History of Persecutions By Christians - Christian Roman Doctrine in 4th and 5th Century A.D.

Christian Roman Doctrine in 4th and 5th Century A.D.

After he had adopted Christianity following the Battle of the Milvian Bridge, Constantine I issued the Edict of Milan in 313 (together with his co-emperor Licinius). Since 306 there had already had been several edicts that granted Christians religious toleration in parts of the Empire, but the Edict of Milan removed all obstacles to the Christian faith and made the Empire officially neutral with regard to religious worship. Constantine supported the church with his patronage; he had an extraordinary number of large basilicas built for the Christian church, and endowed it with land and other wealth. In doing this, however, he required the Pagans "to foot the bill". According to Christian chroniclers it appeared necessary to Constantine "to teach his subjects to give up their rites (...) and to accustom them to despise their temples and the images contained therein," which led to the closure of pagan temples due to a lack of support, their wealth flowing to the imperial treasure; Constantine I did not need to use force to implement this; his subjects are said to simply have obeyed him out of fear. Only the chronicler Theophanes has added that temples "were annihilated", but this is considered "not true" by contemporary historians. According to the historian Ramsay MacMullen Constantine desired to obliterate non-Christians but lacking the means he had to be content with robbing their temples towards the end of his reign. He resorted to derogatory and contemptuous comments relating to the old religion; writing of the "obstinacy" of the pagans, of their "misguided rites and ceremonial", and of their "temples of lying" contrasted with "the splendours of the home of truth".

During the course of his life he progressively became more Christian and turned away from any syncretic tendencies he appeared to favour at times and thus demonstrating, according to his biographers, that "The God of the Christians was indeed a jealous God who tolerated no other gods beside him. The Church could never acknowledge that she stood on the same plane with other religious bodies, she conquered for herself one domain after another".

After the 3-year-reign of Julian the Apostate (ruled 361 to 363), who revived the Roman state paganism for a short time, the later Christian Roman Emperors sanctioned "attacks on pagan worship". Towards the end of the 4th century Theodosius worked to establish Catholicism as the privileged religion in the Roman Empire."Theodosius was not the man to sympathise with the balancing policy of the Edict of Milan. He set himself steadfastly to the work of establishing Catholicism as the privileged religion of the state, of repressing dissident Christians (heretics) and of enacting explicit legal measures to abolish Paganism in all its phases."

Two hundred and fifty years after Constantine was converted and began the long campaign of official temple destruction and outlawing of non-Christian worship Justinian was still engaged in the war of dissent.