(no subject)
It is useful to view Christianity as one of the quite similar religions and philosophical schools competing for the role of a common moral codex of the Roman empire. The era was pregnant with religions, sects, and cults striving for acceptance at the highest level. Judaism was tried at the imperial court and not accepted for obvious reasons.
But, say, if you take Stoicism and marry it with Eleusinian Mysteries, you'd arrive almost at the same set of values, only more expensive and henceforth elitarian in nature. Marcus Aurelius was celebrated as a near-Christan and almost a saint for that same reason.
Similarly, the Cult of Mithras plus Neoplatonism of the IV century gives us a common moral code, extremely close to that of Christianity, and again, requires long studies and levels of initiation to pass through. One may say that Christianity won not because it was superior, but because it was way simpler and cheaper to implement, so the extremely practical emperor, Constantine the Great, used it for that reason.
His grandson (or grand-nephew or whatever), Julian still saw it as a somewhat inferior product fit for the commoners, while the elitarian philosophical Neoplatonism was adorned at his time with theurgy and became a fully-fledged religion, - still way too difficult, too mental and henceforth too impractical for the bulk of the population. And his "pagan" restoration attempt quickly dissipated after his untimely death.
For quite a long time in Rome, it was thought to be impossible to achieve good fortune, high status, and prosperity without proper religious sacrifice. A sacrifice of a fully grown bull, followed by a bath in bull blood, burning some unsavory bits, and feasting on the rest of the carcass was thought to be the most certain way to obtain a favorable destiny. The trouble is that a bull was as expensive back then as a small car nowadays and sacrificing it was as elitarian exercise as burning Volkswagen Beatle in the middle of a Californian desert. Compare it with the Christian sacrifice of a few breadcrumbs and feasting on bread and wine.
On top of this problem of expensive vs cheap (elitarian vs commoners) cults, the "pagan" religions of Rome were traditionally very tolerant of all other cults. Rome viewed itself as a protective mother, sheltering all religions of the universe in a most splendid way, better than their original birthplace.
And its emperors preferred one god over another for purely personal reasons, often seeing themselves as distant grandsons and an incarnation of a certain deity or divine essence.
This lack of religious cohesion created many moral hazards along the way, with some emperors being deified and then condemned within a short space of time, which denigrated their preferred cults, casting a lasting shadow on each of them.
Emperor Commodus, who overplayed his role as Hercules incarnate, may have inadvertently destroyed the popular masculine cult after he was ingloriously killed and Senate declared him a public enemy.
Emperor Hadrian attempted to deify his lover Antinous, perhaps too forcefully, so that little fag' statues and busts in every corner of the Empire became a source of embarrassment for the following emperors, who tried to promote traditional family values and improve the failing demographics of Roman citizenry.
Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, better known as Elagabalus, was a little fag of his own making and made a mockery of sun-god worship.
Emperor Valentinian II tried to combine Christian values with "pagan" tolerance and preservation of traditional cults, which led to many revolts and a particularly poisonous atmosphere in Alexandria, where sexually explicit pagan cults and open-minded Neoplatonist schools clashed with the morally rigid Christian sects, leading to death and destruction.
Even the great and undeniably virtuous emperor Marcus Aurelius, despite his high mental capacity and honed philosophical outlook, was bamboozled by a religious charlatan Alexander of Abonoteichos, who promoted a snake deity Glycon and made false prophecies. Roman army once lost an important battle because of such a prophecy. For years Roman coins were minted with Glycon images until the whole cult collapsed.
The growing bureaucracy of the late empire required all of the administrators to share the same set of values and swear allegiance to the same set of principles, embodied in the most comprehensive yet compact and widely recognized set of texts, symbols, and ritual practices. The bureaucratic decision-making process as well as a coherent judicial system at the grand level of the whole Empire is impossible otherwise. Especially when the growing complexity of the society required two or more simultaneous Emperors and Caesars. Justice and the system of governance are downstream of the shared value system. And it cannot revolutionize itself after each emperor's sudden death.
Christianity, being highly intolerant of competing cults and extremely stubborn in its adherence to tradition, had an edge.
So Christianity eventually won state approval and was made into a vehicle for civilization. Which required first and foremost culling of all the heresies. Henceforth the Orthodoxy. Still, Christianity had many close competitors afterward, and Manichaeism nearly won the popularity contest among the learned elite but ultimately fell out of favour as it produced palpably worse morals.
State approval meant turning the religion of the apostolic Church into an imperial cult; Popes who used to be chairmen during meetings of the bishops assumed the role of Pontifex Maximus; which both expanded their duties and powers of statesmen (such as maintaining bridges and other public works) and shrank their religio-philosophical freedoms. From a certain point of view, the merger of the State and Christianity was a religious tragedy, from another point of view, it was an administrative necessity. What survived of Christianity in early medieval times was a highly distorted religion, a monster of bureaucracy and intrigues, somewhat a caricature of itself, an anti-Christianity in many ways.
Yet it helped to survive civilization as such. And in its turn, the civilization allowed Christianity to go on refining the thought in the relative peace and solitude of monasteries and cathedrals. What we see now confirms that Christianity played a major role in maintaining a moral atmosphere necessary for Europe to become and stay Europe. Disconnection it from the State would have been beneficial, if it was not attacked by secular administration, envious of the priesthood powers and desiring the same powers for themselves. There are way too many secular priests of some kind of novelty religion nowadays, and it resembles the situation in the Roman empire just before the adoption of Christianity. In a way, we are regressing.
But, say, if you take Stoicism and marry it with Eleusinian Mysteries, you'd arrive almost at the same set of values, only more expensive and henceforth elitarian in nature. Marcus Aurelius was celebrated as a near-Christan and almost a saint for that same reason.
Similarly, the Cult of Mithras plus Neoplatonism of the IV century gives us a common moral code, extremely close to that of Christianity, and again, requires long studies and levels of initiation to pass through. One may say that Christianity won not because it was superior, but because it was way simpler and cheaper to implement, so the extremely practical emperor, Constantine the Great, used it for that reason.
His grandson (or grand-nephew or whatever), Julian still saw it as a somewhat inferior product fit for the commoners, while the elitarian philosophical Neoplatonism was adorned at his time with theurgy and became a fully-fledged religion, - still way too difficult, too mental and henceforth too impractical for the bulk of the population. And his "pagan" restoration attempt quickly dissipated after his untimely death.
For quite a long time in Rome, it was thought to be impossible to achieve good fortune, high status, and prosperity without proper religious sacrifice. A sacrifice of a fully grown bull, followed by a bath in bull blood, burning some unsavory bits, and feasting on the rest of the carcass was thought to be the most certain way to obtain a favorable destiny. The trouble is that a bull was as expensive back then as a small car nowadays and sacrificing it was as elitarian exercise as burning Volkswagen Beatle in the middle of a Californian desert. Compare it with the Christian sacrifice of a few breadcrumbs and feasting on bread and wine.
On top of this problem of expensive vs cheap (elitarian vs commoners) cults, the "pagan" religions of Rome were traditionally very tolerant of all other cults. Rome viewed itself as a protective mother, sheltering all religions of the universe in a most splendid way, better than their original birthplace.
And its emperors preferred one god over another for purely personal reasons, often seeing themselves as distant grandsons and an incarnation of a certain deity or divine essence.
This lack of religious cohesion created many moral hazards along the way, with some emperors being deified and then condemned within a short space of time, which denigrated their preferred cults, casting a lasting shadow on each of them.
Emperor Commodus, who overplayed his role as Hercules incarnate, may have inadvertently destroyed the popular masculine cult after he was ingloriously killed and Senate declared him a public enemy.
Emperor Hadrian attempted to deify his lover Antinous, perhaps too forcefully, so that little fag' statues and busts in every corner of the Empire became a source of embarrassment for the following emperors, who tried to promote traditional family values and improve the failing demographics of Roman citizenry.
Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, better known as Elagabalus, was a little fag of his own making and made a mockery of sun-god worship.
Emperor Valentinian II tried to combine Christian values with "pagan" tolerance and preservation of traditional cults, which led to many revolts and a particularly poisonous atmosphere in Alexandria, where sexually explicit pagan cults and open-minded Neoplatonist schools clashed with the morally rigid Christian sects, leading to death and destruction.
Even the great and undeniably virtuous emperor Marcus Aurelius, despite his high mental capacity and honed philosophical outlook, was bamboozled by a religious charlatan Alexander of Abonoteichos, who promoted a snake deity Glycon and made false prophecies. Roman army once lost an important battle because of such a prophecy. For years Roman coins were minted with Glycon images until the whole cult collapsed.
The growing bureaucracy of the late empire required all of the administrators to share the same set of values and swear allegiance to the same set of principles, embodied in the most comprehensive yet compact and widely recognized set of texts, symbols, and ritual practices. The bureaucratic decision-making process as well as a coherent judicial system at the grand level of the whole Empire is impossible otherwise. Especially when the growing complexity of the society required two or more simultaneous Emperors and Caesars. Justice and the system of governance are downstream of the shared value system. And it cannot revolutionize itself after each emperor's sudden death.
Christianity, being highly intolerant of competing cults and extremely stubborn in its adherence to tradition, had an edge.
So Christianity eventually won state approval and was made into a vehicle for civilization. Which required first and foremost culling of all the heresies. Henceforth the Orthodoxy. Still, Christianity had many close competitors afterward, and Manichaeism nearly won the popularity contest among the learned elite but ultimately fell out of favour as it produced palpably worse morals.
State approval meant turning the religion of the apostolic Church into an imperial cult; Popes who used to be chairmen during meetings of the bishops assumed the role of Pontifex Maximus; which both expanded their duties and powers of statesmen (such as maintaining bridges and other public works) and shrank their religio-philosophical freedoms. From a certain point of view, the merger of the State and Christianity was a religious tragedy, from another point of view, it was an administrative necessity. What survived of Christianity in early medieval times was a highly distorted religion, a monster of bureaucracy and intrigues, somewhat a caricature of itself, an anti-Christianity in many ways.
Yet it helped to survive civilization as such. And in its turn, the civilization allowed Christianity to go on refining the thought in the relative peace and solitude of monasteries and cathedrals. What we see now confirms that Christianity played a major role in maintaining a moral atmosphere necessary for Europe to become and stay Europe. Disconnection it from the State would have been beneficial, if it was not attacked by secular administration, envious of the priesthood powers and desiring the same powers for themselves. There are way too many secular priests of some kind of novelty religion nowadays, and it resembles the situation in the Roman empire just before the adoption of Christianity. In a way, we are regressing.