[lit-ideas] Re: Ancient Roman Religion
- From: Omar Kusturica <omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 24 May 2014 20:59:22 +0200
I suppose that Lawrence might have in mind Julian The Apostate, although
Julian also did not officially outlaw Christianity.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_(emperor)#Julian_and_religious_issues
On Thu, May 22, 2014 at 1:11 AM, Redacted sender Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx for
DMARC <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> In a message dated 5/21/2014 6:23:46 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
> lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx writes:
> there was a Roman emperor who after gaining power declared Christianity
> illegal and many renounced their belief in order to save their lives.
> There
> was controversy (after the emperor’s death) about whether such people,
> people who renounced their faith in order to save their lives, could be
> accepted back into the church. It was eventually decided that they could
> if
> memory serves me, but it wasn’t a simple matter.
>
> Interseting. This passage below, from
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religio_licita
>
> makes an interesting point regarding collocations like 'religio licita'
> and 'religio illicita' -- collocations which did not seem to make a lot of
> sense to the Romans themselves. There is a reference to 'human sacrifice',
> too, and how the Ancient Romans avoided it.
>
> "Some scholars have argued that Christianity was declared a religio
> illicita (an impermissible or illegitimate religion) by Domitian in the
> 80s AD.
> Though this term appears nowhere, it has been conjectured that a
> declaration
> of Christianity as illicita was the legal basis for official persecutions.
> There was, however "no law, either existing section of criminal law, or
> special legislation directed against the Christians, under which
> Christians
> were prosecuted in the first two centuries." Rome lacked a uniform policy
> or
> legal code pertaining to foreign cults, and before Christian hegemony in
> the 4th century, there was no legal language to designate a concept
> analogous to "heresy" or crimes against orthodox religion. Under
> Constantine the
> Great, Christianity and other religions became tolerated with the Edict of
> Milan in 313. Toleration did not extend to religions that practiced human
> sacrifice, such as Druidism. This state of affairs lasted until 380, when
> Nicene Christianity was adopted as the state religion of the Roman Empire,
> after which time persecution of non-Christian and non-Nicene cults began.
> Priscillian was executed for heresy in 385, and Theodosius I began
> outlawing
> Rome's traditional religious rituals in 391."
>
> Cheers,
>
> Speranza
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------
> To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off,
> digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html
>
Other related posts:
