The 4th century was a very important era in the development of Christianity. After 312, the religion was free from persecution that for centuries had made martyrs of its members who had been burnt alive by Nero, sent to be savaged to death by wild animals on the orders of Marcus Aurelius, or put to the sword by Diocletian. The law now allowed Christianity to be practised openly, with churches able to own property.
After the accession of Constantine the Great, the imperial family was now Christian and many of the elite saw the advantage of professing the new faith, which began to grow rapidly.
But it was also a period of challenges, as a once-illegal underground religion now had to more rigorously define its beliefs, especially concerning the nature of Jesus. Two schools of thought had developed which were incompatible. One, named after the Egyptian priest Arius, held that Jesus, though holy and powerful, was not the supreme deity, but rather a creation of the one true God. Arianism was opposed by those who said that the one God had three aspects, or persons: God the Father, God the Son (Jesus), and God the Holy Spirit.
Emperor Constantine summoned the first great Church Council to decide the issue. At Nicaea in 325 the Council rejected Arius and backed the Trinitarian (three-in-one) position.
But when Constantine died, his sons (whose names, like the Kardashian children, all began with the same letter) came out as Arians – Constans, Constantius II, and Constantine II battled each other for supremacy. When the smoke cleared, only Constantius was left standing. During his reign he forbade pagan sacrifice, sent Arian missionaries out to convert the barbarians, and persecuted Trinitarian bishops. It looked like the future of religion in the Roman Empire was going to be Christianity of the Arian variety.
That didn’t happen because of a series of deaths. The first of these occurred on Nov. 3, 361, when Constantius died on his way to a battle against his rebellious nephew Julian, who then succeeded him as emperor. Julian was not an Arian but he wasn’t a Trinitarian either. In fact, he wasn’t any sort of Christian.
Though he had been raised in the Church, Julian had always longed to go back to that old-time religion—the worship of deities like Jupiter, Mars, and Apollo. He admired the philosophers of the distant past (men like Plato, Aristotle, and Zeno); he wanted to suppress Christianity, and encourage Romans to once again fill the temples with sacrifices to the gods of their ancestors. In imitating the ancient Greek style he took to wearing a beard, a break from the shaven faces of previous emperors.
Julian proved to be a capable administrator, tackling corruption and defeating a series of barbarian invasions, but in his desire to restore the old ways, he was doomed to be disappointed. Paganism was losing its grip on the hearts of the populace, temples were being abandoned, priests were neglecting their rituals, and the oracles—the prophetic voices of the old gods—had gone silent.
Whether Julian might have succeeded had he been granted a longer life must remain a mystery, but a mere two years after he came to the throne he was killed fighting against the Persians. Christian legend says that in the middle of the battle he was stabbed in the side by a spear wielded by the ghost of Longinus, the centurion who had presided over the crucifixion of Jesus. According to this story, Julian’s last words were, “You have conquered, o man of Galilee!” (Visitors to St Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican can see a giant statue of Longinus, carrying his spear.)
Julian was to be the last pagan emperor of Rome. After his death, a series of Christian generals took the throne, some Trinitarian, some Arian. In 378, Emperor Valens would die fighting the Goths—he would be the last of the Arians. Theodosius, his successor, would make Trinitarianism the official religion of the empire and banned attendance at temples and rituals. He abolished the gladiator fights that had delighted blood-thirsty Romans for centuries; henceforth, if sports fans wanted action they had to turn to the excitement and danger of the chariot races.
Theodosius also shut down the Olympic games which were dedicated to the pagan gods, sent the Vestal Virgins home, and passed laws against magicians and fortune telling. He forbade parents from selling their children into slavery. Most importantly, he submitted to the discipline of the Church when Bishop Ambrose made him do penance for ordering a massacre.
Paganism had lost, Arianism was on the way out, and the Christianity of the Council of Nicaea was the future.
