AHC: Roman paganism survives, thrives to today

[Malta]

It lost out due to political persecution.

 

[Faeelin]

It lost out due to political persecution.

But that can't be all of it, or Christianity wouldn't have become powerful enough despite said persecution, right?

 

[Emperor Julian]

It would allow it to survive though... Even Julian the Apostate couldn't manage a Indigeous Roman Religion revival... general apathy was the name of the game...

I think to answer your challange that your best bet would be a misplaced stone hits Saul at the stonig of Stephen... that would hurt the Early Church big time...

Question: What sort of Roman Religions do you want large... Paganism is a pretty rubbish term... not to mention none of them would have wanted it since it essentially meant rural hill-billy...

Do you want polytheistic, monothestic, mystical cult... Take your pick and then we can make the challange a little bit more specific...

The OP specifies that it must be "the Roman Religion". He also specifies that it must have billions of followers and have comparable size to Christianity OTL. Once Christianity has taken control, the traditional religion isn't going to be revived. Really, all you need is for Christianity to keep the circumcision requirement for conversion (and presumably other Jewish laws which will deter potential converts to a lesser level). That's going to stop any mass-conversions that allow Christianity to grow larger. Stopping the Christian destruction of the Roman religion is easy.

However, I still ask, what happens to the religion of Rome when Rome itself falls?

 

[carlton_bach]

But that can't be all of it, or Christianity wouldn't have become powerful enough despite said persecution, right?

It's not like we have anything like a fully convincing monocausal explanation, but there are some things that probably played a major role.

- Paganism isn't really a religion in the sense we use the term today. It has no cohesive creed or unifying scripture, and itr only developed a real group identity once it was boxed in by "other" religions that already had one. There was no word for "pagan" in any of the classical languages. They were just people. What we, in retrospect, consider "the pagan religion" is really an assembly of often unrelated and mutually unintelligible traditions, rites, practices and beliefs. It did not create identity but reinforced existing ones. That made it flexible, but also vulnerable. Every community had its own rites, and every rite, temple and tradition stood on its own. They were separate targets. If the emperor forbade the cult of the Genius Augusti and the Domus Divina, that sucked for the freedmen who had used it to cement civic status, but did not threaten the religious identity of most people. If the altar of Victory was removed from the Senate, that did not necessarily affect even the compital colleges just down the road. It also often depended opn physical structures and communitiesv that could be destroyed. Being a solitary Christian is possible, indeed, it is part and parcel of the theology. Being a solitary Eleusinian is not.

- Pagans did not (usually) make claims to exclusive truth. The idea that just because you were a worshipper of the Gods, you could not also worship something else was ridiculous. To traditional Romans, the very definition of religiosity was a worshipful respect for ALL sacred things. Christianity, on the other hand, was a one-way street. Once you had been baptised, there was no way out. Even the earliest communities punished apostasy with social ostracism and strenuous efforts to recover the hellbound soul. Once the church had authority, legal sanction and physical intimidation came into play as well. Nonetheless, for quite some time many pagans remained convinced that it was possible to be a Christian and a good Hellene or Roman, and accepted baptism as the path of least resistance. They might not be Christian in anything but name, but their descendants would grow up in the faith.

- Christianity had an organisation that survived the collapse of so many other aspects of society. It was a good deal to be a Christian because you had friends and protectors. Pagan society had had such structures, too, but they usually were not religious, and where they were, they were local in nature. Many of them were bound up with civic structures at some level, and those increasingly disappeared.

- The Christians were a lot better at persecuting. Yes, that matters. Roman persecution before Decius was random, local and brief, like the pogroms of early modern Europe. Even afterwards, the waves were always short and never really that effective. The rivers of blood and hecatombs of martyrs of later tradition are pure invention. Christianity, once in power, could deploy legions of well-intentioned, dedicated, full-time persecutors. It meant a lot more to them.

Take all of that together and you have a plausible scenario.

 

[jakewilson]

A question I have is, if Judaism could survive as an ethnic minority religion despite the heavy persecution, why couldn't Greco-Roman polytheism?

Almost all parts of India, at one time or another, were ruled by Muslim monarchs for centuries on end, but most Indians still follow the traditional religious practices and theological philosophy native to the sub-continent. In Europe and Southwest Asia, the Church and the imperial government successfully and permanently broke the institutional framework (choirs, gymnasia, temples, games) that allowed traditional religion and philosophy to survive and thrive. So what was the difference?
I think that the bishops and the imperial government felt that the pagan senators and the Greek literati (and heretics, too!) posed a threat to their supremacy in a way that the Jews, for example, never could. No one was going to raise a Jew as Augustus and rabbis would never be counted among the city fathers the way pagan gentlemen or heretical bishops might. In other words, after Constantine there weren't separate Christian and pagan 'communities' with different leaders. On the imperial level and also town to town, pagans and Christians were competing for the same positions and the same honors. And so, one of them had to go, and Julian's last ditch attempt to make Christianity déclassé didn't catch, and the Church had more organizational reach. The Muslim monarchies of India had clearer succession rules and lacked the republican trappings of the Graeco-Roman elite, and so were not internally threatened by Hindus in the way that the Christian Empire felt threatened by Hellenes.

 

[jakewilson]

However, I still ask, what happens to the religion of Rome when Rome itself falls?

It survives, but changes through the centuries to become as unrecognizable to classical Olympianism as modern Hinduism is to Vedic religion.

I rather think the best POD for European pagan survival is actually an earlier fall of the Empire. If, for example, the central Empire was unable to bring the periphery to heel in the third century. The Church would not be able to establish its supremacy across the entire Mediterranean in just a few decades, as it was able to do later on. I think that separatism also is much easier on the maintenance of classical religion than barbarian takeovers are.

And even so, I think that without the Church having shut down the gymnasia and schools of philosophy and so forth, it will be much easier for classical civilization to survive even under the Gothic yoke. German kings will give honor to the gods at the local temples, and their sons might be inducted into choirs or be educated by the Roman leftovers (as happened historically, think of Boethius). Within a couple generations, everyone will be speaking sub-Latin and calling Arvandil 'Vesper' and Wotan 'Mercury.' The economy will be horribly wrecked, but still.

 

[sdrucker]

It survives, but changes through the centuries to become as unrecognizable to classical Olympianism as modern Hinduism is to Vedic religion.

I rather think the best POD for European pagan survival is actually an earlier fall of the Empire. If, for example, the central Empire was unable to bring the periphery to heel in the third century. The Church would not be able to establish its supremacy across the entire Mediterranean in just a few decades, as it was able to do later on. I think that separatism also is much easier on the maintenance of classical religion than barbarian takeovers are.

And even so, I think that without the Church having shut down the gymnasia and schools of philosophy and so forth, it will be much easier for classical civilization to survive even under the Gothic yoke. German kings will give honor to the gods at the local temples, and their sons might be inducted into choirs or be educated by the Roman leftovers (as happened historically, think of Boethius). Within a couple generations, everyone will be speaking sub-Latin and calling Arvandil 'Vesper' and Wotan 'Mercury.' The economy will be horribly wrecked, but still.

Maybe I'm thinking too much of the world of Gary Jenning's Raptor (a historical novel set in Theodoric's Italy), but how about a survival of the Gothic Kingdom's Arian Christianity, and a relative weakening of Rome as the seat of what became Roman Catholicism? The Arians were supposedly less intolerant of competing Christianity denominations than either the sixth century Catholic Church or the Orthodox Christianity of Justinian.

One way to do this that might work - find a way for this guy to survive past 522-23, and Theodoric to die before Justinian's accession to the East Roman throne in 529:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eutharic

If Eutharic took over before Theodoric got paranoid, killed Boethius and imprisoned Pope John I, you might head off the Gothic War, and leave Italy a heterogeneous mix of Catholics, Arians, Jews, and a remnant pagan aristocracy and/or rural population that follow their local traditions.

Of course, whether the Bubonic Plague of the 530's and 540's would weaken the Ostrogothic kingdom to the point that it would have been destroyed by the Lombards is an open question.

The interesting question, though, is what would happen to Roman Catholicism if it's a 'first among equals' in Rome. Does it stay centered there, or move to a more hospitable seat in, say, Merovingian France or Visigothic Spain?

 

[Emperor Julian]

It survives, but changes through the centuries to become as unrecognizable to classical Olympianism as modern Hinduism is to Vedic religion.

I rather think the best POD for European pagan survival is actually an earlier fall of the Empire. If, for example, the central Empire was unable to bring the periphery to heel in the third century. The Church would not be able to establish its supremacy across the entire Mediterranean in just a few decades, as it was able to do later on. I think that separatism also is much easier on the maintenance of classical religion than barbarian takeovers are.

And even so, I think that without the Church having shut down the gymnasia and schools of philosophy and so forth, it will be much easier for classical civilization to survive even under the Gothic yoke. German kings will give honor to the gods at the local temples, and their sons might be inducted into choirs or be educated by the Roman leftovers (as happened historically, think of Boethius). Within a couple generations, everyone will be speaking sub-Latin and calling Arvandil 'Vesper' and Wotan 'Mercury.' The economy will be horribly wrecked, but still.

So you think they would do the standard Roman god-matching between religions to absorb the new Gothic gods? Would this merged system spread throughout the rest of Europe, or would they keep their own religions there?

 

[jakewilson]

So you think they would do the standard Roman god-matching between religions to absorb the new Gothic gods? Would this merged system spread throughout the rest of Europe, or would they keep their own religions there?

I think it would be mostly restricted to Latin Europe. And it's not so much the Latins absorbing the new gods of their conquerors so much as the conquerors becoming thoroughly Latinized through sheer demographic weight. The Latins will of course describe foreign gods through the interpretatio Romana, but I don't see non-Romance speakers feeling a need to adopt Latin names or practices. This could eventually number in the billions if the sub-Roman realms colonize as much as they did in OTL, and syncretize with West African and Mesoamerican religions.

I'm most interested in Britain, actually. You'd have a mix of Romanized and un-Romanized Britons and Germanic invaders as well. Celtic, Graeco-Roman, and Saxon practices side-by-side. It could lead to some very bizarre syncretism.

 

[Badshah]

Hinduism has a billion followers today and is the third largest religion in the world in spite of any missionary impulse, competition with two major missionary religions (Islam and Buddhism), and a total lack of anything resembling an overarching structure. Roman Paganism already has a leg up on Hinduism in that it has a structure which was set up and controlled by the Roman state (Pontifex Maximus and all subordinate magistracies) complete with explicit imperial support. The redirection of funds from the Roman religion to Christianity under Constantine and its elevation to the sole religion of the empire under Theodosius had a LOT more to do with Christianity's rise from significant cult to dominant religion than its missionary impulse.

Actually that's its main weakness. Hinduism was really just a mish mash of various cultural traditions which would be fit in at some point to help bridge the various different peoples within a polity or kingdom. For example, Ayappan has really nothing to do with the rest of Hinduism, but in Kerala, he's an important deity.

This could also be demonstrated through how English became so widely spoken, even while French has the Academie Française. In this case it's the lack of a central authority which helps it, not the other way around.

 

[jakewilson]

Maybe I'm thinking too much of the world of Gary Jenning's Raptor (a historical novel set in Theodoric's Italy), but how about a survival of the Gothic Kingdom's Arian Christianity, and a relative weakening of Rome as the seat of what became Roman Catholicism? The Arians were supposedly less intolerant of competing Christianity denominations than either the sixth century Catholic Church or the Orthodox Christianity of Justinian.

One way to do this that might work - find a way for this guy to survive past 522-23, and Theodoric to die before Justinian's accession to the East Roman throne in 529:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eutharic

If Eutharic took over before Theodoric got paranoid, killed Boethius and imprisoned Pope John I, you might head off the Gothic War, and leave Italy a heterogeneous mix of Catholics, Arians, Jews, and a remnant pagan aristocracy and/or rural population that follow their local traditions.

Of course, whether the Bubonic Plague of the 530's and 540's would weaken the Ostrogothic kingdom to the point that it would have been destroyed by the Lombards is an open question.

The interesting question, though, is what would happen to Roman Catholicism if it's a 'first among equals' in Rome. Does it stay centered there, or move to a more hospitable seat in, say, Merovingian France or Visigothic Spain?

The imperial family before Julian was Arian, I believe. Butterflying Julian away might make the pagan senators less threatening, and give the Arians a foot up, meaning an end result much like you describe, with Italy becoming a heterogeneous mix of Arian, 'orthodox,' Jewish, and pagan.

In regards to your final question, I would think that 'Roman Catholicism' would be stillborn in your scenario, and that the Catholic Orthodox Apostolic tradition would be based in the East, Constantinople or Alexandria. The Visigoths were predominately Arian as well, and I don't think that the Franks were capable of holding the loyalty of the Roman nobles still hanging around in Italy. Rome will still lead the West, but will be second to more important centers in the East.

 

[jakewilson]

Actually that's its main weakness. Hinduism was really just a mish mash of various cultural traditions which would be fit in at some point to help bridge the various different peoples within a polity or kingdom. For example, Ayappan has really nothing to do with the rest of Hinduism, but in Kerala, he's an important deity.

This could also be demonstrated through how English became so widely spoken, even while French has the Academie Française. In this case it's the lack of a central authority which helps it, not the other way around.

The formal religious structures in 'Roman religion' were not really relevant outside of the actual city of Rome. Flamens, pontiffs, sworn virgins and so forth didn't really have any responsibilities beyond their own temple grounds. The Augustus as Supreme Pontiff was notionally in charge of religious stuff everywhere, but it functionally wasn't treated separately from the rest of government, i.e. imperial oversight of religious matters was handled through governors rather than specifically religious officials. Paganism as actually practiced is actually quite a bit like the way you describe Hinduism.

When Julian did try to introduce religious officials and hierarchy, he was more or less copying the Christian model. The provincial high priests would have had episcopal privileges, like not having to pay for travel and exemption from onerous civic duties. It's an interesting question whether Julian's plan would have worked well, actually.