[Buddha-l] Religious Persecution

[curt]

L.S. Cousins wrote:
> Curt,
>
> Are you not overstating the case somewhat here ? I am not convinced 
> that Constantine engaged in 'systematic and systemic violent 
> intolerance'. Even Theodosius did not do that. Otherwise we would not 
> see the continuation of the schools of pagan philosophy in Athens 
> until long after this and e.g. the temples in Greece would not have 
> lasted as long as they did.
>
> It seems to me more a case of a slowly growing infection that 
> gradually got worse in both Christianity and Islam over the course of 
> half a millennium.
>

The problem that the Christians faced was that no one had ever tried to 
impose one and only one religion on 60 million people before. It took 
them about 200 years to get it right. This story is told quite clearly 
and calmly by Ramsay MacMullen ("the greatest historian of the Roman 
Empire alive today": 
http://www.historians.org/perspectives/issues/2001/0103/0103ann2.cfm ) 
in his book "Christianity and Paganism in the Fourth to Eighth Centuries".

The first chapter of that book is titled "Persecution", and MacMullen 
summarizes the chapter like this: "describing the determination of the 
Christian leadership to extirpate all religious alternatives, expressed 
in the silencing of Pagan sources and, beyond that, in the suppression 
of Pagan acts and practices, with increasing harshness and machinery of 
enforcement." Also of interest is MacMullen's book "Christianizing the 
Roman Empire", espcially chapter 10: "Conversion by Coercion".

You see, prior to Constantine no such thing as a "machinery of 
enforcement" for a state religion existed - since previously people had 
followed hundreds of different religions side-by-side and had always 
done so. Constantine made Pagan sacrifices illegal - this would be the 
equivalent, for Catholics, of outlawing Mass. From that time forward it 
was just a matter of ratchetting up the enforcement. Constantius, 
Constantine's successor, reiterated the ban on sacrifices in 341. In 356 
the "worship of images" was also banned. In the 380's the pace of 
violent suppression was quickening - this was when Libanius wrote his 
famous plea "For the Temples", in which he especially pleaded for the 
Sarapaeum in Alexandria - which was destroyed by Christian mobs a few 
years later.

That it took 200 years to close all the loopholes and put the finishing 
touches on the apparatus for monolithic thought-control in no way 
diminishes the guilt of the people who set the ball rolling in the first 
place. Quite the opposite. But it does reflect well on the devotion and 
stubbornness of the Pagans who refused to go without a fight.

Curt Steinmetz