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The Empire itself provided Christianity's ability to move beyond the local geographic area through the advantage of Roman roads and the links between Roman cities. [ 17 ] [ 104 ] Having begun moving outward from Jerusalem, Christianity also directly connected to remote large cities such as Rome.
The Roman family was one of the ways that the mos maiorum was passed along through the generations.. The mos maiorum (Classical Latin: [ˈmoːs majˈjoːrʊ̃]; "ancestral custom" [1] or "way of the ancestors"; pl.: mores, cf. English "mores"; maiorum is the genitive plural of "greater" or "elder") is the unwritten code from which the ancient Romans derived their social norms.
Map of the Roman Empire with the distribution of Christian congregations of the first three centuries AD. The growth of Early Christianity from its obscure origin c. AD 40, with fewer than 1,000 followers, to being the majority religion of the entire Roman Empire by AD 400, has been examined through a wide variety of historiographical approaches.
Roman investigations into early Christianity found it an irreligious, novel, disobedient, even atheistic sub-sect of Judaism: it appeared to deny all forms of religion and was therefore superstitio. By the end of the Imperial era, Nicene Christianity was the one permitted Roman religio; all other cults were heretical or pagan superstitiones. [187]
In the year before the First Council of Constantinople in 381, Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire when Theodosius I, emperor of the East, Gratian, emperor of the West, and Gratian's junior co-ruler Valentinian II issued the Edict of Thessalonica in 380, [1] which recognized the catholic orthodoxy [a] of Nicene Christians as the Roman Empire's state religion.
Conversions tore families apart: Justin Martyr tells of a pagan husband who denounced his Christian wife, and Tertullian tells of children disinherited for becoming Christians. [10] Traditional Roman religion was inextricably interwoven into the fabric of Roman society and state, but Christians refused to observe its practices.
However, during the Dark Ages, the decline in the study of this literature as a whole, as well as the waning of Christianity's popularity throughout Europe, resulted in the extinction of its effect in Christian life until the spread of Islam—the reintroduction of Classical texts—and the "rebirth" of Ancient Greek and Roman philosophies and ...
Under the first Christian Roman emperor Constantine, there was a relaxation of attitudes toward abortion and exposure of children. [1] Bakke writes, "Since an increasing number of Christian parents were poor and found it difficult to look after their children, the theologians were forced to take into account this situation and reflect anew on ...