Roman religion during the times of Early Christianity

Im betting it would probally turn into a number of different versions of the same religion and might even become different rwligions altogether, considering regionalism and the state based aspect of the roman religion.


Wasn't it that already?

Did peasants in Illyricum or Asia Minor worship the same fertility gods/godesses as those in Spain or Pannonia? Was there ever a "Roman religion" except to some degree in the Army and the educated upper crust - both of whom will largely disappear when the Empire goes.
 
Wasn't it that already?

Did peasants in Illyricum or Asia Minor worship the same fertility gods/godesses as those in Spain or Pannonia? Was there ever a "Roman religion" except to some degree in the Army and the educated upper crust - both of whom will largely disappear when the Empire goes.

Before the Empire, before even later Republic maybe? Before taking in social changes and foreign influences?

(Then... What was the evolution of latin(s)-italic belives over eras? what was 'native', what was of other italic peoples like Samnites, what was etruscans?
More for another thread maybe..)
 

Mookie

Banned
It is important to keep in mind that there really is no such thing as "the" Roman religion. All attempt to reconstruct what "the Romans" believed are efforts to make a more or less cohesive whole out of something that was in all likelihood much more amorphous. I think what we so charmingly call "traditional Chionese religion" is a good copmpüarison, and if you read a book on that you will very soon lose any illusion of finding coherence or logic. Taking, e.g., the cult of the Capitoline Triad (Iupiter, Iuno and Minerva) that was pacticed throughout the Empire, it is hard to say what role this played in the lives of participants. Most likely, it functioned as an aspect of civic religion, something like Independence Day parades.

As was said before, the main thing about religious practice in the Roman tradition was that it was bound up with social and political structures. That does not mean, though,m that it was something like a state cult (it is too easy to draw parallels with the royal summepiscopate or vilayet-e-faqih). Cicero, who was a much better theologian than he is usually given credit for, observed that the Immortal Gods emerge from the actions of mortal men; that men worship the good things they do. And traditional Roman religion had a deity for pretty much everything - the fasti list them with tedious (and spurious) precision. That is also where our traditional idea of "God" gets in the way of understanding. THe Roman world was full of Gods - every home had lares, every family manes, every person a genius or iuno, every road crossing had lares compitales and every spring nymphae. To most religious Romans, an existence at peace and respectful distance from those beings was what 'religion' was all about. In rural context, it is likely that those practices continued far after they had become antiquarian oddities to educated urbanites.

On top of that was a layer of civic religion, practices that bound together communities. The Capitoline deities were shared by all Roman citizens, though not with equal devotion. The cult of the imperial genius (a nice touch, since only "bad" emperors demanded to be worshipped as Gods, but nobody could object to a cult of the emperor's guardian spirit) was originally a pretty limited affair, but spread. In addition to those, there were vocationally specific cults (e.g. the deities of the signa and the camp for soldiers, Isis among sailors) that are found in much of the Empire. Regional communities had shared cults, often with festivals people travelled very far to attend such as the feriae Latinae, the Olympic and Isthmian games, or the Eleusinian mysteries. And every city had a collection of shrines at which its citizens practiced religious ritual together. Being part of these activities cemented your communal status. In either case, BTW, there was no question of belief. Cicero believed that the Divine preexisted humanity, and that the contrary assumption was a mark of a bad character, but he himself had to admit that the Gods most likely were not real persons. The pax deorum did not require belief. If you participated in the rites that defined your community, you were a member of that community in good standing asnd could believe whatever you wanted.

In addition, there was private religious (or philosophical) practice. Philosophical schools would have been the closest, socially speaking, to what we think of as "religions": groups of people reading the same scripture, sharing the same beliefs about body, soul, and afterlife, a moral teaching, and a dogma that they debated and interpreted. A lot of the vocabulary of Christianity - othodoxy, dogma, heresy - comes from these schools. Philosopher-preachers could earn money in much the same way Evangelicals do now, by assembling a community of the faithful and collecting donations in return for guidance and spiritual comfort. Some of the abuses, too, appear to have been similar.

Together with philosophical schools, more traditiuonally religious cults became popular for individuals throughout the Empire. Many of them remain quite mysterious to us. Iuppiter Dolichenus was worshipped by individuals as far away as the Rhine frontier, and we would dearly wish to know how or why. Isis was extremely popular. And of course, synagogue-going became a common practice. I sometimes envision rabbis as something like Tibetan Buddhist lamas today: we don't really understand what they do, but surely they must be much more spiritual than us corrupted Westerners (apparently, Tibetan Buddhism has considerable pop appeal in China, too). All these things were firmly in the private sphere. The broader community only interfered when it felt that there were practices contrary to propriety or dangerous to the social order.

What an individual believed or practiced religiously depended on where that person located him- or herself geographically, socially and personally. Religion did not unify people in an overarching church or ummah. The religious calendar of a soldier would be a very different one from that of a farmer or a freedman barber. Calling all of this "a" religion is difficult, but of course, in Latin, "religio" is not properly countable. It's a property of persons and societies, not a specific practice or belief. That is why, as many Romans saw it, the Christians lacked "religio".


There was no Roman religion as a state religion, but Latin religion was very well and prospering (Jupiter, Mars..) Its popularity faded at later periods, replaced by Mithras and Isis, but they still got state suport and that is what matters.

Once the Rome started to have a single religion and let barbarians in things went down the drain for the entire country.
 

Mookie

Banned
Before the Empire, before even later Republic maybe? Before taking in social changes and foreign influences?

(Then... What was the evolution of latin(s)-italic belives over eras? what was 'native', what was of other italic peoples like Samnites, what was etruscans?
More for another thread maybe..)

Illyrians worshiped their own gods, as well as Celtic gods who were also present in balkans and illyricum thus the similarity. Celts were a huge group at that time, spreading from balkans to germany, and from germany trough france, spain and britain. So of course you will find a lot of similarities.
 
There was no Roman religion as a state religion, but Latin religion was very well and prospering (Jupiter, Mars..) Its popularity faded at later periods, replaced by Mithras and Isis, but they still got state suport and that is what matters.

Once the Rome started to have a single religion and let barbarians in things went down the drain for the entire country.

This is a rather gross, naive and foolish interpretation. The 'Christianism did the Empire' old cannard, by example.. One could argue one religion for a state like this may have STRENGHTENED the Empire at start at least, into an unity.
What really was the issues where more the economical issues and reforms of the 4th century, probably.
 
What's worth noting also is that while for whatever reason/s the West fell, the East didn't.

So the "entire country" didn't suffer equally to begin with.
 
Illyrians worshiped their own gods, as well as Celtic gods who were also present in balkans and illyricum thus the similarity. Celts were a huge group at that time, spreading from balkans to germany, and from germany trough france, spain and britain. So of course you will find a lot of similarities.

Syncreticism. Roman and Regional Gods mixed together and vice versa, a practice that had already long been started by the Hellenization as a result of Alexander's Conquests and even before that by Greek settlers.

For example, Meet Hermanubis. Hermes-Anubis-Thoth of Ptolemaic Egypt.
images


This is a rather gross, naive and foolish interpretation. The 'Christianism did the Empire' old cannard, by example.. One could argue one religion for a state like this may have STRENGHTENED the Empire at start at least, into an unity.
What really was the issues where more the economical issues and reforms of the 4th century, probably.

Eh, that did not last long after Constantine what with the various deviations . His sons split the Empire (ironically something Constantine had fought against) into three parts for his sons who duked it out over power and the Arian and Nicene creed and this was repeated over and over again by successors.
 
Carlton Bach's post wins the thread as being by far the best explanation of religious ideas during the period of the Principate.

Julian's attempts I should say failed because he died and did not leave a stable dynasty after him. He drew upon Neo Platonism, Sun Cult imagery, and stoic beliefs that were wide spread and long established by this point.

There's also the fact that Julian was deeply unpopular with the populace, both pagan and Christian alike. That's the sort of thing that even a hero-worshipping biography like Ammianus' fails to cover up. Julian was essentially an analogous figure to the modern upper middle class socialist teenager who harangues genuinely working class adults to stop their work and embrace true class consciousness.

Put in that context, it's no wonder AH.com loves him. ;)

Eh, that did not last long after Constantine what with the various deviations . His sons split the Empire (ironically something Constantine had fought against) into three parts for his sons who duked it out over power and the Arian and Nicene creed and this was repeated over and over again by successors.

You can't really blame Christianity for the division of the empire, which happened solely due to political reasons. Indeed, I very much struggle with placing religion as a primary reason for any of the Empire's big problems in the 300-700 period. The Empire didn't fall because of Christianity, it didn't alienate the Easterners because of Christianity, and the Islamic faith is not what caused the conquest of Syria and Egypt.
 
There was no Roman religion as a state religion, but Latin religion was very well and prospering (Jupiter, Mars..) Its popularity faded at later periods, replaced by Mithras and Isis, but they still got state suport and that is what matters.

Once the Rome started to have a single religion and let barbarians in things went down the drain for the entire country.

They did have a state religion, it simply wasn't orthodox in nature. Roman polytheism was a civic polytheism. The Pax Deourm and Imperial Cult show this.

Everybody should watch this when discussing Roman religion and late Imperial Christian period: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tcIuAJ-jaSg

You can't really blame Christianity for the division of the empire, which happened solely due to political reasons. Indeed, I very much struggle with placing religion as a primary reason for any of the Empire's big problems in the 300-700 period. The Empire didn't fall because of Christianity, it didn't alienate the Easterners because of Christianity, and the Islamic faith is not what caused the conquest of Syria and Egypt.

Yes, it is a popular myth and generalization that Christianity somehow "destroyed the Roman Empire," but this is not true. If you want the Roman Empire to survive longer, get rid of the Crisis of the Third Century, since it was during that time we see regionalism grow and decline of the importance of Rome.

Christianity did have a role to play late in the game, but mostly directed towards Paganism, and the empire was already on the path to its downfall (the reasons behind it was political, economic, geographical and demographic in nature).
 
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Yes, it is a popular myth and generalization that Christianity somehow "destroyed the Roman Empire," but this is not true. If you want the Roman Empire to survive longer, get rid of the Crisis of the Third Century, since it was during that time we see regionalism grow and decline of the importance of Rome.

I have a hard time believing the Crisis of the Third Century can really be considered to blame for the collapse of a Mediterranean-dominating Roman state either, to be honest. There's a greater time span between the accession of Diocletian and the death of Phocas than there is between the beginning of the Principate and the accession of Diocletian, after all.

My view is that the Roman Empire fell largely due to the exogenous shock delivered by peoples from beyond its borders who reacted to centuries of Roman domination in ways the Romans could not have foreseen due to their own ideology. That, and a healthy dose of bad luck in the fifth and seventh centuries did in for the state, not so much any internal factors.
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Also, vaguely unrelated, but it came up earlier in the thread. I'm pretty sure that it was the standard done thing for every Emperor to be divinised after their death. Even Constantine and his sons were quite happy to encourage the cult of the gens Flavia.
 
I have a hard time believing the Crisis of the Third Century can really be considered to blame for the collapse of a Mediterranean-dominating Roman state either, to be honest. There's a greater time span between the accession of Diocletian and the death of Phocas than there is between the beginning of the Principate and the accession of Diocletian, after all.

It isn't the only thing to blame, no. But it was during that time where we see the underlying internal fractures/problems that the Empire suffered from come to head. Over extension and geographical size, numerous enemies to deal with on its borders, no formal means of succession, increased use of the military in politics, etc.

It was due to Diocletian's reforms that we begin to see some elements that continue on into and characterize the Medieval period, such as Diocletian making occupations hereditary, families being tied to the land and regionalism. After the crisis, Rome was no longer the most important city in Rome, and I think it this has both a symbolic and practical impact. His Tetrarchy was the answer to problems that caused the Crisis, but it did more damage as Rome slowly disintegrated.

My view is that the Roman Empire fell largely due to the exogenous shock delivered by peoples from beyond its borders who reacted to centuries of Roman domination in ways the Romans could not have foreseen due to their own ideology. That, and a healthy dose of bad luck in the fifth and seventh centuries did in for the state, not so much any internal factors.

When it comes to barbarians, Roman's did unintentionally influenced the barbarians, as the tribes became more sophisticated and organized through their interactions with Roman over the centuries.

But, there are numerous reasons why the Western Roman state fell, and his is still a debate going on today. I think it is a mistake to say that it was only external factors which brought about the fall of the west.

So many reasons are given...from simple over extension, to changes in military policy, debasing of Roman blood and importance of Roman citizenship (Caracalla's granting citizenship to everyone), barbarization of Roman army, cost of the imperial bureaucracy, changes in religion and culture (it is true that many Roman looked to other religions for spiritual life, such as Mithras, Isis and Christianity).

It is a complex beast.
 
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