Struggle between paganism and Christianity

Christianity emerged in the first century CE within a Jewish setting and gradually spread across the Roman Empire. The second century saw extensive apologetic literature, letters and theological works. The transition towards a Christian empire took several centuries and differed between regions.

The historical essay retained below belongs to an older encyclopaedic tradition. Its ideas about the exhaustion of paganism, inevitable Christianisation and relations between religions reflect the historiography of its time, not a modern scholarly consensus. Ancient reports of persecution, miracles and casualty totals require critical reading.

A broad outline distinguishes the early communities, local persecutions, empire-wide measures in the third and early fourth centuries, and changes in the Church’s position after Constantine. Galerius’ edict of 311 and Constantine and Licinius’ agreement of 313 recognised Christian worship. Nicene Christianity received a privileged state position under Theodosius I in 380; Constantine did not proclaim it the sole state religion.

The emergence of Christianity

The older account explains the pagan world’s receptiveness to Christianity through developments in religion, philosophy and learning.

It distinguishes three broad currents in imperial religious life: Greek, Roman and eastern. Within the Greek current, it contrasts public civic worship with the mysteries. Public Greek religion, with its multiple gods and civic associations, differed from Christian monotheism and universal claims. The account argues that it no longer had the power it possessed when Delphi could unite Greeks around Apollo’s cult. Greek independence had declined, and philosophical criticism and religious change had unsettled traditional beliefs. Among reflective people, ideas of a single divine principle could take different forms: Tyche, understood as fortune; Moira, or fate, associated with celestial movements and human lives; Pronoia, or providence; or less precisely defined references to “the divine”, “god” and “gods” — theion, theos and theoi. These are the essay’s interpretations, not proof that all Greeks had abandoned civic polytheism.

The account gives the mysteries, especially Orphic rather than Eleusinian traditions, a contrasting role. It relates Orphism to the story of Dionysus Zagreus torn apart by the Titans and to Orpheus’ attempt to recover Eurydice. It argues that these traditions directed attention towards an afterlife, promising blessedness to the good and punishments to the wicked. Fasting, washing and purification offered ways to prepare for a better fate after death. Similarities in religious concerns should not be mistaken for evidence that one system directly anticipated or produced Christian doctrine.

The essay accordingly interprets the popularity of private or initiatory cults as one condition favouring Christianisation. It assigns Roman religion a different path, claiming that its relatively flexible divine categories encouraged integration into a more encompassing divine authority. Imperial worship, especially worship of the reigning emperor’s genius, is central to this argument. Worship of a genius was not necessarily identical to worship of the emperor himself, although practices could overlap. The essay compares these developments with Christian monotheism and belief in a divine-human saviour. Such comparisons are part of its historical model, not demonstrations that the imperial cult already contained Christian theology or that Christianity was intrinsically incompatible with every form of Judaism.

The third current comprises cults associated with the eastern Mediterranean and Asia, which also spread into the western empire. Christianity itself originated in the East. The account argues that eastern cults combined features it associated with Roman and Greek religious traditions. The Great Mother, Isis, Cappadocian Ma or Bellona, and Mithras could occupy a predominant place within a devotee’s worship without excluding every other deity. Their rites also addressed purification, salvation and religious belonging, sometimes through particularly striking ceremonies.

The essay presents the Roman cult of Mithras as an important competitor to Christianity. Mithraic communities were especially visible in western military and urban settings, whereas early Christianity had strong eastern centres. It interprets their competition as a contrast between western Roman and eastern Greek cultural worlds. This geographical scheme is too rigid to stand as a general explanation: both Christianity and other cults crossed regional boundaries, and Roman Mithraism cannot simply be equated with Iranian religion.

Early Christianity within a Jewish setting (to about 80 CE)

The account follows Christianity from the point at which it becomes visible in the diaspora. Neither the foundation date of every urban community nor one uniform direction of expansion can be established. Almost simultaneous appearances in several places are unsurprising. A geographical reconstruction traces connections from Jerusalem through Antioch into Asia Minor, especially Ephesus, then towards Macedonia — Philippi and Thessalonica — or towards Corinth, Puteoli and Rome. This is an explanatory outline, not a documented itinerary for every community.

Hellenised Jewish communities provided important early settings, and Greek remained a major language of early Christianity, including at Rome. The essay contrasts the varied organisation of those communities with what it depicts as a stricter situation after the Bar Kokhba revolt under Hadrian. Its model gives proselytes and gentile sympathisers an important place in Christian expansion. Relations with Jewish communities, however, differed by place and time; later conflicts should not be projected backwards as universal Jewish hostility to Christianity.

A single strict organisational pattern could not exist everywhere at the beginning. The account distinguishes individual adherents, groups with little formal organisation that understood themselves as guided by the Holy Spirit, and more clearly structured Christian communities. It compares the first group with people loosely attached to Jewish religious life, using the expression metuentes sabbata, and envisages some replacing Sabbath observance with Sunday worship while otherwise continuing their usual lives.

Christian teachers increasingly urged believers to participate in an organised community rather than seek spiritual benefits in isolation. The essay compares these communities with Roman collegia, arguing that religious and secular associations developed within the same imperial social environment. It does not claim that every Christian institution was consciously copied from a collegium.

The relationship between emerging Christian communities, synagogues and surrounding pagan society was therefore essential. Apostolic preaching took place in synagogues, but its reception was not uniform. The essay distinguishes Jewish followers of Jesus, proselytes who moved towards Christianity, and former pagans who became Christians without first adopting Judaism. Over time, gentile adherents grew in importance, although this varied between communities.

To outsiders, Christian groups could initially appear to be a Jewish sect. The account associates this perception with Jewish exemptions from certain compulsory pagan observances, particularly imperial worship, while stressing that Christian communities developed independent leadership. Where several synagogues existed, the relationship between them and Christian groups could be complex; the essay nevertheless tends to treat the Christian community of each city as a single body.

Separation sometimes produced conflict, but it was neither simultaneous nor identical everywhere. The expression fontes persecutionis, “sources of persecution”, belongs to the polemical interpretation used by the older essay. It must not be read as a description of all synagogues or all Jewish people. Roman officials’ difficulty in distinguishing communities also reflected limited knowledge of internal religious differences.

Separation from surrounding pagan society was not complete. The account distinguishes civic, social, legal and family obligations. Converts remained inhabitants or citizens of their communities and continued to bear public burdens. Enslaved Christians remained under their owners’ authority. Conversion did not require avoiding every pagan acquaintance. Ordinary legal relationships also continued, although communities sought to settle disputes between Christians internally, a practice compared here with synagogue traditions.

Mixed marriages could create particular difficulties, especially when one spouse’s religious duties conflicted with those of the other. The essay contrasts Jewish and Christian approaches but describes an idealised pattern rather than a uniform rule for every community: Christian teachers might accept an existing marriage while hoping for the other spouse’s conversion or considering separation under particular circumstances.

It divides early community organisation into two sets of functions. The first concerns administration and communal welfare:

• A bishop, or episkopos, could lead the community. The account acknowledges that early sources sometimes refer to several bishops or presbyters rather than one clearly differentiated office.
• Deacons assisted the community, especially in charity; the essay compares them with the curators of collegia.
• Presbyters formed a body of elders, compared with decurions, although the distinction between presbyter and bishop was not everywhere settled.
• The assembly of members, the ekklesia, supplied the word later used for the Church.

The second set consists of apostles, prophets and teachers, or didaskaloi. The account sees teachers as more regularly attached to individual communities, while apostles and prophets could travel. Their work involved spreading the message of Christ and instructing believers. Apostolic and early Christian letters preserve evidence of these activities.

These arrangements should not be imagined as uniform or rigid. Communities understood themselves as guided by the Holy Spirit, and authority could depend on a person’s perceived spiritual gifts as well as an office. Meetings, teaching and disputes over doctrine shaped their religious and intellectual life.

Relations between communities raise a further distinction: a shared Church in belief and communication was not the same as a single centralised administrative organisation. Believers could understand themselves as members of a wider Christian body, exchanging news and opinions through travelling preachers, correspondence and hospitality, without one universal governing institution.

The account therefore recognises common identity while denying that the earliest period had either one universally acknowledged head or a permanent representative council. Organisation within communities was itself still developing. It nevertheless identifies tendencies towards stronger episcopal leadership and towards greater authority for particular urban centres.

It distinguishes traditions associated with Peter at Rome, Paul in Greece, Macedonia and Asia Minor, and John in Asia Minor. These apostolic associations did not automatically create one unified administration. The Roman community’s letter to Corinth, traditionally linked with Clement, is interpreted as an early assertion of authority and concern for order. How far it demonstrates later Roman primacy remains a historical question, rather than a conclusion established by the letter alone.

Local and intermittent persecutions (about 80–235 CE)

This period extends from the late first century to the death of Severus Alexander in 235. Christianity increasingly attracted attention as a distinct movement, both from Roman officials and from surrounding society. Its separation from Jewish communities was gradual and cannot be assigned one universal completion date.

The account first surveys the geographical spread of Christianity. Alongside Jerusalem, it names communities or groups in Samaria, Joppa, Lydda and the Sharon region; in Syria, Antioch, Damascus, Tyre, Sidon and Ptolemais; and in Cyprus, Salamis and Paphos. Asia Minor appears especially prominently: Ephesus and the other communities of Revelation — Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia and Laodicea — together with Tarsus, Perge, Pisidian Antioch, Iconium, Lystra, Derbe, Colossae, Hierapolis and communities in Galatia, Cappadocia and the Troad.

In Macedonia, the account lists Thessalonica, Philippi and Beroea; in Greece, Corinth, Athens and Cenchreae; it also includes Crete, Rome and Puteoli. Alexandria belongs to a different evidential tradition from many of the communities named in the New Testament. This survey illustrates the importance of Greek in early Christian preaching, but absence from its list is not proof that Christianity had not reached other places.

By the later second century, the account adds further Syrian centres, probably including Seleucia; numerous communities in Asia Minor, among them Magnesia, Tralles, Philomelium, Parium, Nicomedia, Pepuza, Apamea, Ancyra, Sinope and Amastris; and Bithynian communities known from Pliny’s correspondence with Trajan. It also names Deultum and Anchialus in Thrace, Larissa and Sparta in Greece, Same on Cephallenia, and Knossos and Gortyn on Crete. Western evidence includes Naples and Syracuse, Lyon and Vienne, Carthage, Madaura and Scillium, together with traditions concerning Cologne and Spain. The strength and date of evidence differ between these cases.

The density of Christian populations is much harder to establish than the existence of individual communities. The essay uses Origen’s description of Christians as still relatively few, although numerous compared with their beginnings. Its numerical estimate for Jewish Christians should not be treated as a reliable empire-wide census. Nor does the presence of a Christian group make a whole city Christian.

The movement also spread across social categories. The account contrasts the modest social settings prominent in Paul’s letters with later participation by educated and wealthy people. Gnostic writers included learned figures; Clement of Alexandria and Origen became important representatives of Christian intellectual life. Evidence for senatorial and equestrian adherents shows increasing social variety, but does not establish that Christianity and paganism already had equal representation in every order.

The essay discusses Titus Flavius Clemens and Domitilla, relatives of Domitian who were punished in 95–96. Their exact religious affiliations and the relationship between these events and Domitian’s assassination are uncertain; they should not simply be labelled a Christian imperial family awaiting succession. Christians nevertheless appear among imperial servants, freedpeople and associates. Under Commodus, Marcia offered protection to Christians, and the Roman bishop Victor obtained the release of some condemned to labour in Sardinian mines through her influence.

The account connects wider education with the development of Christian theology and doctrinal disagreement, and elite participation with changes in leadership. Greek intellectual culture influenced both writers later regarded as orthodox and those classified as heretical. These processes cannot be explained solely through social status.

Military service presented another set of tensions. The account’s claim that an early Jewish classification generally excluded Christians from service is too sweeping. Christians did serve in the army, and conversion could occur among soldiers. Some Christian writers opposed soldiering because it involved bloodshed, pagan religious obligations in military oaths, and the example of Jesus preventing Peter’s use of force. Others cited John the Baptist’s instructions to soldiers and favourable Gospel accounts of centurions. There was no single uncontested position. Stories of military martyrs coexist with evidence for Christians in imperial forces, especially in the East.

The account describes substantial changes in community and Church organisation during this period. It begins with two overlapping sets of leadership: bishops, presbyters and deacons, and apostles, prophets and teachers. It associates the second with charismatic inspiration and the first with regular communal administration. Its narrative traces a growing predominance of the first group, although this should not be understood as one identical sequence in every city.

Later traditions offered explanations for the transition. Theodore of Mopsuestia presented apostles as responsible for broad regions while bishops managed individual communities, and envisaged their successors withdrawing from the apostolic role. Roman tradition linked Clement’s episcopate with Peter’s approaching martyrdom. These accounts express later understandings of continuity; they are not contemporary administrative records of the earliest communities.

The question was not simply whether leadership existed, but whether one bishop or a group of elders should exercise it. The essay compares collegial Roman associations with synagogue organisation, then points to communities led by an episkopos or several leaders. Titles were not yet consistently differentiated: people called presbyters could also be described as bishops. A bishop might act with the elders as primus inter pares, “first among equals”, rather than as an isolated ruler.

As episcopal leadership developed, exhortations to obey the bishop became prominent in the letters attributed to Ignatius. The account places apostolic-prophetic, presbyterial and episcopal forms in a broad sequence and relates them to later Christian institutions. Such parallels are useful only with care: modern denominations cannot simply be projected onto second-century communities.

It proposes several reasons for the growing prominence of bishops. Communication between communities could be easier when each had one recognised representative. Socially influential converts could acquire leadership. Bishops also increasingly guarded doctrine and coordinated responses to disputes. These explanations belong to the essay’s interpretation; local evidence remains varied.

By the period’s end, deacons, presbyters and bishops formed a more differentiated hierarchy, and clergy became more clearly distinguished from other believers. This raised questions about the source of ministerial authority. One understanding emphasised the community’s ability to choose leaders because all believers shared the Spirit; another emphasised succession from Christ through the apostles and those ordained by them. Election and succession need not always have been mutually exclusive.

The account argues that succession strengthened the prestige of communities claiming an uninterrupted apostolic tradition, especially Rome. It gives about 180 CE as an important point in closer coordination, but that date should not be treated as the foundation of a previously nonexistent Christian Church.

Montanism played an important role in disputes over prophecy and authority. Emerging in Asia Minor during the second century, it placed strong emphasis on inspired prophecy and eschatological expectation. The essay contrasts it with the growing institutional stability of episcopal communities and interprets their opposition as a stimulus to cooperation.

Meetings commonly called synods brought representatives together to consider these disputes. Early anti-Montanist gatherings in Asia Minor are among the first known examples. Both sides sought support from the Roman bishop Eleutherus. His position and that of his successor Victor increased the importance of Rome, although their authority was not accepted everywhere in the same way.

Under Victor, provincial meetings considered the date of Easter. Their decisions were communicated between churches, and Rome circulated its own position. Victor attempted to exclude the Asian communities that retained a different observance. Resistance to this action illustrates that Roman claims to authority and universal acceptance of those claims were not identical.

The essay distinguishes two organisational dimensions. A hierarchy of individual bishops, bishops of important provincial centres later called metropolitans, and the bishop of Rome developed alongside assemblies and councils. At the local level, the assembly of believers corresponded to the bishop; regional meetings corresponded to the leading provincial church. A universal council was not yet an established institution.

The account presents later relations between Roman primacy and conciliar authority as an unresolved future tension. Its three-level scheme anticipates institutions that developed over time rather than describing a fully formed second-century administrative system.

Empire-wide persecutions and the Church’s changing position (235–324 CE)

The period from Severus Alexander’s death to Constantine’s sole rule in 324 included empire-wide persecution as well as substantial intervals of relative peace. The policies of Decius, Valerian and the tetrarchs were not one continuous persecution.

The older account again examines geographical expansion, the size and social composition of communities, and changes in organisation. Its contention that Christians had become an empire-wide numerical majority before legal recognition is not established by the evidence. The following regional survey records the picture proposed by the essay, not a reliable population census.

In Palestine, it describes a diminishing position for Jewish-Christian groups and stronger links between Christianity and Greek-speaking urban populations. Caesarea was an important ecclesiastical centre, while the bishop of Aelia Capitolina, the Roman city established at Jerusalem, also acquired influence. Constantine’s patronage later transformed Christian access to sacred places. These developments do not justify treating Jewish Christianity as having simply disappeared everywhere.

In Phoenicia, the account highlights coastal towns, Tyre as a leading episcopal centre, and communities at Damascus, Palmyra and Paneas. It gives eleven Phoenician bishops as representatives at Nicaea. In Syria, Antioch remained a major Christian centre and hosted large regional gatherings. The essay calls its population almost half Christian and gives twenty Syrian bishops at Nicaea; such population estimates require particular caution.

It lists three Cypriot representatives at Nicaea, while acknowledging additional bishops. Egypt, especially Alexandria, had extensive Christian networks; the account proposes more than a million Christians and about a hundred bishops by Athanasius’ time, with twenty-nine attending Nicaea. These totals reflect older reconstructions rather than secure demographic records. Alexandria’s leadership and the development of episcopal organisation were important, while Christianity also reached the Aksumite kingdom in the fourth century.

Tarsus was the leading centre in Cilicia, for which the essay gives ten Nicene representatives. Elsewhere in Asia Minor it identifies Caesarea in Cappadocia, Nicomedia in Bithynia, Ancyra in Galatia, Laodicea in Phrygia, Iconium, and Ephesus. These centres illustrate the strength of Christianity in the region. Its earlier importance in imperial worship does not prove that the imperial cult necessarily prepared populations for Christianity. Ephesus retained influence even as Rome’s wider position grew.

The account portrays expansion in the Balkans and Danubian provinces as slower and uneven. It contrasts Greek and Latin connections in Moesia, Pannonia and Noricum. Its language about supposedly unreceptive or “wild” peoples reflects an obsolete cultural hierarchy, not an adequate explanation of religious change.

In Italy and Sicily, Christian organisation became more extensive. The essay associates Cornelius’ council against Novatian with around sixty Italian bishops; this belongs to 251, not 250. It also traces the increasing use of Latin at Rome while acknowledging earlier Greek writers such as Hippolytus. Ravenna, Aquileia and Mediolanum appear as important northern centres, although firm foundation dates should not be inferred from later traditions alone.

For Gaul, Belgica, Raetia and Roman Germany, the account uses council attendance to reconstruct communities, describing a contrast between the more developed south and smaller northern groups such as Trier. The Roman meeting of 313 and Council of Arles in 314 are relevant evidence; Arles was not held in 316. British representatives attended Arles, and traditions about Alban testify to early Christian memory in Britain. The date of Alban’s martyrdom remains debated and should not automatically be assigned to Diocletian’s reign.

North Africa had dense Christian networks. Carthage was especially influential, with Cyprian an important third-century bishop. The account cites gatherings of around seventy bishops at Carthage and ninety at Lambaesis, and proposes more than 125 by the early fourth century. It quotes Harnack’s explanation of later religious change in terms of Berber, Punic and Greco-Roman population layers. This older model is too schematic: cultural identity, language, conversion and the later persistence of Christianity cannot be reduced to three homogeneous groups or one simple explanation based on Islam.

For Spain, the Council of Elvira provides important evidence for Christian communities and their disciplinary concerns. Its prohibitions do not justify a blanket judgement that Spanish Christians were morally inferior.

Ancient bishoprics could be much smaller than modern dioceses. The essay gives communities numbering a few thousand and sometimes far fewer. For Rome under Cornelius, it reports forty-six presbyters, seven deacons, seven subdeacons, forty-two acolytes, fifty-two other clergy, and support for more than 1,500 widows and poor people. Harnack used such figures to estimate about 30,000 community members, but clergy and relief lists do not produce an exact census. Statements attributed to Decius about the danger of a rival bishop illustrate perceptions of ecclesiastical influence.

Christian intellectual life also gained prominence. The account contrasts Celsus’ criticism with later philosophical attention to Christian and related doctrines, including Plotinus’ engagement with Gnostic opponents. This was not simply a measurable decline of pagan culture and rise of Christian culture: several intellectual traditions developed at the same time.

Clerical differentiation became more pronounced. Traditions associate Fabian with the organisation of lower clergy and local administration at Rome, and Dionysius with further territorial arrangements. Precise later diocesan structures should not all be projected backwards into their reigns. Leading churches increasingly intervened beyond their own cities.

The dispute involving Paul of Samosata at Antioch illustrates these wider connections. Aurelian referred the question of possession of the church building to bishops in communion with Italy and Rome; this was not simply a papal deposition on imperial instruction. Cyprian and other bishops did not accept an unrestricted Roman jurisdiction, and apostolic succession remained a claim made by many churches.

Within communities, clergy acquired greater authority, although election procedures still varied and lay participation did not disappear everywhere. Rural bishops, or chorepiskopoi, developed in parts of the East and later faced restrictions from urban bishops. Persecution enhanced the prestige of bishops who suffered or died, while authority over reconciliation and property also strengthened the episcopate. By Constantine’s time the Church consisted of organised episcopal communities with important regional centres, not one universally accepted Roman command structure.

Christianity’s growing predominance

After Constantine, relations between imperial authority and the Church changed substantially. Christian communities received patronage, property and new opportunities, but disputes over doctrine and ecclesiastical authority continued. Julian attempted to restore the position of traditional cults in 361–363.

Theodosius I supported Nicene Christianity through the law of 380. Laws of 391–392 prohibited various pagan rites, including sacrifices, but enforcement differed between places. Some sanctuaries were destroyed or converted into churches, while others survived. There was no single decree that immediately destroyed every ancient temple, and traditional beliefs did not disappear in one year. The Altar of Victory was removed from the Senate house under Gratian in 382; the dispute over its restoration appears in Symmachus and Ambrose. The date at which the ancient Olympic Games ceased remains debated.

The Church’s growth brought increasing wealth and episcopal involvement in public life. Monasticism offered varied ascetic forms, from hermit life to communal monasteries. Relations between monks, bishops and government were complex and cannot be reduced to one uniform process of subordination.

Christian authors debated wealth, slavery, justice and rulers’ responsibilities. Christianisation did not immediately abolish slavery or eliminate social conflict. Polemical accusations against all clergy, monks or theologians nevertheless cannot replace historical analysis of particular institutions and texts.

Donatist disputes in Africa and Christological disagreements in the East combined theological, political and local circumstances. Later denominational names cannot be projected without qualification across the entire fourth century, nor can every religious community be described simply as a form of social protest.

Related topics

• The Roman Empire
• Dominant
• Christianity in Antiquity
• Religion in Antiquity

Literature and sources

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• Eusebius. Church History, Book X