Lithuania? The Old Prussians? A millennium and more of basically constant efforts at conversion, backed by the support of political elites for most of that time, doesn't sound like the Christians had it particularly "easy".
History questions not worth their own thread
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LightSpectra
me autem minui
Because Christianity is awesome.
To clarify, during massive plagues or military invasions and what not, Christians were the ones who would care for the sick and raped, which resulted in Christians having better PR and survival rates. So that's why most of the Roman territory and the Germanic tribes allied with Rome became Christian. Add to that highly fanatical orders like the Teutonic Knights as well as militarily successful rulers like Charlemagne and you have a almost-homogeneous religious situation by the turn of the millennium.
Possible, but not probable.
I haven't seen ring myslef, but read a description of it -it's related to one incident in 1931, of which I'm reading contemporary news papers. One article connects the word "double" with brass, if I recall correctly it used the word "double" like it would mean brass. The article is in Finnish, but the word can't be of Finnish origin. The best hypothesis I've made is that it's contraction of "double alloy" or something like that.
This is a shame, as I was going to suggest you had it examined to see if the inscription was engraved (meaning a personal message) or stamped into the ring (makers mark ect). If the ring has not been worn much it should be possible to tell the difference.
If the ring is brass, it won't be a hallmark.
Have you no idea about it's country of origin. In the UK at this time it was still common for people to have brass wedding rings, they were made in vast numbers. Many were engraved with personal messages. but considering the message I would think you're right that it's makers description of some kind.
"elw" may in some language refer to electroplating or something similar.
I'll bear this mystery in mind, and get back to you if I ever discover anything.
Dragonlord
Fantasy Warlord
Noooo.... I don't really think so! Do you really believe, by and large, Christians behaved so much more virtuously and compassionately than non-Christians? Dream on... or give a source.
I suscribe to a much simpler theory - not mine, but I don't know where it originates. Basically, early Christianity spread because it was so appealing to women; unlike most earlier religions/cults (at least in the Roman empire), women were more or less equal to men, having immortal souls of their own etc. Also they liked its' emphasis on peace and love, of course. At the same time, Romans were quite tolerant toward new religions, with husbands often allowing their wives to convert to Christianity. So, more and more women became Christian - and brought their children up to become Christian as well.
Then, of course, when Christianity, after initial persecutions, became the state religion of Rome, it spread by force - because it was itself totally intolerant of other religions. Christian rulers mostly saw it as their duty to spread Christianity by any means possible - because non-Christians were doomed to hell, don't you know...
Forget the sweetness-and-light Christianity spreading by the virtuous example of its' followers. By and large, that didn't happen.
LightSpectra
me autem minui
Roman historians themselves recorded such a thing. In the 3rd century, even while Christians were being persecuted, they managed to care for 1,500 sick in the city of Rome. At the First Council of Nicaea, where Arianism became condemned by the Church, it was ordered that "the hospital to be established in every city," for instance.
Romans weren't tolerate to new religions unless they were amalgamated into their own. Christianity itself had a bad time under the Empire before Constantine. Perhaps you've noticed the persecutions of Diocletian, Nero, Domitian, Septimius Severus, Valerian and others. Also, being that women had very few rights in ancient Rome, it was rarely the case that families consisted of different faiths, so I find your theory that women were the proxy to be unlikely.
Paganism was still de facto legal in Rome when Christianity became the state religion. In fact, the traditional Roman religion still outnumbered Christians in the city of Rome by 400 AD.
It did, actually. How do you think Christianity spread so fast as an illegal religion with threat of bloody persecutions? Or convert entire nations without any significant military power to do so? What's so hard to believe about this, exactly?
You're both partly right.
Within the Roman empire before the sixth century, Christianity spread largely because of its virtues, which it genuinely possessed in a way that the traditional religion did not. This included its welfare provision for the poor. Julian the apostate commented on the fact that the Christian hostels and hospitals were enormously popular and shamed the pagans; he ordered a system of pagan ones to be built in an attempt to win back popularity from the Christians. Moreover, one of Constantine's cleverest innovations was the episcopal audience, in which bishops adjudicated over minor legal and social matters. This not only freed up the official legal system to focus on more important stuff, but made the bishop a key figure in society in a way which pagan priests had not been since the time of the Republic. Factors such as these made it nigh-on impossible for those who wanted to bring back paganism, such as Justin, to do it - even just half a century after the Edict of Milan.
It is true that Christianity appears to have been especially appealing to women. I think this was less to do with the notion that women had souls and more to do with the fact that Christian women were less likely to become child concubines than pagan ones (Christian women generally married later than pagan ones, and Christians thought that adultery was a sin even when men did it) and that Christians did not practise abortion (which, in antiquity, basically meant a man ordering a woman to take poison, or be cut open, or simply be kicked repeatedly until she miscarried). Another possible factor is that Christians had a higher birthrate than pagans, for reasons that are not entirely understood (probably something to do with the aforementioned proscription on abortion and exposition and the higher proportion of women, which cancelled out the effects of widespread sexual abstinence).
And note that force didn't come into it. Constantine almost certainly never legislated against paganism. Constans and Constantius II did, in a series of edicts in the 350s which banned public sacrifices, but these edicts were almost certainly almost universally ignored. Not until the 390s did legislation against pagan practices appear which effectively proscribed it, and even then, it was still largely ignored outside cosmopolitan areas. By then, as I said, Christianity had become irrevocably established in Roman society for other reasons. It was not until the time of Justinian that the laws against paganism were really enforced rigorously and pagans actively persecuted. It must be said that the Christians took far longer to start persecuting pagans than pagans had to start persecuting Christians.
However, none of that is very relevant to the actual question, which was about Europe in general, not the Roman empire. The factors underlying Christianity's spread outside the empire and in early medieval Europe are much less well known, partly because of the absence of literary evidence among most of the converted peoples (who typically only learned to read and write their own language when they converted to Christianity). Key factors, however, must include (a) the influence of Roman culture, which in many parts of the former empire remained largely intact even as the political situation changed, (b) the growing importance of bishops as political figures in cities that might change hands between rival warlords on an almost annual basis, (c) the activities of missionaries. This last is the main difference from the spread of Christianity in the Roman world, where there were surprisingly few major missionaries, especially in the third century; Christianity usually spread within the empire by personal contact and word of mouth. After Rome fell, however, missionaries appeared who travelled all over the place and converted enormous numbers of people. Often this was done by converting the local king, who would decide that all his subjects were now Christians. At other times it was done in a more gruelling but ultimately successful way by missionaries who would simply travel about in an area for years, talking to everyone they met. Figures such as Aidan in Northumbria or Boniface in what is now Germany used this method, unknown to the classical world since the time of Paul, with enormous success.
In addition to this there were also violent conversions, such as those Charlemagne forced upon the Saxons or Alfred the Great forced upon the Vikings. But I think this sort of thing was generally much less important than the activities of missionaries just mentioned.
Within the Roman empire before the sixth century, Christianity spread largely because of its virtues, which it genuinely possessed in a way that the traditional religion did not. This included its welfare provision for the poor. Julian the apostate commented on the fact that the Christian hostels and hospitals were enormously popular and shamed the pagans; he ordered a system of pagan ones to be built in an attempt to win back popularity from the Christians. Moreover, one of Constantine's cleverest innovations was the episcopal audience, in which bishops adjudicated over minor legal and social matters. This not only freed up the official legal system to focus on more important stuff, but made the bishop a key figure in society in a way which pagan priests had not been since the time of the Republic. Factors such as these made it nigh-on impossible for those who wanted to bring back paganism, such as Justin, to do it - even just half a century after the Edict of Milan.
It is true that Christianity appears to have been especially appealing to women. I think this was less to do with the notion that women had souls and more to do with the fact that Christian women were less likely to become child concubines than pagan ones (Christian women generally married later than pagan ones, and Christians thought that adultery was a sin even when men did it) and that Christians did not practise abortion (which, in antiquity, basically meant a man ordering a woman to take poison, or be cut open, or simply be kicked repeatedly until she miscarried). Another possible factor is that Christians had a higher birthrate than pagans, for reasons that are not entirely understood (probably something to do with the aforementioned proscription on abortion and exposition and the higher proportion of women, which cancelled out the effects of widespread sexual abstinence).
And note that force didn't come into it. Constantine almost certainly never legislated against paganism. Constans and Constantius II did, in a series of edicts in the 350s which banned public sacrifices, but these edicts were almost certainly almost universally ignored. Not until the 390s did legislation against pagan practices appear which effectively proscribed it, and even then, it was still largely ignored outside cosmopolitan areas. By then, as I said, Christianity had become irrevocably established in Roman society for other reasons. It was not until the time of Justinian that the laws against paganism were really enforced rigorously and pagans actively persecuted. It must be said that the Christians took far longer to start persecuting pagans than pagans had to start persecuting Christians.
However, none of that is very relevant to the actual question, which was about Europe in general, not the Roman empire. The factors underlying Christianity's spread outside the empire and in early medieval Europe are much less well known, partly because of the absence of literary evidence among most of the converted peoples (who typically only learned to read and write their own language when they converted to Christianity). Key factors, however, must include (a) the influence of Roman culture, which in many parts of the former empire remained largely intact even as the political situation changed, (b) the growing importance of bishops as political figures in cities that might change hands between rival warlords on an almost annual basis, (c) the activities of missionaries. This last is the main difference from the spread of Christianity in the Roman world, where there were surprisingly few major missionaries, especially in the third century; Christianity usually spread within the empire by personal contact and word of mouth. After Rome fell, however, missionaries appeared who travelled all over the place and converted enormous numbers of people. Often this was done by converting the local king, who would decide that all his subjects were now Christians. At other times it was done in a more gruelling but ultimately successful way by missionaries who would simply travel about in an area for years, talking to everyone they met. Figures such as Aidan in Northumbria or Boniface in what is now Germany used this method, unknown to the classical world since the time of Paul, with enormous success.
In addition to this there were also violent conversions, such as those Charlemagne forced upon the Saxons or Alfred the Great forced upon the Vikings. But I think this sort of thing was generally much less important than the activities of missionaries just mentioned.
LightSpectra
me autem minui
It seems you're in agreement with me, Plotinus. What did you mean when you said I was partly right?
I think you were wrong in a few details. Christianity didn't spread particularly quickly until it was patronised by the Roman emperors; it seems not to have spread at all in the third century, at least within the Roman empire. The explosion really happened after the conversion of Constantine - it was then that the xenodocheia and other social institutions mentioned above were set up. Also there were periods when Christianity was tolerated before Constantine; most governors tolerated it more or less in the middle part of the second century, and there were decades of peace for the church in the first and second halves of the third century (not at the start, middle, and end though!). Even the Edict of Milan only made official a de facto decriminalisation of Christianity which had already been in place in the west for half a decade (since the accession of Constantius Chlorus). That is a minor quibble though!
There is good evidence that women did act as proxies in the spread of Christianity. Critics such as Celsus complained volubly about it. What's more, later on, Christian writers such as Epiphanius complained about women spreading heresy. It seems that whether the establishment were pagan or Christian, they still complained about women spreading the wrong kind of religion. When you consider how many people might be counted as part of a "household", it's easy to see how a female Christian in a household (not necessarily the mater - perhaps a servant) could draw other people into a Christian social circle. As you say, it was rare for a family to contain more than one religion; get a zealous female Christian in a household, and you'd probably find that most of the other people in it would follow suit. I think it's quite plausible to suppose that many male Christians became Christians basically because their wives did, their wives having become converted after their friends did, and so on. The almost exclusively male-dominated nature of the literature of Christian antiquity probably gives a very skewed picture of the social make-up and dynamics of the church at the time.
More importantly, I don't think that the barbarian tribes allied with Rome who converted to Christianity did so initially because of the virtues of Christianity; it was more of a political move or one associated with loyalty traditions. Fritigern the Visigoth became a Christian in gratitude to the emperor Valens, who forged an alliance with him against his rival, Athanaric the Visigoth. Another important influence in the conversion of the Visigoths was the work of the missionary Ulfilas, but unfortunately we know almost nothing about how Ulfilas went about the work of conversion. He was obviously very effective, though, since he passed on to the Visigoths his own Homoian views, which would cause a few problems down the line.
Finally, of course, while we shouldn't over-stress the role of violence in the way that is so fashionable these days, we also shouldn't minimise it. It is true that pagans were not persecuted within the Roman empire until the sixth century AD, but they were still cruelly persecuted. This was not a simple mopping-up operation either, but a systematic persecution which required considerable resources. It is not really relevant to the question, since by the sixth century what happened in the Middle East had little relevance to the conversions going on in Europe, but still.
There is good evidence that women did act as proxies in the spread of Christianity. Critics such as Celsus complained volubly about it. What's more, later on, Christian writers such as Epiphanius complained about women spreading heresy. It seems that whether the establishment were pagan or Christian, they still complained about women spreading the wrong kind of religion. When you consider how many people might be counted as part of a "household", it's easy to see how a female Christian in a household (not necessarily the mater - perhaps a servant) could draw other people into a Christian social circle. As you say, it was rare for a family to contain more than one religion; get a zealous female Christian in a household, and you'd probably find that most of the other people in it would follow suit. I think it's quite plausible to suppose that many male Christians became Christians basically because their wives did, their wives having become converted after their friends did, and so on. The almost exclusively male-dominated nature of the literature of Christian antiquity probably gives a very skewed picture of the social make-up and dynamics of the church at the time.
More importantly, I don't think that the barbarian tribes allied with Rome who converted to Christianity did so initially because of the virtues of Christianity; it was more of a political move or one associated with loyalty traditions. Fritigern the Visigoth became a Christian in gratitude to the emperor Valens, who forged an alliance with him against his rival, Athanaric the Visigoth. Another important influence in the conversion of the Visigoths was the work of the missionary Ulfilas, but unfortunately we know almost nothing about how Ulfilas went about the work of conversion. He was obviously very effective, though, since he passed on to the Visigoths his own Homoian views, which would cause a few problems down the line.
Finally, of course, while we shouldn't over-stress the role of violence in the way that is so fashionable these days, we also shouldn't minimise it. It is true that pagans were not persecuted within the Roman empire until the sixth century AD, but they were still cruelly persecuted. This was not a simple mopping-up operation either, but a systematic persecution which required considerable resources. It is not really relevant to the question, since by the sixth century what happened in the Middle East had little relevance to the conversions going on in Europe, but still.
Thanks! This was certainly a good information, because in the paper it was said that the ring was not tarnished nor had it darkened the finger where it was found!
I have no idea, but British or American are good guesses. Probably those rigns were exported too.
It was probably half of a bigger ring that was meant to be broken in two, so most probably a wedding ring.
There was also speculations that it could be actually gold and have belonged to a Russian immigrant, because they could have non-hallmarked rings etc so that nobody would rob them. But I have reasons to believe that the owner was poor, which corroborates the massproduced ring theory.
I thought that maybe I would write here more complete story of this thing, but it will take time, since I'm researching the thing only out of interest and have plenty of other things to do also.
innonimatu
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In the Eastern Empire christianism probably spread easily, as it was essentially an urban religion (it was no accident that Augustine's ideal was the city of God), and fitted quite well into the evolving philosophical traditions of the empire. But in the west, were cities collapsed after the 5th century, I also believe that it spread though the ruler classes and due to its prestige by association with the customs of the old Empire. I very much doubt that the peasants who made up the majority of the population had any understating about the ideas of christianity, or even followed its rituals. Bishops were still quite busy stamping out traces of pagan rituals by the 10th-13th centuries, and likely didn't care about those at all before that.
I suspect that while local communities might have its priests, there wasn't any enforcement of a strict orthodoxy. That kind of thing happened in cities, because cities were seats of power and there the church jealously guarded its influence, but didn't affet the majority of the population, on the countryside.
And the rural areas of Europe were targeted by very intense missionary activity during the 16th-17th centuries again, because even then those populations didn't really knew the precepts of whatever christian religion happened to control their area (the era of the religious wars).
I wouldn't call a conversion process taking centuries (from ca. 50 AD to well after 1000 AD) giving up pagan religions easy. Compared to, for instance, the spread of romanized religion it was first of all a rather slow process - and compared to the rate of spread of Islam even an exceptionally slow process.
This a bit contradictory. At least since Christianity became state religion force definitely came into. But even if the state didn't apply force (i.e. law), it is quite striking that Christianity, like Judaism before it, spread predominantly within the Roman empire. So I think it's fair to say that culture played a part - and culture, in itself, is also a force, even if no violence is involved. With the disappearance of the Western Empire, the rôle of the state fell to Germanic reigns mostly in the West and to Byzantium in the East. Ultimately, these proved succesful in spreading Christianity all across Europe, and from there, when these states became more powerful, across the globe - but especially across the less developed parts of the globe, outside of the reach of Islam and the entrenched Eastern religions and philosophies, the latter being obviously quite a bit older.
As far as the slow development of persecution by Christianity is concerned, that's a matter of point of view. Heresy has always been frowned upon - although it could only be declared so when a certain brand of Christianity was the dominant religion. Pagan religions, being polytheistic, had little cause for persecuting Christians - the major exception ofcourse being the Roman Empire and an important reason for persecution might very well be the refusal to recognize the deity of the emperor. But even so, persecution of Christians was never excuted systematically and never as thorough as when Christendom acquired a taste for it; whatever ethical hindrance there may have been in terms of "Christian behaviour", they made well up for it once they got going. That "unchristian behaviour" may be persecuted by unchristian methods seems to some even today without question.
Compared to the Eastern Empire, the Western Roman Christians never were particularly concerned with the orthodoxy of the belief as opposed to the purity of the clergymen who administered the sacraments and so forth. Donatism and Pelagianism both arose over this issue, and they were the major heretical beliefs in the region for the first several centuries of Christian dominance - outside of Arianism, an Eastern Empire invention that in the West was mostly confined to the Germanic peoples that came in and settled, and within two centuries of that settlement was basically gone as well. This was apparent even in the cities, and probably the only exceptions were during the period between the Gothic War and the advent of Pippinid/Carolingian power in Italy, when the Pope was beholden to the Byzantine Emperor and thus forced to take part in the more abstruse theological disputes of the east.
flyingchicken
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Cue some of the iconoclasm controversies.
Dragonlord
Fantasy Warlord
Sorry, rereading my post I didn't make myself perfectly clear.
I mostly meant to take exception to the 'Christianity is so awesome' quote and the view that Christianity spread mainly due to it's virtues.
I overstated my case - certainly there were virtues and certainly they played a role in its' spread, especially, of course, at the very beginning.
I won't go into the arguments again - Plotinus has put it far better than I ever could have. Actually, when I posted before, I was sort of hoping he might jump in and clarify, knowing he's the resident expert on the history of Christianity.
Yes, I think all this is quite right. It is no accident that there were very few non-urban areas in the Roman world that had a large proportion of Christians before the fifth century or thereabouts (the Berbers were a rare exception). Roman culture itself spread via cities, and Christianity basically piggybacked on that.
I'm not so convinced by that. You must bear in mind that the distinction between Christian rituals on the one hand, and pagan ones on the other, together with the notion that there is fundamental incompatibility between them, is a way of thinking that developed in later Christianity (I mean post-fourth century) and developed slowly and at different speeds in different places. So the fact that what we think of as "pagan rituals" persisted for many centuries in certain places is not, in itself, evidence that those people were not thoroughly Christianised; they might have been thoroughly Christianised but have seen no reason to stop practising their traditional rituals (just as there are plenty of Chinese Christians who are perfectly devout but who still venerate Confucius and their ancestors).
Surely these missionaries were not educating people about Christianity who didn't know much about it, but bolstering their faith against rival versions of Christianity or seeking converts from rival versions? I mean, this was about Catholics/Lutherans/Reformed versus each other, rather than Christians versus pagans. Although I don't know much about this period.
It's perfectly possible for one bunch of Christians to call another bunch heretical even when Christians as a whole are a small minority; the church was happily doing this from the first century onwards, even when its members represented less than one per cent of the empire's population.
No! The Roman Empire was certainly not the "major exception" here. In fact Christians in antiquity were persecuted not only by the Roman Empire but also by the Visigoths (Athanaric, whom I mentioned before, was a notable persecutor of Christians), by the Armenians (Tiridates III persecuted the Christians before converting himself), and above all by the Persians. The persecutions of Christians in the Roman Empire were absolutely dwarfed by the incredibly cruel persecutions they suffered at the hands of the Sassanids in the fourth and fifth centuries. Shapur II and Ardashir II slaughtered enormous numbers, eschewing the legal procedures followed by the Romans in favour of simply ordering wholesale massacres in Christian areas, in which many non-Christians also died. For some victims they used particularly inventive forms of execution, such as dismemberment over the course of several days, being eaten alive by rats, or trampled by elephants. Even after Christianity was decriminalised in AD 410, there were still terrible massacres, most notably under Yazdgerd II in the 440s and 50s, in which tens of thousands of people died, almost certainly more than died in all the Roman persecutions put together.
You're right about Donatism (although that was almost completely confined to Africa) but not about Pelagianism: that was, initially, an ethically-motivated movement (Pelagius objected to people using original sin as an excuse for lax behaviour) but in the hands of Julian of Eclanum and the "semi-Pelagians" such as Faustus of Riez it transformed into a more philosophically, doctrinally inclined movement which was concerned with the nature of the will and of divine grace. Pelagianism was never about the purity of the priesthood. Also, don't forget the major disputes in the ancient west about Sabellianism and other Trinitarian matters, and then in the early Middle Ages about predestination, the nature of the sacraments, and adoptionism. So to suggest that western Christians were primarily concerned about correct practice and not correct doctrine isn't really true, I think. They were concerned about different issues from eastern Christians, to a considerable extent, but not necessarily less dogmatic ones. Plus of course there were eastern controversies that revolved around practical rather than primarily dogmatic matters, such as Messalianism and, much later, the row over hesychasm.
That seems to confirm then that it was mostly a cultural conversion - whether by force or not.
Such heresy! Are they unfamilar with the 1st Commandment? More seriously though, pagan rituals persist even today within Christianity.
Indeed, heresy seems endemic to Christianity itself. The point was, however, that this did not have such severe consequences until Christianity became dominant as a religion.
For some reason this reminds me of the pogroms... (But I gather Judaism wasn't persecuted by the Sassanids? On another level, killing people for their religious beliefs will not eradicate that belief - unless they are Christian "heretics".) But to return to the Roman Empire being the major exception: notwithstanding your examples - and I had no knowledge of those you mention - in terms of territory that would still appear to be correct. (By contrast, persecution of Christians in the Roman and post-Roman world as a whole would then appear to have been quite less harsh than under the 4th to 5th century Sassanids.)
That explanation was far too simplistic for me to think it didn't have holes...
Thanks for pointing that out.
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