The Empire had been divided into Eastern and Western halves, and Constantine picked the East for his 'New Rome' at Constantinople.
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| East vs West: How Christianity split the Empire |
The switch to an alien belief system undoubtedly contributed to the West's downfall, though historians still can't agree why.
Some say Christian pacifism—all that stuff about 'turning the other cheek'—meant the Romans no longer had the stomach to defend their Empire, while Christian asceticism meant they stopped producing enough bastards to fight their wars.
The Christians also introduced the concept of a heavenly afterlife available to believers, in contrast to the pagan Greeks and Romans, who never really worked out what fate awaited them in Hades (though everyone knew the door to the Underworld was near Pompeii, amid the 'Fields of Fire').
'In Christianity, no matter how miserable your life, you had hopes and aspirations that if you did the right things, your afterlife would be a much better world,' Dr. Varone says.
'But in paganism, if you had a miserable life where you got screwed over your entire life, that was it—it ended there. You had just been screwed over for your entire life.'
CHRISTIANIZING THE EMPIRE
In The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Edward Gibbon argued that the Christian hope of the hereafter encouraged Westerners to neglect the here and now.
However, subsequent historians have noted that the more orthodox Eastern Roman Empire actually outlived the Western half by a thousand years (there's even a contrarian argument that Christianity ensured the Empire's 'salvation' and continuity via the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Churches).
In any event, the new religion definitely had an impact on popular thought. In contrast to the pagans, the early Christians protested against sexual exploitation.
Around 155 AD, one of Christianity's earliest philosophers, Justin, denounced the Empire for profiting from the prostitution of children who were abandoned by their parents or even raised specifically for that purpose.
'Anyone who uses such persons… may possibly be having intercourse with his own child, or relative, or brother. And there are some who prostitute even their own children and wives, and some are openly mutilated for the purpose of sodomy; and they refer these mysteries to the mother of the gods.'
As his nickname indicates, Justin the Martyr didn't have much immediate success, but arguments like his eventually inspired change.
The Christianized Empire abolished Caligula's tax on prostitution and began targeting pimps—who used the levy to justify their trade—as 'degenerate and wicked character(s).' These measures weren't completely effective, but they marked the first attempts to improve the lot of prostitutes.
The question of what to do with prostitution has bedeviled the West ever since.
In the new capital of Constantinople (now Istanbul), Constantine reputedly tried to limit brothels to just one part of the city—an early red-light district—while the Church in Rome came to accept illicit sex as an inevitability (and a nice little earner).
'THE GIFT OF DIVINE GRACE'
Writing in the 1200s, Thomas Aquinas echoed the ancient Roman view of the sex trade, declaring that 'prostitutes in a city are like a sewer in a palace. If you get rid of the sewer, the whole place becomes filthy and foul.'
This take on the sex industry continues to shape public debate to this day.
Whereas pagan Romans lived by the code of 'once a whore always a whore,' Christianity introduced the concept of redemption, as epitomized by Mary Magdalene, the former prostitute who became one of Jesus' followers.
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| Prostitute turned saint: Titian's take on St. Mary Magdalene |
As Prof. McGinn writes, 'Whatever the internal contradictions, accommodations to practice, and continuities with the pagan world one finds in Christian moral discourse on prostitution, there is at least one important new development. This is the idea that the prostitute may be redeemed. In its extreme form, the idea represents the prostitute as an allegory of the human soul, in its fallen state, able to be saved nevertheless through the gift of divine grace.'
Dr. Varone agrees, noting that Christianity was one of many changes that led to Rome's decline.
'No empire has survived forever. They all come to an end. Christianity was just part of the history. The only empire that has lasted—at least up until now—for 2,000 years is the Catholic Church.'
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