The Crisis of the Towns: The Rise of Christianity, c. 200-300
The peace of the early third century led to the development of two very different worlds.
One the one hand, to “articulate Roman and Greek gentlemen, the peace of the empire had come as an opportunity to fortify and cherish the customs of one’s ancient town”. Their towns were paradoxically both uniform and unique. Greek philosophical culture was a consistent backdrop, but every town felt that it was unique and revelled in their “ancient particularities” and “having maintained their local characteristics since the fifth century BC”. The impression I get is rather like modern-day small-towns that appear identical to an outsider but are all convinced of their own special nature.
At the same time, for humbler men, peace was an opportunity for trade and travel. Wider horizons weakened local differences and local loyalties. “Uprooted and cast adrift” these ‘citizens of the world’ appear to have found the world a “lonely and impersonal place”.
These groupings of the “lower middle classes and respectable artisans” found a sense of belonging and loyalty through membership of various of the oriental cults that spread through western Europe. Lacking an entry into the ossified civic society around them, they created their own societies.
These two worlds split further apart. The Greek upper classes abandoned the “flexible, living Greek” of the Koiné and started speaking an “archaic Attic style”. Consciously or not they were creating walls around their own culture and keeping out a “turbulent intellectual proletariat”.
This proletariat still wanted answers though and when they were excluded from direct access to Greek philosophical culture they would go to religious teachers instead. These provided a “simpler fare”, but one which seemed equally nourishing. The Christian Apologists observed that Plato had served good food, but with fancy dressings, while the apostles cooked for the masses.
These “well-to-do” plebeians had found a middle-brow alternative to the high-brow discussions of the elites and they also patronised new styles of art. Freed from the classical restraints it conveyed simple messages with characters displaying formalised meaningful gestures and facing the viewer full on in order to be recognisable.
Where does Christianity fit into this? And why, in the end, does it come out on top?
Various groups such as the Gnostics and oriental cults beset classical paganism. Christianity shared many attributes with these, but also some differences. These differences may help explain why Christianity came out on top. Two notable areas are how open and public-facing the Christian community could be.
- Openness: Many other cults were the “jealously guarded preserve of foreigners”. Becoming a Christian was not easy (maybe that was part of its appeal), but it was possible for anyone willing to be initiated to join.
- Public-facing: Other cults offered “salvation in the next world [but] took the position of their devotees in this world for granted”. Christianity was egalitarian in this world; Rome in the early third Century had an ex-slave as bishop and was protected by a mistress of the emperor. This public attitude could be viewed as both utopian and subversive and the two are not necessarily in conflict – intermittent persecutions provided publicity and demonstrated the courage of the converts.
These attributes demonstrated their value in the latter half of the third century. Recall that two things happen at this point:
- An empire at war: The emperors are busy at the Rhine and the Danube and trade is dislocated.
- The aristocracy become self-interested: In the second century, public competition between aristocrats involved a “large amount of religious activity – rites, processions, dedications” The upheavals of the later third century led to more personal forms of competition centred on demonstrating the magnate’s standing rather than reinforcing communal activities.
This lack of communal activities left a void that the townspeople needed to fill. The cults of the ex-pats that had flourished during the peaceful years of the early third century were not an option (and were struggling anyway with a lack of immigrant devotees). However the Christian church was able to step in to provide a new form of community. In fact, in “public emergencies […] the Christian clergy were shown to be the only united group in town”.
These circumstances benefited the Christians, but their longer-term success came from the hold they exerted on those who joined their faith. Once within the community it was hard to leave. Joining was not an easy task – this was not the “market-place preaching of the cynic philosophers” but a process involving personal scrutiny, slow preparation, and a final initiation. Once inside the gates the individual could drop from a “wide impersonal world into a miniature community”. However, he would also be made “constantly aware of the awesome chasm between belonging and not belonging” and of the “formidable penitential system” that he had signed up to.
Moritasgus 