Christianization of the Roman Empire

The Roman Empire converted to Christianity in stages, despite the persecutions. Official recognition of the young religion was the work of Constantine, a pure product of the Tetrarchy. In 313, the Edict of Milan granted Christians, a small minority of the Empire’s subjects, the right to worship freely. It was only much later, in 392 with Theodosius’s Edict of Thessalonica, that Christianity became the sole legitimate state religion in the late Roman Empire.

Persecuted, tolerated, or official, Christianity exercised considerable influence on the late Western and Eastern Roman Empires. In politics, philosophy, and poetry, it clearly stamped works by writers who were called to become the fundamental authors of medieval scholarship, like the philosopher Boethius. At a time when it was a rarity in the Western Empire, he was learned in Greek and played a crucial role in transmitting antiquity’s legacy to the Middle Ages. Boetius’ writings inspired the clerics of the great Cathedral schools of Reims, Auxerre, and Chartres, as well as the greatest thinkers of the age, Alcuin of York, Abelard, and Thomas Aquinas. The Greek manuscript of the Homeric Centos perfectly illustrates the fusion of Christianity and pagan culture. The Cento was a very popular genre in late antiquity, an extreme form of paraphrase, repurposing verses from one or more poets to compose an entirely new piece. These centos reuse Homeric lines to create a poem in a completely Christian vein.