Christianization

The historical phenomenon of Christianization, the conversion of individuals to Christianity or the conversion of entire peoples at once (a political shift as much as a spontaneous mass shift in individual consciences), also includes the practice of converting pagan cult practices, pagan religious imagery, pagan sites and the pagan calendar to Christian uses. This practice has at times been relatively peaceful and at times has been a very violent process, ranging from inspired works of charity which convinced populations to adopt Christianity to forced conversions.

Related Topics:
Conversion - Christianity - Pagan - Cult practices

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When Yale historian Ramsay MacMullen treated the Christianization of the Roman Empire, he divided his book in two sections, before and after the year 312, which marked the momentous conversion of Constantine. Constantine ended the persecution of Christianity (and other religions) with the Edict of Milan, so that paganism was no longer the only acceptable religion. Whether or not Constantine himself was a proponent of what was to follow is contested. After Rome was declared a Christian Empire by Theodosius I in 389, laws were passed against pagan worship over the course of the following years. Those who continued to worship the pagan gods were often imprisoned, tortured, and put to death. Many of the ancient pagan temples were subsequently defiled, sacked, and destroyed, or converted into Christian sites. As such, the Christianization attributed to Constantine eventually became a very violent process under Theodosius.

Related Topics:
Constantine - Edict of Milan - Theodosius I

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Humanistic studies of Antiquity and the Reformation combined in the 16th century to produce works of scholarship marked by an agenda that was occupied with identifying Roman Catholic practices with paganism. The sober Lutheran scholar Philip Melanchthon produced his Apologia Confessionis Augustanae (1530) detailing the rites derived from paganism. Heinrich Bullinger, De origine erroris libris duo (1539) detailed the pagan "origins of errors". Isaac Casaubon, De rebus sacris et ecclesiasticus exercitationes (1614) makes a third familiar example, where sound scholarship was somewhat compromised by sectarian pleading. Thus such pagan precedents for Christian practice have tended to be downplayed or even sometimes dismissed by Christian apologists as a form of Protestant apologetics.

Related Topics:
Reformation - Philip Melanchthon - Heinrich Bullinger - Isaac Casaubon - Apologist

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The 20th century saw more purely historical inquiries, free of sectarian bias; an early historicist classic in this field of study was Jean Seznec's The Survival of the Pagan Gods: the mythological tradition and its place in Renaissance humanism and the arts. (1972).

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