Mercy, Charity, and Asceticism Became Common in Roman Society
“The Christians support not only their poor,” complained pagan emperor Julian, “but ours as well.”
The Spread of Christianity
By the fifth century, Christianization of the Roman Empire encompassed the majority of its 60–70 million people.
Did Roman Men prefer Christian Women?
Some historians think that it is one reason why Christianity spreads so fast. The early church was so especially attractive to women that in 370 the Emperor Valentinian issued a written order to Pope Damasus I requiring the Christian missionaries to cease calling at the homes of pagan women.
Early Christianity was highly appealing and was teaching women ideas similar to ideas that had previously been exclusively reserved for the philosophical schools.
Resurrection of Christ
Romans had secular accounts and historical evidence on the existence and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth.
Flavius Josephus (AD 37-100), was a Jewish historian He wrote: Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man, for he was a doer of wonderful works, a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews and many of the Gentiles. He was the Christ, and when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men among us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him; for he appeared to them alive again the third day; as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him. And the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct at this day (Antiquities of the Jews, XVIII, 33).
Roman christian women, even though illiterate, were regarded as the “true philosophers” (theologians) over against the false philosophical schools associated with pagan thought. Actually, their knowledge of events recorded in the New Testament was corroborating the historical evidence that historians in the ancient Roman world wrote under the authority of governing officials.
For instance, in circa AD 52, Thallus, a secular historian, comments about the darkness that enveloped the land during the late afternoon hours when Jesus died on the cross. The importance of Tallus’ comments is that it shows the Gospel accounts of the darkness that fell across the earth during Christ’s crucifixion were well known. Another examples is Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus, a Roman historian and court official during the reign of Emperor Hadrian. He reports that christans were suffering for their faith and dying for their conviction that Jesus had lived, died, and literally arose from the dead!
All this generated debate within all levels of Roman society, an interaction that swept away the old distinction between the educated elite and the masses, creating new practices such as “the extensive social welfare program” of the churches. The content of Christianity was at the center of this age, contributing to both a “social revolution” and an “intellectual revolution” which then changed the “moral texture of the late Roman world.
Man Made in the Image of God
This new way of thinking and believing involved a fundamental reorganization in the ways people thought about themselves and others” through a conscious dismantling of concepts of hierarchy and power:
The letters of Paul, begins with a baptismal formula, which says in Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, neither male nor female, neither slave nor free.
Pliny the Younger and others demonstrates that early Christian communities were, in fact, highly inclusive in terms of social stratification and other social categories, much more so than were the Roman voluntary associations. From the beginning, the Pauline communities cut across the social ranks. This conscious dismantling of concepts of hierarchy and power was imposed by Paul the Apostle. His understanding of the meaning of the Crucifixion of Jesus and the paradox of Christ created a new order unprecedented in classical society.
The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world!
Christian teachings made “love of wisdom” and ethics available to ordinary women who might not even have known how to read. It provided them with a unique “sense of belonging” ‘Christians were in a more than formal sense ‘members one of another’
Their habits of giving were originally part of what broke down the traditional social boundaries, as all believers, of all classes, contributed to care for the poor, the church, and the clergy.
Christians in the ancient world were joyful, had better lives, and longer life expectancies than did their pagan neighbors. Many pagans were attracted to the Christian faith because the church produced blessings for the faithful.
So, its quite plausible that roman men preferred marrying christian women over pagans, leading to their own conversion and the spread of Christianity.
Roman men could see that Christian women find their inspiration and example in the Blessed Mother. As late Cardinal Joseph Mindszenty puts it:
The most important person on earth is a mother. She cannot claim the honor of having built Notre Dame Cathedral. She need not. She has built something more magnificent than any cathedral – a dwelling for an immortal soul, the tiny perfection of her baby’s body. The angels have not been blessed with such a grace. They cannot share in God’s creative miracle to bring new saints to Heaven. Only a human mother can. Mothers are closer to God the Creator than any other creatures. God joins forces with mothers in performing this act of creation. What on God’s good earth is more glorious than this: to be a mother?
