Macrohistorical Aspects of the Constantinian Shift: Climatic Change, Pandemics, and the Rise of Christianity
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| Year of publication | 2024 |
| Type | Article in Proceedings |
| Conference | Studying Religion, Past and Present: Essays in Honor of Panayotis Pachis |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Keywords | Christianisation of the Roman Empire; the Antonine Plague; the Plague of Cyprian; climatic change; epidemiology of Representation; immunology of representations |
| Description | The article presents an innovative view of the circumstances leading to the gradual Christianization of the Roman Empire. The scenario presented incorporates in the historical narrative the influence of macro-historical factors such as: a) the deteriorated epidemic situation caused by the Antonine plague and the Plague of Cyprian; b) the gradual climatic change unfavourable for agricultural production, which began to manifest themselves in the Ancient Mediterranean during the 2nd and especially the 3rd century CE. These factors led to a deterioration in food security, a demographic decline, and increasing social pressure, which caused considerable erosion of the prestige of pagan religion and confidence in the Roman political system. From the perspective of Spereber’s epidemiology of representations and Sorensen’s immunology of representations, the “crisis of the third century” also led to a weakening of the “cultural immunity” of the inhabitants of the Roman Empire and to the emergence of new conditions relevant to the acceptance of new cultural ideas. This situation enabled a wider dissemination and acceptance of previously only modestly successful cultural representations in the form of Christian ideas about God, the world, and man’s role in it, which gradually began to increase their popularity in the changed conditions of the Roman world. |