For many in the West, the prototypical case of two religious communities locked in inexorable conflict, from which it was thought only one could emerge victorious, is still the one that preoccupied the first half millennium of the Common Era, when the pagan Roman Empire was undermined and overwhelmed by the rise of what has been termed “Christian Europe.” Within three hundred years of the crucifixion of Jesus, a small and localized religious sect in the eastern Mediterranean, having survived relentless and murderous imperial persecution, came to be recognized as an official religion by the emperor Constantine in 313 CE under the so-called Edict of Milan, and went on to vanquish paganism across the whole of Rome’s realms. This extraordinary story, of one religious collectivity defeating and conquering another, was recounted in heroic terms by the earliest chroniclers of the Christian church, such as Eusebius, bishop of Caesarea in Palestine, and was only much later to receive an exhaustive (and much more skeptical) treatment by Edward Gibbon in his The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Gibbon would describe and explain Rome’s collapse as “the triumph of barbarism and religion.” What barbarism meant to Gibbon will be treated in a later chapter. For now, suffice it to say that by religion, Gibbon meant Christianity, a vigorously assertive new belief system that would prove fatal not only to paganism but to the Roman Empire as well.
Gibbon was much influenced by the Enlightenment ideas of his time, which helps explain why The Decline and Fall is shot through with so many contrasts, polarities, dichotomies, and antitheses, of which that between paganism and Christianity is one of the two most prominent (along with that of barbarism and civilization). Having been attracted at different times to Protestantism and to Catholicism, Gibbon in his mature attitude to the Christian religion was by turns cool, ironic, skeptical, and detached. He disliked priests, monks, and ecclesiastical hierarchy; he was suspicious of saints and scornful of miracles; he deplored religious asceticism and the “superstition” on which it was based; and he thought the historic role of the church had been more destructive than creative. But Gibbon was also an ardent follower of theological disputes, and he recognized that religion was a major force in history, albeit one that needed to be understood in human terms rather than just accepted uncritically and credulously as the preordained working out of the divine will and providential purpose. As he once observed, “For the man who can raise himself above the prejudices of party and sect, the history of religions is the most interesting part of the history of the human spirit.” More than half a century after Gibbon’s death, Cardinal Newman grudgingly admitted that he was the most incisive historian of religion that Britain had ever produced, and Gladstone (who was no less alert to religion’s importance in human motivation and identity) regarded Gibbon as one of the three greatest historians of all time.
According to The Decline and Fall, paganism was one of the two principal reasons why the Roman Empire managed to expand and endure long enough to reach such heady heights of achievement by the time of the death of the emperor Marcus Aurelius in 180 CE. The Roman belief system was capaciously and inclusively polytheistic, while also effectively reinforcing the imperial virtues of civic duty and public commitment. Across the empire, a great variety of gods were worshipped and venerated, many of them carried over from indigenous cults that had long thrived before the arrival of the conquering legions. These diverse deities provided Rome’s many peoples with the comfort of local loyalties, while an overlay of official Roman idols and cults ensured that the fortunes of the empire actively engaged the hopes and concerns of its citizens and subjects. As Gibbon described and acclaimed it, this “mild,” eclectic, flexible, nonproselytizing civic religion, devoid of any separate priesthood or church hierarchy, and without any agreed scriptural authorities, was a great source of strength, and the resulting imperial culture of tolerance and forbearance, enforced by local magistrates, effectively prevented religious discord or doctrinal conflict. In an oft-quoted summation, he writes, “The various modes of worship which prevailed in the Roman world were all considered by the people as equally true; by the philosopher as equally false; and by the magistrate as equally useful.” However cynical Gibbon’s admiration, he recognized in paganism’s practice a tolerant spirit that engendered among the subjects and citizens of the empire not only a disinclination toward religious strife, but also actual social concord.
Christianity, by contrast, was a very different kind of religion: it was monotheistic, it was dogmatic, it was all-consuming, it was proselytizing, it was exclusive, it was well organized, and it had its own priesthood and hierarchy. Gibbon outlined five reasons why, from its unpromising beginnings in the eastern Mediterranean, it eventually triumphed over paganism to become the state religion of the Roman Empire. To begin with, the early Christians were “obstinate” in their faith: once converted, they felt zealously that they were on the right side of an absolute, Manichean divide between the godly and the unrighteous. Moreover, in a world where life was hard for most, Christianity benefited from its doctrine of the immortality of the soul and its promise of future glory in heaven, which boosted conversions and stiffened the morale of the faithful. In the third place, the many early claims of miracles and visions established Christianity’s truth and efficacy, appealing especially to what Gibbon lamented as the “dark enthusiasm of the vulgar” (although it was hardly a faith restricted to the lower echelons of society). Fourth, it was difficult not to respect the Christians for their superior conduct and rigid rectitude; in aspiring to holiness and salvation, they were highly moral, sometimes extraordinarily ascetic, and often exemplary in their fortitude in the face of persecution. Finally, Christianity was remarkably well organized, with its cellular network of churches and its hierarchy of priests and bishops. So it was scarcely surprising that in the aftermath of the emperor Constantine’s conversion, and with unprecedented official support, Christianity “was received throughout the whole empire” in “the space of a few years.”
~~The Undivided Past -by- David Cannadine
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