Why? His untimely death “left the empire without a master, and without an heir, in a state of perplexity and danger which, in the space of four-score years, had never been experienced, since the election of Diocletian.” Then, too, it’s hardly plausible that Julian’s revival of the deities of Olympus might have somehow replaced Christianity after the vindictive emperor had stripped the Christians of everything that made them respectable in the eyes of the world-especially since even Gibbon recognized that Julian became an advocate of paganism only because “in the defense of the weaker cause, his learning and ingenuity might be more advantageously exercised and displayed.” “The triumph of Christianity, and the calamities of the empire, may, in some measure, be ascribed to Julian himself,” the historian wrote. In The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776–88), Edward Gibbon actually blamed Julian for discrediting the paganism of which he was so fond. “In fact, when policies are reconsidered against the processes which actually made the Empire Christian, it quickly becomes clear that they stood a very real chance of success.” For Heather, Julian’s reign “represents a moment when the rising tide of Christianity might really have been turned.” Yet Heather, whose sense of the ridiculous is rather limited, offers the possibility with an almost wistful gravity. “Modern scholarship,” he writes in the introduction of Christendom: The Triumph of a Religion AD 300–1300, “still tends to dismiss as utterly hopeless the anti-Christian efforts of the last pagan Roman emperor, Julian while alternative non-Nicene Christianities of the late Roman period generally rate no more than a few footnotes.” The idea of Julian the Apostate winning out against Constantine is an amusing counterfactual, rather like Saki’s novel, When William Came (1913), depicting the Hohenzollerns prevailing against George V and the House of Windsor. Peter Heather, professor of medieval history at King’s College London, sees the triumph of Christianity as much more dubious. By the end of his civilization he had discovered that a man cannot enjoy himself and continue to enjoy anything else.” “The pagan set out, with admirable sense, to enjoy himself. “The great psychological discovery of Paganism, which turned it into Christianity, can be expressed with some accuracy in one phrase,” he wrote. Chesterton makes this point memorably in his 1905 book Heretics. How did the Catholic Church manage to extend its dominion over such a vast territory? Most Catholics would say that it was faith, hope, and charity that made Christianity so attractive to the first-century Mediterranean, mired as it was in despondent hedonism, as well as the other lands to which Christianity came. 704 pp., $40)įrom its inception in Constantine’s Roman Empire to the High Middle Ages of the fourteenth century, Christendom stretched over a massive swath of land, including not only North Africa and Europe but also Scandinavia and the Baltic States. Rising Tide extends Beyond Earth to new frontiers on the planet’s surface and beneath its seas, adding even more choices and diplomatic options as you continue to build “just one more turn” toward a new vision for the future of humanity.Christendom: The Triumph of a Religion, AD 300–1300, by Peter Heather (Knopf. Now, many decades after their first landfall on a new planet, the proud survivors of the first expeditions beyond Earth look up to see the skies darkened by a new breed of pioneers.īeyond Earth extended the Civilization franchise from its historical setting into the possible futures of science fiction. These newcomers were grounded not in the idealism of their predecessors, but on opportunism, resilience, ruthlessness, and above all a commitment to their own survival. From this tumultuous time, two new factions arose. Those left behind fell into a violent struggle over the quickly-diminishing resources on their barren home world. After the first wave of great colony ships departed Earth, the jubilation of humanity was short-lived.
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