Day of Empire_ How Hyperpowers Rise to Global Dominance--And Why They Fall - Amy Chua [36]
But “too much diversity” was only part of the problem. Far more devastating, after the golden age Rome descended into an era of intensifying religious persecution and ethnic bigotry. This is my second point: Although not the only cause of Roman decline, intolerance helped tear the empire apart.
Christianity was deeply implicated in the new intolerance, first as a target and later as its primary source. Over the course of the third century AD, Christianity spread to every corner of the empire, representing by the year 300 approximately one-tenth of the total population. The early Christians were not popular among their fellow subjects. Not only did they deny the gods of Rome, they were also accused of incest and cannibalism, the Eucharist taken literally to be the consumption of human bodies and blood. Because of their refusal to participate in the official rites of sacrifice to the deities, Christians were often held responsible for military defeats as well as natural disasters like plagues, earthquakes, and famines.32
In AD 303 the emperor Diocletian launched the so-called Great Persecution against Christianity. At the time, the Pax Romana was breaking down, with Germanic tribes invading from the north and Persians attacking in the east. Seeking to restore the glory of the High Empire—ironically through measures antithetical to the values of the golden age—Diocletian decided to extirpate the “un-Roman” Christians. For nearly ten years, Christians were systematically persecuted. Imperial officials stripped Christians of public office and purged the army. In 304, an imperial edict ordered the arrest of every Christian who would not make sacrifice to Rome's gods. Churches were destroyed, scriptures burned, and thousands killed.
Amazingly, in the battle between mighty Rome and the fledgling Christian church, the church won. After a brief but intense war of succession, Constantine the Great emerged as emperor and, for reasons opaque to this day, converted to Christianity in AD 312. With his conversion, the persecution of Rome's millions of Christians abruptly ended, but for the rest of the empire's inhabitants, the era of persecution was just beginning.
The role of Christianity in Rome's fall has been debated for centuries. Gibbon believed that Christianity was a major factor— perhaps the major factor.33 Although tempered by various qualifications, Gibbon's view was that Christianity's emphasis on “a future life,” “passive obedience,” and “pusillanimity” fatally corrupted Rome's traditional manly, martial, and worldly virtues. My emphasis is different. Rome's official embrace of Christianity introduced into imperial policy a virulent strain of intolerance that undermined those strategies of assimilation and incorporation that had so successfully held together the empire's diverse populations.
At first, paganism was far too widespread to be simply banned. Instead, Constantine stripped Roman temples of their riches while erecting lavish Christian basilicas. But as the empire became more and more Christian, intolerance intensified. Particularly conspicuous “sects” such as Stoicism, Manichaeism (an ancient religion of Persian origin), and Judaism were aggressively repressed. By the late fourth century, Rome had embarked on a systemic campaign to weed out paganism—and indeed all dissenters, including “heretic” Christians who deviated from the official orthodoxy. For the first time, Europe had an established church: “[T]he closed Christian society of the Middle Ages was now in existence.”
Undoubtedly, Constantine and his successors believed that religious uniformity would reinvigorate the empire and strengthen it against increasing barbarian attacks. In fact, the opposite occurred. The attacks on pagans and heretics proved deeply self-destructive, actually facilitating barbarian encroachments. In North Africa, for example, the shutdown of pagan temples provoked bitter rioting, and