How Christianity Became a World Religion

Around the year 30 in the Roman province of Judea, a local preacher and prophet named Jesus of Nazareth was executed. His disciples spread throughout the Roman Empire and began to bring a new religion to the people. They called their teacher Christ, meaning the Anointed One. This was how the disciples translated into Greek the Hebrew word Mashiach. The Messiah promised in the Old Testament, the Son of God, who was to save humanity from spiritual ruin. The new religion, Christianity, spread quickly throughout the Roman Empire. It was banned, its followers persecuted and imprisoned. But it survived. Eventually, Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire, and later, of all Europe. Today, it spans nearly the entire world, uniting more than 2 billion believers. At the turn of the eras, the Kingdom of Judea was undergoing political and cultural crisis. For many years, it had been under the rule of conquerors. And when it finally gained independence, it almost immediately fell under the influence of powerful Rome. Formally, Judea remained autonomous. But in reality, everything was controlled by the Romans. Their garrisons stood in the cities. And the most important decisions were made by officials sent from Rome. The local kings held titles, but had almost no real power. The crisis also affected religion. The Jewish world was caught between two cultures, its own faith and the strong Hellenistic influence. Even the last king of the Hasmonean dynasty had a Greek name, Antigonus. With the rise of the Herodian dynasty, the situation did not change. Herod the Great built in Caesarea a pagan temple in honor of the Roman emperor Octavian Augustus, a sign of how strong the cultural pressure from Greece and Rome was. But not all Jews accepted such a situation. Radical groups, the Zealots and the Sicarii, dreamed of independence. They called for rebellion and attacked Roman soldiers. Others, on the contrary, fled from the world. Apocalyptic sects, including the Essenes, believed that the end was near and that Jews should focus not on politics, but on spiritual purification. They left the cities, settled in the desert, and lived ascetically. In this complex political reality, Christianity was born. Its followers urged people to renounce the struggle for power and focus on the spiritual instead. They believed in the imminent return of Jesus Christ, after which the end of the world, the apocalypse, would arrive. Then the sinners would be punished and the righteous rewarded. Although Christianity rose among Jews, and although they were the first preachers, not everyone in their homeland accepted these ideas. Therefore, Christian missionaries began spreading the faith among non-Jews. The four Gospels, written in the first century, were composed not in Aramaic, the language spoken by Jews at that time, but in Greek, the dominant language of the Eastern Roman Empire. The first preachers were the Apostles, the disciples of Jesus Christ, but their biographies are often mythologized. When Christianity became firmly established, it was considered a great honor if an Apostle was said to have preached in your country. As a result, chroniclers sometimes attributed to them journeys that may never have happened. Saul of Tarsus, better known by his Latin name Paul, initially persecuted Christians, but later accepted the faith himself and began spreading it. The center of his activity was the large city of Antioch, from which St. Paul set out on missionary journeys across the Roman Empire. The Patriarchate of Antioch traces its origins to him. Another Christian missionary, St. Mark, the author of one of the Gospels, chose the great eastern city of Alexandria as his center. From there, he spread Christianity throughout Egypt. Two Alexandrian Patriarchates trace their origins to Mark the Evangelist. According to legends, almost all the Apostles set out for different lands and corners of the Roman Empire. The most famous of these stories is associated with the Apostle Peter. Allegedly, he traveled to Rome, where he became the first bishop. The Roman Popes, the heads of the Catholic Church, trace their origins back to him. Rome was undergoing a cultural crisis. The empire had grown so vast that it absorbed dozens of peoples and cultures. In the time of Octavian Augustus, only about 10% of the population were actual Roman citizens. The rest were conquered peoples, with their own beliefs and traditions. Gradually, Rome began to change under the influence of these cultures. Foreign cults became popular among the Romans. The Egyptian goddess Isis, the Phrygian Sibel, and the Persian Mithras. Their fate in history was different. The cult of Isis was banned by the authorities. The cult of Sibel was supported by the emperors, but it never became widespread. The most popular cult among Roman legionaries was that of Mithras, and several rulers among the soldier emperors were even his followers. However, this cult never spread beyond the military camps. The most successful cult was the cult of Saul Invictus, the unconquered son. In the year 274, Emperor Aurelian made it the official state religion. This was essentially a single god who replaced the entire Roman pantheon. Relations between the Roman authorities and Christians were tense. Formally, the empire did not forbid foreign beliefs as long as one acknowledged the divine authority of the emperor and remained loyal to Rome. Christians nevertheless refused both, and thus conflict was inevitable. The Romans executed Jesus Christ, and nine of the twelve apostles died as martyrs, mostly in the lands of the empire. The first mass persecutions began in the year 64, during the reign of the controversial emperor Nero. After the great fire that destroyed most of Rome, rumors spread that Nero had set the city ablaze himself. To deflect suspicion, he blamed the Christians. They were hunted, tortured, and executed, often in arenas as public spectacles. After Nero's death, the persecution subsided. Meanwhile, tensions in Judea were rising. Over the next eight decades, the Jews, led by the zealots, rose in revolt three times. The Romans suppressed them brutally, and after each uprising, deported the Jews. After the third revolt, known as the Bar Kokhba Uprising, nearly all Jews were expelled from Judea. Rome renamed the province Syria-Palestina, after the ancient Philistines who once lived there. For almost two thousand years, Jews were deprived of their homeland. Together with the Jews, Christians were also persecuted. At that time, the Romans viewed Christianity as one of the sects of Judaism. After the next Jewish revolt, Emperor Trajan persecuted not only Jews, but also Christians. His most famous persecutions took place in the province of Bithynia. The most brutal wave of persecutions of Christians came at the end of the third century. The Roman Empire was then experiencing a political crisis. Civil wars tore it apart from within, and emperors tried to preserve unity by returning to the old Roman cults. Emperor Decius ordered all inhabitants of the empire to offer sacrifices to the Roman gods for the salvation of Rome. For Christians, this was unacceptable, and they refused, for which many were executed. Decius' policy was continued by his successor, Emperor Valerian. Emperor Diocletian introduced large-scale reforms that strengthened Rome and extended the life of the empire by another century and a half. One of these reforms was the establishment of the Dominate, a form of rule in which the emperor was proclaimed a living god and his authority divine. This created conflict with monotheistic religions. During this time, Manichaeism was eradicated in the Roman Empire, and Christians suffered the most extensive persecutions in their history. Hundreds of martyrdom stories originate from this period. Christianity gradually spread beyond the Roman Empire. The Kingdom of Armenia, known as Greater Armenia, was a state bordering Rome and under strong Roman influence. It was from Rome that the new faith reached the Armenians. According to tradition, its first preachers were the Apostles Bartholomew and Jude Thaddeus. They founded a small community in the country. Despite persecution, it gradually grew, especially thanks to Christian refugees from the Roman Empire. According to legend, among them were 33 nuns, including Saint Ripsame. Her beauty captivated King Tiridates III of Armenia. The king wished to marry her, but Ripsame refused. Enraged, the ruler executed all the nuns. Soon after, Tiridates fell gravely ill. Seeking healing, he turned for help to Gregory the Illuminator, a Christian preacher he had once imprisoned. Gregory healed the king through prayer, and a grateful Tiridates baptized Armenia in the year 301. Thus, Armenia became one of the first Christian states, and the first head of its church, the Catholicos, was Gregory the Illuminator. His descendants founded the influential Gregorid dynasty, which combined both ecclesiastical and political power in the country. Gregory is still honored today as the patron saint of Armenia. After the death of Diocletian, another civil war broke out in Rome. Four contenders fought for power. Constantine sought support from the Christians, and many legends are associated with him. The most famous story tells that on the eve of his battle with Maxentius, Constantine saw a cross in the sky, and the words, In this sign, you shall conquer. He ordered his soldiers to place Christian symbols on their shields, and won the battle. In 313, Constantine issued the Edict of Milan, which legalized Christianity in the empire. Later, according to various accounts, he himself was baptized, either after falling ill or under the influence of his mother, Saint Helena. The Edict of Milan marks the beginning of a new stage in the history of Christianity. Rome no longer persecuted the new faith, though it had not yet become the state religion. Christianity gradually strengthened, competing for influence with the ancient cults. Constantine, who was baptized only shortly before his death, entered history as Constantine the Great, and the white cross on a blue background became known as the Cross of Constantine. Christianity continued to spread into the Caucasus. In Sakartvelo, then known as the Kingdom of Iberia, there was already a small Christian community. According to tradition, Saint George, the future patron saint of the country, came from Georgian Meskheti. It was his name that later gave rise to the European term, Georgia. According to legend, Christianity was established in Iberia by Saint Nino. By one version, she was one of Saint Ripsome's nuns, who miraculously escaped execution and fled from Armenia to Iberia. According to another version, Nino was a Christian woman from Jerusalem. She traveled to Georgia in search of Christian relics, but stayed there to preach her faith. At the time, Iberia was ruled by King Mirian III. The dates of the kingdom's christening vary, 325, 327, or 337 AD. According to legend, while Mirian was out hunting, the sun vanished from the sky, and in despair, he turned to Nino. She advised him to accept Christianity, after which the sun reappeared. Historians connect this story with an actual solar eclipse, and use it to determine the approximate date of Georgia's conversion. Christianity also gradually spread into Africa. The powerful Kingdom of Aksum was a state of Semitic peoples who had once migrated across the Red Sea. In the 4th century, it became one of the earliest centers of Christianity on the continent. According to legends, the faith in Christ was brought here by the apostles Matthew and Bartholomew. The man considered the baptizer of Ethiopia is Frumentius, a Syrian Greek. In 330, after a shipwreck in the Red Sea, he found himself in Aksum. The educated young man was taken into the royal court, where he became the tutor of Prince Ezana. Later, Ezana, influenced by his teacher, accepted Christianity. When he ascended the throne in 333, he baptized the kingdom. At the end of his life, Frumentius became a monk and founded the monastery of Dabasalama. Ethiopians honored him under the name Abbasalama, Father of Peace. Christianity became not only a religion in Ethiopia, but also a foundation of political unity. Even during periods when the country fragmented, it was the church that preserved the common identity of the people. Through Christian tradition, the authority and sacred prestige of the royal dynasties grew, as they traced their lineage to the biblical king Solomon and the queen of Sheba. Christianity also spread eastward. According to tradition, the apostle Thomas preached among the Assyrians and Persians, and even reached India, where he found a community of followers. Later, Indian Christians came to be known as the Church of Saint Thomas. Christianity spread most widely among the Assyrians. Once rulers of a mighty empire, by the beginning of the Common Era, they found themselves between two giants, Rome and Parthia. The lands of the Assyrians became a constant battleground. Their small kingdoms often passed from one empire to the other. Along with Roman legions came the new faith. The first Assyrian ruler to adopt Christianity was Abgar VIII the Great, King of Osroene. At his court served the famous Syrian philosopher and poet, Bardaison. He persuaded the ruler to accept the new faith before the year 195. Thus, Osroene became, albeit briefly, the first Christian state. In 198, the Roman emperor Septimius Severus established a protectorate over it and limited Abgar's power. After the king's death, Osroene was annexed into the Roman Empire. Despite losing state support, Christianity continued to spread among the Assyrians. By the 4th century, most of them already followed the new faith. But from the east, Assyrians were constantly pressured by Persia. Neither the Parthian Arsacid dynasty nor the Sassanian rulers accepted Christianity. They practiced their own monotheistic religion, Zoroastrianism. Therefore, every time Persian troops entered these lands, Christians suffered persecution. Over time, Assyrian Christians were mentioned less and less. Their communities lived in isolation and often faced oppression. Yet despite everything, they preserved their faith. Today, the descendants of those first Christians have their own churches. The East Syriac, the Assyrian, and the Chaldean churches. In the 4th century, Christianity gradually became dominant within the Roman Empire. And now Christians themselves began persecuting pagans. Emperor Julian II attempted to revive paganism, issued edicts against Christians, and built temples to the old gods. But during his campaign against Persia, he died. According to legend, killed by one of his own Christian soldiers. In Christian Chronicles, Julian received the epithet the Apostate. And Christianity firmly restored its influence in the empire. In 380, Emperor Theodosius the Great proclaimed Christianity the sole state religion of Rome. Other cults were banned, some of their temples destroyed, and even the Olympic Games, deemed a pagan remnant, were abolished. But with the establishment of Christianity came internal disputes. The faith was interpreted in different ways, leading to schisms. Any deviation from accepted doctrine was called heresy, and heretics were excommunicated by church councils. In 314, the Council of Arles condemned the Donatists, popular in the province of Africa. In 325, the Council of Nicaea condemned the Arians. Fleeing the empire, they preached their doctrine among Germanic tribes. Their most famous missionary was Bishop Ulphilus, a Goth by origin, who created the Gothic alphabet and translated the Bible into Gothic. In 431, the Council of Ephesus rejected the teachings of the Nestorians. They fled eastward and spread Christianity across Asia. Their community survived until the 19th century. And at the Council of Chalcedon in 451, the first major church schism occurred. A dispute over the nature of Christ split several churches away. They were called Miaphysites or Monophysites. These included the Armenian, Ethiopian, and partly the Coptic churches, as well as some Assyrian communities. This division continues to this day. For example, the Ethiopian church adopted the name Tewahedo to emphasize its Miaphysite identity. In the 5th century, the Great Migration of Peoples began. A mass movement of tribes that radically changed the map of Europe. The Germanic peoples moved into Roman lands and established their own kingdoms. The Eastern Roman Empire, known as Byzantium, avoided this fate and remained more Greek than Roman in culture. The political map of Western Europe changed. Many Germanic tribes were already familiar with Christianity, and some practiced its Aryan form. Europe entered the Middle Ages, and it seemed that Christianity might lose its influence. But the church became the only stable institution after the fall of Rome. It preserved learning, literacy, and authority. The popes of Rome became spiritual leaders, and the barbarian kingdoms, rooted in tribal traditions, gradually adopted Christianity as a foundation of political legitimacy. In pagan times, leaders were elected, but Christianity turned them into kings, anointed by God. Their power was sacred. Thus, the church legitimized the new feudal system of Europe, and the spread of Christianity began to move from the top down, from monarchs to their subjects. The first of these rulers was Clovis, the king of the Franks. After expanding his kingdom, he converted from Aryanism to Catholic Christianity in 508 and baptized his people. In return, the pope recognized and supported the Merovingian dynasty, from which Clovis came. A similar story unfolded in the Visigothic kingdom. In the 580s, Prince Hermenegild rebelled against his father, an Aryan king, fearing he would lose his inheritance. The Roman clergy supported him. The prince lost the war and was killed. But a few years later, King Rechored, fearing renewed conflict, adopted Catholicism. In 589, he convened the Council of Toledo, which formally condemned Aryanism, making the Visigoths officially Christian. In 597, the pope sent the monk Augustine to Britain. There, Augustine managed to convert King Ethelbert of Kent. Kent became a Christian kingdom, and its capital, Canterbury, remains the center of English Christianity to this day. Augustine himself became the first archbishop of Canterbury. From Kent, Christianity spread to the other Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. Despite the arrival of Roman missionaries, there were already Christians in Britain. During Roman rule, Christianity had become popular. From Roman Britain, missionaries traveled to Ireland, where the new faith also spread. The most famous among them was St. Patrick, the patron and principal saint of Ireland. In the 5th to 6th centuries, the islands faced new migrations. The Anglo-Saxons arrived from the continent, and the Scots settled what is now Scotland. Ireland, untouched by these newcomers, remained Christian. From there, monks resumed preaching in Britain. Around 563, the monk Columba sailed from Ireland to the island of Iona, where he founded a monastery and preached among the locals. It is unclear whether the kingdom of the Scots, Dalriata, was Christian at that time. Columba converted both Scots and Picts, another Celtic tribe of Scotland. Around 585, he convinced Briti MacMalcon, king of the Picts, to accept Christianity, after which other tribal leaders followed. Christianity also survived among the Britons, whom the Anglo-Saxons had pushed to the west of the island. Here, monasteries became centers of spiritual and cultural life. St. David, patron of Wales, gained renown for founding monasteries and preaching to his people during difficult times. He eventually became Bishop of Minevia, that is, all of southern Wales. The Celtic land's remoteness from the rest of Europe led to the formation of a distinct Celtic church, with its own rites, calendar, and traditions. When Roman missionaries arrived, this caused conflict between Celtic and Roman clergy. The kingdom of Northumbria became the center of this dispute, as its kings alternated between Roman and Celtic Christianity. The conflict culminated in the Synod of Whitby in 664, where King Osweo ruled in favor of Rome. According to legend, when debates grew heated, the Roman clergy declared that the Pope was the chief of all Christians. Osweo asked the Celtic clergy if this was true. They confirmed it, and the debate ended. From then on, the Celtic church gradually merged with the Roman one. In the early 7th century, a new monotheistic religion emerged in Arabia, Islam. Its prophet Muhammad quickly united the Arab tribes. Soon, they launched vast conquests. They struck the Sasanian Persian Empire and the Byzantine Empire. Persia disappeared from the map for a long time, and Byzantium lost its richest provinces. Arab armies advanced as far as the Strait of Gibraltar. But they did not stop there. In 711, the general Tariq ibn Ziyad crossed the strait and defeated the Visigoths in the Battle of Guadalete. This began the gradual Arab conquest of the Iberian Peninsula, which lasted until 718. Later, another general, Abd al-Rahman ibn Abd Allah, invaded the Frankish Kingdom, but was defeated at the Battle of Tours in 732. In the lands conquered by the Arabs, Christianity formally remained but lost state support. Christians had to pay a special tax, the jizya. Islam became the religion of the elites. Over time, more and more Christians converted to Islam and adopted Arab culture, so their numbers steadily declined. The Iberian Peninsula was the exception. Christian kingdoms survived in the north. From here, they began a long, nearly 800-year struggle to reclaim the land from the Arabs, the Reconquista. In western Europe, the main pillar of Christianity became the Frankish rulers of the Carolingian dynasty, thanks to their close ties with the papacy. Charles Martel conquered Phrygia, and Christian missionaries began to preach actively there. The most famous was Saint Willebrord, the apostle of the Phrygians, and the first bishop of Utrecht. With Frankish support, Saint Boniface preached among the Germanic tribes. He was himself a Saxon and fluent in Germanic languages. He began among the Phrygians, then preached in Hesse among the Franks. Local pagans threatened him. But Boniface cut down the sacred oak of Donar, symbol of their gods. When nothing happened to him, the Germans accepted this as proof and converted. His major achievement was the Christianization of Bavaria, restoring dioceses, building monasteries and churches. For this, Boniface became known as the Apostle of the Germans. Charles Martel's son, Pepin the Short, created the Papal States and defeated the Lombards, the last Aryan Germanic tribe in Europe. His son Charlemagne finished their conquest and baptized the Lombards. During these years, the Frankish Empire reached the height of its power. At the same time, Charlemagne faced a serious problem. The Saxons. Although formally subdued, they fiercely resisted conversion. The Saxons rebelled, destroyed churches, killed priests and revived pagan rituals. During Charlemagne's reign, they rebelled five times. And each time, the emperor had to bring his armies to suppress them. Christianity among the Saxons was imposed with fire and sword. Only at the end of Charlemagne's reign did they finally accept the new faith. Thus ended the Christianization of Western Europe. Christianity survived persecution, became the state religion of Rome and spread among new peoples, crossing the Danube, the Rhine and Hadrian's Wall. In the centuries to come, missionaries would go to the Slavic princes, the Scandinavian Vikings and the Baltic peoples, spreading Christianity throughout Eastern and Northern Europe and making it the dominant religion of these lands. This marked the beginning of the flourishing of Christian culture in medieval Europe.