Heritage Exam 1 Key Concepts

Jupiter, Greatest and Best: Traditional Roman Religion

• Roman mythology expresses social truths about the Romans

• Romans claim their founder is Aeneas

  • Son of goddess Venus and a Trojan king

    • Exhibiting permeable boundary between divinity and humanity

  • Julius Caesar claims to descend from Aeneas

  • Aeneas and a group of soldiers escape Troy during Trojan War, become culturally Latin

• Roman self-mythology emphasizes their militaristic and religious aspects (in that order!)

• Romulus and Remus (twins) born to a vestal virgin priestess (religious symbol) and Mars the god of war (militaristic symbol)

• Livy = Roman historian around the time of Christ; wrote Roman history to praise Augustus

• Romulus and Remus select the place for their new civilization based on two aspects

  • Can easily cross Tiber River (trade advantages)

  • 7 hills (military defense advantage)

• Romulus and Remus wait for an omen from the gods to select who is king

  • Remus sees the first omen: 6 eagles

  • Romulus sees the second omen: 12 eagles

  • They fight, Romulus wince, which is why it’s called Rome

• 1st King of Rome = Romulus

  • MILITARISTIC SYMBOL!!!

  • Formed a legion, then formed the state

    • Within the state, formed the senate and the people’s assembly

• 2nd King of Rome = Numa

  • RELIGIOUS SYMBOL!!!

  • Uses religion to shape Rome into civilized society

  • Invents new religious practices and imports practices from other civilizations

  • Gives Rome their calendar and its holy days

  • Created the pontifex maximus (the pope of today)

• Roman society = a soldier worshipping a symbol of military domination

• SYNCRETISM OF ROMAN RELIGION

  • All ancient peoples worshipped the planets, just with different religious practices

  • Tradition of hero-worship (people could become gods)

• PERMEABLE BOUNDARY BETWEEN DIVINITY AND HUMANITY!!!

Alexamenos Worships His God: Jesus and the First Christians

• Jesus’ public ministry begins in 29 AD

• Jesus was born into a period of instability in Roman Judea

• We know for sure that Jesus was baptised by John because of the criterion of embarrassment

• Apostolic Age ended in 64 AD with the death of Peter and Paul

  • 1st Persecution of Christians by the State

  • Under Emperor Nero

• 2 Christian innovations to deal with power vacuum after end of Apostolic Age

  • Apostolic Succession

    • Authority passed from Jesus to His Apostles, then from the Apostles to bishops

    • Bishop = leader of all Christians in a city

  • Canonization

    • Collection of the writings of the Apostles and treating them as Scripture

    • Formulating the New Testament

  • Together, Apostolic Succession and Canonization laid theological and moral foundations for the new Christian community

  • Theological Tradition ⇨ Interpret Scripture ⇨ Reinterpret Theology ⇨ Reinterpret Scripture

    • CIRCULAR MOVEMENT

Be Subject to the Bishop as to Christ: First Institutions and Orthodoxies

• Post-Apostolic Christianity

  • Early Christians first met together in one person’s house

  • Once Christianity grew larger, this shifted

  • Now, Christians split into multiple churches, each headed by a presbyter/elder (“priest”)

  • Head of all the priests in the city = bishop

  • Idea emerges that obedience to the bishop is essentially obedience to Jesus

• Early controversies and heresies

  • Ebionism

    • Taught that Jesus was really human but not really divine

  • Docetism

    • Taught that Jesus was really divine but not really human

      • “Ghost” figure weirdness

    • Theological tendency, NOT actually a church

  • Gnosticism

    • Complex; not just a Christian heresy

    • Knowledge = salvation

    • Passwords, multiple gods, etc

    • Greco-Roman syncretic philosophy and religion

    • Blending ideas of Plato

  • Marcionism

    • Christian missionaries brought a de-Judaized Bible to Marcion since it was a Gentile area

      • Marcion converts, then comes into contact with the full Bible and is shocked

    • Marcion teaches that the Old Testament is false and evil, and the expanded New Testament is false as well

    • Marcion sees the God of the Old Testament as different from the God of the New Testament

Crises of the Third Century: Invasion, Persecution, and Diocletian

• Nero becomes emperor of Rome, famous for his mismanagement and cruelty

• Great Fire of Rome occurs in 64 AD

  • Extraordinary cruel

  • Short-lived

  • Confined only to the city of Rome

• The Doctrine of Trajan

  • Emperor Trajan and Pliny

    • Correspondence between the two where Pliny asks about how to handle Christianity

  • If someone is accused publicly of being a Christian, they must recant or die

  • State cannot go hunting Christians → only dangerous to be Christian if you have enemies

  • During this time, persecution is sporadic and informal

• Crisis of the Third Century

  • Period where military kept overthrowing emperors, installing a general as emperor, and the cycle repeating over and over

  • Military wanted consistently higher pay (which is what started and continued the crisis)

• Decius’ Persecution

  • 250 AD

  • Decius announces that everyone except the Jews (but including the Christians) in Roman Empire would be forced to worship the Roman gods

  • An attempt to stabilize the situation caused by the Crisis of the 3rd Century

  • Not intended as a persecution of Christianity, but in effect, it was

• Diocletianic Persecution / The Great Persecution

  • Diocletian takes throne and wants to restore Rome

  • 303-313 AD

  • Most systematic campaign against Christianity in Roman history

In This Sign Conquer: Constantine and the Conversion of Rome

• The Tetrarchy (installed by Diocletian)

  • Prevents future military coups

  • Each emperor (“Augustus”) has an assistant emperor (“Caesar”)

  • Meant to stabilize succession process and eliminate hereditary succession

  • Eastern and Western Augustuses/Caesars

• Constantine’s ascension to power

  • Constantine, son of Constantius, gets left out of the succession of Caesars and Augustuses but his enemies are included

  • Constantius dies and Constantine’s army backs him as the true inheritor of Western Empire → Constantine begins civil war

  • Constantine sees a cross or Chi-Rho before his battle with the word “in this sign conquer” (a vision of Christ)

  • He wins the battle and becomes unopposed Western Roman emperor

  • Christianity is legalized with Edict of Milan in 313 AD

    • Constantine involves bishops in the administration of the emperor ⭐

    • From this point, the Church is established (integrated into the state)

      • CHRISTENDOM

• Donatism

  • Diocletianic persecution led to all possible copies of Scripture being burnt

    • Some bishops obeyed and handed over copies, they got called “traditores”

  • Donatus claimed the traditores were illegitimate and therefore had invalid sacraments

  • Donatus gets condemned by North African council, so then he goes to Constantine

  • Constantine sides with the council and tries to get the Donatists back in line via persecution

Nicaea in World Perspective

• With Constantine, the church and state became fully integrated

  • Church uses state resources to enforce orthodoxy and punish heresy

• Arianism

  • Alexandria, Egypt = cultural and intellectual center of Roman Empire

    • Know where this is on the map!

  • Arius is a priest from Alexandria; was teaching that Jesus was less divine than the Father

    • “Lowercase g”

    • To Arius, Jesus was created by God and then Jesus created the world

      • Jesus functions as an intermediary

  • “In what way is Jesus God?  To what degree?”

• Council of Nicaea

  • 325 AD

  • Decide that Jesus and God are in fact of the same nature

  • Homoousios

  • Agree on a creed (theological statement) condemning Arius’ teachings by using homoousios (which Arius hated)

  • Constantine splits his empire between multiple sons; Constans in the west follows orthodox mainstream church, while Constantius in the East follows the Arian church.

  • Constantius becomes sole emperor and now the Christians in the west are of a diff form than their emperor (their theological difference exacerbates their ethnic difference)

• Ulfilas

  • Romano-Greek background, but raised among Goths

  • Studied in Alexandria and agreed with Arias but took it further

    • To Ulfilas, the Holy Spirit was like an angel, and was also created

  • Ulfilas starts converting the Goths to his form of Christianity

  • Gothic Civil War occurs, Ulfilas leads large group of refugee goths to the Roman Empire

    • They’re allowed in since they’re Christian

    • Rules get bypassed because there are so many refugees – so they get to settle as a group and keep their weapons

• Refugees get cruelly mistreated by Roman government and they rise up in war (with the weapons they got to keep) and kill the emperor

• Beginning of the end for Western Roman Empire

The Fall and Transformation of the Western Roman Empire

• 380 AD

  • Edict of Thessalonica

  • Christianity becomes “the” legal religion of Roman Empire

  • Legally required to be Catholic Christians

• Imperium Sine Fine: Roman mindset that they are rightful rulers of the world without end

• Rome federates the tribes surrounding their borders to protect from invasion