średniowiecze: Historiography of the Christianization of the Roman Empire

Evidence: 44 • authority: 72

During the reign of the Roman emperor Constantine the Great (306–337 AD), Christianity began to transition to the dominant religion of the Roman Empire. Historians remain uncertain about Constantine's reasons for favoring Christianity, and theologians and historians have often argued about which form of early Christianity he subscribed to. There is no consensus among scholars as to whether he was raised a Christian, whether he adopted his mother Helena's Christianity in his youth, or whether, as claimed by Eusebius of Caesarea, he encouraged her to convert to the faith he had adopted. Constantine ruled the Roman Empire as sole emperor for much of his reign. Some scholars allege that his mai…

Evidence: 39 • authority: 72

The history of Christianity begins with Jesus, an itinerant Jewish preacher and teacher, who was crucified in Jerusalem c. AD 30–33. His followers proclaimed that he was the incarnation of God and had risen from the dead. In the two millennia since, Christianity has spread across the world, becoming the world's largest religion with over two billion adherents worldwide. Christianity was a mostly urban grassroots movement that grew to over a million adherents by the third century. In its first century, it began developing a church government and a religious text, which was not formalized as canon until the fourth century. Constantine the Great issued the Edict of Milan legalizing it in 313.…

Evidence: 20 • authority: 72

Flavia Julia Helena (; Ancient Greek: Ἑλένη, Helénē; c. AD 246/248 – 330), also known as Helena of Constantinople and in Christianity as Saint Helena, was a Greek Augusta of the Roman Empire and mother of Emperor Constantine the Great as well as a canonized saint in both Catholic and Orthodox Churches for her pivotal role in the spread of Christianity. She was born in the lower classes traditionally in the city of Drepanon, Bithynia, in Asia Minor, which was renamed Helenopolis. Helena ranks as an important figure in the history of Christianity. In her final years, she made a religious tour of Syria Palaestina and Jerusalem, during which ancient tradition claims that she discovered the True…

Evidence: — • authority: 88

Introduction. Abstract Recent scholarship on Roman religion has emphasised the ‘secularity’ of late antique culture and treated Christian polemics (the main accounts of fourth-century polytheism) as exercises in constructing artificial boundaries between ‘pagans’ and ‘Christians’. Neither approach does justice to the dynamic interaction between Christian writers and traditional religious thought. Pagan, philosophical henotheism and the anti-Christian legislation of Decius, Valerian, and the Tetrarchs paralleled the common Christian division between ‘gentiles’ or ‘pagans’ and ‘Christians’. Christian thinkers, in turn, developed new ways of thinking and talking about ‘religion’ (using such te…

Evidence: — • authority: 88

Conclusion. Abstract Fourth-century writers dealt with traditional religion and its shifting place in Roman society with the help of myth, philosophy, and observation of cultic practice. These were not mere ‘antiquarian’ endeavours but resources that fleshed out a picture of traditional religion whose frame was set by each author’s social situation and theological convictions. The diversity of the resultant texts precludes a grand narrative of pagan evolution, or even of the formation of a new conception of ‘paganism’ or of ‘religion’. Nevertheless, the long arc of polemical discourse from Diocletian to Valentinian II testifies to the importance of the changing legal and political context t…

Evidence: — • authority: 88

Worshippers of the Gods. Abstract Worshippers of the Gods Worshippers of the Gods tells how the Latin writers who witnessed the political and social rise of Christianity rethought the role of traditional religion in the empire and city of Rome. In parallel with the empire’s legal Christianisation, it traces changing attitudes toward paganism from the last empire-wide persecution of Christians under the Tetrarchy to the removal of state funds from the Roman cults in the early 380s. Influential recent scholarship has seen Christian polemical literature—a crucial body of evidence for late antique polytheism—as an exercise in Christian identity-making. In response, Worshippers of the Gods argue…

Evidence: — • authority: 72

Germanic paganism or Germanic religion was the traditional, culturally significant religion of the Germanic peoples. With a chronological range of at least one thousand years—in an area covering Scandinavia, the British Isles, modern Germany, the Netherlands, and at times other parts of Europe—the beliefs and practices of Germanic paganism varied. Scholars typically assume some degree of continuity between the beliefs and practices of the Roman era and those found in Norse paganism, as well as between Germanic religion and reconstructed Indo-European religion and post-conversion folklore, though the precise degree and details of this continuity are subjects of debate. Germanic religion was…

Evidence: — • authority: 72

Persecution of pagans in the late Roman Empire began during the reign of Constantine the Great (r. 306–337) in the military colony of Aelia Capitolina (Jerusalem), when he destroyed a pagan temple for the purpose of constructing a Christian church. Rome had periodically confiscated church properties, and Constantine was vigorous in reclaiming them whenever these issues were brought to his attention. Eusebius alleged that Hadrian (2nd century) had constructed a temple to Venus on the site of the crucifixion of Jesus on Golgotha hill in order to suppress Christian veneration there. Constantine used that to justify the temple's destruction, saying he was simply reclaiming the property. Using t…

Evidence: — • authority: 72

Anglo-Saxon paganism, sometimes termed Anglo-Saxon heathenism, Anglo-Saxon pre-Christian religion, Anglo-Saxon traditional religion, or Anglo-Saxon polytheism, is the set of religious beliefs and practices followed by the Anglo-Saxons between the 5th and 8th centuries AD, during the initial period of Early Medieval England. A variant of Germanic paganism found across much of north-western Europe, it encompassed a heterogeneous variety of beliefs and cultic practices, with much regional variation. Developing from the earlier Iron Age religion of continental northern Europe, it was introduced to Britain following the Anglo-Saxon migration in the mid 5th century, and remained the dominant beli…

Evidence: — • authority: 72

Paganism is commonly used to refer to various religions that existed during Antiquity and the Middle Ages, such as the Greco-Roman religions of the Roman Empire, including the Roman imperial cult, the various mystery religions, religious philosophies such as Neoplatonism and Gnosticism, and more localized ethnic religions practiced both inside and outside the empire. During the Middle Ages, the term was also adapted to refer to religions practiced outside the former Roman Empire, such as Germanic paganism, Egyptian paganism and Baltic paganism. From the point of view of the early Christians, these religions all qualified as ethnic (or gentile, ethnikos, gentilis, the term translating goyim,…

Evidence: — • authority: 72

Constantine I (27 February 272 – 22 May 337), also known as Constantine the Great, was Roman emperor from AD 306 to 337 and the first Roman emperor to convert to Christianity. He played a pivotal role in elevating the status of Christianity in the Roman Empire, the Edict of Milan decriminalising Christian practice and ceasing Christian persecution. This was a turning point in the Christianisation of the Roman Empire. He founded the city of Constantinople (now Istanbul) and made it the capital of the Empire, which it remained for over a millennium. Born in Naissus, a city located in the province of Moesia Superior (now Niš, Serbia), Constantine was the son of Flavius Constantius, a Roman arm…

Evidence: — • authority: 92

Women health providers: materials on cures, remedies and sexuality in inquisitorial processes (15th-18th century).. Background The first inquisitorial trials were against Muslims and Jews. Later, they focused on women, especially caregivers. Progressively, they were linked to witchcraft and sorcery because of their great care, generational and empirical knowledge. The historiography of health in the 15th-18th centuries still has important bibliographical and interpretative gaps in the care provided by women. Objective To analyse the care provided by healers as health providers, accused by the Inquisition, justifying the importance of nursing in the diversity of community care in the 15th-18…