Christianity and Paganism in the Fourth to Eighth Centuries

...is a more complicated subject than what most people suppose. The usual story is that people in the Roman Empire, upon seeing the superiority of Christianity, converted peacefully and immediately, and that this happened once Constantine tolerated the new religion. Further, most people think that Christianity, as a whole, sprang with its doctrines already intact. Ramsay MacMullen, Professor Emeritus of History at Yale and one of the best historians of the Roman Empire, exposes the flaws in these assumptions. Since Justinian felt the need to take sever action against pagan religious practice, well into the 6th century, we see that paganism was alive and well for a while. Under Constantine, and then under Theodosius and others, the laws encouraged conversion to Christianity and discouraged staying pagan. Constantine's motivations are complex; he wanted to find one religion to unify his empire, but there's no evidence that he was not sincere in his conversion. After his conversion, church leaders and bishops were not happy with the persistence of the old religion. "Pagans danced in the very streets, as Augustine described them; in the theatres they laughed aloud at takeoffs on communion and martyrdom, as I mentioned a few pages earlier; they wrote open letters and speeches in their own defense, they even went to court to assert their rights- all this, far into the fifth century...Thus the imperative to which Augustine and others of the ecclesiastical leadership responded, utterly to extirpate every form of worship but their own, must resort to arms." (p. 25) One of the most interesting aspects of the book is MacMullen's discussion of the assimilation of pagans into the church. Most pagan converts simply did not have a concept of praying to one supreme being for petitions, intercessions, etc. Rather, they each had their own god- one for harvests, one for employment, and so on. They thought that there was some vague "Logos" that was governing the world, but that it was unreachable by humans. The influx of pagans holding these views greatly influenced the cult of the martyrs and saints. Many converts made a simple substitute. Since there are records of Augustine and Jerome and others constantly making sermons against superstitious obsession with martyrs, we can safely say that assimilation was far from a smooth process. Moreover, according to MacMullen, aspects of paganism influenced the development of Christianity, despite the latter's hostility to the former. This is a highly recommended work. Anyone wanting to know how Christianity got to where it is today should read this. It makes a good companion to "Voting About God in Early Church Councils" by the same author.

This is a very important book, one that every student of religious history should read. Ramsay MacMullen has undertaken the task of speaking on behalf of a people who were not allowed to speak for themselves: the pagans of the Roman Empire. He points out that the focus of history has been on Christianity; after all, Christians wrote the histories of that era. But he notes as well that the estimates on Christian numbers by Tertullian and Eusebius are "manifestly absurd", an expression "of the authors' zeal and their sense of the distance traveled by their church since the first century." What this amounts to, in MacMullen's view, is that "the Christians, not only in their triumphant exaggerations but in their sheer bulk, today, seriously misrepresent the true proportions of religious history." Orthodox Christianity was not interested in voices raised in protest. What were seen as heretical writings were burned, as were non-Christian texts and "copyists were discouraged from replacing them by the threat of having their hands cut off." And Christianity's own historians were not interested in giving a balanced accounting of events. MacMullen comments that Eusebius "disclaimed the telling of the whole truth. Rather, he proposed to limit his account to 'what may be of profit.'" This book attempts to set the record straight. MacMullen notes that previously scholars had thought that paganism had been defeated by the end of the fourth century and all converted to the new faith. This is not true, he tells us. "Stain Augustine did not live in a Christian world" he says and in the book's five chapters proceeds to demonstrate the truth of this assertion. We see that paganism of the late Roman Empire was alive and well. "It used to be thought that, at the end, the eradication of paganism really required no effort" and that paganism had become a hollow husk. "But historians seem now to have abandoned this interpretation...The real vitality of paganism is instead recognized; and to explain its eventual fate what must also be recognized is an opposing force, an urgent one, determined on its extinction." And we see the extreme measures to which Christianity was willing to resort to stamp out all opposition: fines, confiscation, exile, improsionment, flogging, torture, beheading, and crucifixtion. "What more could be imagined? Nothing. The extremes of conceivable pressure were brought to bear." Nor was this violence restricted to pagans. Speaking of the fourth century, MacMullen says "more Christians died for their faith at the hands of fellow Christians than had died before in all the persecutions." Like Pagans and Christians before it, Christianity & Paganism in the Fourth to Eighth Centuries must be read for the truth of the past to be understood. The facts have for long been misrepresented and misunderstood, and MacMullen brushes these obstructions away with a masterful hand to reveal the vibrancy of a pagan world scholarship has long consigned to oblivi

As far as I know Ramsay MacMullen could not in any way be accurately described as a Pagan. In fact, he does say some things that indicate that he almost certainly is not one. Nevertheless, this is one history book that every well-educated Pagan should read. It's not a pretty story - in fact its an excrutiatingly painful story. MacMullen deals with most of the important myths about the rise of Christianity and the downfall of Paganism: (1) that Pagans voluntarily chose to convert to Christianity without coercion (2) that women, slaves and the rural populations were less loyal to Paganism than the urban male elites (3) that Paganism "went quietly" (4) that Paganism simply disappeared without a trace All of these myths are laid to rest by MacMullen. May they rest in peace. Despite (apparently) not being a Pagan himself, MacMullen nevertheless displays an uncanny sympathy for and understanding of Classical Paganism. In particular he adeptly captures the spirit of Paganism with the two words "tradition" and "tolerance". Paganism was a Religion and a world-view in which tradition was honored and revered - it was a way for human beings to feel a strong connection to the past and to each other. And it was also a Religion in which tolerance was taken for granted. This is the real take-home lesson of this book. MacMullen calmly tells the tale of how Christianity grappled with a simple fact: nobody knew exactly how to go about imposing one religion on everyone. It had never been done before and the very idea was not so much objectionable as it was simply incomprehensible. MacMullen tells the horrifying story of how the Christians slowly perfected the repressive machinery necessary to enforce spiritual and psychological conformity. At first edicts against Paganism could be safely ignored - but as the decades and centuries went on, through a combination of savage mob-violence and state terrorism, Paganism was driven underground. MacMullen makes it clear that Paganism fought to survive. Without probably intending to, he leaves the door wide open for future investigations of the ways in which Paganism continued to survive as a clandestine Religion.

Continues the story of MacMullens' "Christianizing the Roman Empire" with a solid scholarly look at the reasons Pagans converted to Christianity in the period after Christianity took over the central government of the Roman Empire. Christian Roman Emperors outlawed Pagan ceremonies, taxed Pagan temples, and gave Christian Romans preferences in official advancement. By the end of this period everyone was Christian and the Empire was gone. By a famous Yale historian, an essential text for serious students. Highly recommended. And like everything MacMullen writes, it is hard to read.

MacMullen does a valuable service by showing that persecution of non Christians was methodically practiced by the Church long before the Inquisition. The Church was indeed persecuted by Romans in its formative years. However, when Constantine made his calculated move to consolidate, and save what was left of his empire by supporting monarchial Christianity, its leaders, Augustine of Hippo among them, persecuted non believers with fanatical zeal. MacMullen's evidence is irrefutable. His new book shows that bloody and unbloody persecution by nascent ecclesiastical christianity formed part of the dynamic contributing to the growth of the church.