Sacramental attachments to a dying a resurrected savior was a common idea in the Roman Empire. The religion of Mithraism, very popular in the army and open only to males, bathed the initiate in the blood of a bull.
Norman F. CantorThe most important fact to know about the Christian Church in the two hundred years after Jesus' death is that only at the end of this period did the Church comprise as many people as the far-flung Jewish community numbered (five million) in the Roman Empire. Christianity developed an intense rivalry with Judaism, and for many decades was compared to the Jews as a minority. This accounts for the intense anti-Semitism that became enshrined in Christianity by 200 A.D.
Norman F. CantorSaint Paul was proud of his Roman citizenship, and his letter to various Christian communities in the empire presupposed an effective communications system that only Roman government, law, and military might allowed.
"The Church's administration evolved as the imperial government's structured was modified over time. An archbishop ruled a large territory that the Romans called a province. A bishop ruled a diocese, a smaller Roman administrative unit dominated by a large city.
"The capitals of the eastern and western parts of the empire -- Constantinople and Rome -- came in time to signify unusual and superior power for the bishops resident there. When the Roman state was dissolved in the Latin-speaking world around 458 A.D., the pope replaced the emperor as the political leader of the Eternal City.
Saint Augustine proliferated central theological and political doctrines of the Church, following Saint Paul closely. History is the scene of the struggle between the Heavenly and Earthly Cities, but only God before the Last Judgment knows the membership rolls. Human nature is so sinful (rebellious and corrupt) that only those who have received grace, i.e., have been chosen by God to love Him, can be saved for eternal life. This theory caused a lot of trouble for the medieval church, which by and large abandoned it. It was revived much later by Martin Luther.
"By the early fifth century, at a series of church councils, the Christians had hammered out a compromise theory of the Trinity -- God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit (Church) -- more or less of one substance but with three personalities. Those who would not accept this compromise were branded as heretics and sooner or later persecuted by the imperial state.
The Gnostics (also called Manichees) postulated that there were two gods -- the Christian God of goodness and light, and an evil anti-God of darkness. This theory proved an easy explanation of why there was evil in the world. It was rejected by Catholic Christianity in favor of the monotheistic view that there was one God who created only goodness. Evil was sin, a rebellious falling-away from God, a perversion of His goodness. This was the foundation of the evolving Christian concept of Satan.
Norman F. CantorIt would take many centuries before Christian preachers started to teach that when Christ said, 'Blessed are the poor for theirs in the Kingdom of Heaven,' he meant not just the poor in spirit (the pious), but the actual impoverished masses of people.
Norman F. CantorBy the early fifth century, the Church that had begun as a tiny group of fishermen and other poor people meeting in modest abodes had joined the Roman trend in classical culture in becoming logocentric, relying heavily on written texts -- the Bible, the sacramental services, and the theology of the Church Fathers.
"Beginning as a movement in Egypt around 200 A.D. and reaching France by 500 A.D., a special place of holiness was attributed to monks and nuns in a monastic setting because of their celibacy. Monks often became bishops; nuns were told to stay in their convents and shut up.
There was some kind of cultural cause for the decline of the ancient world. It was neither corruption of public spirit nor Christianity. It was due to the rise of the logocentric culture rooted in written text. This engendered, in general, a conservative, backward-looking frame of mind, hostile to critical military and technological innovation. It widened the gap between the highly literate elite and the still-illiterate masses. It aroused social strains that the imperial government would not, or perhaps could not, confront. Once the Visigoths had won a lucky battle or two, a general pessimism, docility, and privatism settled in.
"The ancients had a phrase for this. They said the world was 'growing old.' It was a mature culture. The Roman in late antiquity needed social and intellectual restoration, not more intensive cultivation of the classical heritage.
The German economic historian Fanz Oertel in the 1950s points to another drastic consequence of a slave economy. A slave economy initially allowed an increase of productivity through the invention and use of new machinery. Roman products remained at a simple level and could be reproduced by handicraft. By the fourth century, for example, the robust pottery industry of Greece was in sharp decline because other parts of the empire also learned to make pottery.
"The decline in international trade in the Mediterranean in the fourth century was partly due to increasing piracy, but it was also due to lack of industrial innovation and of need for exchange of manufactured goods.
There is no doubt that to the ancients of circa 100 A.S., games implied bloodshed; but gladiators' hand-to-hand combats to the death featured in Hollywood movies are overdone, since gladiators were splendid physical specimens who took a long time to be selected and trained and were not easily dispensable.
Norman F. Cantor« ; premier précédent
Page 3 de 5.
suivant dernier » ;
Data privacy
Imprint
Contact
Diese Website verwendet Cookies, um Ihnen die bestmögliche Funktionalität bieten zu können.