Roman influence on Christianity

As we discussed this week Christianity went from a minority religion to a major religion in Rome. The person that helped with this huge shift from repressing Christian to accepting them was Constantine. His adoption of the religion started the acceptance of the religion and it continue to gain popularity when he started to give Christians benefits such as tax breaks. Until Constantine Christianity was seen as a cult. It also gained popularity because people could chose to be Christians, they were not forced to. Christianity started to become a powerful part of society in Rome. This religion however was so foreign to the Romans because they were used to having many gods for many different thing and Christianity believes in one god who is all powerful. The buildings that were built to be churches ended holding government meeting during time when church was not being held. Also Christianity started to form itself around the Roman government model. The early churches modeled their leadership positions after the Roman government. There is many other ways that Christianity became "Romanized" it is even said that Christian holidays such as Easter and Christmas were changed so that they correlated with popular Roman festivals of the day. Many of these details (i.e. when to celebrate Christmas and Easter.) were debated out at the Council of Nicaea in which Constantine sat as the debate settler. He would let two parties argue their points and then would decide which one he felt was right.




http://www.columbia.edu/cu/augustine/arch/sbrandt/nicea.htm

Constantine the Great, and his influence on Christianity

One of the most important people in the Roman Empire around 300 C.E. was Constantine the Great. He was born around 270 C.E. to Flavius Constantius and Helena and following his father’s death, he became a ruler. He was a leader from 306 to 337 C.E. and played a key role in Christianity becoming more popular.

Constantine was not the only ruler of the Roman Empire. There were others (for example Maxentius and Galerius) that were all split up to rule a certain part, whether it be to the East or West. A lot of them would be involved in wars having to do with who and where they were ruling. Constantine stayed out it it as long as possible, until the war became inevitable. The night before a big battle, Constantine had a vision of a religious symbol, the Labarum. The Labarum is a symbol with two Greek letters literally meaning "Christ".

With Christ on his side, he won the battle, and converted to Christianity. He did not force his religion upon others, but as time increased more “rewards” were given to those in the faith. First, many churches and buildings were built to worship, in which Constantine provided. He would later continue to help others in that religion by, for example, priests not having to pay taxes. Overall, Constantine was a huge influence on the spread of Christianity, which is extremely important to many people today.

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04295c.htm