Did Romans Kill Christians

Roman society didn’t care for the Christians very much. They would blame them for communal catastrophes, such as earthquakes and outbreaks of diseases. They would claim that these misfortunes were caused by the Christians angering the gods. Being Christian by itself was illegal. “The crime of being Christians; that is, to belonging to an illegal sect or association. The penalty for such unlicensed association was death.” (pg. 174) There was freedom given to anyone who renounced their faith and was willing to worship a Roman god. The martyrs went through vicious punishments for staying in their faith. This tells us that living in Roman society could be fatal if you don’t follow what the Roman Empire expected you to be.

Christianity was frowned upon by the Romans. The Roman Emperor wanted the people to worship him and the Roman Gods. Christians were blamed for many of the misfortunes that happened in Rome. Due to the belief that Christians were to blame they were ostracized, tortured and even killed.

When you think about Christianity, you don’t think about it being a bad thing. Christianity is the religion derived from Jesus Christ, based on the Bible as sacred scripture, and professed by Eastern, Roman Catholic, and Protestant bodies. This religion came to be one of the largest and most influential religions today. When the Romans thought about Christianity, it was considered a sin. But what exactly was the nature of the conflict between Christianity and the Roman government? The conflict between Christianity and the Roman government was that Christians refused to recognizes the romans beliefs in their religion.

The document, The Passions of Saints Perpetua and Felicity, shows how brave the Christian faith was in Rome. During Diocletian’s ruling, Christianity was not a common religion. In fact, most Romans practiced polytheism. Under these circumstances, many Christian followers were publicly persecuted for their faith. The Roman government assumed that if the executions were public, it would discourage others from becoming Christians and shift away from the Roman life traditions, in which would guarantee wealth and prominence to the Roman elites. Shockingly, this did not bother the Christians that they were publicly sentenced to death because their faith in god was so strong they believed that by dying for their faith would bring them closer to god. Despite the cruelty and crudness of these executions however, it did not stop christianity from spreading. As a result, all persecutions were ended and it was declared leniency for the Christians. After such changes, Christianity became the official state religion of the Roman Empire. Such adjustments in policy spread Christian religion throughout every edge of the Empire. Although these legal orders ended a lifetime of Christian persecutions, they also could have shattered the traditional Roman values system. By this time, the Christians had only believed in one god, who was not the emperor. Due to the disregarding of the emperor, it weakened his authority and credibility. Lastly, another change was enacted which caused the fall

From the third to the fourth century, the Roman Empire witnessed a widespread attempt to stop the spread of Christianity. Initially, leaders of the church were predominately targeted, but later anyone admitting to Christianity became a target. The persecutions hit a climax during Diocletian’s reign. These persecutions actually helped the spread of Christianity by glorifying Christians and beginning a tradition of martyrdom that shaped the Church, and the strength that Christians displayed shows that the persecutions could not have possible stopped the spread of Christianity.

The textbook should be rephrased because it doesn't have the necessary amount of details regarding the information about Roman persecution of the Christians.

In Jerusalem, Jesus was treated fairly by everyone, but Romans and Jews didn’t except him, so he had to be executed. This shows that Romans and Jews would kill anyone who was dangerous, or threatening. Till this day, Jesus is a major part of believe and religion.

Going in depth with Christianity, The Christians believed in believing in one and only one god. They hated the romans and their views because they were pagans and had many gods to look up to. The Christians believe in justification by faith with that through their belief in Jesus as the Son of God. With his death and

According to Gaddis (2005) some of the Christians were tortured as well as being burnt alive, while others were publicly executed. Furthermore, it would seem that the more the Romans persecuted them, the more their hatred grew for them, as they believed them to be disobedient and a danger to the Empire. As such they did everything in their power to rid themselves of the Christians. The only consequence for the Christians at this time was, they either obeyed the law by sacrificing to the Pagan Gods or face persecution. However, Gaddis (2005) suggests that some of the Christians looked at the Roman persecution as not so much a Roman persecution, but one from their own God, who was testing their faith so that they could repent for their

Imperial persecution became wholesale throughout the Empire. Initially the Jewish community was the instigators of this persecution of Christians. The book of Acts outlines several incidents involving such persecution. During the decade of 60 A.D., periods of Roman persecution occurred, however this persecution was sporadic. For example, Nero was ruler of the Roman Empire, under his reign Rome was set on fire and burnt to the ground. Christians became the scapegoat for this cowardly act. Tasitus wrote that perhaps Nero himself started the blaze, as an excuse to persecute the Christians. Nero’s acts of persecution were contained within the confines of Rome.

For many years, Christianity was illegal. Often, it was essentially ignored, but there were time periods where the Christians in all the conquered areas were persecuted for not making sacrifices to the ancient gods. Finally, when Theodosius made Christianity the favored religion of the state and decided the orthodoxy of the New Testament, the era of European Christianity began. The idea of a fully human and yet fully divine messiah began at this time and also the idea of a Bishop in Rome presiding over the entirety of Christianity. All of this set the stage for the Christian beliefs still held today.

During the first decades preceding Christ's death, Christians were tolerated but not really liked by the general population of the Roman empire due to their refusal to acknowledge the emperor as a living god. This act of defiance was considered heresy by the state .The real mass persecution of the Christian people came during the reign of the emperor Nero who needed a scapegoat on whom to blame the great fire during his reign.

The Romans had a religion that they believed in but was not something concrete and was not of having a central idea. The religion was based on a mix of certain traditions and beliefs. Religion was not never really a big factor in their Empire. The Romans were stubborn with religion and this could be the reason they had an attitude towards these aspects of life. According to St. Augustine’s book Confession, he states that there were a lot of fake gods and there were two major religions in the Roman Empire. The very first religion was Paganism and that’s what his father was known to believe. Then the second main religion was Christianity which his mother believed in. The emperor of Rome at this time, Constantine himself was not a Christian when he conquered Rome, but rather he had a religious conversion when he won the fight with contending tetrarchs at the Milvian bridge in 306 AD, with help of image of the Cross. The

According to the sources the Christians were hated by the people of Rome. According to a source, that was written by Tacitus in 64 AD, they were “ a class hated for their abominations, who are commonly called criminals......... an immense multitude was convicted, not so much on the charge of arson as because of hatred of the human race.” (Tacitus, Annales 1a). They were convicted of crimes due to the fact that the Romans hated them. The

As Christianity was spread throughout Rome, people began to question the teachings of Jesus. Out of fear, officials arrested and killed a multitude of Christians as a result. The everyday plebeian became impressed with these people dying for a belief. Although persecutions became more common, the number of Christians stayed the same and maybe even grew because of the influx of polytheistic Romans converting to the monotheistic religion of Christianity. People were converting quicker than they were being killed off because of the likeable teachings of love, the bravery of these people dying because of what they believed in, and their appealing message to those not in the affluent classes.