Christianity As The Roman State Religion
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Christianity As The Roman State Religion
Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire when Emperor Theodosius I issued the Edict of Thessalonica in 380, which recognized the catholic orthodoxy of Nicene Christians in the Great Church as the Roman Empire's state religion. Most historians refer to the Nicene church associated with emperors in a variety of ways: as the catholic church, the orthodox church, the imperial church, the imperial Roman church, or the Byzantine church, although some of those terms are also used for wider communions extending outside the Roman Empire. The Eastern Orthodox Church, Oriental Orthodoxy, and the Catholic Church, all claim to stand in continuity from the Nicene church to which Theodosius granted recognition. Earlier in the 4th century, following the Diocletianic Persecution of 303–313 and the Donatist controversy that arose in consequence, Constantine the Great had convened councils of bishops to define the orthodoxy of the Christian faith and to expand on earlier Christi ...
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Theodosius I
Theodosius I ( grc-gre, Θεοδόσιος ; 11 January 347 – 17 January 395), also called Theodosius the Great, was Roman emperor from 379 to 395. During his reign, he succeeded in a crucial war against the Goths, as well as in two civil wars, and recognized the Catholic orthodoxy of Nicene Christians as the Roman Empire's state religion. Theodosius was the last emperor to rule the entire Roman Empire before its administration was permanently split between two separate courts (one western, the other eastern). Born in Hispania, Theodosius was the son of a high-ranking general, Theodosius the Elder, under whose guidance he rose through the ranks of the Roman Army. Theodosius held independent command in Moesia in 374, where he had some success against the invading Sarmatians. Not long afterwards, he was forced into retirement, and his father was executed under obscure circumstances. Theodosius soon regained his position following a series of intrigues and executions ...
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Diversity In Early Christian Theology
Traditionally in Christianity, orthodoxy and heresy have been viewed in relation to the "orthodoxy" as an authentic lineage of tradition. Other forms of Christianity were viewed as deviant streams of thought and therefore "heterodox", or heretical. This view was challenged by the publication of Walter Bauer's ''Rechtgläubigkeit und Ketzerei im ältesten Christentum'' ("Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity") in 1934. Bauer endeavored to rethink Early Christianity historically, independent from the views of the current church. He stated that the 2nd-century church was very diverse and included many "heretical" groups that had an equal claim to apostolic tradition. Bauer interpreted the struggle between the ''orthodox'' and ''heterodox'' to be the "mainstream" Church of Rome struggling to attain dominance. He presented Edessa and Egypt as places where the "orthodoxy" of Rome had little influence during the 2nd century. As he saw it, the theological thought of the "Orien ...
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Communion (Christian)
() is a transliterated form of the Greek word , which refers to concepts such as fellowship, joint participation, the share which one has in anything, a gift jointly contributed, a collection, a contribution. It identifies the idealized state of fellowship and unity that should exist within the Christian church, the Body of Christ. The term may have been borrowed from the early Epicureans—as it is used by Epicurus' Principal Doctrines 37–38.Norman DeWitt argues in his book ''St Paul and Epicurus'' that many early Christian ideas were borrowed from the Epicureans. The term communion, derived from Latin ''communio'' ('sharing in common'), is related. The term "Holy Communion" normally refers to the Christian rite also called the Eucharist. New Testament The essential meaning of the embraces concepts conveyed in the English terms community, communion, joint participation, sharing and intimacy. can therefore refer in some contexts to a jointly contributed gift. The word ap ...
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Deposition Of Romulus Augustulus
Odoacer's deposition of Romulus Augustus, occurring in 476 AD, was a coup that marked the end of the reign of the Western Roman Emperor last approved by the Western Roman Senate and the creation of the Kingdom of Italy, although Julius Nepos exercised control over Dalmatia until 480. Romulus Augustus was a 16-year-old minor at the time. Background Rome is sacked twice Rome had twice been sacked in the 5th century AD, after a lengthy decline which followed more than a millennium of dominance, first over central Italy and then over an empire that surrounded the Mediterranean Sea. First, in 410 a Visigothic army under the command of Alaric besieged, entered, and looted the city, and in 455 the Vandals attacked Rome after their king, Genseric, believing himself to have been snubbed by an usurper emperor, voided a peace treaty. Despite remaining the seat of the Roman Senate, and an important city of the Western Roman Empire, Rome was not what it had once been – the Wester ...
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Romulus Augustus
Romulus Augustus ( 465 – after 511), nicknamed Augustulus, was Roman emperor of the West from 31 October 475 until 4 September 476. Romulus was placed on the imperial throne by his father, the ''magister militum'' Orestes, and, at that time, still a minor, was little more than a figurehead for his father. After Romulus ruled for just ten months, the barbarian general Odoacer defeated and killed Orestes and deposed Romulus. As Odoacer did not proclaim any successor, Romulus is typically regarded as the last Western Roman emperor, his deposition marking the end of the Western Roman Empire as a political entity, despite the fact that Julius Nepos would continue to be recognised as the western emperor by the east. The deposition of Romulus Augustulus is also sometimes used by historians to mark the transition from antiquity to the medieval period. Very few records survive of Romulus' reign. There are no known policies, laws or inscriptions of significance of the emperor, which ...
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Odoacer
Odoacer ( ; – 15 March 493 AD), also spelled Odovacer or Odovacar, was a soldier and statesman of barbarian background, who deposed the child emperor Romulus Augustulus and became Rex/Dux (476–493). Odoacer's overthrow of Romulus Augustulus is traditionally seen as marking the end of the Western Roman Empire as well as Ancient Rome. Though the real power in Italy was in his hands, he represented himself as the client of the emperor in Constantinople, Zeno. Odoacer often used the Roman honorific patrician, granted by Zeno, but was referred to as a king ( la, rex) or duke ( la, dux) in many documents, so is not clear which was his actual charge. He himself used the title of king in the only surviving official document that emanated from his chancery, and it was also used by the consul Basilius. Odoacer introduced few important changes into the administrative system of Italy. He had the support of the Roman Senate and was able to distribute land to his followers without muc ...
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Sack Of Rome (455)
The Sack of 455 was the third of four ancient sacks of Rome; it was conducted by the Vandals, who were then at war with the usurping Western Roman Emperor Petronius Maximus. Background In the 440s, the Vandal king Genseric and the Roman Emperor Valentinian III had betrothed their children, Huneric and Eudocia, to strengthen their alliance, reached in 442 with a peace treaty (the marriage was delayed as Eudocia was too young). In 455 Valentinian was killed, and Petronius Maximus rose to the throne. Petronius married Valentinian's widow, Licinia Eudoxia, and had his son Palladius marry Eudocia; in this way Petronius was to strengthen his bond with the Theodosian dynasty. Unhappy, however, with her husband's murder and the usurpation of Maximus, Eudoxia turned to aid from the Vandals to remove Maximus from the throne. The overture was favorably met, because Maximus' revolution was damaging to Genseric's ambitions. The king of the Vandals claimed that the broken betrothal betwee ...
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Sack Of Rome (410)
The Sack of Rome on 24 August 410 AD was undertaken by the Visigoths led by their king, Alaric I, Alaric. At that time, Rome was no longer the capital of the Western Roman Empire, having been replaced in that position first by Mediolanum (now Milan) in 286 and then by Ravenna in 402. Nevertheless, the city of Rome retained a paramount position as "the eternal city" and a spiritual center of the Empire. This was the first time in almost 800 years that Rome had fallen to a foreign enemy, and the sack was a major shock to contemporaries, friends and foes of the Empire alike. The sacking of 410 is seen as a major landmark in the fall of the Western Roman Empire. Jerome, St. Jerome, living in Bethlehem, wrote: "the city which had taken the whole world was itself taken".St Jerome, ''Letter CXXVII. To Principia'', s:Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers: Series II/Volume VI/The Letters of St. Jerome/Letter 127 paragraph 12. Background The Germanic tribes had undergone massive technological ...
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Rome
, established_title = Founded , established_date = 753 BC , founder = King Romulus (legendary) , image_map = Map of comune of Rome (metropolitan city of Capital Rome, region Lazio, Italy).svg , map_caption = The territory of the ''comune'' (''Roma Capitale'', in red) inside the Metropolitan City of Rome (''Città Metropolitana di Roma'', in yellow). The white spot in the centre is Vatican City. , pushpin_map = Italy#Europe , pushpin_map_caption = Location within Italy##Location within Europe , pushpin_relief = yes , coordinates = , coor_pinpoint = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name = Italy , subdivision_type2 = Region , subdivision_name2 = Lazio , subdivision_type3 = Metropolitan city , subdivision_name3 = Rome Capital , government_footnotes= , government_type = Strong Mayor–Council , leader_title2 = Legislature , leader_name2 = Capitoline Assemb ...
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Polity
A polity is an identifiable Politics, political entity – a group of people with a collective identity, who are organized by some form of Institutionalisation, institutionalized social relation, social relations, and have a capacity to mobilize resources. A polity can be any other group of people organized for governance (such as a corporate board), the government of a country, or of a country subdivision. A polity may be a republic administered by an elected representative, or the realm of a hereditary monarch. Overview In geopolitics, a polity can be manifested in different forms such as a State (polity), state, an empire, an international organization, a political organization and other identifiable, resource-manipulating organizational structures. A polity like a state does not need to be a Sovereignty, sovereign unit. The most preeminent polities today are Westphalian sovereignty, Westphalian states and nation-states, commonly referred to as countries and also incorrectl ...
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Western Roman Empire
The Western Roman Empire comprised the western provinces of the Roman Empire at any time during which they were administered by a separate independent Imperial court; in particular, this term is used in historiography to describe the period from 395 to 476, where there were separate coequal courts dividing the governance of the empire in the Western and the Eastern provinces, with a distinct imperial succession in the separate courts. The terms Western Roman Empire and Eastern Roman Empire were coined in modern times to describe political entities that were ''de facto'' independent; contemporary Romans did not consider the Empire to have been split into two empires but viewed it as a single polity governed by two imperial courts as an administrative expediency. The Western Roman Empire collapsed in 476, and the Western imperial court in Ravenna was formally dissolved by Justinian in 554. The Eastern imperial court survived until 1453. Though the Empire had seen periods with m ...
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Miaphysitism
Miaphysitism is the Christological doctrine that holds Jesus, the "Incarnate Word, is fully divine and fully human, in one 'nature' (''physis'')." It is a position held by the Oriental Orthodox Churches and differs from the Chalcedonian position that Jesus is one "person" ( el, ὑπόστασις) in two "natures" ( el, φύσεις), a divine nature and a human nature (Dyophysitism). While historically a major point of controversy within Christianity, several modern declarations by both Chalcedonian and Miaphysite churches state that the difference between the two Christological formulations does not reflect any significant difference in belief about the nature of Christ. Terminology The word ''miaphysite'' derives from the Ancient Greek μία (''mía'', "one") plus φύσις (''phúsis'', "nature, substance"). Miaphysite teaching is based on Cyril of Alexandria's formula μία φύσις τοῦ θεοῦ λόγου σεσαρκωμένη, meaning "one ''physis'' of ...
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