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Paganism
Until the middle of the fourth century, only a small minority of the Roman world was Christian
GOSPELS four books of the New Testament (Christian part of the bible) that record the words
and deeds of Jesus, the son of a carpenter who became a prophet and a teacher
All the texts in the New Testament were written in koine Greek
Produced translations of the Hebrew bible and by 400 CE there was a coby translated into Syric
The Vulgate was a Latin translation
Three of the four gospels are synoptic (seeing together) and tell similar stories
Jesus wrote down nothing himself, and facts such as his birth are hard to pin down
MIRACLES
o The first three gospels mainly talk about Jesus miraculous deeds, mainly that of healing
and exorcisms. He heals blindness, deafness, paralysis, leprosy, and a woman w/ chronic
bleeding
o Mental illnesses were often thought of as demonic possession
PARABLES AND THE APOCALYPSE
o Parables stories with ordinary things that had an allegorical meaning
o Jesus often lectured using parables
o the idea of a day of judgement complete with punishment for evildoers and the
salvation of a chosen group, and the resurrection of the dead is known as apocalyptic
o not clear whether Jesus thought of himself as the son of god
In 312, Constantine converted as he prepared for his battle with Maxentius to occupy the city;
he had a dream about the cross, and the following day he won the battle
The pervasive network of patronage and dependence that turned Roman society into a densely
interconnected web was well suited to the spread of a new religion one that converted of
high status would influence his/her entourage of slaves, freedmen, and friends
One key to the growth was the commitment as the Christian god demanded that one stopped
worshiping other gods
New laws began to favour Christians and outlawed pagan practices
Changes were slow: began to ban Gladiatorial contests in 325 and addressed doctrinal conflicts
within the church hesitantly and ineffectively, relying on his advisers: they were matters which
he did not understand
In 313 Christianity was legalized
The basilica a church that was rather large was built
Lots of advantages to conversion, including laws
After Constantine, the surviving literary works were mainly Christian as those of paganistic
nature were destroyed
While paganism tolerated diversity, Christianity did not; heresy (any doctrine rejected by that of
the church to enforce their views) was a disease to be stamped out
Orthodoxy straight thinking
Doctrine was often decreed on by a council, and arrived at an ideal by a voting
Donatism rejected the ideas of the authority of those bishops who had agreed to hand over
sacred writings for destruction
Relationship between Christ and God was debated on
Public Architecture
By 600, the population was in decline due to a variety of reasons; some cities were abandoned
or shrank, and others moved
Possible that this was due to Christanity
Aristocrats turned from funding public buildings like theatres to churches and the like; left
legacies to churches in their wills
In 406, perhaps because of conflicts with the Huns, several barbarian tribes tried to
cross into the Rhine and devastated the pop. with a violent invasion.
o They reached Spain in 409
o In 429 under Geiseric they invaded north Africa and ten years later they captured
Carthage. Christian historians who suffered under Adrian Vandals prosecution of
orthodoxy in Africa did not insist on independence from the Roman Empire rather, they
wanted the emperors to acknowledge their dominion over parts of it, which they did in
a series of treaties
BARBARIAN LEGAL CODES
o In the late 5th 6th centuries, the Visgoths and the Franks both issued law codes as well
as the Burgundians do not know how much this influenced Germanic cultures
o Codes are compared with the Roman codifications of Theodosius and Justinian and
focus on matters such as property and inheritance, loans, as well as theft, homicide,
assault, and so on
JUSTINIAN
o Ruled from 527 565 and was an era of ambitious imperialism and momentous events
near the end of the antique world history
o He repressed the bloody Nika Riots at Constantinople in 532 and nearly died from the
bubonic plague
o Sponsored a building program including the basilica of Saint Sophia and ordered the
compilation of a massive legal code to become the judicial legacy to the medieval world
o Most ambitions conquest was the reconquest of the barbarian kingdoms in the West
o
Was born in Mecca, in a pagan oasis city in the western part of the Arabian peninsula
Arabs traded with the farmers and the barbarians
Pre-islamic poetry shows values of Bedouin society and heroic ideals of bravery as warriors
In 610, angel Gabriel spoke to Muhammed and it became the Quran
After his death in 632, Islam conquered Rman Syria and Persia then later Egypt, before invading
Visigothic Spain in 711
By the middle of the 7th century, Rome was reduced to a small fraction of its former self
The fall of Rome was a process
Many Europeans claim Greco-Roman culture as civilized