Most ancient peoples cremated their dead, I think - burial was used in ancient Egypt, and generally features where religions believe in bodily resurrection or else that one needs one's body to enter the afterlife,.
History questions not worth their own thread V
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Louis XXIV
Le Roi Soleil
Yeah and I know Romans often cremated their dead as well. I guess my question is "To what extent is Christianity the reason for the switch to inhumation?"
cybrxkhan
Asian Xwedodah
To my knowledge most of Europe untouched by the Romans was still largely pagan by the fall of the Empire - so Europe, parts of the British Isles, Central and Eastern Europe, Scandinavia, etc., were still largely pagan. You then basically had several kings and tribes (or their equivalents) converting one at a time to Christianity as it spread. Clovis of the Franks, I believe, formally converted in the late 5th century for instance; most of the Central and European states accepted Christianity sometime in the 10th and early 11th centuries (Hungary in 1000, Poland in 990 or something, Kievan Rus also around the same time, etc.). The last holdout of paganism, Lithuania, formally converted around 1400.
Additionally as you may guess, the conversions weren't entirely 100% complete. Many peasants (and even some of the middle and upper class, I'd wager) still kept many of their old beliefs. For the peasants, who were otherwise illiterate, for all they knew they were still workshipping some big dude in the sky, they just had to call him funny names and something about this guy stuck to a cross. Hence all that talk you hear from time to time about "Christian" "holidays having pagan elements. In some parts of Europe full conversion took centuries - in Russia for instance there were pagan priests and revolts still a century after it formally converted, while in Scandinavia there were still those holding onto the old Norse ways likewise a century or two after formal conversion - and some even claim that in some cases in the Baltic full conversion never happened at all (a few Lithuanians and so on claim their parents or grandparents were still practicing some form of paganism disguised as Christianity).
The problem with assessing the spread of Christianity in antiquity / the early Middle Ages is that it's simply very hard to tell. It's one thing to know that King So-And-So converted and his kingdom with him, but what does that mean? What are we even talking about when we ask which areas were Christian? You could colour in a map according to which areas were "officially" Christian, but that wouldn't necessarily tell you much about what difference it had made to society. And as cybrxkhan rightly points out, what counts as "Christian" anyway? If the only difference to a particular individual is that he addresses the same old god he's always worshipped as "Jesus", has he become a Christian? There's no obvious answer to that. Plus of course there were different varieties of Christianity. The Goths Christianised (to one degree or another) in the fourth century, but they were Arians, so they were at odds with the Nicene Christians who were dominant in the Roman territories by the end of that century.
Also note that it wasn't simply a story of Christianity spreading and eradicating, displacing, or absorbing paganism. For the most part it was, but sometimes the flow went the other way. The most striking example is Britain, which as far as we can tell was quite Christian up until the fifth century, but when the Anglo-Saxons turned up Christianity seems to have been wiped out in England and had to be re-introduced by missionaries from the Continent and from Ireland. Examples like this, of paganism swamping Christianity rather than the other way around, are rare, but they make the situation still more complex.
Also note that it wasn't simply a story of Christianity spreading and eradicating, displacing, or absorbing paganism. For the most part it was, but sometimes the flow went the other way. The most striking example is Britain, which as far as we can tell was quite Christian up until the fifth century, but when the Anglo-Saxons turned up Christianity seems to have been wiped out in England and had to be re-introduced by missionaries from the Continent and from Ireland. Examples like this, of paganism swamping Christianity rather than the other way around, are rare, but they make the situation still more complex.
ParkCungHee
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Ireland itself is an odd duck too, where Christian and Pagan priestly classes seem to have existed in parallel for some time, unofficially up until the 17th century.
I didn't know about that.
No one yet has mentioned the spread of Christianity through the Middle East. I thought Plotinus would bring that up. We know that Christianity seems to have spread through the Parthian Empire much as it did through the Roman Empire. The main difference seems to be that the upper classes didn't convert. These upper classes decided that the Parthian Christians might act as a fifth column of sorts for a Roman invasion, and so began a massive purge of the Christians, that makes any of the Roman persecutions pale in comparison.
I assume Plotinus, or even Dachs - that is kind of his region - would know more about the situation tha myself. A similar purge of Manichaeans later took place there. You now know everything I do about Parthian Christians.
cybrxkhan
Asian Xwedodah
The original question concerned Europe, if I am correct.
I could mention a few things given I took several classes on Iranian history. Actually there used to be a professor at my university who specialized on late antiquity, particularly on religion in late antiquity. Unfortunately he suddenly died (rather young too, I believe he was only around forty) when I was in my first year so I never had the opportunity to take his classes - I heard he was a pretty good professor too.
Anyhow, as far as I know about Christians in the Middle East, Lord Baal is correct in that it spread throughout Persians, though the persecutions did not happen in under Sassanid monarchs. In fact, some tried the opposite - supporting branches of Christianity persecuted in the Roman/Byzantine Empires - and claim themselves as the true protectors of Christianity. Khosrau II's capture of some big important Christian cross thingy (I forgot what it was) was an important symbol of this, though Heraclius recaptured it.
Christianity was also popular among several Arabic tribes. You've probably heard of claims - probably true to some extent - that Mohammed was influenced by various Christian ideas. Even if he wasn't, he was highly aware of them nevertheless.
During the medieval era Christianity east of the ERE was mostly dominated by the Nestorian Church, which had adherents all the way to Mongolia and China (in regions, oddly enough, where Manichaeans also did well enough). They were already persecuted as a foreign religion for a while during the Tang Dynasty, for instance, and some of the Mongols running around during the Mongol conquests were Nestorian.
Phrossack
Armored Fish and Armored Men
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Sassanid treatment of Christianity was mixed. At times, they were alright with a Church of Persia being established. At least one of the Shahanshas (Khosrau/Xusro/Khusro II) had a Christian wife, and Yazdgerd II had pretty good relations with the Roman emperors and Christianity until late in his reign. Other times, the Sassanid state ruthlessly persecuted Christianity, especially any version that happened to be connected to the Roman government, as such Christians were seen as potential fifth columnists of the Romans. Generally, there was at least some persecution, and it worsened or lessened as relations with the Romans went up and down. The Sassanid monarchy and the Zoroastrian religious establishment were closely connected, and the religious establishment really didn't like any religious competition. Though they practiced some weird version of Zoroastrianism caled Zurvanism that worshiped the third of the two gods, Zurvan. I think. Religion's not my strong suit at all.
Christianity was pretty major with the Arabs before Islam, and still is today, though it's shrunk a lot in the past few centuries. My great-grandparents were Christian Lebanese. The Ghassanid kings were Arabs, often Christian, and usually allied with the Romans in the Sassanid era.
And the "cross thingy" was the True Cross (supposedly) captured along with Jerusalem.
Heraklios eventually got it back when he beat the Sassanids.
cybrxkhan
Asian Xwedodah
Ah, it seems I mistyped there or had a brain fart or something, i meant to say under the Sassanids their treatment of Christianity varied from ruler to ruler. The harshest and most oppressive repression occured in the early years of the dynasty, particularly under the Zoroastrian head priest Kabir, who wanted to pretty much get rid of everybody who wasn't Zoroastrian, be they Christian, Manichaean, Buddhist, Jewish, or whatever. It seems like it partly was due to the fact that it was seen as a measure to solidify the state, from what my Iranian specialist professor says. During the early-middle to middle Sassanid period it also I guess was a natural reaction to Christianity slowly becoming the official state religion of the Roman Empire (and vice versa).
Though they practiced some weird version of Zoroastrianism caled Zurvanism that worshiped the third of the two gods, Zurvan. I think. Religion's not my strong suit at all.
Wikipedia does mention Zurvanism as a major branch of Zoroastrianism during the Sassanid era, though from what I vaguely remember my professor saying in his Zoroastrianism class was that it actually was a persecuted heresy (i.e. Wikipedia is wrong), though don't quote me on that as I don't remember exactly what he said. I think he did say the Zurvanists were pretty weird.
Christianity was pretty major with the Arabs before Islam, and still is today, though it's shrunk a lot in the past few centuries. My great-grandparents were Christian Lebanese. The Ghassanid kings were Arabs, often Christian, and usually allied with the Romans in the Sassanid era.
And the "cross thingy" was the True Cross (supposedly) captured along with Jerusalem.
Ah, yes, the True Cross. That's what it was.
My professor would definitely be disappointed in all my forgetting, I took so many classes with him and even did a research paper under his guidance, I should be better than this.
But as a totally tangential note I am glad to have a professor who specializes in especially this ancient and medieval Persian stuff and a ton of ancient languages related to greater Iranian history (ranging from Avestan to Sanskrit to Khotanese and Aramaic). *end praise of professor*
German occupation of the Channel Islands was largely a propaganda coup, rather than important in any way. The Islanders were treated very well compared to other occupied territories. I believe only a small handful died. Part of this is likely due to the fact that the numbers of Jews on the islands was positively miniscule. There was some resistance, but it wasn't violent. It mostly consisted of hiding shipwrecked sailors or crashed pilots from the Germans.
I'm afraid I know nothing about the British occupation of the Faeroes. I know a little about Iceland.
I would have mentioned the Middle East, but I understood the question to be about Europe!
It's true that the persecutions that the Sassanids wrought on the Christians dwarfed anything the Romans did. These persecutions mainly occurred in the fourth century under Shapur II, who ruled for seventy years, and who killed untold thousands of them. The names of 16,000 of the martyrs are still remembered today by the Church of the East, and prayed for seven times a day. Things improved after Shapur's death in 379, but there were still intermittent persecutions which caused many Christians to flee west to Edessa and its environs.
The real complicating factor is that Christianity to the east of the Roman empire was spread by such different means at different times. Originally it may well have spread mainly among Jewish merchants and had a very Jewish flavour. (Scholars still can't agree how "Jewish" even mainstream Roman Christianity was right up to the fourth or fifth centuries, so this is even harder to determine.) Later, during their wars with Rome, the Sassanids captured huge numbers of Roman prisoners and forcibly re-settled them far to the east, in lands that they considered under-populated. These displaced people were mostly Christian. The result was that there were two rather distinct Christian populations under the Sassanids - the "original" Christians, who spoke Syriac and had rather Nestorian theology (they all venerated Theodore of Mopsuestia), and the resettled ones, who spoke Greek and were mostly Chalcedonian. That caused complications, especially after 457 when the emperor Zeno closed the theological school at Nisibis and all the rabidly Nestorian theologians fled east to join the Sassanid church. And this was before Islam even turned up. Nevertheless, the Sassanid church was thriving when the Prophet was a boy; it had major theological schools and missionary colleges, it was supported by the Sassanids (who had worked out by this time that "their" Christians were different from the Byzantines', and therefore to be encouraged rather than persecuted), and it was sending missionaries along the Silk Road and also into India. There were even Nestorian churches in Sumatra, which survived until at least the fourteenth century, although pretty much nothing is known about them.
Also it's true that Christianity had spread to the Arabs - in fact one of the first groups of Arabs to play an important role in the world beyond the Arabian peninsula were the Ghassanids, who had left Arabia and forged a small kingdom east of the river Jordan. As Phrossack said, they were Monophysite Christians, and their leader, the phylarch al-Moundhir, was courted by the emperor Tiberius II, who thought that he might be a valuable ally against the Sassanids. It didn't last, of course.
As for the influence of Christianity on Islam, that remains largely a matter of speculation, though certainly any such influence would have been via Monophysitism. One interesting tidbit is that Tertullian referred to Christ as "the seal of the prophets", which is of course one of the titles of the Prophet Muhammad - although I doubt there was any real influence there, more a matter of convergence.
It's true that the persecutions that the Sassanids wrought on the Christians dwarfed anything the Romans did. These persecutions mainly occurred in the fourth century under Shapur II, who ruled for seventy years, and who killed untold thousands of them. The names of 16,000 of the martyrs are still remembered today by the Church of the East, and prayed for seven times a day. Things improved after Shapur's death in 379, but there were still intermittent persecutions which caused many Christians to flee west to Edessa and its environs.
The real complicating factor is that Christianity to the east of the Roman empire was spread by such different means at different times. Originally it may well have spread mainly among Jewish merchants and had a very Jewish flavour. (Scholars still can't agree how "Jewish" even mainstream Roman Christianity was right up to the fourth or fifth centuries, so this is even harder to determine.) Later, during their wars with Rome, the Sassanids captured huge numbers of Roman prisoners and forcibly re-settled them far to the east, in lands that they considered under-populated. These displaced people were mostly Christian. The result was that there were two rather distinct Christian populations under the Sassanids - the "original" Christians, who spoke Syriac and had rather Nestorian theology (they all venerated Theodore of Mopsuestia), and the resettled ones, who spoke Greek and were mostly Chalcedonian. That caused complications, especially after 457 when the emperor Zeno closed the theological school at Nisibis and all the rabidly Nestorian theologians fled east to join the Sassanid church. And this was before Islam even turned up. Nevertheless, the Sassanid church was thriving when the Prophet was a boy; it had major theological schools and missionary colleges, it was supported by the Sassanids (who had worked out by this time that "their" Christians were different from the Byzantines', and therefore to be encouraged rather than persecuted), and it was sending missionaries along the Silk Road and also into India. There were even Nestorian churches in Sumatra, which survived until at least the fourteenth century, although pretty much nothing is known about them.
Also it's true that Christianity had spread to the Arabs - in fact one of the first groups of Arabs to play an important role in the world beyond the Arabian peninsula were the Ghassanids, who had left Arabia and forged a small kingdom east of the river Jordan. As Phrossack said, they were Monophysite Christians, and their leader, the phylarch al-Moundhir, was courted by the emperor Tiberius II, who thought that he might be a valuable ally against the Sassanids. It didn't last, of course.
As for the influence of Christianity on Islam, that remains largely a matter of speculation, though certainly any such influence would have been via Monophysitism. One interesting tidbit is that Tertullian referred to Christ as "the seal of the prophets", which is of course one of the titles of the Prophet Muhammad - although I doubt there was any real influence there, more a matter of convergence.
Louis XXIV
Le Roi Soleil
I mentioned Europe because I was specifically interested in various barbarian groups, but more information is a good thing either way.
Thanks for the responses everyone. Very interesting.
That's because they were living in a free society for 1,000 years. In Irish society, the courts and the law were largely libertarian, and operated within a purely stateless manner. This society persisted in this libertarian path for roughly a thousand years until its brutal conquest by England in the seventeenth century. And, in contrast to many similarly functioning primitive tribes (such as the Ibos in West Africa, and many European tribes), preconquest Ireland was not in any sense a "primitive" society: it was a highly complex society that was, for centuries, the most advanced, most scholarly, and most civilized in all of Western Europe. A leading authority on ancient Irish law wrote, "There was no legislature, no bailiffs, no police, no public enforcement of justice... There was no trace of State-administered justice."
1. "They certainly had access to both gold and silver from native sources; they traveled abroad and knew the monetary usages of their neighbors; and the metalworkers capable of creating such masterpieces as the Tara brooch or the Ardagh chalice were certainly capable of striking coins...The essentially libertarian nature of Irish society can also be seen in the fact that the native Irish never issued coinage." http://mises.org/journals/lf/1971/1971_04.pdf
2. "In addition, cities and walled towns were brought to Ireland by invaders; the early Irish people did not have these places of mass congregation that supported cities and marketplaces." http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Acade..._different_12/Papers_12/Irish Law Osborne.htm
3. Property rights in Irish law: http://mises.org/journals/jls/1_2/1_2_1.pdf
4. "While a comprehensive survey of the Irish law of property and property rights cannot yet be written, we can already see that the idea of private ownership permeates those aspects of the law which have been subjected to recent study. The Irish frankly and openly used assessments of property as the criterion for determining a man's social and legal status, the extent of his capacity to act as a surety or compurgator, and to fix the amounts of compensation due him as a victim of crime or any kind of injury..." http://books.google.com/books?id=nf...ce=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false p.14
privatehudson
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Not strictly about the occupation of the Channel Islands, but about them in general, I read a very interesting book about the evacuation of the islands. This took place immediately before the Germans occupied it and for the most part consisted of children, school teachers or mothers with very young children. Unlike most evacuations though they found themselves forced to stay away from home for the rest of the war and were generally evacuated to Industrial towns in Northern England or Scotland (one evacuee was in Coventry when the Luftwaffe hit it and was moved to Manchester just in time for the December blitz on that city). When they returned many of them were ostracised by those who had remained behind who thought they'd had an easy time of it, when in reality the evacuees time on the mainland was every bit as difficult as the average experience of those who stayed on the island.
TheLastOne36
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So what happened to Phoenician populations across the Mediterranean following the final defeat of Carthage?
The plight of Carthaginian population is well known, but Carthage was far from the only Phoenician settlement in North Africa and there were many other Phoenician settlements elsewhere such as Gades and Carthago Novo in Iberia, and the Phoenician homeland itself. Plus it is my understanding that the Phoenicians, being a sea-faring mercantile culture, had established Phoenician quarters in many cities and trading hubs throughout the Mediterranean.
I guess after the decline of Carthage and the cities of the Phoenician homeland, Phoenician populations had less political clout and over the centuries assimilated into local populations, but I'm hoping someone can provide additional insight.
The plight of Carthaginian population is well known, but Carthage was far from the only Phoenician settlement in North Africa and there were many other Phoenician settlements elsewhere such as Gades and Carthago Novo in Iberia, and the Phoenician homeland itself. Plus it is my understanding that the Phoenicians, being a sea-faring mercantile culture, had established Phoenician quarters in many cities and trading hubs throughout the Mediterranean.
I guess after the decline of Carthage and the cities of the Phoenician homeland, Phoenician populations had less political clout and over the centuries assimilated into local populations, but I'm hoping someone can provide additional insight.
cybrxkhan
Asian Xwedodah
From what I know they mostly assimilated, though the Lebanese do tend to claim direct descent from Phoenicians (I don't know the genetics of that, though, so I won't make a statement as to the likelihood of that). According to Wikipedia remnants of the Phoenician language still lingered on in the early days of the Arabic Empire, although like in many originally Semitic but non-Arabic-speaking regions the Arabs conquered (such as the Maghreb, Mesopotamia, and Egypt), it appears Phoenician was supplanted by Arabic, and seemingly much more severely (as Berber, Assyrian, Coptic, etc. still survive in some form or another).
Louis XXIV
Le Roi Soleil
Phoenician culture in North Africa actually lasted a surprisingly long time. I don't recall the details (I'd have to dig up my copy of "Carthage Must Be Destroyed") but I think it lasted several hundred years before it finally assimilated. This is leaving aside the Vandals establishing themselves as the successors to the Carthaginians. I have no idea if there was anyone who considered themselves Carthaginian to be impressed by that.
Phrossack
Armored Fish and Armored Men
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Sounds about right. Kinda sad that Phoenician culture was absorbed, it was interesting. I may be biased a bit because my great-grandparents came from Lebanon and my family still makes their delicious food, though.
But it's interesting to note that spoken Lebanese Arabic is different enough from other forms of Arabic that it's sometimes seen as a separate language, and there have been suggestions that it be written in a modified Latin script. Now, these differences may not be any greater than between Arabic and any other dialects. I dunno, it'd take Owen Glyndwr to decipher Wiki's page on the differences. But Lebanese nationalism and Phoenicianism hold that Lebanon is not Arab but Phoenician. This view was/is especially popular with the far-right militia and political party, the Guardians of the Cedars.
cybrxkhan
Asian Xwedodah
Sounds about right. Kinda sad that Phoenician culture was absorbed, it was interesting. I may be biased a bit because my great-grandparents came from Lebanon and my family still makes their delicious food, though.
But it's interesting to note that spoken Lebanese Arabic is different enough from other forms of Arabic that it's sometimes seen as a separate language, and there have been suggestions that it be written in a modified Latin script. Now, these differences may not be any greater than between Arabic and any other dialects. I dunno, it'd take Owen Glyndwr to decipher Wiki's page on the differences. But Lebanese nationalism and Phoenicianism hold that Lebanon is not Arab but Phoenician. This view was/is especially popular with the far-right militia and political party, the Guardians of the Cedars.
My impression is that the dialects of Arabic are divergent enough they could be interpreted as different languages (i.e. something sort of like the Chinese "dialects" which are really different languages but due to political/cultural/historical reasons are officially dialects in nonliguistic circles), but don't quote me on that. I do know that definitely dialects really far from each other (like, say, the variety Arabic in West Africa and Arabic in Central Asia) are pretty much mutually unintelligible.
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