mediterranean environment played its part in the creation of the rich diversity gestured towards above.