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The Triumph of Christianity over Paganism, a painting by Gustave Doré (1899). Paganism is commonly used to refer to various religions that existed during Antiquity and the Middle Ages, such as the Greco-Roman religions of the Roman Empire, including the Roman imperial cult, the various mystery religions, religious philosophies such as Neoplatonism and Gnosticism, and more localized ethnic ...
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 pagans who attributed the misfortunes of Rome and its wider Empire to the rise of Christianity, and who could only see a restoration by a return to the old ways, [19] [26] were faced by the Christian Church that had set itself apart from that faith and was unwilling to dilute what it held to be the religion of the "one true God". [27]
The Roman emperors used syncretism to help unite the expanding empire. [10] Social conversion to Christianity happened all over Europe. It became even more effective when missionaries concurred with established cultural traditions and interlaced them into a fundamentally Christian synthesis. [11]
Christianity then rapidly grew in the 4th century - Rodney Stark estimated that Christians accounted for 56.5% of the Roman population by 350. [27] According to Will Durant, the Christian Church prevailed over paganism because it offered a much more attractive doctrine and because the church leaders addressed human needs better than their ...
The Christian cross on the chin and forehead was intended to "deconsecrate" a holy pagan artifact. Found in the Agora of Athens. National Archaeological Museum in Athens. Persecution of pagans in the late Roman Empire began during the reign of Constantine the Great (r.
Map of the Roman Empire with the distribution of Christian congregations of the first three centuries AD. The growth of early Christianity from its obscure origin c. AD 40, with fewer than 1,000 followers, to being the majority religion of the entire Roman Empire by AD 400, has been examined through a wide variety of historiographical approaches.
The "stranglehold of the workshop" meant that the first Christian artworks were heavily based on pagan art, and "a few alterations in costume and attitude transformed a pagan scene into a Christian picture". [42] A series of scholars have since discussed possible similarities with Mithraic reliefs in medieval Romanesque art.