Did the Roman Empire fall because of Christianity?

Great Debates
21

[QUOTE=tomndebb]
In any event, the Roman Empire was well on its way toward internal disruption before Christianity came to power–and the Christians proved to be quite as willing to use violence to attain their goals as any pagans who preceded them.
[/QUOTE]

'before Christianity came to power" ?

I take it that what you really mean is before Constantine usurped the Christian religion.for political/military goals in the 4th century CE. My objection is based on my perceived difference between real non-political Christianity that existed prior to Constantine as fractured as it may have been, and the subsequent “intellectual/documented Christianity” compromised by state interference.

Any cites for Christian violence prior to Constantine?
To be fair, any cites that pagan citizens were a factor in Rome’s administration of the empire?

22

Dutchman, I’m not sure why you ask for cites of Christian violence pre-Constantine, unless you parsed tom’s statement incorrectly. Nowhere in tom’s post is there anything that says the Christians were being violent before taking over. When he says Christians were (were, hell - ARE) as effective at using violence as the pagans that preceded them, I read it as countering the theory quoted in the OP that "replacing the traditional state religion of Rome, with its martial-heroic values, with the more pacifist and otherworldly Christianity demoralized the Romans". That theory presumes that Christianity indeed was and stayed mystical and pacifistic and its followers were some sort of Flower Children who somehow sapped the character of Roman society; but one would expect that once the religion had progressed beyond a fringe cult and into more respectable households (the kinds of people that don’t just sell everything and join a commune), the average Christian Roman soldier/officer would be as militarily effective or not, and the average Christian Roman citizen as involved or not, as any other of his/her peers, with the only trouble coming on the day that you had to sacrifice to the Emperor or to Rome itself.

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Christianity never seemed very pacific to me. Some of the bloodthirstiest wars were fought in the name of Christ.

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[QUOTE=The Flying Dutchman]
'before Christianity came to power" ?

I take it that what you really mean is before Constantine usurped the Christian religion.for political/military goals in the 4th century CE. My objection is based on my perceived difference between real non-political Christianity that existed prior to Constantine as fractured as it may have been, and the subsequent “intellectual/documented Christianity” compromised by state interference.

Any cites for Christian violence prior to Constantine?
To be fair, any cites that pagan citizens were a factor in Rome’s administration of the empire?
[/QUOTE]
Whatever usurpation Constantine may have performed, there is no record of the Christians of the time telling him to leave them alone so that they could return to their more pure religion.

I would not claim that Christianity “came to power” under Constatine, anyway. I would place that phenomenon during the reign of his last surviving son, Constantius, whose reign was marked by frequent riots between the Arians and Trinitarians and by the frequent involvement of the emperor in councils and declamations of doctrine. At that point, the Christian movement had achieved sufficient power to compel the attentions of the “secular” emperor (and many of his subordinate rulers) in purely theological disputes. Once Theodosius I named (Trinitarian) Christianity the official religion of the empire, he began to actively suppress the advocates of Arian belief. While that suppression hardly rose to the level of Diocletian-like persecution, it was no gentle remonstrance and call to the faith. Once Arianism had been suppressed, he turned his attention to paganism and launched a campaign to destroy all the active pagan temples in the empire as well as establishing several forms of pagan worship to be crimes against the king (hence, capital).

While it may be comforting to look on such actions as the mere corruption of belief in support of the power of the state, it is notable that no Christian preacher or author expressed resevations about his actions. They appear to have been quite comfortable letting the secular power sweep away any unbelievers.

At any rate, most historians note the reforms of Diocletian to be attempts to stave off the impending internal collapse of the empire and his actions, (including the last great persecution of Christians) occurred before the secular balance of power shifted from pagans to Christians, which is all that I really was saying.

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Tiridates III, king of Armenia, was converted to Christianity in 301 and made it the state religion. The rest of his reign was mainly concerned with battling those who refused to abandon paganism, and destroying the country’s pagan heritage.

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[QUOTE=Lust4Life]
Personally I believe the three main causes of Romes downfall were more aggressive warrior nomads assaulting and taking over the territory of the nomadic tribes to their West,and “domino theory like” they in turn were forced to attack the tribes to THEIR West and so on until it impinged on the Roman empires borders.(I have no cite but it may have been because of an out break of the “Black Death” on the Mongolian plains.)
They had I believe a technological superiority over the Romans in that they had stirrups and composite bows ,but I might be wrong on that one.
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Not so much technological superiority as superior tactics on the part of the Huns. Even the late Roman legions were more trained for set-piece infantry battles, not against the light cavalry skirmish tactics used by tribes like the Huns. More importantly, though, was the mobility that the legions lacked. Raiders into the Empire could strike where they willed, whereas the defenders were constrained in how quickly they could respond. The later Empire had reduced funding for its military, but more territory to defend. The outcome of that was rather inevitable, no matter whether they faced attackers with stirrups or without.

[QUOTE=Lust4Life]
Secondly the succession system for the emperors was basically based on luck and violence .
So there was as such ,no loyalty to Rome itself but merely an allegiance to your personal “Mafia Boss”,so internicine struggles would carry on right up to (and sometimes beyond ) a barbarian invasion.
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This occurred in the succession from the very beginning of the Empire, and on into the Byzantine Empire much after the fall. You may as well attribute the fall to “bad luck”.

[QUOTE=Lust4Life]
I think the last ,and possibly the most important reason for Romes decline was,after centuries of relying on slave labour the Romans ,even without slaves had lost the knack of innovation in agriculture,industry and trade.
The first known steam engine was invented by Hero of Alexandria but was used only as a toy because there wasn’t any need for it in an abundant "free"manpower economy.
My own belief is that Romes legacy of slavery dragged them down in the end ,the sins of the fathers …
[/QUOTE]

By the downfall of the western empire, slavery was pretty much a dead business. It was too expensive, when cheaper alternatives for labor existed – leading to the serf system. And it’s pointless to say that romans had lost the knack of innovation because of slavery – slavery was present in the Roman culture throughout its period of innovation, as it was present in nearly every other conteporary culture.

Although I’m of the opinion that much of Rome’s “innovation” was in more effectively using the innovations of other (slave-owning) cultures.

Hero’s aeolipile is irrelevant, here. Even had there been a need for industrialization, the infrastructure and support technology to exploit steam power wouldn’t be around for many centuries to come. It remained a toy because that’s all they could use it for.

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Legends, lies & cherished myths of world history by Richard Shenkman has a good perspective. Really we would have to say on X date the Empire ended and probably the Date we picked, and then we would probably need to agree that there were many causes and argue how important each relatively was.

Since this is Great Debates I will say that I think the slave system was breaking down & that was an under rated and overlooked cause of what we see in the late Empire/Early Medieval transition:

*Christianity certainly had a huge role in this.

*So did allowing people, who at best would be an adjunct force to a Legion of Italians 1-2-3 Hundred years before - if they were allowed to remain armed at all - be the whole show.

*Further new slaves poured into the Empire during the Early and Classical Empire period due to new conquests. By the late empire there were no new conquests, the Army was basically on border patrol. This caused the price of a slave to gradually skyrocket. And free labor and primitive sharecropping/serfdom (especially in Europe) a reasonable alternative.

Slaves were a HUGE percentage in the population of the Empire at least a quarter but maybe even higher. This fundemantal change in thier relative status from (picking dates from the air 250ish CE to 426) over the 200ish year death spiral of the Empire in a recognizable form is critical.

28

Something that no one has mentioned yet is that the German tribes that overran the western Roman empire were Christians too, albiet not Roman Catholic but Arian. The Goths had been converted to Arian christianity by Ulfilas, the “Apostle to the Goths”. Much of the destructive wars of the 5th and 6th centuries CE were sectarian conflicts between Catholic and Arian Christians.

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[QUOTE=Can Handle the Truth]
Something that no one has mentioned yet is that the German tribes that overran the western Roman empire were Christians too, albiet not Roman Catholic but Arian. The Goths had been converted to Arian christianity by Ulfilas, the “Apostle to the Goths”. Much of the destructive wars of the 5th and 6th centuries CE were sectarian conflicts between Catholic and Arian Christians.
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Hey woah, I did so mention this, well mostly, in post 11.

Also, hey woah, Christians were still a minority in the empire when Constantine became one. If he ‘usurped’ Christianity by converting (no true Scotsman, anyone?), it was not from some extremely shrewd political motivation; Christians had absolutely no political power in 312 ce. Constantine was already a ‘solar monotheist’ and after his conversion to Christianity he appears to have assimilated his Christian belief within that context.

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QUOTE:One historian I read said that it’s possible to view the rise of feudalism in Western Europe as a struggle to invent an economic structure capable of supporting a cavalry force on an agricultural base. The fact that the knightly virtues were called “horsemanship”, i.e. “chivalry”, is an indication of just how central to feudalism the mounted warrior was.
Very interesting: I think that fedalism began with the edicts of emperor Diocletian-he fixed prices and bound Romans into social classes-in an effort to stop the empire’s decline. This was the underpinnings of feudalism. AS far as I know, AD 525 marked the end of the Western Empire-even though the Byzantine Emperors attempted to re-establish the old Roman empire inb the west. :mad:

31

A history professor at U.N.Colo. back in the early '80s contended Rome fell because it was, from the very beginning, on an “expansion arc” that rose as long as there were resources to continue conquest and expansion; peaked when the efficiency of administration in the capital equalled the efficiency of oppression in the field; and fell when expenditures at home outstripped the pace of expansion (which slowed the further afield the military had to go to find new conquests.) He also contended that the Spanish and British empires suffered similar fates, and that the United States was on an expansion arc as well.

Of course, that’s a thumbnail simplification of a semester of college history, but that’s how I understood it. Most of what I have read casually and seen on television (i.e. History, Discovery channels) bears that out, but that could be because my mind makes everything I read and hear conform to that arc first explained by that professor. At no time during the semester did the processor hint that Christianity might have had something to do with Rome’s downward arc.

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Well and good Sunrazor, but a society’s arc need not be its destiny. I think that Constantine recognized that Rome was reaching the end of what was possible by continuation of a conquest/expansion arc and was attempting to use Christianity as a means to try to develop a different paradigm. As pointed out, this approach was indeed somewhat successful in the Eastern Empire, it just was just too late to make the transition work for the Western Empire. (A parallel can be made with corporate structures today: many a company has done well during rapid expansion phases only to fail in making the transition to becoming an established company. Sometimes they too retreat and emerge successfully as smaller entities. None can expand forever.)

A hijack: anyone with good examples of cultures that well made that transition from expansionist to stable non-expansionist societies? What allowed them to do it other than becoming smaller? (The colonial powers retreated; maybe the Manchurians who went from nomadic invaders to rulers of all of China for a few hundred years?)

33

[QUOTE=DSeid]
Well and good Sunrazor, but a society’s arc need not be its destiny. I think that Constantine recognized that Rome was reaching the end of what was possible by continuation of a conquest/expansion arc and was attempting to use Christianity as a means to try to develop a different paradigm. As pointed out, this approach was indeed somewhat successful in the Eastern Empire, it just was just too late to make the transition work for the Western Empire.
[/QUOTE]

I think that’s implausible. Constantine became a Christian, but there is no evidence that he ‘used’ Christianity to change anything fundamental in the structure of the empire. That happened much more gradually. He did not undertake ‘Christian reforms’ or anything - in contrast to, say, the (attempted, at least) entirely ‘pagan’ in character reforms of Diocletian.

Constantine also spent much of his time in the East, founding Constantinople and whatnot. Most of the Roman emperors after him did too. In the century after Constantine, there was vicious fighting between different Christian factions all throughout the East. The Christianised Byzantine state does not really follow this ‘paradigm’ until Justinian, who came to power quite a while after the western empire ‘fell’, to Christian invaders.

The ‘cause’ of the ‘decline and fall’ simply cannot be pinned on any one thing - except perhaps Rome’s army becoming unable to defend properly against newly strengthened invading forces.

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[QUOTE=Sunrazor]
A history professor at U.N.Colo. back in the early '80s contended Rome fell because it was, from the very beginning, on an “expansion arc” that rose as long as there were resources to continue conquest and expansion; peaked when the efficiency of administration in the capital equalled the efficiency of oppression in the field; and fell when expenditures at home outstripped the pace of expansion (which slowed the further afield the military had to go to find new conquests.) He also contended that the Spanish and British empires suffered similar fates, and that the United States was on an expansion arc as well.

Of course, that’s a thumbnail simplification of a semester of college history, but that’s how I understood it. Most of what I have read casually and seen on television (i.e. History, Discovery channels) bears that out, but that could be because my mind makes everything I read and hear conform to that arc first explained by that professor. At no time during the semester did the processor hint that Christianity might have had something to do with Rome’s downward arc.
[/QUOTE]

I think this idea is essentially true-Rome was at its most vigorous when it was expanding-expansion meant conquest, gold and silver, and (more importantly) more slaves for the aristocrat’s estates! Rome ran on slavery, and conquest kept it going. Note that the emperors who tried to set limits to Rome (like Trajan, hadrian, etc.0 usually were followed by emperors who attempted conquest. the problem was, Rome was running out of (profitable) areas to conquer-they had Brittania, but stopped at Scotland (Caledonia) because Scot land wasn’t worth it-the same with germania. In the east, they were blocked by the vast distances and deserts (which made the conquest of parthis very difficult)-and the Roman infantry was ill-equipped to fight cavalrymen. When all is said and done, Rome could onl;y exist as long as it could keep on expanding-when it stopped, it began its long decline. As for Christianity. most Christian theologians considered the fall of Rome to be a GOOD thing, and one that was desireable. Could Rome (under other circumstances) survived into medieval times? Quite posibly.

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[QUOTE=ralph124c]
I think this idea is essentially true-Rome was at its most vigorous when it was expanding-expansion meant conquest, gold and silver, and (more importantly) more slaves for the aristocrat’s estates! Rome ran on slavery, and conquest kept it going. Note that the emperors who tried to set limits to Rome (like Trajan, hadrian, etc.0 usually were followed by emperors who attempted conquest.
[/QUOTE]

Just a small point: Trajan was widely, and positively, viewed during and after his reign as an ‘expansionist’ and the empire reached its widest geographical boundaries under him. These quickly proved ‘too hot to handle’ and Hadrian was perceived as a ‘contractor’ though this is really not the case either, he was more of a ‘demarcator’.

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[QUOTE=ralph124c]
I think this idea is essentially true-Rome was at its most vigorous when it was expanding-expansion meant conquest, gold and silver, and (more importantly) more slaves for the aristocrat’s estates! Rome ran on slavery, and conquest kept it going…
[/QUOTE]

Again, this suggestion that slavery was behind the rise and fall of Rome – is there some support for this that somebody could cite, because it just doesn’t seem plausible.

The heart of the empire wasn’t lacking in slaves even back in the days of the republic, and since the slaves were reproducing themselves, there shouldn’t have been much decline in their number. Importing slaves as the main profit from conquest just wouldn’t be financially or logistically plausible – except for skilled slaves (higher value). And skilled slaves, like most high-end consumer goods, aren’t something that would drive conquest. By the time of the “fall”, slavery wasn’t even a profitable concern, anymore; Rome no longer ran on slavery.

It’s much more reasonable that what Rome got out of its conquests was what it needed the most: food and taxes (or tribute). Those are commodities much more easily transported, and much more easily sustained. (If you conquer someone to get slaves, you can’t go back year after year for more slaves; you can go back year after year to collect taxes.)

Rome did have an ever-expanding need for conquest. It’s ever-expanding borders were ever-more expensive to defend – and inflation kept those costs going up and up. Also, one of the sure ways to get ahead in Roman politics was through military victories – another excuse to go out and conquer was to get back to Rome and exploit the political capital of that conquest. But conquest because some patrician wanted a barbarian slave woman of his own just like ol’ Sextus had? I’m not seeing that.

37

Cites for lightray:

http://www.tamos.net/~rhay/romefall.html
Skyrocking costs and loss of Slaves in a Pop-History book

History 221 that touches on it
http://faculty.oxy.edu/horowitz/courses/Hist221/rise_and_fall_of_the_roman_empir.htm

Social Changes and Costs (and Christiianity) in the decline of Slavery – on the Rome website (really – but they used real HistoriansTM and ExpertsTM)

http://abacus.bates.edu/~mimber/Rciv/slavery.htm
Agrees with you that breeding is where the Slaves are but notes the importance of expansion in slave trading. Further notes (importantly -YMMV):
In the century between Cicero and Tiberius, Romans needed 100,000 new slaves per year to satisfy manpower needs. Compare this to the record of American slave holders who averaged about 30,000 new slaves a year (with peaks of 60,000 at the height of the regime).
Really all I can say for sure:

~25% -& maybe more of the population of the Empire was Slaves
Christianity changed the way Romans viewed Slaves
Slaves leagal status was a constant and ongoing legistaed at empire’s end --suggesting instability
By the late Empire the price of slaves was increasing and cheap “free” labor became more attractive
Slavery as the Romans knew it disappeared roughly along with the Western Empire

Can I say that it was Slavery’s collapse that ended the Empire and not the other way around – nope. I wouldn’t even if I could – I merely think it was a factor among many reasons that the Empire ended.

38

I think DaphneBlack sums it up nicely. There’s just no one thing that you can pinpoint. There were a hundred reasons for the rise of Rome, and no doubt as many for its fall.

And in the end, luck probably played its part. So many times Rome flirted with subjugation or extinction in war, only to have its bacon pulled from the fire by this or that brilliant general, by a trick of geography, a clever innovation or a moment’s heroism in the right place at the right time. We can find reasons to explain the trends beneath these occurrences: that social upward mobility allowed these generals to appear in the first place, or that an effectively middle-class agrarian system provided the backbone of an early superb infantry, or et cetera. But the truth is that there’s only so many times you can take fifty thousand men and break an army numbering a quarter million: sooner or later you’re going to lose. If you lose too many in a row, you’re out of the game.

After a thousand years, luck runs out. Too many generals aren’t a Marius or an Africanus, too many battles go the wrong way, too many emperors choose caution and lack the audacity or strength of their forefathers, and an empire that might have recovered instead got its capital sacked one too many times.

On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero, empires included.

39

Thanks for the cites, jimmmy; that certainly is a higher annual requirement for new slaves than I’d’ve expected to see. But I remain skeptical that slavery was a major cause of Rome’s prosperity. There’s support there for slavery causing the lower classes to be largely underemployed (up until they became serfs); needing to support an underclass that can’t support itself wouldn’t have helped the empire prosper.

The last link’s comments on slaves becoming necessary status-symbols suggests to me that slave prices may have been inflated beyond the practical benefit from having slaves (like many other costs to the later empire). When new slaves stopped coming to market, the entire system suffered financial ruin. That’s an economic bubble, familiar to anyone who’s watched stock markets. It’d certainly be a resonable hypothesis that the empire fell because most of it’s economy was operating as a bubble market.

40

Other factors (in the fall of the Empire):
-the rise of welfare (“bread and circuses”); as slavery displaced freemen, the freemen became welfare recipients; this cost the treasury dearly, and was a factor in the hyperinflation of the 3rd century

  • necessity of grain importation; Italy could not feed itself, imports of grain from gaul and Egypt were necessary to feed the population
    -unstable finances; later emperors relied upon inflation and ruinous taxation to pay the army
    -technological stagnation: Rome NEVER went beyond the footsoldier, and never developed the stirrup. lack of stirrups meant that a cavalryman could not carry heavy lances, or shoot arrows while mounted
    -importation of religious cults (like Mithraeism, cult of isis, etc.0; lack of adherence to old Rom,an religion favored disunity
    -loss of trade: as the empire shrank, piracy emereged 9in the 4th century0; this reduced trade and tax revenue; eventually, roads became dangerous and trade reverted to barter between villages 9early feudalism)
    Question: did Roman customs survive in small enclaves? like mountain valleys in Helvetia? it would be interesting to see a Roman legion appearing to do battle with medieval footsoldiers!