... the origins of Judaism and Christianity.

Topics covered in post 4 of 4:

o Ancient Rome : Cultural Life / Stoicism /
Religious and Cultural Life in the 3rd Century /
Mithraism / Diocletian / Struggle for Power /
The Reign of Constantine / Arianism / Nicene
Creed / Nicaea, Council of / The Roman
Empire Under the 4th-century Successors
of Constantine, The Rule of Constantine's
Sons / The Reign of Julian / The Reign of
Jovian / The Reign of Valentinian and Valens /
The Reign of Gratian and Theodosius I /
Constantinople, Council of / Map - The
Barbarian Invasions

- - -

Ancient Rome
Cultural Life
http://www.britannica.com/eb/article?eu=109198&tocid=26681#26681.toc
Excerpt: "... Stoicism was the most flourishing
philosophy of the age. In the East a sterile scholas-
ticism diligently studied Plato and Aristotle, but
Epictetus, the stoic from Anatolia, was the pre-
eminent philosopher.

In the West, stoicism permeates Seneca's work
and much of Pliny's Natural History. Evidently,
its advocacy of common morality appealed to the
traditional Roman sense of decorum and duty,
and its doctrine of a world directed by an all-
embracing providence struck a responsive chord
in the 2nd-century emperors, though they deeply
disapproved of its extremist offshoots, the cynics:
Marcus Aurelius, as noted, was himself a stoic. ..."

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Stoicism
http://www.britannica.com/eb/article?eu=115429
Excerpt: "A school of thought that flourished
in Greek and Roman antiquity. It was one of the
loftiest and most sublime philosophies in the
record of Western civilization. In urging parti-
cipation in the affairs of man, Stoics have always
believed that the goal of all inquiry is to provide
man with a mode of conduct characterized by
tranquillity of mind and certainty of moral worth. ...

The Stoics believed that perception is the basis
of true knowledge. In logic, their comprehensive
presentation of the topic is derived from percep-
tion, yielding not only the judgment that know-
ledge is possible but also that certain knowledge
is possible, on the analogy of the incorrigibility
of perceptual experience.

To them, the world is composed of material
things, with some few exceptions (e.g., meaning),
and the irreducible element in all things is right
reason, which pervades the world as divine fire.
Things, such as material, or corporeal, bodies,
are governed by this reason or fate, in which
virtue is inherent.

The world in its awesome entirety is so ruled as
to exhibit a grandeur of orderly arrangement that
can only serve as a standard for mankind in the
regulation and ordering of his life. Thus, the
goal of man is to live according to nature, in
agreement with the world design. Stoic moral
theory is also based on the view that the world,
as one great city, is a unity. Man, as a world
citizen, has an obligation and loyalty to all
things in that city. ...

Its chief competitors in antiquity were:

(1) Epicureanism, with its doctrine of a life of
withdrawal in contemplation and escape from
worldly affairs and its belief that pleasure,
as the absence of pain, is the goal of man;

(2) Skepticism, which rejected certain knowledge
in favour of local beliefs and customs, in the
expectation that these guides would provide man
with the quietude and serenity that the dogmatic
philosopher (e.g., the Stoic) could not hope to
achieve; and

(3) Christianity, with its hope of personal salva-
tion provided by an appeal to faith as an immanent
aid to human understanding and by the beneficent
intervention of a merciful God. ..."

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Ancient Rome
Religious and Cultural Life in the 3rd Century
http://www.britannica.com/eb/article?eu=109199&tocid=26688#26688.toc
Excerpt: "Imperial religion was properly com-
pounded of both Roman and non-Roman piety.

Official religion can hardly be said to have existed
in the sense of being pressed on people by the
state. But the statement needs qualification. The
cults of Rome were certainly official in the city
itself; they were supported out of the state treasury
and by the devotion of the emperor, at least if he
lived up to what everyone felt were his responsi-
bilities. ...

Religious developments in the Eastern provinces
during the centuries from Augustus to Severus
Alexander followed a somewhat different course
from those in the West. In the East the further
jumbling together of already well-mixed traditions
encouraged a tolerance that eroded their edges. ...

Eastern cults, however, also introduced to the
West complex liturgies, beliefs underlying beliefs
that could be explained in especially dramatic
ways to special devotees ('mysteries'), and much
rich symbolism. Of no cult was this more true
than Mithraism, known to the 20th century through
excavation of the underground shrines that it
preferred. ..."

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Mithraism
http://www.britannica.com/eb/article?eu=54365
Excerpt: "The worship of Mithra, the Iranian god
of the sun, justice, contract, and war in pre-Zoro-
astrian Iran. Known as Mithras in the Roman Empire
during the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD, this deity was
honoured as the patron of loyalty to the emperor.

After the acceptance of Christianity by the emperor
Constantine in the early 4th century, Mithraism
rapidly declined."

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Ancient Rome
Diocletian
http://www.britannica.com/eb/article?eu=109199&tocid=26698#26698.toc
Excerpt: "... After a period of initial indifference
toward the Christians, Diocletian ended his reign
by unleashing against them, in 303, the last and
most violent of their persecutions. ...

It was urged on him by his Caesar Galerius and
prolonged in the East for a decade (until 311) by
Galerius as Augustus and by other emperors.

As in earlier persecutions, the initiative arose at
the heart of government; some emperors, as
outraged by the Christians as many private
citizens, considered it their duty to maintain
harmony with the gods, the pax deorum, by
which alone the empire flourished.

Accordingly, Decius and Valerian in the 250s had
dealt severely with the Christians, requiring them
to demonstrate their apostasy by offering sacrifice
at the local temples, and for the first time had
directly struck the church's clergy and property.
There were scores of Christians who preferred
death, though the great majority complied or hid
themselves.

Within a matter of months after he had begun his
attacks, however, Decius had died (251), and the
bloody phase of Valerian's attacks also lasted only
months (259/260). His son Gallienus had issued
an edict of tolerance, and Aurelian was even
appealed to by the church of Antioch to settle
an internal dispute. ...

A measure of respectability had been won, along
with recruits from the upper classes and gifts of
land and money.

By the end of the 3rd century Christians actually
predominated in some of the smaller Eastern towns
or districts, and they were well represented in Italy,
Gaul, and Africa around Carthage; all told, they
numbered perhaps as many as 5 million out of the
empire's total population of 60 million.

Occasional meetings on disputed matters might
bring together dozens of bishops, and it was this
institution or phenomenon that the Great Persecu-
tions sought to defeat. The progress of a religion
that could not accept the religious basis of the
tetrarchy and certain of whose members were
imprudent and provocative, as in the incidents
at Nicomedia (where a church was built across
from Diocletian's palace), finally aroused Galerius'
fanaticism.

In 303-304 several edicts, each increasingly strin-
gent, ordered the destruction of the churches, the
seizure of sacred books, the imprisonment of the
clergy, and a sentence of death for all those who
refused to sacrifice to the Roman gods.

In the East, where Galerius was imposing his ideas
more and more on the aging Diocletian, the perse-
cution was extremely violent, especially in Egypt,
Palestine, and the Danubian regions.

In Italy, Maximian, zealous at the beginning, quickly
tired; and in Gaul, Constantius merely destroyed
a few churches without carrying reprisals any further.

Nevertheless, Christianity could no longer be eradi-
cated, for the people of the empire and even some
officials no longer felt the blind hatred for Christians
that had typified previous centuries. ..."

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Ancient Rome
Struggle for Power
http://www.britannica.com/eb/article?eu=109199&tocid=26699#26699.toc
Excerpt: "... In 310, after numerous intrigues, old
Maximian was killed by his son-in-law Constantine,
and in the following year Alexander was slain by
one of Maxentius' praetorian prefects.

In 311 Galerius died of illness a few days after
having admitted the failure of his persecutions by
proclaiming an edict of tolerance. There remained,
in the West, Constantine and Maxentius and in
the East, Licinius and Maximinus Daia.

Constantine, the best general, invaded Italy with a
strong army of faithful Gauls and defeated Maxen-
tius near the Milvian Bridge, not far from Rome. ...

The Reign of Constantine

Constantine and Licinius soon disputed among
themselves for the empire. ... Although Constantine
favoured the Christians, Licinius resumed the perse-
cutions, and in 324 war erupted once again.

Licinius, defeated first at Adrianople and then in
Anatolia, was obliged to surrender and, together
with his son, was executed.

Next, Constantine's third son, Constantius, was
in turn named Caesar, as his two elder brothers,
Crispus and Constantine the Younger, had been
some time before. ...

Constantine's conversion to Christianity had a
far-reaching effect. Like his father, he had originally
been a votary of the Sun; worshiping at the Grand
Temple of the Sun in the Vosges Mountains of
Gaul, he had had his first vision--albeit a pagan
one.

During his campaign against Maxentius, he had
a second vision--a lighted cross in the sky--after
which he had painted on his men's shields a figure
that was perhaps Christ's monogram (although he
probably had Christ confused with the Sun in his
manifestation as summa divinitas ['the highest
divinity']). After his victory he declared himself
Christian. ...

The church, so recently persecuted, was now
suddenly showered with favours: the construction
of magnificent churches (Rome, Constantinople),
donations and grants, exemptions from decurial
duties for the clergy, juridical competences for the
bishops, and exceptional promotions for Christian
officials.

Pagans were not persecuted, however, and Constan-
tine retained the title of pontifex maximus. But he
spoke of the pagan gods with contempt and forbade
certain types of worship, principally nocturnal sacri-
fices.

In 331 he ordered an inventory of pagan property,
despoiled the temples of their treasure, and finally
destroyed a few Eastern sanctuaries on the pretext
of immorality.

The churches were soon to feel the burden of
imperial solicitude: the 'secular arm' (i.e., the
government) was placed at the service of a
fluctuating orthodoxy, for the emperor was
impressionable to arguments of various coteries
and became quite lost in theological subtleties.

In 314 the Council of Arles had tried in vain to
stop the Donatist schism (a nationalistic heretical
movement questioning the worthiness of certain
church officials) that arose in Africa after Dio-
cletian's persecutions.

The Arian heresy raised even more difficulties:
Arius, an Alexandrian priest and disciple of Lucian
of Antioch, questioned the dogma of the Trinity
and of the Godhead of Christ, and his asceticism,
as well as the sharpness of his dialectics, brought
him many followers; he was convicted several
times, but the disorders continued.

Constantine, solicited by both sides and untroubled
by doctrinal nuances that were, moreover, foreign
to most believers in the West, wished to institute
a universal creed; with this in mind he convened
the general Council of Nicaea, or Nicene Council,
in 325.

He condemned Arius and declared, in spite of the
Easterners, that Jesus was 'of one substance' with
God the Father. Nevertheless, the heresy continued
to exist, for Constantine changed his mind several
times; he was influenced by Arian or semi-Arian
bishops and was even baptized on his deathbed,
in 337, by one of them, Eusebius of Nicomedia. ..."

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Arianism
http://www.britannica.com/eb/article?eu=9522
Excerpt: "A Christian heresy first proposed early
in the 4th century by the Alexandrian presbyter
Arius. It affirmed that Christ is not truly divine
but a created being. Arius' basic premise was the
uniqueness of God, who is alone self-existent
and immutable; the Son, who is not self-existent,
cannot be God.

Because the Godhead is unique, it cannot be
shared or communicated, so the Son cannot be
God. Because the Godhead is immutable, the
Son, who is mutable, being represented in the
Gospels as subject to growth and change, cannot
be God.

The Son must, therefore, be deemed a creature
who has been called into existence out of nothing
and has had a beginning. Moreover, the Son can
have no direct knowledge of the Father since the
Son is finite and of a different order of existence. ..."

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Nicene Creed
http://www.britannica.com/eb/article?eu=57093
Excerpt: "Also called Niceno-constantinopolitan
Creed, a Christian statement of faith that is the
only ecumenical creed because it is accepted as
authoritative by the Roman Catholic, Eastern
Orthodox, Anglican, and major Protestant
churches.

The Apostles' and Athanasian creeds are accepted
by some but not all of these churches.

Until the early 20th century, it was universally
assumed that the Niceno-Constantinopolitan
Creed (the more accurate term) was an enlarged
version of the Creed of Nicaea, which was prom-
ulgated at the Council of Nicaea (325).

It was further assumed that this enlargement had
been carried out at the Council of Constantinople
(381) with the object of bringing the Creed of
Nicaea up to date in regard to heresies about the
Incarnation and the Holy Spirit that had risen
since the Council of Nicaea. ..."

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Nicaea, Council of
http://www.britannica.com/eb/article?eu=57082
Excerpt: "(325), the first ecumenical council of
the Christian church, meeting in ancient Nicaea
(now Iznik, Tur.). It was called by the emperor
Constantine I, an unbaptized catechumen, or neo-
phyte, who presided over the opening session
and took part in the discussions.

He hoped a general council of the church would
solve the problem created in the Eastern church
by Arianism, a heresy first proposed by Arius
of Alexandria that affirmed that Christ is not
divine but a created being. Pope Sylvester I did
not attend the council but was represented by
legates. ..."

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Ancient Rome
The Roman Empire Under the 4th-century
Successors of Constantine
The Rule of Constantine's Sons
http://www.britannica.com/eb/article?eu=109200
Excerpt: "After some months of confusion, Constan-
tine's three surviving sons (Crispus, the eldest son,
had been executed in mysterious circumstances in
326), supported by the armies faithful to their father's
memory, divided the empire among themselves and
had all the other members of their family killed. ...

Constantius was primarily interested in religious
affairs. His interventions created a 'caesaro-papism'
that was unfavourable to the church, for after the
Battle of Mursa the emperor had become violently
Arian.

The Christological problem had moved to the fore-
front. In 360 Constantius obtained a new creed by
force from the Council of Constantinople, which,
rejecting the notion of 'substance' as too risky,
declared only that the Son was like the Father
and thus left the problem unresolved.

Pagans as well as orthodox Nicaeans (Homoou-
sians) and extremist Arians (Anomoeans) were
persecuted, for in 356-357 several edicts pro-
scribed magic, divination, and sacrifices and
ordered that the temples be closed. But when
Constantius visited Rome in 357, he was so
struck by its pagan grandeur that he apparently
suspended the application of these measures."

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Ancient Rome
The Reign of Julian
http://www.britannica.com/eb/article?eu=109200&tocid=26703#26703.toc
Excerpt: "Julian, who had been spared because
of his tender age from the family butchering in
337, had been brought up far from the court
and was undoubtedly intended for the priest-
hood. Nevertheless, he had been allowed to take
courses in rhetoric and philosophy at Ephesus
and later at Athens; he developed a fondness
for Hellenic literature, and he secretly aposta-
tized around 351.

When he became sole emperor at the end of
361, he proclaimed his pagan faith, ordered the
restitution of the temples seized under Constan-
tius, and freed all the bishops who had been
banished by the Arians, so as to weaken
Christianity through the resumption of doc-
trinal disputes.

The religion he himself espoused was com-
pounded of traditional non-Christian elements
of piety and theology, such as might have been
found in any fairly intellectual person in the pre-
ceding centuries, along with elements of Neo-
platonism developed by Porphyry and Iambli-
chus of two or three generations earlier, and,
finally, much of the organization and social
ethic of the church.

From Neoplatonism he learned the techniques
of direct communication with the gods (theurgy)
through prayer and invocation; from the church
he adopted, as the church itself had adopted
from the empire's civil organization, a hierarchy
of powers: provincial, metropolitan, urban,
with himself as supreme pontiff.

His deep love of traditional higher culture, more-
over, provoked his war on Christian intellectuals
and teachers who, he protested, had no right to
Homer or Plato. Many Christians both before
and later concurred with him, being themselves
troubled by the relation between Christianity
and inherited literature and thought, steeped
as both were in pagan beliefs.

In the latter part of his 18-month reign, Julian
forbade Christians from teaching, began the
rebuilding of the Temple at Jerusalem, restored
many pagan shrines, and displayed an exag-
gerated piety. Whereas Constantine (and his
sons to a lesser degree) had introduced a huge
number of coreligionists into the upper ranks
of the army and government, achieving a rough
parity between the members of the two religions,
Julian began to reverse the process.

Within a short while Julian was successful enough
in his undertaking to have aroused the fear and
hatred of the Christians, who for a long time
thought of him as the Antichrist. ...

Taking up Trajan's dream, Julian wished to defeat
Persia definitively by engaging the empire's forces
in an offensive war that would facilitate a national
reconciliation around the gods of paganism.

But his army was weak--corrupted perhaps by
large numbers of hostile Christians. After a bril-
liant beginning, he was defeated near Ctesiphon
and had to retrace his steps painfully; he was
killed in an obscure encounter on June 26, 363.

The Reign of Jovian

Julian's successor, Jovian, chosen by the army's
general staff, was a Christian, but not a fanatic.
He negotiated a peace with Shapur, by which
Rome lost a good part of Galerian's conquests
of 298 (including Nisibis, which had not sur-
rendered) and abandoned Armenia.

He also restored tolerance in religious affairs,
for he neither espoused any of the heresies nor
persecuted pagans. In February 364 he died
accidentally.

The Reign of Valentinian and Valens

Once again the general staff unanimously chose
a Pannonian officer--Valentinian, an energetic
patriot and, like Jovian, a moderate Christian--but
he had to yield to the rivalry of the armies by
dividing authority. ..."

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Ancient Rome
The Reign of Gratian and Theodosius I
http://www.britannica.com/eb/article?eu=109200&tocid=26705#26705.toc
Excerpt: "... In 380 the Arians (Christians who
denied Christ's divinity) were relieved of their
churches in Constantinople, and in 381 the
Nicaean faith was universally imposed by a
council whose canons established the authority
of the metropolitan bishops over their dioceses
and gave the bishop of the capital a primacy
similar to that of the bishop of Rome. ...

Paganism also was hounded: following Theodo-
sius' lead, Gratian refused the chief priesthood,
removed the altar of Victory from the hall of the
Roman Senate, and deprived the pagan priests
and the Vestal Virgins of their subsidies and
privileges. ...

After a few years' respite, ... paganism waged its
last fight: Theodosius, influenced by Ambrose
(bishop of Milan), who had dared to inflict public
penance on him in 390 after the massacre at
Thessalonica, had determined to eliminate the
pagans completely.

After a few hostile clashes, the law of Nov. 8,
392, proscribed the pagan religion. Then Arbo-
gast (barbarian general of the Roman Empire,
the first to establish a Roman nominee of his
own as a puppet emperor), after Valentinian II's
death in 392 under shadowy circumstances,
proclaimed as emperor the rhetorician Eugenius.

When Theodosius refused to recognize him,
Eugenius was thrown into the arms of the pagans
of Rome.

But this last 'pagan reaction' was short-lived; in
394, with his victory at the Frigidus (modern
Vipacco) River, between Aquileia and Emona,
Theodosius put an end to the hopes of Eugenius
and his followers. ..."

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Constantinople, Council of
http://www.britannica.com/eb/article?eu=26416
Excerpt: "(381), the second ecumenical council
of the Christian church, summoned by the
emperor Theodosius I and meeting in Constan-
tinople.

Doctrinally, it promulgated what became known
to the church as the Nicene Creed; it also declared
finally the Trinitarian doctrine of the equality of
the Holy Spirit with the Father and the Son. ..."

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Map - The Barbarian Invasions
http://www.britannica.com/eb/art?id=4471&type=A

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