Constantine loses (but not decisively) the Battle of Cibalae. The conflict continues, with the Empire being split more or less as in OTL, but between an increasingly Christian West under Constantine and an increasingly reactionary pagan East under Licinius. When Rome falls, the Christians get the blame.
AHC: Aggressively Anti-Monotheist Polytheism
- Thread starter mienoguy
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I am afraid that in both Empires there will be religious tension - in the West, Christians against the Senate aristocracy, in the east, a Christian center against pagan municipalities.
How about Charlemagne getting killed by the Saxons, preferably defeated badly and sacrificed. The Saxons come into Norse Orbit and spread the narrative that "the Christians will come for you". This has knock off effects, with more monasteries burned, more members of the great heathen army (or atl counterpart) staying in the force rather than settling in the North to "finish the job" and more hostile attacks on Ireland.
Ambitous and upwardly (and downwardly mobile i.e slaves) mobile Brits, Angles and Saxons become more Norse and have babies raised in the Norse cultural sphere, and it snowballs from there.
I was raised as Roman Catholic and was taught that there was an important difference between worship and veneration. It was fine even desirable to venerate the Saints, esp. the Holy Mother of God but not worship them. Most Protestants, Jews and Muslims denigrate this argument as being a distinction without a difference. OTOH the Orthodox churches seem to embrace that distinction enthusiastically.
So that muddies the waters.
My second point which is something that I've been meaning for some time is that the ever popular Paganwank tends to be fixated on polytheism. Religions like Tengrism which are decidedly henotheistic moving towards monotheism generate a shrug and a sigh. That's not cool. Polytheism is cool. The key question in my mind is
Is the Absolute singular?
If it is singular and personal we have monotheism. If it is singular and impersonal then we have monism. And if we go down the "nondual" rabbit hole we get a bit of both.
Neoplatonism was monist. Julian the Apostate was a neoplatonist. Stoicism was pantheistic and had a single prime mover.
What I believe is driving the contemporary enthusiasm for polytheism is postmodernism which rejects the idea of a single Absolute Truth.
I don't have any good sources for the state of Judaism between the Bar Kokhba revolt and that against Constantius Gallus. I'm guessing that they seem less of a political threat to Licinius' *Byzantium because, unlike the Christians, they can be seen as simply continuing the rites of their ancestors. So the Nasi and the Beth Din remain?
Of course. Throughout this period it seems a would-be Emperor could gather support by either promising to relieve Christians or to further persecute them. Most of them didn't mind which they did. That's why I say the battle should be indecisive, so that Constantine continues to rely on Christian support while Licinius reneges on his commitment to the Edict of Milan, just as he did OTL.
Give it a while to polarise and *Byzantium, though not anti-monotheist in the abstract, is strongly against one particular monotheism and probably strongly suspicious of any others that might arise.
It's rather the rejection of the pseudo-scientific belief that monotheism is a "evolved" form of religion and a path towards which all human thinking tends to lead.
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It makes more sense to work from the late 5th century IMO, if Southern Germans(Alemans, Bavarians and maybe Lombards and Rugii too) co-exist with Christians without being converted they might develop a collective religious identity and institutions separated from Christians and spread this identity to Saxons, Thuringians, Anglo-Saxons and Frisians.
I think I touched a nerve. I do see philosophy inexorably moving towards the conclusion that "the Absolute is One" The unresolved question is whether the One is personal or impersonal. Those that conclude the former are monotheists. Those such as the Neoplatonists that conclude the later are monists. Both reject any notion that the Absolute is plural. This is a rejection of Really Cool multiple gods theology. Now it is quite likely that room is made to accord multiple deities some form of adoration/veneration with a variety of different formulae such as emanations, trinity tricks or "One God with Many Faces" Within Christianity there was a tension between philosophy and religion with the later usually stronger. In the late Roman paganism philosophy is stronger. It will be a martini with Neoplatonism as gin and Stoicism as vermouth. The philosophy of the elites will lord it over the simple folk religion they condescendingly regard as superstitious.
I think monists are likely to predominate but there will be some pockets of monotheism.
Kill it in the crib. Assyrians take Judea and exterminate them along with the rest of the otl tribes
One thing I've noticed is that many polytheist faiths tend to go de facto monotheist anyway, or at least henotheist- the existence of multiple deities is established, but worship of one, usually the supreme, creator god is the one dedicated to. This happened with Egyptian polytheism (Atenism), Roman religion (cult of Sol Invictus), and with modern "polytheism" both Hinduism (different gods are manifestations of the same god) and even Shinto (maybe???) could be interpreted as monotheistic.
Atenism died out and I'm not even sure Sol Invictus was meant to replace devotion to other gods(what henotheism actually means). Also representing all of Hinduism in one brush as being "fake" polytheism is not really accurate.
Also about Shinto, I wonder if you went around asking various Christians the fine details about the trinity or about veneration vs worship of saints how "orthodox" they would really be.
That's a good point, and raises the question if "pure" monotheism actually exists.
Speaking of the Germanic faiths - and I do know that Loki in the earlier myths was not as much of a villain as he was portrayed in the Christianity-influenced Edda, this is more for the sake of the argument - a polytheistic religion where (one of) the major antagonist gods is famed primarily as a god of lies might have myths where that god claimed to be the only god, an almighty king of the gods or even the only real god while fooling 'insert name of stupid annoying bastard barbarian tribe on other side of handy geographic feature'. This will likely not suffice in and of itself, but it could be a supporting factor in seeing monotheists as gullible fools.
I did correctly assess your opinion and you seem quite offended by other people's opinions yourself...
Why?
This "multiple gods" theology is really unclear, you could argue that even some of the late archaic Greeks were non-fully polytheist with Anaximander arguing about the concept of "apeiron".
Ultimately though what exactly are we comparing those "monotheistic tendencies"(if we can call it that) to? Even more polytheist cosmologies could be argued to hint at some "absolute one" or singular origin point or source of everything. It seems to me that this way of defining polytheism is quite narrow.
Heck even Vedic religion could be said to have such tendencies and yet it's not like Hinduism ended adopting a single clear stance on the matter after all those millennia, which shows to me that there is no tendencies towards one specific opinion, heck I'd argue the existence of Mormonism and Gnostic faiths also suggests that even people raised as Christians could end up adopting less monotheistic views.
In theory it can exist as can "pure" polytheism but it doesn't make sense to me to argue in terms of definite categories most of the time, I think there are good arguments to be made that there are multiple forces at play pushing people's beliefs in a direction or another but to say that those factors are strong enough to determine the trajectory of all religions or cosmologies seems a stretch to me.
For example comparisons can be made between the concept of patron saints of cities and professions to the concept local deities or "specialized" deities, at least to me it's hard to ignore this and only focus on whether there is nominally a single god(or even a single god in the trinitarian sense...) or more, especially when so many nominally polytheistic faiths have hierarchies or origin stories that converge toward a single origin source.
Indeed, the podcast on Shinto makes a comparison to peasant Christianity.