In the space of a few centuries, Christians went from being entertainment in the edit: circus Maximus* to the majority. How did this happen? How did Christianity go from Catacombs tot he Vatican?

**coughxencough*;)

not many christian s were actuall ykille din the colloseum- it was the circus maximus where most of those foul heathens and traitor sot the empire met thier fate ;)

Well... You know what I mean! :p ;)

I'll let the conspiracy theory rmapant athiest answer this question, actually, as my own answer would be far to long, and typo rmapant to justfy me typing it :p

Didn't we have a "Why Christianity?" thread back in May or June? Not a long one as I recall.

Christianity became the offical religion because of constantine after being influenced by his christian mom IIRC.

I thought Constantine had a dream that if he put a sign on his troop's shield he would win... and that was what inspired him to become a christian...

However, contrary to popular belief, Constantine did *not* make Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire. He merely decriminalised it and endorsed it - for example, his capital of "New Rome" (Constantinople) was to have no pagan shrines in it, and he intended that no pagan rites would ever be carried out there.

It was Theodosius the Great who actually made Christianity the official religion of the empire. Constantine's family were all Arians to one degree or another, but Theodosius was the first Nicene emperor. He was the son of a general who was executed in 376. Theodosius wisely retired, but the following year, in a rather startling move, the emperor Gratian plucked him from obscurity and made him eastern emperor, hoping that his military background would enable him to deal with the various barbarian threats there. He accomplished this admirably by 380, when he finally defeated the Goths. Shortly before doing so, Theodosius declared that the one true Christian faith - that is, the Nicene faith - would be the only recognised religion in his territories. Thus he outlawed paganism and Arianism in one stroke. This was ratified the following year at the council of Constantinople, the second ecumenical council (Nicaea was the first), which endorsed a version of the Nicene creed and also extended it to cover the Holy Spirit (who was proclaimed divine in the same way that the Son is divine).

Perhaps the key moment in the fall of paganism and the ascendancy of Christianity came in 394, as Theodosius invaded the western half of the empire. At the Battle of the River Frigidius, against great odds, he defeated a mighty army led by the pagan Eugenius. It was an incredible moment: the forces of paganism had finally been defeated, and the empire was reunited - under a single faith, Nicene Christianity. But Theodosius died in 395, having ruled a united Roman empire for less than a year - and he was the last man ever to do so. His son Arcadius took the eastern half, and his other son, Honorius, took the west. Neither of them was half the man that their father was.