Why did Julian attempt to recreate paganism?

t. brainlet
You literally just rephrased what I said. "There's some discrepancy as to whether or not Constantine was truly a Christian."

He wasn't the kickstarter, but he was certainly a huge leap forward. He was the first dude to give the Christians in Rome political power.

What does it even mean to truly be a Christian? I'd imagine you'd get many different answers.

Endorsement from the Roman emperor is a massive kickstarter. I'd say so.

Do you think one of the reasons why Christianity, aside from Constantine's reforms, was because of its unity? I do know there was a lot of conflict on interpretations and beliefs of the sort, even Constantine wasn't properly taught the faith I believe, despite having a Bishop advisor. But was the sense of unity in Christianity stronger than, say, in other Pagan cults, which lead to a lot of divisiveness, meaning that truly putting out the Christians was impossible due to the differences? Or am I entirely misunderstanding the Pagan cults of the later Roman Empire?

At least part of it was probably personal.

Julian's cousin Constantius II was a zealous Arian Christian and ordered Julian's parents, oldest brother, and almost all other immediate family members executed when Julian was a young child. Julian and his surviving brother were then raised as basically hostages and given a strict Christian education during their captivity. Combine that with him finding Christian theology sorely lacking, to the point of writing anti-Christian polemical texts that even church authorities viewed as difficult if not impossible to effectively counter, and it's not hard to see why he'd have a distaste for the religion.

Typically Greco-Roman paganism was actually fairly inclusive of other pantheons. It became a rather large heap of various deities and religious figures sprinkled in with the occasional eastern mystery cult. I should clarify, however, that this is a very broad summary of Roman religious values which at times were subject to fluctuation. From my understanding the primary source of contention between Romans and Hebrew/Abrahamic practicing people was the latter's inability to reconcile their faith of a singular God and disdain for idolatry with the Roman pantheon.

Even still, Christianity was built upon many ideas that were already well established within Rome. Notably, schools of philosophy such as stoicism. An idea of a "brotherhood of all men" and the notion that any could convert and become one of God's chosen is appealing to people, and is part of the reason why so many turned to Christianity.

It's because Julian absolutely loathed Christianity. He was raised in a family filled with seemingly pious Christians, all of whom ended up murdering each other. He secretly followed pagan traditions as a young man hidden away from the world as a potential threat and ended up surviving by luck.

He also wanted to dismantle the proto-feudalism Diocletian kickstarted a century earlier.
Julian wasn't just a paganboo, he wanted to restore EVERYTHING back to how it was in the glory days of the empire.

Christianity also spread the unique doctrine that the faithful receive eternal blessing and the unfaithful receive eternal punishment. If you remained pagan and the pagan gods are true you would receive a bland afterlife and if the Christian god was true you would get the worst imaginable punishment, if you converted you would receive a bland afterlife if the pagan gods were true and the best possible blessing if the Christian god was.

>Interesting, so in a sense Constantine used Christianity as a form of helping him in battles and improving the state, rather than the fact that he actually believed in it, correct?
How would adopting an unpopular religion and promoting at the expense of the established religions improve the state? From a practical perspective it makes no sense for Constantine to have adopted Christianity unless he actually believed in it.

> I recall reading that he simply considered the Christian God similiar to the Sun-God he had praised, correct me if I'm wrong.
No, he most likely picked up Christianity from his mother, who was a Christian.

>nd the notion that any could convert and become one of God's chosen is appealing to people, and is part of the reason why so many turned to Christianity.
Oh yeah, this reminds me. The idea of "all are equal in front of God" would be definitely popular among the poor, no doubt. How influential were the Hermits to the spread of Christianity, though? How did they manage to attract so much attention to them? Was it merely the way they devoted themselves to their religion?

>nd the notion that any could convert and become one of God's chosen is appealing to people, and is part of the reason why so many turned to Christianity.
That's sounds really interesting, can I get a source on that? I recall Pagans being supposedly "forced to conform to the Catholic Church" whilst reading "Constantine and the Conversion of Europe" aforementioned in the OP.

Messed up the second quote, meant:
>nd given a strict Christian education during their captivity. Combine that with him finding Christian theology sorely lacking, to the point of writing anti-Christian polemical texts that even church authorities viewed as difficult if not impossible to effectively counter, and it's not hard to see why he'd have a distaste for the religion.

>tfw Julian was only in his early 30's when he died
>tfw we will never get to see what would have happened had he survived his Persia campaign
>tfw IF I COULD TURN BACK TIME

>it makes no sense for Constantine to have adopted Christianity unless he actually believed in it.
Why would he order to mint coins with the symbol of Sol Invictus, though? Wouldn't that be blasphemy, then?

>Wouldn't that be blasphemy, then?
Was blasphemy even defined at that time in the same way it is now?

Being a heathen isn't exactly a new concept user

Well pagans were persecuted during the years of Constantine, in fact Pagan authors were being banned and denounced, so, I guess?
Source: Herrin, Judith, "The Formation of Chrisendom", 1987, p.76

I suppose you could say that Christians had more of a spirit of unity due to their shared oppression prior to Constantine, but I doubt it was a major factor.

Christianity's rise really comes down to two things:
1. It espoused a lot of the ideas the Romans already really liked.
2, Christianity was actively proselytizing. It was a universalist, evangelical religions that constantly strove to attract new followers, which was a bit of a rarity at the time.

The only hint at a conversion involves a deathbed.

The man with him on his deathbed was Arius the heretic, himself a lost neo-pagan for the time being.

I'm pretty comfortable saying that Constantine never became a Christian.

It would be blasphemy if he were a Christian; it would be in due course if he were a sun worshiper. Which he was.

>1. It espoused a lot of the ideas the Romans already really liked.

Nah. The Bible is pretty far away from any Roman virtue. Sol Invictus would seem to appeal more to the Roman mindset, but it did not win out. Maybe Roman society itself was trying to "get away" from the Roman mindset that had caused it so much distress over the past two centuries.

>2, Christianity was actively proselytizing. It was a universalist, evangelical religions that constantly strove to attract new followers, which was a bit of a rarity at the time.

There were tons of actively proselytizing religions in the Empire.

Ignoring your probable shitposting, you only highlight the point that it wouldn't be correct define Christianity by who would go on to become the dominant sects.

Could Hermits be considered a reason why it also rose? Or just, in general, private initiative? I recall reading people saying churches were built willingly, rather than out of force, which helped expand in Urban areas. Would the duties of bishops (acting as the messenger/representative of a city's Christians, performing duties and political state during Constantine's reign etc.) also be considered a relevant factor in its rise? I also agree with , there were plenty of other Pagan cults who were of similiar size of Christianity, which is why I think the privileges, subsidies, support of Constantine and later persecutions of pagans by bishops are what made it heavily stand out from the rest.

Yeah that's sort of what I'm arguing for, it would be silly if he was Christian and just decided to use a Sol Invictus shield and chariot.

>Why did Julian try to recreate paganism in Rome when Christianity...

Because The previous Emperors had fucked over his family (as potential rivals) including killing off most of his male relatives who were not themselves Emperor already, and what they were most noted for was introducing Christianity as an accepted religion in the Empire, and then as THE religion.

He had a grudge (rightfully so) against his predecessors, and tried to get some revenge by undoing their most obvious achievement.

>so in a sense Constantine used Christianity as a form of helping him in battles and improving the state, rather than the fact that he actually believed in it, correct?

Who knows what he actually believed? He did continue participating in pagan rites and offices (as long as there was no sacrificing, he embraced that aspect of Christian dogma pretty strongly) which would have been unacceptable to many contemporary Christians. He seemed to have approached the new faith as providing an additional religion to embrace, rather than an exclusive one.

But since he got baptized on his death-bed, when the act had no possible political significance for him, it seems likely he came to believe in it, if he had not already.

So the sense of revenge was the main reason? Did he gain a lot of support from various pagan cults? Or were the pagans already in a "defeatist" mood of a sort or were already in too much of a disarray after the death of who could be considered the last persecutor of Christians, Maximinus II?

>he didn't "recreate" paganism.

He did in this sense -- he tried to re-make it, structurally, as a better competitor for Christianity. He tried imposing a structure more like the Christians used, to make paganism more able to present a unified front against the Christians. And he rebuilt and re-dedicate many pagan temples that his predecessor had caused to be destroyed or converted into churches.

It seems to me he practiced the usual "your god is a local variant on my Roman god" syncretism that was pretty common at that time.

He (and his father) had worshiped various versions of a sun god, as the Greatest God who could grant victories in battle. It is not strange that he would come to identify that god with the Christian God -- it is likely he'd see that as more of a case of "finally getting the name right" than a huge conversion. In spite of the mythologizing by Eusebius, I don;t see muchy sign that he had a sudden blinding revelation, i looks to me more like his religious views evolved over time, as he recognized that there was one god superior to all others, which maybe went there was just one god, really, who seemed to him to be the Christian God, and so he became a devotee of Christianity, and THEN learned something about the dogma and faith.

One reason he did not get baptized until the end of his life may have been his recognition that baptism, which would have required more of him in terms of shunning other gods and their rites, was not compatible with the social functions he had to take on as head of the State Cult of Rome. At that time, an unbaptized believer had more leeway there than somebody who had made the final commitment to Christianity.

>1. It espoused a lot of the ideas the Romans already really liked.

Fuck no, the values and ideas promoted by Christianity were largely antithetical to Roman values. For one example, the emphasis on vows of celibacy, forsaking marriage, etc among Christianswas a complete slap in the face to Roman values concerning duty to one's family and proper gender roles.

>2, Christianity was actively proselytizing. It was a universalist, evangelical religions that constantly strove to attract new followers, which was a bit of a rarity at the time.

What is Manichaeism

Manichaeism did all that too, and was in fact significantly more widespread with greater numbers of adherents than Christianity early on. The main reason that Christianity thrived and Manichaeism didn't is that persecutions against Christians were lifted, while Manichean persecutions continued for the rest of the Roman empire's history.

>Nah. The Bible is pretty far away from any Roman virtue.
Depends on what you mean by that. Stoicism was by far the most popular philosophy in the empire, and Christianity basically lifted Stoic ethics wholesale. Christian theology was also heavily Platonist, even before St. Augustine.

Though there is merit to what you say. The sheer pervasiveness of new and foreign cults at the time suggests that old religions simply weren't satisfying the needs of the population anymore.

There were tons of actively proselytizing religions in the Empire.
None of the old religions were though. Which is why they couldn't compete.

Of course not. The Kingdom of God is not run like a kingdom men run, and the bible clearly says few are saved, not many.

The many have their own thing going on.

Except that you're projecting there. He certainly maintained his position as the head of the State Cult, whether out of belief or as a social duty that came with being Emperor.

But if you look at his life, particularly in how he became deeply involved in settling questions of Christian dogma and in giving up (and outlawing) sacrificing in the temples, which the Christians found anathema, it's pretty clear that his new faith meant SOMETHING to him, even if his embrace of it was ore evolutionary than what we think of as a religious conversion today.

>What is Manichaeism
Christianity had a two and a half century head start on Manicheanism. I have a super hard time believing they were ever equal in the Roman empire.

Yes, and God does not fit into that pagan paradigm.

>One reason he did not get baptized until the end of his life

I see no evidence of this happening. Further, I see no evidence that such an event would be, spiritually speaking, any more significant than a bath.

If you are ashamed of Jesus before men, which you are implying would have been the case in order for him to run the empire, Jesus will be ashamed of you before the Father.

Christianity is not stoicism; most Christians were just poor.

No, I'm not. His vision was false in that it purported to be a vision from God to spread the Kingdom of God by the sword.

That directly contradicts Jesus who said that His kingdom is NOT spread by the sword.

The sun is the key in that vision, not the chi and the ro. The sun. Constantine was a sun worshiper, like his father before him. He never understood why real Christians were incapable of compromising with Arius.

>>Subsidised the Church,
>>Bishops could remove civil suits, had the final verdict in court
>>Christian clergy freedom from various duties such as public service

Those seem a case of putting Christianity on the same footing as other religions, and Christian priests on the same level as pagan priests.

>>Stopped Christian persecution

Yes. But that was stopped by others before him (and then restarted...)

>>Bishops started persecuting various pagans
I may be wrong, but my memory is this was a thing under later emperors. Constantine's edict was for religious toleration -- he did not want his new faith persecuted, but he also wanted an empire that was peaceful and stable -- letting sects fight each other went against that.

Christianity was super stoic. The Stoic ideal is still considered the ideal moral state by the Church. A ton of early Christian terminology was also lifted from Stoicism because Paul was a Stoic beforehand.

>do know there was a lot of conflict on interpretations and beliefs of the sort, even Constantine wasn't properly taught the faith I believe,

There were a lot of different interpretations, and a number of Fun and Exciting heresies running around. This is one reason Constantine was so into calling the bishops together, to iron out these divisions and make sure his new God, who guaranteed his victories, was worshiped properly and uniformly.

But was the sense of unity in Christianity stronger than, say, in other Pagan cults, which lead to a lot of divisiveness, meaning that truly putting out the Christians was impossible due to the differences?

Don;t know what is "impossible" and what isn't. But the pagan faiths had no over-arching structure, other than some semblance of that within the city of Rome under the State Cult. The temple of Apollo at Philadelphia would have little or no structural ties to the Temple of Apollo at Some Other Philadelphia, and certainly not with the Temple of Aphrodite at That Other Philadelphia Down the Road. (The foundation for Philadelphia jokes was solidly in place already...)

One of the reforms Julian pushed was getting some similar hierarchy in place in paganism, to allow it to cohesively confront the challenge of the Christians.

>Those seem a case of putting Christianity on the same footing as other religions
From what I've read doesn't seem like it. Courts in Rome had to be secular, Bishops were literally given the final verdict, in fact only 1 side of the case had to ask for a Bishop court and it'd be done. Pagan authors were being denounced during Constantine's time IIRC. Also the fact that Pagans were deprived of civic rights. Also Bishop's could employ the state's powers against rivals:
Source:
Brown, Peter, World of Later Antiquity, p. 108
ones, A.H.M, Constantine and the Conversion of Europe, 1948, London, p.98
Rousseau, Religion and State, p. 512

Paul was a Pharisee, a member of the Sanhedrin, and a Jew. Not a stoic. He was, in fact, a Roman citizen by birth.

Christianity is based on two things, neither of them belonging to stoicism.
1. Jesus is God; and
2. Jesus rose from the dead.

That's it. Your lifestyle choice is your own, in Christian liberty, and in love for your brothers.

Constantine just wanted a unified religion. That's it. If it was unified around "Jesus was just a nice guy", so be it. As long as it was unified.

You keep making a distinction between proto-catholics, catholics, and pagans that does not actually exist.

Elaborate, please, I do not seem to understand your statement.

>The only hint at a conversion involves a deathbed.

The fact that he called and presided of Church Councils at Nicea and elsewhere may also be a hint...

As would the fact that he referred to the Christian God as "The Most High God," and referred to "our faith" when writing to Christians.

You can argue that his understanding of the Faith was not deep, particularly when he first converted. And I guess you can say "nobody is a Christian unless they believe all the points of doctrine I believe," and so say he was not a Christian in that sense.

But he certainly came to consider himself one, and spent a lot of time helping to define what being a Christian meant, and what a Christian should believe.

When Constantine decriminalized Christianity, after 300 years of Rome attempting to eradicate Christianity, he did not do it for altruistic purposes. He wanted a united religion to back his united rule of a united Rome.

They just baptized pagans and called them Christians. They had no idea how to become Christians; they basically just bathed tens of thousands of people and told them that they were now Christians.

Those pagans did what pagans have done for time immemorial; they changed the name on their pagan idols to reflect the new paradigm. Tammuz/Horus idols became Jesus idols. Ishtar/Astarte/Venus idols became Mary. And the pagan practices of praying with beads, eating the body of your gods, drinking his blood, forming and praying to idols, etc., continued virtually unabated.

Those pagans were the proto-catholics and catholics I referred to above. Any true Christians were run out of Rome as fast as Arius could run them out.

The seat of paganism merely shifted from Babylon to Rome. That's it. And it has nothing to do with Jesus.

Calling a council to unite the religion is something I have stated several times here, and it was done for purely political purposes. Had the council agreed that Jesus was just an avatar, not really human and not really God, that would have been fine with Constantine.

>So the sense of revenge was the main reason?

Who the fuck knows, none of us live in his head. But it seems a likely cause of his strong anti-Christianity: prominent Christians had fucked him over and at the same time started dismantling paganism, so he had some common grievance with pagan believers.
.

>Did he gain a lot of support from various pagan cults? Or were the pagans already in a "defeatist" mood of a sort or were already in too much of a disarray after the death of who could be considered the last persecutor of Christians, Maximinus II?

He got some support, but his reign did not last long enough to get a real sense of how successful he might have been in re-inventing paganism as a unified faith, and competing with the Christians for believers.

So modern Christianity is just Paganism with a Jewish lining?

>Paul was a Pharisee, a member of the Sanhedrin, and a Jew. Not a stoic. He was, in fact, a Roman citizen by birth.
Fair enough actually, though he was familiar with Stoicism.

>Christianity is based on two things, neither of them belonging to stoicism.
If you boil it down to its barebone essentials, sure. But no Christian community has ever operated like that, and to deny that ethics is a huge part of Christian theology is just silly to me.

Old School Pagans v New School Pagans.

Both sides in the fight were pagans.

The Christian Church for the first three hundred years remained somewhat pure and faithful to the Word of God, but after the pseudo-conversion of Constantine, who for political expedience declared Christianity the state religion, thousands of pagans were admitted to the church by baptism alone with out true conversion. They brought with them pagan rites which they boldly introduced into the church with Christian terminology, thus corrupting the primitive faith.

Even the noted Catholic prelate and theologian, Cardinal Newman, tells us that Constantine introduced many things of pagan origin: "We are told in various ways by Eusebius, that Constantine, in order to recommend the new religion to the heathen, transferred into it the outward ornaments to which they had been accustomed in their own...The use of temples, and these dedicated to particular saints, and ornamented on occasions with branches of trees; incense, lamps, and candles; votive offerings on recovery from illness; holy water; asylums; holydays and seasons, use of calendars, processions, blessings on fields, sacerdotal vestments, the tonsure, the ring in marriage, turning to the East, images at a later date, perhaps the ecclesiastical chant, and the Kyrie Eleison, are all of pagan origin, and sanctified by their adoption into the Church." An Essay On The Development Of Christian Doctrine, pp. 359, 360. This unholy alliance also allowed the continuance of the pagan custom of eating and drinking the literal flesh and literal blood of their god.

This is actually how transubstantiation entered the professing church.

Modern Christianity is the same as 32 AD Christianity; confess out loud that Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart God raised Him from the dead, and become a born again Christian.

It's been the same throughout.

I think that when Christians answer the question "How then should we live?", they don't always get it right. In fact, very few get it right. The ones who do, stand out.

>He wanted a united religion to back his united rule of a united Rome.
That's sort of what I've tried to state before:
>Interesting, so in a sense Constantine used Christianity as a form of helping him in battles and improving the state,
> to the Empire and was of vital importance to its well-being, as according to Constantine The Great?

Also what confuses me still is the "equal footing", I can see where you're coming from, but giving the various privileges bishops had received, can one really consider it was "equal footing" rather than favouring? Even Peter Brown mentions in his "World of Later Antiquity" the support of Christianity from various Emperors (p.104-105).
I believe there has simply been a misunderstanding, I was trying to imply that equal footing isn't really what I could consider, what with the persecutions, bishop power in court, the fact that a Bishop was Constantine's advisor, various privileges and relief of public services etc.

If true, that does not mean Constantine, his contemporaries, Julian or HIS contemporaries or anybody else necessarily saw it that way.

I;'m not in a position to make pronouncements about the One True Nature of God, I'm talking about historical figures, men, and what they did and why they may have done it.

Fuck off Proty

>>One reason he did not get baptized until the end of his life
>I see no evidence of this happening.

Then you need to read a book.

As to arguing theology, I'm not interested in getting into that. If you want to talk about the history of a couple of interesting Roman Emperors, say on.

Tbqh this thread is one of the better threads on Veeky Forums, why can't more threads be like this?

Look at the process. Rome morphed into an empire with an emperor sitting on a throne with a senate and a guard, into a religious empire with a bishop/pope sitting on a throne with a college of cardinals and a guard.

Both Emperor and pope were entitled "Pontifex Maximus".

In other words, Rome never fell, and Rome never changed.

At least use a halfway acceptable spelling of the word, papist.

You should start a theology thread, it might be fun.

But your version of what "real Christianity" is is not really event to a thread about Roman Emperors and what they thought and did.

Who converted Constantine?
A.D. 312. Constantine I was the first Roman Emperor to eventually convert to Christianity. Emperor Constantine I is often credited with converting the Roman Empire to Christianity. In fact, though he ended the persecution of Christians and eventually converted, some historians debate the true nature of his faith.

I've read many books.

None led me to believe that Constantine converted on his deathbed with the aid of Arius the heretic.

Exactly. I could not have said it better myself. Nothing Rome has ever done mattered to Christianity.

>Courts in Rome had to be secular,

But, unless I'm having a super brain fart, litigants had the right to not take their case to a civil court, but instead take it to their priest of Isis or whoever to help them sort it out.

The initial grant of judicial rights to Christian bishops mirrored this.

>But, unless I'm having a super brain fart, litigants had the right to not take their case to a civil court, but instead take it to their priest of Isis or whoever to help them sort it out.
I believe that did happen, I'm not entirely sure, I don't recall reading anything on that. Might be interesting, I'll probably go reread one of the books, regards to "Isis" I do recall Constantine having some trouble with Egypt, but that's about it.

Please tell me how you can read the mind of a guy who died a millennium and more before you were born.

Did he want unity? Obviously, otherwise why work towards it. Did he care what the Church unified around? Since he put forth ideas on that, it seems likely, but neither you nor I know what his actual thoughts were on this.

by inferring motive from actions, obviously.

Christianity was the most divisive religion ever made at it's time.

It was anything BUT unified because it insists on having the one great revealed truth, but was splintered into many factions from day one. None of these factions could co-exist.

And it was even more hostile to Paganism than it's own kind.

>Constantine just wanted a unified religion. That's it.

He could have stuck with Sol Invictus if that was all he wanted.

Rome went back full circle. Rome started with an absolute monarch that held supreme religious authority advised by a Senate and ended with an absolute monarch that holds supreme religious authority advised by a Curia. The Republican period and Rome's rise to power was merely an aberration triggered by the Senate's revolt under Tarquin.

>300 years of Rome attempting to eradicate Christianity,

That's a bit overstated. More often than not, the Roman state ignored Christianity.

>it was done for purely political purposes.

There is no possible way you can know that.

That turned out to be the case in Rome, despite Arius and Constantine's best efforts, yes.

No Christian would unite with that.

Everything that has happened has happened before.

Who crucified Jesus, again?

I can, by eliminating the false religious reason given, and inferring by the false religious reason that there is a different reason behind the decision.

>Rome never changed.

The fuck? Rome constantly changed.

By your own words, then, Rome never changed.

I did not say he converted on his death bed, I said =he was baptised on his death bed (or got out of it long enoyugh for the ceremony."

If you are not familiar with that bit of history, then yeah, you need to read a book.

If you and I were talking about two different things, then I offer you a Level 2 Apology, and give you this picture of a cat to, in some mall way, make peace between us.

>Nothing Rome has ever done mattered to Christianity.

Some things Rome did mattered a great deal -- if you want to say Christianity the concept, the Faith, is eternal and unchanging and nothing to do with Earthly kingdoms and such, fine, but Rome's actions were instrumental in how that faith spread, how it was defined an understood, how knowledge of it was preserved, etc.

Even if you say they got it all wrong, that is an impact in and of itself.

Just used "Isis" as a genric pagan god(dess), since I have some vague memory of court cases being heard by priests in Egypt during the 4th century.

Or maybe by assuming motives, then bending your inferences to fit?

You say he was baptized as though it means something to me. Jewish baptism predates Christian baptism, and Christian baptism predates Roman baptism.

If Constantine took a bath, or more likely had someone sprinkle "holy water" onto his head prior to his death, it had zero meaning in the Kingdom of Heaven.

those things predate Rome, and were perverted by Rome.

Constantine did not want the entire empire united under a common faith. Or, he may have wanted it but he did not do much if anything to work towards it. While building churches, he also built pagan temples. While presiding over councils of the Church, he also served as Pontifex Maximus.

Since he believed (or professed to believe) that the Christian God had his back in worldly affairs, he wanted to make sure that God was worshiped as he demanded, and he went to great lengths to make that happen.

But if his belief in the Christian God was just a political play to give him a unified group of believers behind him, he could have done that much easier by sticking with Sol Invictuus, since that cult as not nearly as riven with heretical belief as Christians were at that time.

Why would you even ask that on Veeky Forums, this close to /pol/?

NB4...

In any case, even if you call that act an attempt to quash Christianity, it did not take up much time. Most of the time, Rome ignored Christianity, outbreaks of suppression were sporadic.

>Christianity had provided stability to the Empire
That must be why Niceanes and Arians were beating each other senseless in the streets of Antioch and Alexandria.