Thanks Pundit, if indeed the Germanic/barbarian Legionaries were mostly Arian Christians at the battle of the Milvian bridge, my hypothesis is at least plausible.

Quote from: HinterWelt;124763Christ dies as a child falling down a well or run over by horses and the effect would be?

Arguably minimal. There were a lot of monotheistic cults burbling along. One of them wins the memetic war instead, and the same socio-memetic pressures lead it to become dominant in Western Europe.

Arguably extreme, to the degree that it's pretty much impossible to predict what the world looks like today. The Roman Empire still falls, of course, but if we imagine Western Europe as a big box full of lots of disparate elements that was shaken up for a couple of centuries around the fall of the Roman Empire, after which a handful of those elements shot out in random directions to establish the Western world as we know it today... well, it doesn't take much imagination to realize that eliminating Christianity completely changes the contents of that box. There's really no way to figure out what shoots out instead or how it shoots out.

Quote from: Settembrini;500590Thanks Pundit, if indeed the Germanic/barbarian Legionaries were mostly Arian Christians at the battle of the Milvian bridge, my hypothesis is at least plausible.

I feel like I should clarify, that I could not qualify as definite the statement "most german legionaries were Arian Christians".

I'm certain that "most Arian Christians were germans"
That "most christians in 312 were Arians"
That "an extremely significant number of german (and other "barbaric european") legionaires were Arian Christians".

But I couldn't quite say and don't really think that the data I've seen conclusively proves that most of said german legionaries were Christians at all, at that time.
Its within the realm of the possible, though.
There's also the extremely likelihood that the spread of Arian christianity was not even; "missionaries" promoting the new religion may have ended up in certain villages, certain tribes, and certain legions; meaning that it could be that individual UNITS of barbarian legionaries were mostly or even entirely christian, while others were not.
Not being a roman military historian, I have very little offhand knowledge of what the composition of either Constantine or Maxentius' forces would have been like in 312; its possible if you want to attribute Constantine's moves to strategic/political expediency that he realized that most of HIS forces in particular were Arians, and that adopting a christian symbol/cause would make them fight better; I don't know.

RPGPundit

In short, Paul was the difference between messianic Judaism and contemporary Christianity.  Makes sense, though I don't know enough of the history of Christianity to tell if what Pundy says is true.  I do recall Paul being quite violently opposed to circumcision, however, lamenting that those advocating it did not "go the whole way" and fully castrate themselves.  Funny that we still practice it in America, though, but that's another can of worms.

Did Constantine ask for the usual pre - battle oracle divination? I am unsure if intestines divination was still in practice, but if Constantine did not ask for such, it'd be another signal that his force was, if not dominated by Christian troops, that Christian elements were at least very influential in it.

Pundit,

my hypothesis would not be as simplistic as assuming Constantine was a Christian just to please some of his Legions or parts thereof.
But that the Christianization of the empire itself would be a lot easier to explain once it was the Legions who where the main drivers of change.

So, let's stick with Constantine being a true believer*:
How can a whole empire be converted? Well, better have the backing of the Legions. Or in another way: Could Constantine take up a faith openly against the will of the Legions?

And my hypothesis is rather weak and says: the role of Christianity at 312 in the Legions seems very important, and it narrows many of the big questions down. If we can explain how Christianity gained foothold in the barbaric Legions, we might be a lot closer to a theory of how Christendom became the late Empires state religion.

Maybe in some version/interpretation/practice it had become a warrior's religion? Pundit what is your say on that? I have no clue about Arianism as a practice.

As to the makeup of the army at the Bridge:
Zosimus II, 15, I. says "C. had gathered troops from the dependent Barbarians, Germanic, Celts and Britannic".


(just to reinforce: BAPTISM just before death is AFAIK an insurance policy, he  was a Chrisitian and not a pagan way before his deathbed. Baptism, of  course and its point in life is a great theological problem to this very day. Compare how the Pope did away with Limbo just recently and why. Baptism  "washes away ALL your sins", so it is smart to postpone it, albeit a bit  of a gamble. Very common practice, though.)

Quote from: B.T.;500691In short, Paul was the difference between messianic Judaism and contemporary Christianity.  Makes sense, though I don't know enough of the history of Christianity to tell if what Pundy says is true.  I do recall Paul being quite violently opposed to circumcision, however, lamenting that those advocating it did not "go the whole way" and fully castrate themselves.  Funny that we still practice it in America, though, but that's another can of worms.

That's for completely different reasons.  The popularity of circumcision in north america today is a remnant of a certain fanaticism that came up only in relatively recent times (19th-early 20th centuries) when our obsession with hygiene led to the belief that circumcision was more hygienic, and especially that circumcision discouraged masturbation.   Neither of which, as I understand it, are strictly true; they were just products of victorian thinking.

RPGPundit

Quote from: Settembrini;500758Maybe in some version/interpretation/practice it had become a warrior's religion? Pundit what is your say on that? I have no clue about Arianism as a practice.

As to the makeup of the army at the Bridge:
Zosimus II, 15, I. says "C. had gathered troops from the dependent Barbarians, Germanic, Celts and Britannic".

Good quote.  As for the other bit, it has been one of the great obsessions of religious historians to ask exactly why Christianity, and more specifically Arian Christianity, enjoyed such popularity with the northern european roman provincials. Some have speculated that it was a more "warrior-friendly" christianity, but I've never totally bought the argument, or at least never seen something that I found sufficiently convincing.  I suspect that there's some piece of the puzzle that's missing there.

What I have no doubt about is that the ultimate success of Christianity is ironically very much connected to the success  of Arius (or more accurately, Ulfilas) in converting the european barbarians.  Not that it did much good to the Arians.

RPGPundit

I suspect a different monotheist religion would eventually overtake the Roman empire, possibly with less Jewish influence.  Without Christianity, if Islam existed it would be different too.

My best guess is that the Romans would have a Sol Invictus type monotheist religion, resembling a slightly more martial version of post-Nicaea Christianity, but probably with less deep-seated support.  It might not do as well at converting the invading northern barbarians (Germans), but I suspect they would still tend to convert over time, with a lot of syncretism - Sol Invictus would gain more elements of Thor than you see in Christianity.  It would also be less well suited for a things-going-wrong, collapsing Empire.  I disagree with Gibbon's view that Christianity itself significantly weakened the empire.  You would have a Sol-type martial religion for the elite, but mystery cults like Isis would still be widespread.

Eventually there would be a major invasion from the east by barbarians with their own monotheist or dualist religion, probably with heavy Zoroastrian influence.  The Germanic barbarians might be more likely to convert; the exact borders of east & west would certainly be different.

Whether it would "do worse" or "do as well" at handling the collapse of empire as Christianity did would depend less upon the theology of the alternate monotheistic religion, and more on whether it instituionally enacted something similar to what the Christian religion did in hijacking the bureaucratic management of the empire.  There is nothing in the theology of the Christian faith that made it so important in the dark ages that was more crucial than the mere fact that the structure of the Catholic church itself was basically the imperial bureaucracy co-opted in religious form.

That's why I don't have a problem in my Albion campaign presenting a world very similar to our own history's only with the Sol Invictus cult being the dominant european monotheistic religion; I simply assumed that they took over the role of Pontifex and the imperial bureaucracy in a very similar way to how Christianity did it.   So you end up with a fairly different (though in some ways similar) theology but an extremely similar institution of "the church".  Its just the Church of the Sun instead of the "church of the son of god".

RPGPundit

Just listened to a nice talk about the Pelagian controversy. Curiously, from the point of early Christian theology, the reverse of what we discuss here was sipposedly a major problem:

The Empire took up Christianity but Rome was sacked! The schock! Why did god put them into misery? That needed to explained away some way or the other.

Quote from: Settembrini;500542Malleus,
 
that is fine and dandy, but I am not sure the question as to wht the Barbarian Legionaries believed mostly at the time is adressed in the excerpt you posted. In fact, barbarian officers being christians is mentioned, right?

Sorry, I was in a bit of a rush. The Western barbarians followed Mithras, a warrior God with a magic lantern and knife, a love of caves, and a whole cosmology built around drinking bull semen. Constantine followed Mithras durring and after his miraculous Christian vision, as evidenced by Constantine's coinage and his death bed conversion. Mithras was a popular religion amongst the fighting men, but fataly unpopular with women.
 

QuoteSo it is not incoceivable that among Constantine seeing the light, maybe the barbarian Legionaries were in favor of Christendom, or at least a sizable element.

Constantine not so much. He presented himself as a tolerant guy and avoided becoming Christian until his deathbed. So there's not much pull there. But by all acounts, the honour that he gave to his devoutly Christian mother helped de-stigmatize the religion.
 

QuoteSo, where the Legions go, the Empire goes? In more general terms, there are many arguments supporting that hypothesis. I utterly just do not know if it could work for religion, too. So if anybody has some more insight, I gladly appreciate.

Early Christianity was based in the city, and it spread from the energy and prosparity of the cities to the country. There's alot of doom and gloom in the Evangelical Christian press right now because currently the situation is reversed -- currently Evangelical Christianity is strongest outside the cities.
 

QuoteThat would narrow down the underlying question of what is driving change in history to what happened with the Legions ethnically, socially and spiritually. It seems to me, a more attainable question than the general idea of the Empire being "ripe for (new) religion".
 
The ethnical and social changes in the roman military are way easier explainable by material and positive arguments than say, the whole of the society.

If I recall correctly, as the legionares returned to the cities they gradualy took up the religion of their wives, slaves, and neighbors, just as Constantine did on his deathbed.

Quote from: Rincewind1;500695Did Constantine ask for the usual pre - battle oracle divination? I am unsure if intestines divination was still in practice, but if Constantine did not ask for such, it'd be another signal that his force was, if not dominated by Christian troops, that Christian elements were at least very influential in it.

Constantine turned to Christianity for a miracle only after the oracles and priests from the popular religions pronounced doom. Christianity was his religion of last resort.

Quote from: Malleus Arianorum;501406Constantine turned to Christianity for a miracle only after the oracles and priests from the popular religions pronounced doom. Christianity was his religion of last resort.

I did remember reading about such a thing, but I wasn't sure. It all sounds a bit like a classic savvy tactician's trick to me then. Ancient warfare, similarly to Napoleonic, relied really heavily on morale, as it was needed to keep the discipline.

Quote from: Rincewind1;501410I did remember reading about such a thing, but I wasn't sure. It all sounds a bit like a classic savvy tactician's trick to me then. Ancient warfare, similarly to Napoleonic, relied really heavily on morale, as it was needed to keep the discipline.

I don't know how it really happened, but I always imagine him lining up all his false idols and going down the row giving each one the Conan prayer. "And if you do not listen, then to HELL with you!"