They had just emerged from the so-called ‘Great Persecution’ under the emperor Diocletian at the end of the third century. The moment of Constantine’s conversion was tied by two Christian storytellers to a military movement against a political rival, Maxentius. The conversion was the result of either a vision or a dream in which Christ directed him to fight under Christian standards, and his victory apparently guaranteed Constantine in his faith in a new god. Constantine is counted as one of the most important of the later Roman Emperors because of Christianity. Constantine was the first Roman Emperor to support Christianity and become a Christian.
In doing this Diocletian had essentially given himself complete control over Eastern Rome. At the time of Diocletian’s rule Rome’s religious policy was to believe in whatever gods one wanted to, however it was required to throw incense on a shrine to reverence Diocletian. It is believed around 298 CE soothsayers consulted Diocletian saying that they could not read the livers of sacrifices because some of the officials present were Christian; with this
Constantine was the Emperor who reunited the Empire into one. He was the one who transferred the capital city from Rome to Constantinople. He also made Christianity the main religion of
CONSTANTINE’S RELIGIOUS POLICY Constantine’s religious policy under his reign was to keep peace throughout the whole of the Roman Empire by stopping the persecution of Christians and allowing paganism to be practised together with Christianity, as well as being a follower of Christianity and using his own power to help it spread across his empire. Constantine’s religious policy also evolved greatly throughout his reign, from being a follower of paganism to finally the emperor that was largely responsible for the spread of Christianity which is still the dominating religion in society today. Constantine’s major aspect of his religious policy was his attitude towards Christians. Constantine himself was a Christian, the first Christian Roman Emperor, and was the one that formally ended what is known as the “Great Persecution of Christians”, which happened (approximately) around AD 303. However, he did not just stop the persecution, but went far further and gave the Catholic Church finances it needed in order to spread around the Roman Empire.
The Church of San Vitale is a church located in Ravenna, Italy, and is an example of early Christian Byzantine Art and architecture in Western Europe. Completed in 546 CE by the 27th bishop of Ravenna, the building plan is octagonal, and a combination of Roman and Byzantine architecture. A prominent Roman element of the plan includes a dome that encloses the top of the structure. In addition, the plan’s stepped towers and the shape of its’ doorways are distinctly Roman. Its’ Byzantine elements include polygonal apse capitals and narrow bricks.
Occurring predominantly in Europe and the Middle East, the Crusades began in 1095 and officially ended in 1291 (History.com staff, 2010). This being said, the causes can be traced back to 1081 when Alexius Comnenus gained the Byzantine throne, becoming Emperor Alexius I, after years of chaos and invasions by the Seljuk Turks (History.com staff, 2010). In due time Emperor Alexius would begin to set his sights on reclaiming the Holy Land from the Muslims. Seeing that this task would require more than the Byzantine’s men, he reached out to Pope Urban II of the Roman Catholic Church asking him for troops (History.com staff, 2010). The Pope made his decision public at the 1095 Council of Clermont in Southern France where he raised the proposal for all able Western Christians to raise arms to aid the Byzantines.
The Byzantine Empire and its most important contributions to the Western Civilization will be explained in the following essay. Where and how it began. What laws they implemented. And lastly, what they contributed to Christianity. In the mid to late 500’s, the Roman Empire was divided up into four groups.
Within this essay three different authors’ interpretations of three topics will be discussed: Christianity and its effect on the Western Empire, barbarians affect on the Roman military, and the splitting of the empire. It is important to note that the Western empire did not fall overnight, the empire succumbed to a gradual breakdown of political, economic, and social institutions over the course of four hundred years. A brief abridgment of the fall of the Western Empire can begin with the Teutoburg Forrest in 9 CE. The crushing defeat the Roman forces is the earliest sign of events that lead to the Western Empires demise. Roman expansion into Germanic territories was essentially halted and the assimilation of the Germanic tribes was a failure.
The history of Serbian Orthodox Church The Serbian Orthodox Church is an autocephalous, or ecclesiastically independent, member of the Orthodox communion, located primarily in Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia. Since many Serbs have emigrated to foreign countries, now there are now many Serbian Orthodox communities on all continents.Soon after their arrrival to Balkans the Serbian tribes were successively baptised by Christian missionaries and became Orthodox Christians. The consecration of St. Sava as autocephalous Archbishop of Serbia in 1219, even more strengthened various Serbian principalities in their ecclesia- stical allegiance to Constantinople and Christian East. Later, as the medieval kingdom of Serbia grew in size and prestige and Stefan Dusan, king of Serbia from 1331, assumed the imperial title of tsar in 1346 to 1355, the Archbishopric of Pec was correspondingly raised to the rank of Patriarchate. The period before the arrival of the Turks was the time of the greatest flourishing of the Serbian Church.
By examining the various primary sources, lecture notes, and textbook, I conclude that the Roman world was transformed by the way people understood the relationship between religion and the state during this period because each leader believed in a different way to bring success and dominance over Western Europe causing Christianity to evolve in the Roman Empire. From 284 to 305 CE, Diocletian ruled as emperor of the Eastern Empire. Diocletian “appointed three men to share his rule” creating a tetrarchy government to provide more effectual governance over the empire by balancing authority and territory. He convened for Lactantius, master of Latin rhetoric, to teach rhetoric at the imperial government and to manage the “Latinity of the imperial court’s official documents;” thus making Lactantius an important eyewitness to Diocletian’s reign. According to Lactantius’s On the Deaths of the Persecutors, in February 303 CE, Diocletian launched the last persecution of Christians which denied Christians of all legal rights.