How do we get maximal religious diversity in post-Roman Europe?

Exactly what the question is? What scenarios can we cook up that will create a Europe chock full of religious diversity, after the fall of the Roman Empire? This diversity can be both intra-religion (say, a Christianity where groups such as the Cathars and such gain a permanent foothoold) and inter-religious (with multiple coexisting and/or competing religons). Well, more than historically occurred in Christendom, at least.
 
The more diversity among Christians would be a good start. Let's begin with some Germanic kingdoms not converting to Catholicism, keeping Arianism as their religion and being more successful in converting local population. Keep those kingdoms (both Arian and Catholic ones) survive longer, without one dominating the others (like the Francs) to enforce their version of Christianity.
Then some kind of earlier conflict beween Roman and Byzantine version of Christianity, and we already have Catholicism and Orthodoxy (probably somewhat different than OTL versions); perhaps also Celtic Christianity might become more separated from Catholicism, especially if the separation is longer due to Arian kingdom separating Rome from Britain.
Arabs might be somewhat successsful in conquering part of Iberia (but I do not want to eliminate Arian Visgoths) and we have Islam.
Pagans, confused with so many versions of Christianity (and because of lack of one powerful Christian state to encourage or even enforce convertions) are much harder to convert and paganism still thrives in many regions of Europe, although various tribes might "borrow" some Christain elements and enrich their religions with them (I think the Slavs in X-XIth century might have done something like that before Christianization).
And if the Khazars surivive we've got strong Judaism too....

And behold, some missionaries come to eastern Europe talking about someone called Buddha? :rolleyes:
 

GeographyDude

Gone Fishin'
I'm thinking medicine as a major joint project and let me paint one scenario. Okay, well before Jenner and cowpox, let's say people circulated smallpox scabs earlier than is documented by writing, which is possible. The problem is that the potency varies widely. It may be too little for a good vaccine, or it may be too much. The beauty of cowpox is that it has a medium virulence. Please remember, Rome does have a medical tradition with Galen living from c. 130 AD - c. 210 AD. So, let's say after the date traditionally given for the fall of the Western Roman Empire of 476, let's say a Pagan doctor notices and announces to colleagues that cowpox seems to make people immune to smallpox. And then it's a Christian lady at another medical university who figures out the first couple of steps to test and develop this, and a heck of a lot more ethically than Jenner did. And the Pagan doctor figures out the next couple of steps. And this mix of competition and collaboration between at least two different research centers often really leads to advancements in a field.

And all microbiology is, is grinding lenses and growing things in petri dishes. And it's building up an intellectual framework and noticing such things as, hey, wait a minute, these contaminated dishes where common molds seem to inhibit bacterial growth, this is potentially highly, highly useful.

And maybe as early as 675, Muslim physicians get into the act and do some of the middle work in understanding antibiotic resistance. And it becomes a culture norm that once a person starts an antibiotic, you really need to complete the entire week or ten days. And maybe as early as 800, ideas about probiotics are developed, if no other reason than neutral bacteria take up available real estate and take infection less likely. And taking yogurt while you take an antibiotic almost becomes a matter of common sense. And with Europe more open to Islamic ideas, and Islamic science and math, the ideas of the Renaissance both come earlier and in a sense are less needed.

Then centuries later, on an alternate history website, someone writes WI: antibiotics did not exist at the time of the black plague? And someone else writes, this is almost complete ASB since by the mid-1300s antibiotics had already existed for more than 500 years!

Without people dying from unknown causes, the world is a less boogie oogie, heebie jeebie scary place. And it's less common for a person to have the heartbreak of losing a child or even losing multiple children. Plenty of diseases and syndromes still have unknown causes. But it's like there's a big group which have known causes and a big group with unknown causes, and a there's a feeling or progress being made. People still have religious beliefs, but fewer people are obsessively religious where that's all they know about.

In the OTL, progress in such things as steam engines and railroads came before medicine. It most probably did not have to be this way.

This is the scenario in which medicine saves the world, both literally and figuratively. :)
 
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I'm thinking medicine as a major joint project and let me paint one scenario. Okay, well before Jenner and cowpox, let's say people circulated smallpox scabs earlier than is documented by writing, which is possible. The problem is that the potency varies widely. It may be too little for a good vaccine, or it may be too much. The beauty of cowpox is that it has a medium virulence. Please remember, Rome does have a medical tradition with Galen living from c. 130 AD - c. 210 AD. So, let's say after the date traditionally given for the fall of the Western Roman Empire of 476, let's say a Pagan doctor notices and announces to challenges that cowpox seems to make people immune to smallpox. And then it's a Christian lady at another medical who figures out the first couple of steps to test and develop this, and a heck of a lot more ethically than Jenner did. And the Pagan doctor figures out the next couple of steps. And this mix of competition and collaboration between at least two different research centers often really advances a technological field.

And all microbiology is, is grinding lenses and growing things in petri dishes. And it's building up an intellectual framework and noticing such things as, hey, wait a minute, these contaminated dishes where common molds seem to inhibit bacterial growth, this is potentially highly, highly useful.

And maybe as early as 675, Muslim physicians get into the act and do some of the middle work in understanding antibiotic resistance. And it becomes a culture norm that once a person starts an antibiotic, you really need to complete the entire week or ten days. And maybe as early as 800, ideas about probiotics are developed, if no other reason than neutral bacteria take up available real estate and take infection less likely. And taking yogurt while you take an antibiotic almost becomes a matter of common sense. And with Europe more open to Islamic ideas, and Islamic science and math, the ideas of the Renaissance both come earlier and in a sense are less needed.

The centuries later, on an alternate history website, someone writes WI: antibiotics did not exist at the time of the black plague? And someone else writes, this is almost complete ASB since by the mid-1300s antibiotics had already existed for more than 500 years!

Without people dying from unknown causes, the world is a less boogie oogie, heebie jeebie scary place. And it's less common for a person to have the heartbreak of losing a child or even losing multiple children. Plenty of diseases and syndromes still have unknown causes. But it's like there's a big group which have known causes and a big group with unknown causes, and a there's a feeling or progress being made. People still have religious beliefs, but fewer people are obsessively religious where that's all they know about.

In the OTL, progress in such things as steam engines and railroads came before medicine. It most probably did not have to be this way.

This is the scenario in which medicine saves the world, both literally and figuratively. :)

What does this have to do with religious diversity
 

GeographyDude

Gone Fishin'
Everything, if first Pagans and Christians, and later Pagans, Christians, and Muslims work together on medicine, it will entirely change the way they treat each other.
 
Okay, but I don't think germ theory was even a thing way back then. So first you'd need to make that happen, and none of this necessarily hinges on religious diversity.
 
No Christianisation of Roman Empire at the point it becomes the imperial religion.

Once one religion, whom beliefs are largely set by the political power according to its interests (or at least, decided trough political action), is set on the scale of all the Romania (meaning the Empire and then the Romano-German realms); you simply had to have a Christianity-wank : when favoured by demographics, economics and political factors, while the Germanic, Slavic, etc. rites were not unified and really dependent on the chiefdoms strength.

You could still have heterodoxial groups popping once and a while (IOTL, they always did in really limited numbers, even in their geographical zones, up to Reformation), but once a standard is set, they were not going to not only have the upper hand, but to really survive.
 
No Christianisation of Roman Empire at the point it becomes the imperial religion.

Once one religion, whom beliefs are largely set by the political power according to its interests (or at least, decided trough political action), is set on the scale of all the Romania (meaning the Empire and then the Romano-German realms); you simply had to have a Christianity-wank : when favoured by demographics, economics and political factors, while the Germanic, Slavic, etc. rites were not unified and really dependent on the chiefdoms strength.

You could still have heterodoxial groups popping once and a while (IOTL, they always did in really limited numbers, even in their geographical zones, up to Reformation), but once a standard is set, they were not going to not only have the upper hand, but to really survive.

That however beg the old question if simply a popular religion could have taken it's place instead, like the much talked of Mitraism, or a reformed Neoplatonism or such.

An ecological niche of the religious style (memes?) was maybe open, and if an Emperor fall for it...

An so, it's 'just' another religion dominating maybe. Potentially.
 
That however beg the old question if simply a popular religion could have taken it's place instead, like the much talked of Mitraism, or a reformed Neoplatonism or such.

An ecological niche of the religious style (memes?) was maybe open, and if an Emperor fall for it...

An so, it's 'just' another religion dominating maybe. Potentially.
None of those religions were exclusive religions however, in the way Christianity was. They didn't require you to believe in just them and nothing else-you can be a Mithraist and worship Isis and Bacchus and Sol Invictus, etc. etc. and many did. There would still be a lot of diversity in religious beliefs. Neo-platonism wasn't really popular outside of the elite from the way I understand it.
 
An so, it's 'just' another religion dominating maybe. Potentially.

As slydessertfox said : they weren't exclusive religions, if religion at all (Neo-Platonicism was rather a net of diverse intellectual schools that had little grasp beyond a traditional elite).
What was more important, was they weren't universal religions, but restricted to given groups, as Mithra's cult to military; and levelled among a structure of initiations, implying elitism and refusal of spirituality hegemony.

While Christianity had eventually as objective the complete conversion of different social groups, almost all of the oriental religions or philosophical schools were not only content with a limited group of followers but even proud themselves to be so.

Without exclusive religion to be used as an imperial cult, another would probably take the place, granted. But it would remain a mainly political cult, shifting with necessities (the military role of the roman imperialship wouldn't last forever, and so Mithra/Sol Invictus' influence) and with little to no grasp on the massive part of population that kept its traditional rites, more or less creolized as their their practicers.
 
I agree with several posters, the conversion of Constantine is what put Christianity at the top of the heap. A scenario with other sects, Arianism or whatever, really does not create more diversity - and IMHO true diversity and tolerance go hand in hand. Just like OTL you'll see Christian sects duking out to achieve mastery, all more sects will do is make the final map we had by the 18th/19th century a little more complex than Catholic/Protestant/Orthodox we have now.

Staring with Constantine the key to the advance of Christianity was not conversion of the masses, although that did happen. However, when the missionaries arrived they targeted the nobility/rulers and when a ruler converted the rest had to follow. Without becoming the imperial religion, when Rome falls Christianity is around but just one of several religions and the scene is set for a post Roman world where you have amix of religions: Mithraism & similar cults, Christians of a variety (absent central secular power early Christian sects don't get squashed), Zoroastrians, Jews, Norse, Druidic, etc.
 

GeographyDude

Gone Fishin'
Okay, but I don't think germ theory was even a thing way back then. So first you'd need to make that happen, and none of this necessarily hinges on religious diversity.
I'm thinking: greater tolerance --> greater diversity.

And then,

1) major joint project(s) lead to greater tolerance, as well as greater appreciation,

2) in a world which is less mysterious, especially one in which people's children are less likely to die early, well, people might still be just as deeply religious, but less likely to take the view that they are absolutely right and someone else is necessarily wrong.

I am well aware that germ theory wasn't developed then. But there was, I think the Greek philosopher Democritus and his theory of atoms. So maybe some scholars grind lenses in an attempt to see atoms, and Oh wow, they see something else along the way.
 
major joint project(s) lead to greater tolerance, as well as appreciation,

The IOTL fame of Muslim, Jewish or Pagan (Greco-Romans) medics in Middle-Ages never provoked a greater tolerance (in fact, it can be argued it happened roughly at the same time than the decline of communauty co-existance); would it be only because it was an intellectual elite thing, with little to no consequence on popular take on it.

As for lenses able to make Ancient see atoms...I think you really underestimate the level of tech complexity it asks for.
 
Exactly what the question is? What scenarios can we cook up that will create a Europe chock full of religious diversity, after the fall of the Roman Empire? This diversity can be both intra-religion (say, a Christianity where groups such as the Cathars and such gain a permanent foothoold) and inter-religious (with multiple coexisting and/or competing religons). Well, more than historically occurred in Christendom, at least.

More successful GHA, less successful Christian missionary efforts elsewhere. Possibly a less stable papacy during the early middle ages? More infighting among feudal lords, i.e. no one rich enough to fund missionary missions?
 
More successful GHA
Norse or Danish presence never seems to have really threatened Christianity in already Christianized regions. You'd need a hell of a change to remove that, and it may make their kingdoms/principalities in Western Europe even more vulnerable than IOTL would it be only because the local population would be far more differenciated (and therefore, no real mix between Anglo-Saxons and Scandinavians)

Possibly a less stable papacy during the early middle ages?
Papacy wasn't exactly stable or powerful in the early middle Ages. Either under byzantine or frankish influence (meaning it won't go unstable unless these do), either a small regional power under Roman (city) aristocracy control...
You really have to wait the XIth century to have a powerful papacy emerging.

More infighting among feudal lords, i.e. no one rich enough to fund missionary missions?
By the time feudal principalities emerged, Church and papacy already mostly build their structural independence toward the former (see Peace of God, Truce of God movements).
It's to be noted that the missionary effort was less a principality matter than royal/imperial at this point.
While you had regular missions in Danemark since Gotefried's era, it was the imperial pressure and the relative benefit of Christian political conceptions that win out, rather than a popular pressure to Christianize their rulers.

As an aside, giving the really important infighting of the late IXth/Xth centuries, and how it didn't really went against Christianisation (critically considering that at least in the first half of this period, the missionary focus was more on already christianized land, more or less as "Let's deal with our sins first"-mode) doesn't make it a very likely outcome.
 
Julian the Apostate is able to reign for an extended period and leave the empire to someone with similar sentiments. Julian's main anti-Christian policy was absolute religious toleration, hoping that he could help foster the divide between the various sects of Christianity, as opposed to using the might of the Empire to unify them ad his predecessors had. If this policy is continued for a long enough period, its quite possible that Christianity might not be able to unify around the Chalcedonian position that ultimstely came to form the foundation for virtually every branch of the faith that survived, even those that are not always considered Chalcedonian.
 

GeographyDude

Gone Fishin'
As for lenses able to make Ancient see atoms...I think you really underestimate the level of tech complexity it asks for.
Oh, I don't think they would be successful at it. But along the way, they might see paramecium, amoebas, cells swimming with flagella. It certainly looks like these tiny little creatures are moving with some sense of agency. The ancients might develop a theory of 'life units.' And there are connected 'life units' like the cells in our bodies, and then there are free-moving 'life units.'

It is kind of amazing how low-tech most of microbiology is. It's more like patiently building up theory and observations and allowing for healthy interplay between the two.

I mean, look at how advanced Roman architecture was. I think it's well within the realm of possibility that other fields could have been just as advanced.
 
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