Dan Snow's History Hit - How and Why History: The Spread of Christianity

Episode Date: July 14, 2020

In the first century after his crucifixion, the teachings of Jesus quickly spread throughout the Greco-Roman world and his early followers often faced severe persecution. But how did people around the Mediterranean learn of Christ’s message? Why did it appeal to them? And how did Christianity change once it was adopted by the Roman Empire? Rob Weinberg puts the big questions about the growth and spread of Christianity to Miri Rubin, Professor of Medieval and Early Modern History at Queen Mary University of London.Subscribe to History Hit and you'll get access to hundreds of history documentaries, as well as every single episode of this podcast from the beginning (400 extra episodes). We're running live podcasts on Zoom, we've got weekly quizzes where you can win prizes, and exclusive subscriber only articles. It's the ultimate history package. Just go to historyhit.tv to subscribe. Use code 'pod1' at checkout for your first month free and the following month for just £/€/$1.

Hi everybody, I'm very excited to introduce another episode in our new special history hit series, How and Why History, the big how and why questions from our past. This is a fantastic one, it's all about the spread of Christianity with the brilliant Mary Rubin, who's been on the podcast before, I'm a huge fan of hers. If you like it, please search for How and Why History wherever you get your podcasts and subscribe. There's a new episode every Tuesday and Friday. Coming this Friday, How and Why looks into America's entry into the two world wars. If you can't get enough How and Why History,

there's actually 30 episodes available over at History Hit TV. So go and subscribe over there. In the meantime, enjoy this one with the wonderful Miria Rubin. In the meantime, enjoy this one with the wonderful Maria Rubin. And it came to pass that after three days Paul called the chief of the Jews together, and they said unto him, We desire to hear of thee what thou thinkest, for as concerning this sect we know that everywhere it is spoken against. And when they had appointed him a day, there came many to him in his lodging, And Paul said, till evening. And some believed the things which were spoken, and some believed not.

And Paul dwelt two whole years in his own hired house, and received all that came in unto him, preaching the kingdom of God, and teaching those things which concern the Lord Jesus Christ, with all confidence, no man forbidding him. Saint Paul's early missionary journey to Rome described in the Acts of the Apostles. In the first century after the crucifixion of Jesus, his teachings quickly spread throughout the Greco-Roman world, and his followers often faced severe persecution. But how did people around the Mediterranean learn of Christ's message? Why did it appeal to them? And how did Christianity change once it was adopted by the Roman Empire? I'm Rob Weinberg and I've been putting the big questions about the growth and spread of Christianity to Mary Rubin, Professor of Medieval and Early

Modern History at Queen Mary University of London. This is How and Why History. Professor Mary Rubin, thank you for joining us. It's a pleasure. How early on in the Christian era were Christians to be found in Europe? So let's go back to these early centuries of the Common Era and remember that where Christianity develops is in the eastern part of the Mediterranean. And the Mediterranean is the centre of the Roman Empire, a Roman Empire which stretches sort of from York to Iraq of today. And of course it reaches far into what would be Germany of today and North Africa of today.

So, and then the heart, there is this Mediterranean that is criss-crossed and it allows for trade to flourish, ideas to travel, and all these people throughout are governed by Roman law. Now, in the late third century, this vast entity sort of split up for reasons of convenience into the Eastern Empire and the Western Empire. The Eastern Empire was mostly Greek-speaking although all formal proclamations were in both Greek and Latin. So what's important here is to

remember that the province of Palestine was a Greek-speaking province within which, of course, the people of Judea spoke Hebrew. That was their language, language both in terms of practice and in terms of also daily life actually was Aramaic. But the formal language was Greek. So anyone who really wrote anything of any interest wrote in Greek. who really wrote anything of any interest wrote in Greek. And this was so much the case that in the first century the Hebrew Bible was already available in Greek. So in the world that Jesus grows up in there is the vernacular, the day-to-day language, which is Aramaic, which he sometimes uses and sometimes follows through, is available in the Gospels,

is mentioned in the Gospels. But everything that is written down formally is in Greek, and hence we have the Gospels in Greek. So it's in that eastern part of an imperial world, largely Greek-speaking, that the news of Christianity begins. And it's only within the first century and because of the importance of the city of Rome and all these other parts of the empire that were Latin speaking that slowly slowly Christianity spread to them. But the center of action in terms of the emergence of Christianity is in parts that really we would not think of as being Europe at all

these days. I suppose it's contemporary Israel, Palestine, Egypt, Turkey, Syria and so on. And it then sort of spreads, it spreads north, it spreads west. So St. Paul is writing to Christians in Greece itself within 50, 60 years of Christ's death. How did those particular people come to hear of Christ's message? Well it's so interesting isn't it because of course the first followers of Christ were Jews, Jews of various hues, some people who had chosen a very rigorous sort of life, probably John the Baptist who of course presaged, foretold and

came before Jesus as it were, but also just people who were sort of interested and he made sense because he spoke within a Jewish idiom. He spoke like a rabbi, he preached like a rabbi, only he had a strong critique of certain practices. So that's the first source of followers, but that was a very limited pool. There were Jews, of course, interestingly, throughout the Roman Empire after the year 70, and particularly after the exile of many, when the Romans exiled many Jews from their country to throughout the empire, but also before. There were Jews in all major cities, like, for example, Rome, Ephesus. So if you're going to

grow Christianity, you can grow it in two directions. You can get all those Jews you can find to see the message of this Jewish sage Jesus. Some will accept it, some won't. But then you also have a whole world out there that Christians call Gentiles, pagans, as yet untouched. They have to be taught everything from scratch. There is nothing in common in terms of the Jewish Bible to build upon. And that is really where all the growth can take place, just in terms of sheer numbers.

And it's into that world that Paul and the apostles go with their mission after the passing of Christ. Which Christian ideas do you think had the most appeal for those populations then? I suppose what's really very, very different from the Jewish tradition, and this is the great good news, as it were, the news of Christianity, is the idea of the Messiah arrived and of a God made flesh. I mean that's totally mind-boggling, the idea that this sort of ineffable divinity assumes in some sense a body, has a family, eats, presumably gets tired and goes to sleep and more and more and

the powerful message is of course that God became incarnate assumed flesh in order to be able to fully redeem humanity in ways that no God separate and away out there in heaven and numinous very sort of ephemeral persona could do. And it's a powerful idea. It's an extremely difficult idea. What does it mean, God assumes flesh? And it of course was the beginning also amongst Christians

of centuries and centuries of debate and discussion. And so that by the time Christianity in the early fourth century becomes of interest to the leaders of the Roman Empire, particularly to Emperor Constantine, who ultimately will say, this is legit, this is not to be persecuted, then this will have to be resolved.

And it's a really tough nut to crack. Were there ideas in Christianity that would have appealed to people at that time that were really quite radically different from what they had before? These developed throughout the first century. And here particularly the Gospel of John is very important because it really takes Jesus and not only elevates him through the whole concept of his divinity but also his death and resurrection and the insistence on this sort of incarnate divinity, but also through the development of ideas of the afterlife,

the apocalypse and the end of time. So there's a whole history that's in the making that is much much more clearly articulated than it was in Judaism. But again it also draws on sort of esoteric strands of unofficial Jewish thought that was available in that first century. And also interesting ideas like Mary's own perpetual virginity. This whole insistence upon Mary's own specialness is also something that develops throughout the first into the second century. So there's a whole lot of what we would consider to be really basic Christian theology that is absolutely not there in those first centuries. It gets worked out and you can almost hear the rhythm

of the debates about the nature of Christianity and the nature of Christ as a set of answers to questions that people, quite sensibly, are asking. What does it mean, a God made flesh? How was he born? From whom was he born? What sort of mum did he have? What happened to him after he died? Because he was clearly executed by the Romans. So what then? How can a body that has been abused and tortured and strung up like that also be resurrected? But all of that gets developed really in the following centuries. So as populations became Christian, did the pagan beliefs survive or were they amalgamated into Christian practices? Well, pagans covers a vast multitude. You get the very official ritualized Roman religion with its whole mythology and gods and whatnot, but you also

get the paganism of the Germanic people who are beginning to move west and south and to populate Europe at the edges of the Empire, then incorporated into the Empire, who have their own ideas about gods that are more sort of connected to features of nature and powers of nature. So there are many many paganisms. But even within these paganisms, there were many developments that tended towards a less materialistic and a more sort of spiritualized understanding of issues of redemption, of issues of the afterlife, for example, Mitraism, which was a religion of the East, sort of areas of what might be Iran of today, that was picked up by Roman soldiers and developed.

So this is a world rustling with many, many religious sounds and many, many spiritual questions. And Christianity, or the message of Jesus, is one amongst them. And also there are people who inhabit these different universes who don't see a contradiction in what these preachers, followers of Jesus is interesting, but they also have their traditional forms of Roman practice. And also Roman practice, remember, is also very much related to the worship of fathers

and forefathers and family lineage, and that can go on totally, respectably, within households, even of those people who are getting interested in the Christian message. But I suppose the bottom line, as it were, is that Christianity so excitingly inverts the sort of social and political order. The idea that the less will be the greater. The idea that death can be defeated. And people find that very, very exciting. What changed so that the Roman Empire stopped persecuting Christians and officially adopted Christianity? The persecution of Christians was really very, very haphazard, occasional, regional. A certain governor who sees them as being disruptive might persecute them.

It is true that under Emperor Diocletian in the very late third century there was a more concerted effort, but on the whole it's not this sort of constant mobilization of the state. The state has other things to do. But there is this clear tipping point where Emperor Constantine, we're talking the early fourth century, gets very interested in the ideas. There is already a substantial number of quite impressive Christian leaders whose ideas it's possible to hear them preaching, it is possible to read. So there is a sort of Christian alternative out there. And particularly this issue of victory and defeating death

and the sort of spiritual guidance that these religious men are willing to offer somebody like the emperor. So Constantine is first drawn to it himself. He believes that it brings him victory in a very important battle. And ultimately he makes it a licit religion. Not the official religion, that'll take another century. Once this religion is associated with him as emperor and with the imperial family and thus also with the court and we might call the state, of course one has to define what it is. And because there are so many different versions of it and so many different styles of it, ranging from the area of, say, Iran of today and going west, he does what emperors

do. That is, he feels you've got to legislate about this. You've got to have a big gathering, a big conference. The first ecumenical council, there is a council that brought all known leaders of the Christian world together, hundreds of them, in Nicaea, in Asia Minor, and they discuss, and they ultimately have a sort of mission statement or a creed or a set of principles. And in that set of principles, it's very important that he chose one version of Christianity over another, because already since the third century, there was a version of Christianity associated with

a priest from Alexandria named Arius who claimed that God the Father and Christ are not co-equal and co-eternal and utterly the one in substance that the Son is generated from the Father, as it were. So it creates a sort of hierarchy within the emergent Trinity. And that leads to all sorts of different understandings about the nature of salvation and has vast amount of followers.

And because a follower of Arius was one of the most important missionaries in sort of the areas of Bulgaria, the Balkans, Hungary of today and reached the Goths, the Gothic people translated the Bible into Gothic, had vast influence amongst these Germanic people. So a large number of the peoples who are settling in Europe and will ultimately also replace the Roman Empire in the 5th century with their kingdoms, Ostrogoths, Visigoths, Vandals, are actually practicing an Aryan Christianity. That would have to be dealt with, and it ultimately is dealt with. But to go back to the early 4th century, what is settled upon is this utterly tantalizing,

very, very difficult version of a trinity, internally co-equal, Christ assuming flesh, born of the Virgin Mary, who lived, who died, who was resurrected on the third day and so on. So these principles, so then that was decided upon and then it's literally sent out, this sort of memo, to all parts of Christianity. We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all that is, seen and unseen. We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, light from light, true God from true God, begotten, not made,

of one being with the Father, Through him all things were made. For us and for our salvation he came down from heaven by the power of the Holy Spirit. He became incarnate from the Virgin Mary and was made man. And for our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate. He suffered death and was buried. On the third day he rose again. In accordance with the scriptures, he ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end.

We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son. With the Father and the Son he is worshipped and glorified. He has spoken through the prophets. We believe in one holy Catholic and apostolic church. We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins. We look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. Amen.

And of course it's not accepted at all well in certain parts, particularly further east in the empire, sort of Syriac-speaking communities in what are parts of Syria, Iraq and Iran of today. But it's the beginning of the definition of official Christianity, but also of the involvement of the definition of official Christianity, but also of the involvement of the state in policing and disciplining Christianity.

So people who don't accept this are meant to be sort of liable to trial and execution by the state. And the whole concept of heresy, so there's the right way and there's the wrong way, people who deviate on the wrong way develops. And that's the beginning of this involvement of the state in policing and also literally enforcing formal Christianity. Land a Viking longship on island shores. scramble over the dunes of ancient egypt and avoid the poisoner's cup in renaissance florence each week on echoes of history we uncover the epic stories

that inspire assassin's creed we're stepping into feudal japan in our special series chasing shadows where samurai warlords and shinobi spies teach us the tactics and skills needed not only to survive, but to conquer. Whether you're preparing for Assassin's Creed Shadows or fascinated by history and great stories, listen to Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hits.

There are new episodes every week. There are new episodes every week. How did warlike leaders or states that depended on conquering others to perpetuate their empires or grow their empires, did they ever reconcile what they were doing with the essentially peaceful message of Jesus? Or was it more to do with power? What's very exciting about what happens in the next century, in the fifth century, is that the general, let's say, administrative capacity of the Roman Empire breaks down.

It can't provide the services. it doesn't collect the taxes, it doesn't it can't control fully the army and it breaks down into a number of recognizable units that we call the successor states and often led by people from Germanic lineages. You've got the Ostrogoths, you've got the Visigoths, you've got the Franks in what is France of today, you've got the Visigoths in Spain of today, you've got the Vandals in North Africa, and so on, all over Europe. Now, the interesting thing about these people is that for quite a long time, they've been living alongside or within even, and sometimes they had actually been used as mercenaries, as fighters for the Empire. They're totally aware of the Roman world and that also means they're totally aware

of Christianity. They're already Christians, they're Aryan Christians, and when they set up courts, say in Ravenna or in Toledo or in all these different parts, their courts are recognizably sort of like Roman in ceremony, but also they are full of bishops and intellectuals and poets who are mostly churchmen, fluent in Latin, and they do all the things you do, eulogize the king, put together treaties, run diplomacy, and also do exactly the job of creating the persona of the Christian monarch, although these are people still who live in very recognizably tribal situations, who are combining a sort of Germanic heritage, their habits of eating, of their hair, their long hair, etc.,

with this ideology that is Christian, which sort of endorses their rule. They get crowned, they have the whole paraphernalia of state, which is by now a sort of Roman Christian heritage. And there's a fantastic book about this period that's called Roman Barbarians, because they may be barbarians, but they're absolutely Romanized. And there, I think, is also the clue to this sort of ideology that develops. And they definitely don't turn the other cheek, but they are, for example, they would claim to be fighting a Christian fight when they're fighting against pagans further out in North and Northeast Europe. They found monasteries, they're patrons of religious art, but they are obviously doing

it through what you called power, that is to say, considerations of lineage and sustainability of their power and so on. And that is what we live with. And then, of course, the person who took this possibility of Christian ruler to its highest degree was in the year 800, the very great king of the Franks, Charles the Great, when he goes to Rome and he asks the Pope to crown him as emperor. Only the Pope can do it, only in Rome can you become an emperor. So all of a sudden we have this renewal, as it were, of the Empire. But the crown is on the head of a

erstwhile barbarian, Christian, powerful ruler. Now, he is de facto a ruler. Why does he need this? Because Christianity offers a certain type of ideological or discourse framework within which to organize life in a vast continental empire like his. But also churchmen are the most important bureaucrats, the most educated people, the people who are the greatest and most important advisors, the most reliable advisors. And one very important anthropologist, Jack Goody, once said that the principle of chastity, although it was not observed at all regularly, but this idea that the bishops do not have

the same level of dynastic aspirations as a lay aristocrat would, made them particularly favoured supporters and advisors to kings. So by the year 800, this is sort of the full coming together of, and he sees himself as a protector of the church, and indeed he reforms the church, he founds abbeys, even as he does, he conquers and he fights and he has concubines and everything else. So this is a tension, but it doesn't go away throughout really Christian history. Were there parts of what we now call Europe that were more resistant to Christianity than others? Yeah, I mean, there's definitely a chronology to this story. And definitely Christianity was first implanted in those old Roman provinces. And of course, after the development of Islam and the conquest of North Africa,

that whole part of the Christian world, of course, is conquered away, as are large parts like Palestine, Syria, and so on, further east. So all of a sudden, the Christian world is really Europe. It's the northern coast of the Mediterranean. So by far the most implanted, the most rich with monasteries, with cathedrals, with centers of learning. Without any doubt, those old provinces, the parts of what we would think of today,

it's Italy, it's southern France, it's part of Spain that soon in 711 will be conquered by the Muslims. But this very now smaller Christian world, as it were, is also growing. It's growing north, it's growing east, and it's growing west. Now one very important launching pad for Christian life is Ireland. Ireland, strangely, mysteriously, is Christian in the fourth century. And it has its own traditions, it lives in quite different ways from the Christians of Southern Europe, although there are contacts, and ultimately it will be the one that will spread Christianity in areas we think of as Scotland today, Northern England today, and even will be a source for inspiring missionaries to go into continental Europe and sort of inspire mission in those

very northern parts of Europe, northern parts of sort of the Netherlands, Germany, let alone the Baltic of today. And of course it's also moving eastwards. So around the year 1000 we have joining this Commonwealth of Christian Europe, Poland, Hungary, and in the north more in the 12th century, 11th and 12th century into Scandinavia. So this movement north and eastwards happens at the same time that a lot of Christian provinces are lost because they're conquered by Muslim rulers. are lost because they're conquered by Muslim rulers.

Land a Viking longship on island shores, scramble over the dunes of ancient Egypt and avoid the Poisoner's Cup in Renaissance Florence. Each week on Echoes of History, we uncover the epic stories that inspire Assassin's Creed. We're stepping into feudal Japan in our special series, Chasing Shadows, where samurai warlords and shinobi spies teach us the tactics and skills needed not only to survive, but to conquer. Whether you're preparing for Assassin's Creed Shadows

or fascinated by history and great stories, listen to Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hits. There are new episodes every week. How important were the Crusades to the emergence of a stronger Christian identity in Europe? I mean, definitely a more belligerent one in certain parts, although it's important to remember, although we talk about the Crusades and we teach the Crusades amply and everybody

knows about the Crusades when they think about this period, that there was also a critique of crusading at the time. What the Crusades, I suppose, really did is invented a sort of role for secular aristocrats in the service of Christianity. There's a movement in the 10th century that already tries to sort of, in a way, Christianise the ethos of the knight, of the horse-riding super fighter who has land to support his vocation. Ideas that, you know, a Christian knight will never fight and hurt widows or children

or merchants on the road and a sort of code of chivalry attempts to combine some ideas about Christian charity with the practice of arms. Now with the idea of crusading of course it's very exciting and of course crusading is not only to the Holy Land. There is also crusading into Iberia, into Spain. In the 1060s already there's an indulgence, a letter from the Pope that blesses those Christian knights from France who will go south and start conquering back from Muslims. And that's when we start getting also intellectuals rallying to develop stronger ideas of just war, of the spiritual reward that would be earned by those who fight or die.

And so it becomes a plank of Christian life, particularly appealing to those who are able to go and fight, that is is knights and their retinues. But the interesting thing is that once the concept is there that fighting can be good Christian work, you can of course deploy it in all sorts of areas. You can deploy it as was done by the mid-12th century against the pagans in the Baltic lands, the Wends as they were called. You can deploy it definitely as mentioned against Muslims in other arenas, but you can also use it as the very pious kings of France did in the early 13th century to fight against

Christians who are not conforming, that is Cathars and suspected heretics. And ultimately in the 13th century the popes would even declare crusades against secular rulers who do not obey them, as he did against the Holy Roman Emperor. So it starts as something that is supposed to happen at the frontiers of Christianity, the idea of crusading, and ultimately becomes an extremely useful tool to justify all sorts of Christian enterprises, even Christian on Christian. We've talked a lot about Christianity being spread through influential men, leaders, rulers, clergy, missionaries,

but presumably 50% of the Christian population were women. What did they find in Christianity that fulfilled them? Well, women, of course, again, come in so many different conditions, situations, levels of education, and so on. So women are absolutely and utterly engaged. In the early era, the early centuries, the Christianization of many high-born Roman families actually happened through matrons that had a lot of influence in the household and that determined the direction of not only education of the young, but of course of slaves and dependents and explored the possibilities and were very attracted.

So there's some extremely, extremely interesting women who are supporting early Christian leaders. Every one of them, like Jerome, you know, was constantly in correspondence with Roman women. Athanasius of Alexandria writes a rule of life for women who want to dedicate themselves to Christian virginity, even in their households. From the 6th century on, we have a tradition of monasticism that is always the monasticism of men or of women, and we even have an Anglo-Saxon tradition of men and women alongside each other. Now, on the whole, these more specialised and professionalised forms of the religious life, well, quite frankly for men and women, were open to elites where families were able to give dowries of sorts to their daughters who were not marrying, who were going into a nunnery and where they became abbesses and leaders and so on.

But clearly there are many very, very attractive areas of Christian practice and devotion that you don't have to be rich or educated to appreciate. And of course the Virgin Mary is extremely, extremely important here. And from about the 12th century on, she really becomes the main devotion in Europe, really, and only growing. And some even complained at the time, you know, someone's devotion to Mary, they almost forget about her son. But I think everybody would be familiar with those very touching images of mother and child, which of course everyone can relate to. And

there were some women, of course, within the monastic tradition itself, who developed that figure of Mary as a model for themselves. And some of them, who benefited from education within the nunnery and so on, they wrote very, very famous 12th century German nun Hildegard of Bingen. She wasn't only a theologian, she wrote about health, she wrote about physics, she wrote about medicine, and she composed the most exquisite music, liturgical music, for the Virgin Mary. So obviously where there was the capacity and the education and placement, the elite placement, women grabbed it as much as men did. The thing is they could not do the liturgical thing. They could not

stand at the altar and ultimately consecrate the body of Christ. They could not get up and preach. But they found other ways. Often they were so inspiring in their ideas that they found men who were their confessors or their religious guides who wrote down their visions and their sayings and their experiences. And these manuscripts have remained because these interested people, even at the time. The first autobiographical text of sorts, though it was probably not written in her hand, in the English language, is from an early 15th century woman, a secular woman, Marjorie Kemp of Lynn in Norfolk, who describes her own experiences and the angst and the joy and so on.

So there is this, almost at every level, there are fewer women who come to note for all the reasons that we can understand in terms of misogyny, but those who are really quite exemplary and indeed at the time were often appreciated by men who observe us and that is really inspiring. More people should know about that because it's good for Christians to know about some of them. And then of course the level of the parish. There's the routine of the sacraments, of attending the mass, of receiving communion, of participating. And although women were not allowed to be church wardens and to assume public offices even in parishes, we know

that they were very active in the parish in preparing the churches and so on. And midwives, for example, had to learn the formula of baptism, lest a child they had helped bring into the world was so close to death before being baptized. So as to save its soul, these women were allowed in a way to be priests of sorts. So the picture is enormously varied, and at every level of Christian life women are there and they are making a difference even if we tend to know a lot more and more personal stuff about those who were the most privileged and who wrote and left their manuscripts and their thoughts committed to parchment. Professor Mary Rubin, thank you for joining us.

Pleasure. committed to parchment. Professor Mary Rubin, thank you for joining us. Pleasure. How and why history? you