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By the fourth century C.E., the Roman Empire was declining. After so many years of perseverance the Roman Empire began to give into the changes that were happening all around them. One change in particular was the spread of Christianity. This new religion went against the traditions of the Romans, it was monotheistic and focused on the will of God. A religion that began small and under persecution became the official religion of the Roman Empire.
The Roman Empire began polytheistic like many earlier civilizations. The practice of monotheism was not legalized until 313 C.E. when Emperor Constantine ended the persecution of Christians. As with many religions, there were various groups of Christians with different views as to what defined Christianity. In 325 C.E. the Council of Nicaea, brought together by Constantine to resolve this issue, established The Nicene Creed. According to this doctrine Roman Christians believe “in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of all things visible and invisible; and in Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the only-begotten of his Father...And [we believe] in the Holy Ghost” (p 142-143). Though Christians believed in three divine beings they only worshipped one God. Even then polytheism was still dominant among the Romans.
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The Roman Empire were facing many kinds of challenges.
Other civilizations attempted to invade their lands, the empire was divided and then joined together, and legalization of Christianity. Because of Christianity the people were no longer beholden to the emperor or many gods that they once worshipped. The old customs of the Roman people were replaced by a monotheistic lifestyle. Combined with the other challenges that the Romans were facing, the loss of Roman traditions to Christianity was too much for the declining Roman Empire to
handle.
Christianity took hold on the ancient world because it was spread exceptionally fast. Missionary journeys were made every set of to three years and teach people Christianity (Document F). Roman judges held trials for reported Christians, and executed them because they admitted that they were Christian. The trials were held to execute Christians so the Roman religion would continue to flourish and so Christian citizens won’t be more powerful than the government (Documents F and G). This shows that Christianity was gaining a lot of members, really fast, in comparison to the government.
The year is 476 A.D. and the Roman Empire has collapsed after being overthrown by barbarians. Looking back, the causes of Rome’s decline can be separated into four categories, social, economic, military, and political. The social aspects of Rome’s fall are the rise of christianity and civil wars. The rise of christianity displaced Rome’s polytheistic roots which viewed the emperor as having a godly status. Pope and church leaders took an increased role in political affairs which further complicated governance. Civil wars also deteriorated the empire. More than 20 men took the throne in only 75 years and the empire was thrust into chaos. The economic aspects of Rome’s fall were high taxes from the government and labor deficit. The roman empire
When he won the throne, similar to Emperor Han Wudi’s conversion to Confucianism in Han Dynasty China, converted to Christianity. Because of this conversion, Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire. The Christian way became very involved in government in the Roman Empire. Even though Christianity’s message is a sense of universal love, because of it intolerance of other religions, there was persecutions of pagans that lead to death. It was not until 450 CE. that a small majority of the Roman Empire was Christian. There ultimately was a split in the empire between the east and the west. The Western Empire struggled on its survival unlike the eastern Empire. The Eastern Empire strived because it stayed involved in Roman politics, administration, and armies. Because the east stayed involved within the government, they were able to last longer. The east was able to spread Christianity more effectively than that of the
Rome went through major changes in its culture because of the start of the growing spread of Christianity. Early on Christianity was not the chief religion and around 64 AD Christians were actually punished and targeted by the ruler Nero. There was an order to kill any Christian, most were killed in very brutal ways. The Christians were killed because the ruler was in fear that the Roman Gods would be upset that they (all of the people) were not worshipping them (the gods) and they would punish the
From 300-600 CE The Roman Empire allowed new religions to be formed and universalized. The Religion that was associated with The Roman empire was Christianity. Christianity became the religion of Rome because of a man named Constantine who allowed Christianity to spread and flow throughout the empire create a harmony throughout the people. Constantine allowed for the Roman officials to adopt Christianity and this led to the building of the Constantinople. Christianity had basilicas which were opulent churches that were open to all which meant any person could go there allowing Christianity to be very universal. Christianity was also very appealing because the worshiped deity walked on land with the people. Christianity split and became the Roman Catholic church which consisted
...eligious practices. Christianity affected not only the Roman Empire but many other countries as well, altering their practices and making way for worship in the present day.
...an to emerge. Christianity, the religion founded on the teachings of Jesus Christ, became a major pillar of Western Civilization. The Roman Empire eventually collapsed, but its influence continued to live on.
The rise of Christianity in Rome did not come easily. It came with much destruction and death. The spark of Christianity in Rome came from an appearance of Martyrs in Rome. Martyrs were people that were executed for going against the common beliefs of pagan (polytheistic) ways. (Tignor, 2011, p. 286) Because of these awful executions, Christianity is said to be based off of “the blood of martyrs.” One of their main ways of spreading Christianity was through the sharing of their writings and by 300 CE there was an exceptional amount of book production throughout Rome. (Tignor, 2011, p. 289) “Christianity operated as one among many minority religions in the Roman Empire, and on several occasions experienced widespread persecution, especially under the emperors Nero (r. 54–68), Decius (r. 249–251), and Diocletian (r. 284–305). However, the situation changed radically under the emperor Constantine (r. 306–337), who in 313 issued the Edict of Milan that made Christianity a legitimate religion in the empire.” (Melton, 2010, p. 634)
Christianity became more prevalent in Roman society as time went on because it appealed to Rome and what Roman ideals were. In the beginning Romans were skeptical of changing religion, but as the years went by, the Romans adopted and changed. Christianity appealed to the Roman ideals, as it gave certain perks that their current polytheistic religion did not offer to them. The emperors of Rome had many different views on Christianity; some emperors encouraged change, and others were more traditional and wanted to stick to their current, polytheistic religion. Roman views on Christianity have changed drastically from the early years of the Roman Empire to the 4th century, as well as its appeal to the ordinary Roman citizen.
The Roman Empire is known as one of the most powerful and influential empires the world has ever seen. At it’s height, this Empire had peace, economic prosperity and was expanding. Roman cities contributed to a fair amount of this success because they contributed to many advances during Pax Romana and united the empire. After the fall of the Empire, Christianity survived because although the empire separated into many kingdoms they were still being influenced by the religion.
This led to a decrease in traditional Roman values because before Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire the Roman people had a strong belief in polytheism. Because the polytheistic view was abandoned no one saw the Emperor as a deity which in turn took power away from the Emperor. People began to shift their belief in the city to a belief in one sole deity. With such a large focus on the new religion many religious leader began to rise in political sectors. This was negative for the Roman people because their government was already weak and with the increasing of political power being given to the religious leaders it would only began to further make governing harder. It was really hard for a weakened government that originally based itself on polytheism to change to monotheism because it would only to serve to remove more power from the
Starting with Rome’s first emperor, Julius Caesar. Considered a military genius, Caesar had many successful military campaigns witch gained him support, popularity, and loyalty. The famous city, Pompey was not so thrilled of Julius and his growing popularity. Pompey along with the senate ordered Caesar to return to Rome without his army. However, Caesar, being the smart man that he was, brought his army with him despite the senate’s orders. This led to a civil war where Caesar defeated Pompey. After this, Caesar made himself dictator and the ruler of Rome and all of its territories. In the end when Caesar finally died, the Romans failed to realized that the republic ways of Rome had died with him. Rome was now an Empire. This was the start of Rome’s down fall. With the New emperor, Augustus, came the rebuilding of the constitution, and the demobilization of most of the army. This left the city open to more attacks. Wars left ruins and slaves. There was also the acceptance of Christianity during Constantine’s rule. The approval of Christianity meant the Roman state weakened their own religious traditions. Also what contributed to the fall of Rome was the ruling of Diocletian. Diocletian ordered the persecution of Christians because he believed the Greco-Roman gods were angry about the rise of Christianity. He also divided the empire into half. Lastly there was the continuous raids from barbarians. These invasions
The Roman Empire was incredibly large and successful. In the prime of the empire population reached up to 56.8 million people. The land they conquered amasses to an outrageous 1 million square miles. Their influence is so great that even now people can see their imprint in architecture, law, and even helping spread Christianity, the world’s most populous religion. These amazing facts also begs a question. How did one of the world’s greatest civilization fall? Well, the fall of Roman Empire in 476 ACE was aided by ineffective rulers, the crumbling economy, and the invasion of the Germanic Tribes.
There were many reasons for the fall of the Roman Empire. Each one interweaved with the other. Many even blame the initiation of Christianity in 337 AD by Constantine the Great as the definitive cause while others blame it on increases in unemployment, inflation, military expenditure and slave labour while others blame it on the ethical issues such the decline in morals, the lack of discipline of the armies and the political corruption within the Empire. Three major contributions that led to the collapse of the once great empire were: the heavy military spending in order to expand the Empire, the over-reliance on slave labour which led to an increase in unemployment, and the political corruption and abuse of power by the Praetorian Guard leading to the unfair selection of many disreputable emperors and the assassination of those not favoured by the Guard.
Decrease in population made it more difficult to have a strong military. The army that was already intact was demanding payment which greatly weakened the budget of Rome. Collecting taxes became harder thus causes the economy to decline. This inevitably made it easy for the Germanic tribes to invade the Mediterranean. Constantine and Diocletian slowed down the rate of decline in Rome by allowing Christianity, trying to improve tax collection, and the creation of a second capitol in Constantinople. This only sped up the rate of decline in the western half of the empire, but strengthening the eastern half. The only surviving portion of the empire was now known as the Byzantine Empire with its capitol Constantinople.