lerance inherent in the monotheistic Christian faith. By the very nature of their belief in a single almighty God, so it is concluded, Christians were unable to tolerate the existing beliefs in a variety of Gods. The classic expression of this view occurs in the work of Edward Gibbon, who, in his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, equated Christianity with intolerance and paganism with tolerance. "It is difficult to overestimate the influence of Gibbon's interpretation on subsequent scholarship."
However, "while there is obviously some truth in the proposition that intolerance follows from the rejection of other gods that lies at the core of monotheistic belief," this alone could neither explain why pagans had previously persecuted Christians, nor why there were "important voices for moderation in the early Christian community." As H.A. Drake writes: "Gibbon skirts a serious problem: for three centuries prior to Constantine, the tolerant pagans who people the Decline and Fall were the authors of several major persecutions, in which Christians were the victims. ...Gibbon covered this embarrassing hole in his argument with an elegant demur. Rather than deny the obvious, he adroitly masked the question by transforming his Roman magistrates into models of Enlightenment rulers — reluctant persecutors, too sophisticated to be themselves religious zealots."
Peter Garnsey strongly disagrees with those who describe the attitude of the "plethora of cults" that are labelled 'Paganism' as "tolerant" or "inclusive." What Ramsay MacMullen wrote, that in its process of expansion, the Roman Empire was "completely tolerant, in heaven as on earth" (with the notable exceptions of the Jews, Christians and Druids), is for Garnsey a simple "misuse of terminology." The foreign Gods were not tolerated, but made subject together with their communities when they were conquered. The Romans "cannot be said to have extended to them the same combination of disapproval and acceptance which is toleration."
Legacy for Christianity
The example of Constantine, Theodosius and Justinian, who were seen as "godly emperors (...) serving the church and crushing its enemies," has been cited repeatedly by Christian authors who endorsed religious persecution. According to the historian Ramsay MacMullen, a council of bishops at Toledo in 681 called on civil authorities to seize and behead all those guilty of non-Christian practices of any sort. Medieval Emperor Charlemagne ruled in September 774 that the Saxons (Westfali, Ostfali, and Angrarii) must be presented with the alternative of baptism or death and had 4,500 pagan Saxons beheaded in the Massacre of Verden. In 1685, when Louis XIV of France issued the Edict of Fontainebleau initiating the persecution of Huguenots, he was saluted as a 'new Constantine' by Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet.
The Christian view shifted away from an endorsement of religious persecution in the 17th century. The first Christian church to grant adherents of other Christian denominations freedom of worship was the Church of England, with the Act of Toleration 1689 (still retaining some forms of religious discrimination and with the notable exception of Catholics).
The Catholic Church issued the decree "Dignitatis Humanae" that fully embraced the right of every human person to religious freedom, as part of the Vatican II council, on 7 December 1965. On 12 March 2000, Pope John Paul II prayed publicly for forgiveness because "Christians have often denied the Gospel; yielding to a mentality of power, they have violated the rights of ethnic groups and peoples, and shown contempt for their cultures and religious traditions".
- History of persecutions by Christians
- History of Christianity
- Religious persecution in the Roman Empire
- Decline of Greco-Roman polytheism
Notes and references
- R. MacMullen, "Christianizing The Roman Empire A.D.100-400, Yale University Press, 1984, ISBN 0-300-03642-6
- "A History of the Church," Philip Hughes, Sheed & Ward, rev ed 1949, vol I chapter 6.
- Eusebius Pamphilius and Schaff, Philip (Editor) and McGiffert