Thoughts from a Newbie: Rose Reads Safehold

Semi-divine. Emperors crazy enough to claim they _were_ gods soon discovered that they had an appointment with a gladius or two. At which point, in the imperial mythology, the claim might become true: the emperor was expected to join the gods when he died, not in life. Depended on the mood of his successor, though, since it was up to him to issue the appropriate decrees.

I'm aware of that injunction, and have often wondered why it wasn't invoked more actively. In fact, the de facto toleration generally extended to Christian communities by emperors who had dealings with them [which they did: it was, iirc, a rescript of Valerian that granted bishops ownership of church property] suggests that the more self-confident among them were perfectly happy with whatever compromise arrangement the bishops were offering.

Still, the fact remains that Christianity was illegal
from 64-313, so I'm not disputing your basic point. When they chose to imperial authorities needed to point no further that the illegality of Christian worship - and the rebellion it implied - to show that your predecessors were outside the social matrix.

n7axw wrote:Hi Louis R

Good post. But it does need a bit of refinement. It's true that the Jews had been granted an exemption to the normal rule of worshiping the emperor and for a while Christians tried to pass themselves off as another variety of JeW.

But as I understand it, what was normally expected was affirm the emperor as divine, sacrifice to the gods and after that worship how you want. Doing that was a way for the Romans to demand acknowledgement of their preeminence. That in turn ties back into the tie between religion and the social contract to which I referred earlier. The whole notion of separating them would have been completely alien to them.

Just one more comment...in the Bible, Chistians are exhorted to pray for kings and all in authority. That would have ibcluded the emperor.

Don

Louis R wrote:Semi-divine. Emperors crazy enough to claim they _were_ gods soon discovered that they had an appointment with a gladius or two. At which point, in the imperial mythology, the claim might become true: the emperor was expected to join the gods when he died, not in life. Depended on the mood of his successor, though, since it was up to him to issue the appropriate decrees.

I'm aware of that injunction, and have often wondered why it wasn't invoked more actively. In fact, the de facto toleration generally extended to Christian communities by emperors who had dealings with them [which they did: it was, iirc, a rescript of Valerian that granted bishops ownership of church property] suggests that the more self-confident among them were perfectly happy with whatever compromise arrangement the bishops were offering.

Still, the fact remains that Christianity was illegal
from 64-313, so I'm not disputing your basic point. When they chose to imperial authorities needed to point no further that the illegality of Christian worship - and the rebellion it implied - to show that your predecessors were outside the social matrix.

A friendly amendment to my comment: semi divine.

It's certainly true that persecution was sporadic rather than universal. While there were some instances of empire wide persecution such as during Diocletian's time, local flare ups usualy centered around local politics.

Don