Fresco depicting a Christian banquet in the Catacombs of Saints Marcellin and Peter, Rome • WIKIMEDIA COMMONS The evangelization of the ancient Mediterranean area has often been read as a reversal of the situation which made Christianity go from a forbidden and very minority religion to an official and dominant religion. Has it changed the history of the Western world by creating a radical break in its system of values and in the relationship between religion and politics and society? The answer is nuanced. According to its founding texts, Christianity has the particularity of being a missionary religion, because it is persecuted:the martyrdom of Stephen in Jerusalem, around 34, launches the disciples of Jesus on the roads; Paul evangelizes non-Jews after his expulsion from the synagogues. Admittedly, “travelling in spite of oneself” has been a stereotype of Greek historiography since Homer. But, in fact, an imperial rescript of 112 attests that Christianity was then prohibited, an unprecedented situation in an empire which assumed its ethnic and religious pluralism. Was it because of his Judean origin, reputed to be subversive? Of his incrimination during the fire of Rome in 64, who would have stigmatized him as an "association of criminals"? Or because he exhibited certain sectarian behaviors, such as the pooling of property? However, the Emperor Trajan specifies, at the beginning of the II th century, that Christians will not be wanted. There is therefore no persecution strictly speaking before 250:repression always has a local and circumstantial character, often even individual. Mass at home The Church of the Catacombs is a myth, as proven by modern archeology. These underground cemeteries are not a shelter for clandestine communities, but a mode of burial justified by population growth. Christians were not buried there separately and did not use them as places of worship. In Rome, the cult of the martyrs was not installed there until the IV th century, well after the end of the persecutions; it was in the open air that the memory of Peter was celebrated in the Vatican from 180, then that of Peter and Paul on the Via Appia from 258. Christians wrote in the public space, but using encryption methods:the discreet Greek letter chi (X), initial of Christ; the image of the “fish”, which allowed by acrostic to confess “Jesus Christ Son of God Saviour”; a pun on oinos christos , which in Greek could mean "wine of superior quality" or "Christ-Wine" (referring to transubstantiation, the transformation of the bread and wine of the Mass into the substance of the Christic body and blood). Thanks to archaeology, we know that the Church of the catacombs was a myth:Christians did not have their own burial there and did not use them as places of worship . The preaching of the gospel (the "good news") is done at the crossroads of the public and the private, especially since the first churches are part of a household, under the direction of the head of the family. Thus, baptisms are first family and collective. The ancient household was not reduced to the nuclear family:it was an operating unit – farm, workshop or shop – which employed employees and slaves, themselves integrated into the religious community gathered with the women around the hearth. Primitive Christianity therefore had a configuration of small groups, all sources converge on this point. It was a protection against the repression which stopped at the doors of the houses, the domestic religion being part of the internal forum. This allowed women to exercise leadership functions in certain communities, before Christians met in functional collective buildings, prayer houses or meeting houses, from the III e century; in the Greek world, in fact, a woman, even a doctor or a philosopher, could not express herself outside her home, and her authority depended on frequenting her house. The household is naturally open to the outside, integrated by each of its members into the associative fabric of the city:groupings by affinity of women, slaves or elders, associations of citizens, corporations, brotherhoods, friendships... Paul gives of the importance of hospitality and conviviality, because he is convinced that converts must be left in their particular networks so that the gospel will circulate step by step. Ancient polemics presented Christianity as a religion of the weak and the marginalized, which not only belies the texts, but also the sociological investigations carried out today on the basis of inscriptions and papyri. Christianity was not a religion of slaves or immigrants, except by promoting human rights and an ideal of mutual relations that excluded any discrimination between Christians. But Christian writings do not aim to change the statutes or the order of society, especially since the Christian mission has made extensive use of existing social networks. A religion that travels From Jerusalem, the apostles took the roads of the Diaspora – the exile of the Jews from Judea – to Rome, Alexandria, Anatolia and the Middle East, so that the Churches were often established in the vicinity of the synagogues:we still see it in Dura-Europos, in the province of Syria, or in Smyrna (now Izmir, in Turkey). More broadly, Christianization is part of the secular movement of cults from the East in the Mediterranean area, to Rome, Carthage and Lyon. In the provincial capitals, in the ports and in the road junctions, which constitute so many communication nodes, small Christian centers developed alongside the cults of Isis, the Great Mother or Dionysos, from which they do not differ. hardly externally, except that they have neither temples nor statues. Inter-community comings and goings are attested, the trend of the time being to multiply religious affiliations in an eclectic search for truth and salvation, which explains the proliferation of "heresies" within Christianity. All of this complicates the phenomenon of conversion and makes it difficult to evaluate and assess it. When did one become a Christian? By baptism or by reading the Gospels and praying in private? What to think of the intellectuals who joined the Church through the synagogue, except that the category of Judaizing Christians was not residual, but numerous and diversified? The Christian identifications were undoubtedly multiple and sometimes fragile, as evidenced by the number of lapsi (the “fallen” during the persecutions at the end of the III th century), far superior to that of the martyrs. The local immersion of Christian communities thus built unity in diversity, sometimes at the cost of violent opposition – for example between the bishops of the province of Asia and that of Rome around 190. The bishops remedied this by setting up specifically Christian networks, which made the Churches interdependent through the circulation of people, letter correspondence and even the transfer of funds. Their travels and meetings led to the constitution of episcopal networks, at least on a regional scale, from which the synodal practice (that of the episcopal conference) itself stems, to settle disciplinary or doctrinal disputes. But the Christian dynamic was not yet backed by a hierarchical and centralized organization. The year 250 marks a break in Christianization. This is the beginning of a policy of persecutions based on a test:the obligation to practice the sacrificial rite to the traditional gods. Under these conditions, Christian preaching advocated integration. This was the role of the Apologists, these converted intellectuals of the second century, to whom we also owe the caricatural presentations of Greek and Eastern myths, since it was necessary to value the Christian difference among all the religions of salvation of the period. The antipagan polemic is above all theological and remains limited. In Athens, Paul denounces the absurdity of such a proliferation of idols, but he establishes a bridge between local polytheism – the worship of unknown gods – and Christian monotheism by proclaiming the unknown god. Clement of Alexandria, a converted philosopher from Athens, uses concepts and categories of polytheism to develop a philosophical justification for Christianity and a way of being a Christian consistent with Hellenism. A follower of radical Christianity, Tertullian of Carthage, a converted jurist, nevertheless asked that the common law of associations be applied to the Churches, which certain emperors did. The card of compatibility was played rather than rupture, but there was a risk of secularization against which the literature of martyrdom reacts by proposing counter-models of heroism:women and children, slaves, the weak, like Blandine, who died in Lyon in 177. The middle of the III th century, the year 250 precisely, marks a break in the development of Christianization. It is the beginning of a policy of persecution decreed intermittently under three reigns:that of Decius in 249-251, that of Valerian in 257-258 and that of Diocletian and his colleagues of the Tetrarchy from 303. These persecutions were brief for the most part, general in principle, but unevenly applied on a local scale. The Empire hardly had the means for its policy, although Decius had instituted “certificates of sacrifice”, of which about thirty have been kept in Egypt. The sacrificial rite became the obligatory test of attachment to the traditional gods and above all of participation in the local civic community. Christians accused of dividing the Empire The break is political rather than religious, and Christians are not primarily targeted as such. It is about achieving the sacred union while the Empire is threatened by the barbarians on its borders and weakened from within. In 212, the Emperor Caracalla wanted to concretize the universal political community by giving Roman citizenship to all free inhabitants; the Empire also assumes the vocation of Hellenism to universality. It remained to found a unified religious community around a unifying cult:Decius accepted all the local gods (the important thing being to attend a cult, if not to participate); Aurelian instituted the syncretic cult of the deified Sun; Diocletian turned to the Old Roman cults of Jupiter and Hercules; Constantine, finally, swung a few years between the Sun and Christ. The Empire was now implementing a policy of assimilation to “Romanism”, a concept then invented by a Christian. This deepened the opposition with Christian universalism which, since Paul, wanted to be integrative in respecting differences in culture, status and even gender. The controversy ignited:the reproach against Christianity of "deromanization" and loss of patriotic sense was brought up again, while at the very end of the III th century the figure of the military martyr, raising the question of conscientious objection. The persecution had paradoxical effects in more ways than one. It deeply divided the communities, because the Christians did not agree on the value of the testimony of martyrdom, nor on the future of the lapsi , which the bishops wanted to reintegrate into the “Great Church”, while others made the choice of a Church of the Pure, reduced to the “little remnant”. However, Christianity remained vibrant. Other edicts were intended to combat or prevent Christian proselytism by confiscating the movable and immovable property of the Churches and specifically targeting bishops, as well as Christian notables in the senatorial milieu, the army and the Imperial Household. This is the indirect proof that Christianization now affected the upper classes. Similarly, the confiscation inventories found in Africa and Egypt attest to the new visibility acquired by the House of the Church within the city – something that archeology sometimes verifies. Above all, the martyrs made converts. The execution of the condemned ad bestias ("to the beasts") in the amphitheater overexposed Christianity, hitherto transmitted in private, in front of tens of thousands of spectators. It seems that the converts were sensitive to the paradox of the Christian martyr who died praying for the continuity of the Empire and thus left the future open, while the "pagan martyrs", nationalist resistance fighters or protesting philosophers, provoked the power whose they expected nothing more than death. Persecution therefore proved ineffective, and the emperors learned the lesson by promulgating amnesties, such as Gallienus in 260 and Galerius in 311. The way was open for Christianity to develop henceforth as the religion of the emperor under Constantine, then as the state religion from the edict issued in 381 during the reign of Theodosius I st . Find out more How Our World Became Christian , by Marie-Françoise Baslez, Points, 2015.After Jesus. The Invention of Christianity , directed by Roselyne Dupont-Roc and Antoine Guggenheim, Albin Michel, 2020. Timeline Around 40 The term “Christian” appears in Antioch and Rome, coined by the Romans to identify the new religion.112 In response to a request from the governor of Bithynia, Emperor Trajan confirms the status of a forbidden but not persecuted religion.Around 190 With the True Speech of the philosopher Celsus, Christianity became a subject of debate among intellectuals.Towards 230 The house-churches acquire greater visibility in the public space, such as the house of Doura-Europos, a city in the province of Syria.250 Christians suffer a first great persecution. The edict of Emperor Decius makes participation in a public sacrifice obligatory.311-313 With the first edicts of tolerance, Galerius established freedom of worship, then Constantine freedom of belief (edict of Milan).381 Christianity in its Nicene form becomes the official religion of the Empire by the edict of Emperor Theodosius I st . Peter and Paul, two apostles for Rome The association of the apostles Peter and Paul is complementary:one continues the preaching of Jesus in a Jewish environment, the other is the "apostle of the nations" who opposed the first on the conditions of the integration of non-Jews into Christian communities. This association is also constitutive of the development of the Roman Church. There is no historical record of their action or their death in Rome, or even of their eventual meeting. But, from 180, their funerary cult is celebrated parallel to the Vatican (which has been confirmed by archeology) and on the road to Ostia, then they are celebrated together from 258 on the Via Appia. At IV e century, theology insists on their double patronage as local martyrs to better position Rome as the head of the Church unified in its diversity. Christians, these citizens like the others A small anonymous epistle dedicated to the II th century "to Diognetus" is presented as a catechesis for the use of notables, striving to reduce the tension that runs through the existence of the Christian. The very specificity of Christianity does not isolate it, because its universalism takes into account the whole of human society. He alone can therefore organize society in accordance with the divine will:Christians are the soul of the world and must be active in it. They are in the world without being of the world. They are registered in a city where they pay their taxes and obey the law, do not live in a ghetto and do not have an eccentric outward behavior, but they regulate their behavior by another system of values, that of the gospel. Thus, they do not expose their newborns and renounce orgies.
