Quote from: Malleus Arianorum;501424I 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!"

It might had. In Constantine's case, there's an odd thing that they actually found a crater from a meteor that might've been the omen.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3013146.stm

Otherwise, well...we all know that most of those "Famous Uplifting Speeches" were usually retconned in the chronicles .

Most of them were probably a variation of "Dogs, would you live forever?" combined with jokes about the other side.

Quote from: Settembrini;501265Just 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.

Most definitely, but that's another story.  I could easily see a kind of christian triumphalism up till that point. It would have made sense, everything was going according to plan. They were being given the keys to the empire.  But then god turns around has has that empire go to shit.

End result? The City of God.

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;501215There 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.

We-ell... I don't know how important it was that Christianity started as a pacifist & underdog religion with an emphasis on enduring suffering.  I do think though that Martial religions rely on Martial success.  A monotheism without a patiently-enduring-suffering aspect would thus seem likely to be less popular in a declining empire.  Also, at an earlier stage Christianity was initially popular with, and spread by, the educated urban women of the Mediterranean Roman empire.  I think its popularity with women was (and is) important to its success, and again a more purely martial religion won't have that aspect.  For all I know there may be evidence of Sol Invictus having those 2 aspects (enduring suffering, feminine) but I haven't seen it.

Finally, would Charles Martel have triumphed under the sign of Sol Invictus at Tours/Poitiers, fighting Zoroastrian Arab invaders? I have no idea.

Quote from: S'mon;501591Also, at an earlier stage Christianity was initially popular with, and spread by, the educated urban women of the Mediterranean Roman empire.  I think its popularity with women was (and is) important to its success

That's pretty highly contested. As far as I know there's no very clear evidence that Christianity was any more popular with women than any other movement or religion. A lot of early Christian literature featured women prominently, but that probably has a lot more to do with genre conceits--they bear a lot of resemblance to Greek Romance novels--than any historical circumstance.

Quote from: S'mon;501591We-ell... I don't know how important it was that Christianity started as a pacifist & underdog religion with an emphasis on enduring suffering.  I do think though that Martial religions rely on Martial success.  A monotheism without a patiently-enduring-suffering aspect would thus seem likely to be less popular in a declining empire.

A number of non-christian philosophies and hermetic theologies of the time had similar concepts.
I think that the traits you mention are over-emphasized for Christianity's success over certain other things, like the universality (as in, not just a male mystery or a female mystery, and spreading a message of spiritual equality between the lowest and highest of people) and deeply personal aspects of the faith (you didn't have to be a hero or a noble to be paid attention to by Jesus), and the intellectualism of the faith (there were many other new religions at the time that were intellectual, but this was a big selling point for a certain class of adopter).  I think mainly it was the spiritual promise of the religion that caused such appeal.

QuoteAlso, at an earlier stage Christianity was initially popular with, and spread by, the educated urban women of the Mediterranean Roman empire.  I think its popularity with women was (and is) important to its success, and again a more purely martial religion won't have that aspect.  For all I know there may be evidence of Sol Invictus having those 2 aspects (enduring suffering, feminine) but I haven't seen it.

Mithraism was exclusively male, but the Sol Invictus cult (which had many iterations over the years) had widespread male and female appeal.  It was adopted as acceptable to romans far earlier than Christianity, so it really didn't need to be spread around in secret.
Also there is no question that women were a very important demographic in early christianity, but there is a lot of question as to just how important, how much of the spread was due to that class of women you talk about.

QuoteFinally, would Charles Martel have triumphed under the sign of Sol Invictus at Tours/Poitiers, fighting Zoroastrian Arab invaders? I have no idea.

I would assume so; but I very much doubt that the Arab invaders would be zoroastrians.  My theory as applied in Albion is that another kind of monotheism (probably still inspired by judaism) would have taken hold in the arab world had Islam not arisen.

RPGPundit

Its like I never posted my analysis of how Islam would be largely recognizable to us if Christianity hadn't existed...

I know its not very sexeh alt-history wise, but I did think it was insightful and logically laid out.

Names would be different, some points of structure would change, most of the core values and "look" would be the same, yes.

RPGPundit