So I just got finished watching a lecture on the end of paganism in the Roman world and to my surprise, it is in Justinian's day.
According to the lecturer (Professor Kenneth W. Harl in his Fall of the Pagans and the Origins of Medieval Christianity series on The Great Courses Plus) historians mostly agree that in Justinian's day the majority of the population of the Roman Empire, especially outside the cities was still very much pagan. Further, many "Christians" including some high ranking government officials were only publicly Christian and in their private lives still worshiped and sacrificed to the pagan gods.
Justinian carried out a major crackdown in OTL to end this, with a wave of heavy handed persecutions and some botched attempts to reunite the already fracturing christian churches. He essentially promoted the idea that Pagan gods were demons in league with Satan himself and must be exorcised, and even began the trend of persecuting Jews in the Roman world, where we see for the first time forced baptisms of Jews, outlawing reading the Torah in Hebrew and forcing them to live in separate sections of the cities which would later evolve into what we would recognize as ghettos.
By the time Justinian was done, the Army was marching into battle under the cross for the first time, military saints were emerging, the old intellectual centers of the Roman world were gone, their scholars and philosophers fleeing to places like the Sassanian Empire, where they helped form the university in Baghdad, and what it was to be Roman was now changed. The Roman identity following this was thoroughly tied to religion and Christianity.
One long winded summary out of the way, my question in this: What if Justinian had instead promoted a policy of tolerance in the Empire. In my head he would ideally instead seek to unify the people of the empire around, say the monolithic legacy of Rome itself. The reasoning being that as long as people are paying their taxes and not being disruptive or rebellious, the Empire had more pressing issues to deal with and would rather not create even greater divisions to drive it's people apart. Not to mention that to drive away so many intellectuals from the Empire could only hurt the Empire's prospects and strengthen her enemies.
Could this lead to an earlier rise of the concept of the separation of church and state? Could the retention of the academic traditions of the ancient world result in a more technologically advanced ERE, or at the very least prevent the backslide in Roman technology that occurred throughout the Middle Ages? What are the potential implications here?
According to the lecturer (Professor Kenneth W. Harl in his Fall of the Pagans and the Origins of Medieval Christianity series on The Great Courses Plus) historians mostly agree that in Justinian's day the majority of the population of the Roman Empire, especially outside the cities was still very much pagan. Further, many "Christians" including some high ranking government officials were only publicly Christian and in their private lives still worshiped and sacrificed to the pagan gods.
Justinian carried out a major crackdown in OTL to end this, with a wave of heavy handed persecutions and some botched attempts to reunite the already fracturing christian churches. He essentially promoted the idea that Pagan gods were demons in league with Satan himself and must be exorcised, and even began the trend of persecuting Jews in the Roman world, where we see for the first time forced baptisms of Jews, outlawing reading the Torah in Hebrew and forcing them to live in separate sections of the cities which would later evolve into what we would recognize as ghettos.
By the time Justinian was done, the Army was marching into battle under the cross for the first time, military saints were emerging, the old intellectual centers of the Roman world were gone, their scholars and philosophers fleeing to places like the Sassanian Empire, where they helped form the university in Baghdad, and what it was to be Roman was now changed. The Roman identity following this was thoroughly tied to religion and Christianity.
One long winded summary out of the way, my question in this: What if Justinian had instead promoted a policy of tolerance in the Empire. In my head he would ideally instead seek to unify the people of the empire around, say the monolithic legacy of Rome itself. The reasoning being that as long as people are paying their taxes and not being disruptive or rebellious, the Empire had more pressing issues to deal with and would rather not create even greater divisions to drive it's people apart. Not to mention that to drive away so many intellectuals from the Empire could only hurt the Empire's prospects and strengthen her enemies.
Could this lead to an earlier rise of the concept of the separation of church and state? Could the retention of the academic traditions of the ancient world result in a more technologically advanced ERE, or at the very least prevent the backslide in Roman technology that occurred throughout the Middle Ages? What are the potential implications here?