the timboucher experience

As a kid, I devoured history. I’d spend 2-3 days a week at the library picking up tons of books about ancient history, and bicycling home. During that time period, I learned a thousand times more history than I ever subsequently did in school. Of particular interest to me was the military history of Greece and Rome. But this was probably pushing 10-12 years ago that I read most of that stuff. I’ve been brushing up again on a lot of it lately to help me write various sections of my book which utilize historic examples.

One of the things I’m the most interested in right now is the early history of the Catholic Church, especially in terms of how it came to power in the Roman Empire. I’m just going to do this in a random list format again, because that’s fun. Then I can just hop around to the facts I’m interested in.

1. After a period of internal strife, the Emperor Diocletian reunited the Roman Empire for a brief period of time, starting in 285 CE. However, shortly thereafter he divided the empire into east and west regions to take care of administrative problems, and threats from within and without. Each half of the Empire was ruled by someone with the title of Augustus. In 293, each of the Augustus’s appointed an aid, who was granted the title of Caesar. This period of Roman history was called the Tetrarchy, or rule of four.
2. This arrangement of course didn’t work, and things quickly got out of hand. Without getting into specifics, everybody got at each other’s throats. By 324, Constantine the Great emerged as the victor, and once again the Empire was united under his rule. He moved the capitol to Byzantium or Nova Roma.
3. In the intervening period, Constantine is popularly portrayed as having been converted to Christianity before the Battle of Milvian Bridge. The night before this battle, he supposedly saw the chi ro sign (also known as the labarum) in a dream with the message “In hoc signo vinces” or “By this sign shalt thou conquer.”
4. The labarum was later said to have been a symbol of Christ, and an acknowledgement that God was protecting his army, which emerged victorious. Scholars admit though that the symbol was in use long before Christianity as a sign of various sun gods.
5. Constantine, as the leader of Rome, also held the title of Pontifex Maximus, the head priest of the Roman pagan religion. Note the similarity to the word “Pontiff” which was another later title for the Catholic Pope (pontiff is supposed to mean “bridge builder” as in between man and God).
6. Most scholars now seem to believe that Constantine didn’t convert to Christianity personally at all. His personalized coins and other insignia show that he followed the cult of Sol Invictus, of relation to Mithraism, both of which had extremely strong similarities to Christianity.
7. In 313 CE, Constantine issued the Edict of Milan, which gave legal rights to Christianity as a religion. Before that, it was an illegal practice and was prosecuted (to greater or lesser degrees, according to different historians). Contrary to popular belief though, Constantine did NOT make Christianity the official religion of the Empire. That came later. Also of importance here is the fact that the Edict of Milan established Sunday as the official day for Christian worship. Most believe that this was so that Christians and the other Sun-based cults (”Sun”-day) would worship together. I’ve also read elsewhere that Christmas and the dates of other holidays were moved at this point to coincide with the holidays of the Sun-god cults. I’ll have to look into that though.
8. In 325, a year after he became sole ruler of the Empire, Constantine sponsored the Catholic Church to hold the First Council of Nicea. This was the first world-wide meeting of Bishops, coming together to make rulings about doctrinal issues, and seeking uniformity of belief among all their various congregations. This is also important because Constantine was Pontifex Maximus, and was thus throwing his weight behind the Church.
9. Constantine himself was not baptized until near his death though, as was customary, and he ultimately subscribed to Arianism, which was ruled heresy by the Council of Nicea. Arianism, in a nutshell, says that God and Jesus are not one and the same substance. It’s opposed to trinitarianism, which was adopted by the Council, and which states that God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit are of the same essence, though existing in three persons or hypostases.
10. It wasn’t until the Emperor Theodosius that Christianity was officially adopted as the state religion of Rome.
11. Between 380 and 392, Theodosius issued a series of decrees which rested religious authority in the bishoprics of Rome and Alexandria, and gradually outlawed the practice of pagan religions. Pagan feasts which were not already converted to Christian ones were now workdays. Blood sacrifices were outlawed and pagan temples were to be abandoned and in many cases destroyed. Christian churches were quickly built over most of these sites. In 391, the eternal fire in the Temple of Vesta was extinguished and the Vestal Virgins were disbanded.
12. In 390, Theodosius was temporarily excommunicated by the Bishop of Rome, Ambrose, for having indiscriminately slaughtered the inhabitants of Thessalonica. Ambrose would not allow Theodosius back into Rome for many months until he had made public penance. This is considered as the point when the Bishops of Rome came to be even more powerful, and it’s generally assumed that Ambrose was behind many of the decrees of Theodosius.
13. The Catholic Church founded much of it’s early legitimacy on a document called the Donation of Constantine, which supposedly granted Pope Sylvester I and the Bishops of Rome sovereignty over Rome, Italy and the entire Western Empire in 324 CE. Constantine is said to have granted this to Sylvester for having cured him of leprosy. However, the Donation was proved to be a forgery in 1440 by Lorenzo Valla. It is believed that the Church manufactured it around the year 752 to give it greater authority against the secular kings of the day. Of course, by the time the forgery was uncovered, it was far too late to reverse a thousand years of Roman domination

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