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In the year before the First Council of Constantinople in 381, Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire when Theodosius I, emperor of the East, Gratian, emperor of the West, and Gratian's junior co-ruler Valentinian II issued the Edict of Thessalonica in 380, [1] which recognized the catholic orthodoxy [a] of Nicene Christians as the Roman Empire's state religion.
Religion in Graeco-Roman times differed from religion in modern times. In the early Roman Empire religion was polytheistic and local. It was not focused on the individual but was focused on the good of the city: it was a civic religion in which ritual was the main form of worship.
A. N. Sherwin-White records that serious discussion of the reasons for Roman persecution of Christians began in 1890 when it produced "20 years of controversy" and three main opinions: first, there was the theory held by most French and Belgian scholars that "there was a general enactment, precisely formulated and valid for the whole empire, which forbade the practice of the Christian religion.
Roman investigations into early Christianity found it an irreligious, novel, disobedient, even atheistic sub-sect of Judaism: it appeared to deny all forms of religion and was therefore superstitio. By the end of the Imperial era, Nicene Christianity was the one permitted Roman religio; all other cults were heretical or pagan superstitiones. [187]
The gradual rise of Germanic Christianity was, at times, voluntary, particularly amongst groups associated with the Roman Empire. From the 6th century AD, Germanic tribes were converted (and re-converted) by missionaries of the Catholic Church. [citation needed] Many Goths converted to Christianity as individuals outside the Roman Empire.
Christianity in the 4th century was dominated in its early stage by Constantine the Great and the First Council of Nicaea of 325, which was the beginning of the period of the First seven Ecumenical Councils (325–787), and in its late stage by the Edict of Thessalonica of 380, which made Nicene Christianity the state church of the Roman Empire.
During this period, there was an awareness that Christianity had existed in Roman Britain. [62] Gildas , a British Christian monk living somewhere in Western Britain during the sixth century CE, discussed the issue in his De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae ("The Ruin and Conquest of Britain"). [ 62 ]
The general significance of Jerusalem to Christians entered a period of decline during the persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire. According to Eusebius, Jerusalem Christians escaped to Pella, in the Decapolis (Transjordan), at the beginning of the First Jewish–Roman War in AD 66. [88]