W In the letters of Paul of Tarsus and in the Acts of the Apostles, i.e. in the oldest Christian writings, we will not find any mention of preaching the Good News in the countryside. However, we see how the Christian message reached the ports on the coast of Syro-Palestine already before the middle of the first century. From here, the route to the entire Mediterranean world was open.
From now on, for many generations, Christianity will be the religion of cities. […]
The Christians came from various groups of the urban community. Paul of Tarsus already wrote that there are both slaves and their owners among them. Texts from the 2nd century mention social differences between members of communities and emphasize that they should not be given too much importance (if they were mentioned, it was not entirely obvious).
Of course, when reading the gospels, especially the beatitudes addressed to the poor, suffering, persecuted and hungry for justice, one gets the impression that their message should have reached people low in the social hierarchy with particular force. In the Roman world, such a group was created primarily by slaves, who constituted at least several percent of the empire’s population and whose work was an essential element of its economy.. The fate of a slave could be very different. Working in a mine usually meant imminent death, but house slaves could sometimes have real influence and a great hope of liberation. However, none of them was the master of their own fate. Physical punishment, sexual abuse, and threats of separation from loved ones were experienced by almost all members of this group.
They all may have felt oppressed.
A religion for slaves, women and children?
However, did the Christian message, addressed directly to the oppressed and promising them reward in heaven, reach this group more strongly? Let’s start with the fact that Christianity did not call for the abolition of slavery. In the “Letter to the Ephesians”, which was traditionally attributed to Paul of Tarsus, we read: “Slaves, with reverence and fear, in singleness of heart, obey your temporal masters as to Christ, not serving merely as eye-catching people, but as slaves Christ, who do God’s will from the soul. Serve willingly as the Lord, not as men […]” (“Letter to the Ephesians” 6, 5-7). The author of the letter only required the masters to refrain from threats against their slaves. It is not much, but just noticing this group, and perhaps even more of an announcement that it is those who suffer today will be the first to reach the kingdom of heaven, could have attracted people who could not really count on improving their situation on earth. But was it really attractive if you asked the ancient writers this question? arguing with Christianity, they would answer with a decisive “yes!”, but not treating it as a compliment. Celsus, the 2nd century author of a treatise against Christians, claims, for example, that their religion only convinces slaves, women and children. But we should not believe Celsus too much easily. The juxtaposition of these three groups is rhetorical. The author wants to convince readers that only those who use reason less efficiently than a mature, free man will accept Christianity however, more about the way weaker groups were perceived at that time than about the actual social composition of Christian communities.
In fact, slaves as members of Christian communities are very little visible to us. Of course, this is partly because sources from this era are always focused on the elites, not the bottom of society. Christian texts are no exception. However, the silence of the sources about slaves means at least that for the remaining members of the community their presence was not particularly noticeable; it did not dramatically distinguish Christian communities from the rest of society. Slaves did not embrace Christianity in huge numbers, or rather, many of them, even those who lived in the worst conditions, simply did not have the opportunity to encounter it. For many generations, Christianity was primarily the religion of cities
More authoritative is the silence of Christian sources about the opposite end of the social ladder. In the first two centuries AD, we are unable to point to any example of a Christian from the senatorial elite or, more broadly, the ruling elite of the empire – apart from a few legendary figures or those who existed, but who were associated with the new religion only after several centuries. In other words, before the mid-3rd century, Christians such as Marcus Vinicius (for those who remember “Quo Vadis”) appeared only in literature.
The situation changes shortly thereafter. In 257, Emperor Valerian issued the already known edict against Christians, ordering, among other things, the confiscation of property (and in case of further stubbornness, the beheading) of Christian senators and equites: two formally distinguished classes of the Roman aristocracy. This suggests that there were already Christians among the people of these groups, or that at least the emperor did not think such an assumption was absurd. From the second half of the 3rd century, we even know the names of specific representatives of the senatorial estate who adopted this religion. In the early fourth century, Constantine’s conversion accelerated the Christianization of this group, although its members did not change their religious affiliation overnight. They had no need to do so. It is true that the emperors of the 4th century sometimes favored Christians in state positions, but religious affiliation was never the most important criterion for appointments. There were probably people who became Christians for the sake of a career, but the old senatorial aristocracy associated with the city of Rome stuck to the old cults longer than the rest of society and it did not cost them much. Even at the end of the 4th century, Christians were relatively few in its ranks.
Intellectuals and businessmen
Slaves and aristocrats, of course, belonged to extremely distant worlds. Most Christians, meanwhile, were people who lived off work, but were free and not necessarily poor. We rarely know the origins of specific people, but a group that clearly catches the eye are the relatively well-educated and mobile inhabitants of large metropolises. Examples include the 2nd century Gnostic teachers: Carpocrates came from Asia Minor, the most urbanized part of the empire, but moved to Alexandria, its second largest city. His son Epiphanius was already teaching in Rome. Basilides and Valentinus were also active in Alexandria, but the latter also moved to Rome. Kerdon, who came from Syria, taught in the same city. This mobility was not exclusive to Gnostics. In 2nd-century Rome we also find Justin from Palestine, Tatian from Syria, Irenaeus of Smyrna (who later moved to Lugdunum, today’s Lyon), and Markion of Pontus. At least some of the first Christians in Lugdunum, described in a description of their martyrdom written in the 1270s, also came from Asia Minor. The mobility of these people could encourage the perception of them as missionaries, sent by their communities to proclaim the Good News in distant lands. However, we have no evidence of such actions. […]
In addition to intellectuals, we see among Christians specialists and business people who are sometimes as mobile as they are: Markion was the owner of a merchant ship; Alexander, one of the Lyon martyrs from 177 – a doctor, like Irenaeus, from Smyrna; Hermas, author of the treatise entitled “The Shepherd” – a freedman conducting some commercial activity (perhaps he was a salt merchant); Callixtus, bishop of Rome in the early third century, was also a freedman active in the banking industry. Prisca and her husband Aquila, mentioned several times in Paul’s letters, were craftsmen who made tents. They came from Pontus, but later worked in Rome, and they met Paul in Corinth. They went with him to Ephesus and later returned to Rome. All in all, the people we see best in our sources and who probably played a key role in Christian communities are intellectuals of various caliber and people running small or medium-sized businesses, also well educated, traveling freely around the Mediterranean and feeling equally comfortable in each of them. its great cities, where they could find listeners who understood Greek.
The group described played a key role in the expansion of Christianity, teaching and managing communes, which is why we are able to name its representatives. We see the rank-and-file members of communities in a worse situation. A certain idea about their social status is given by sources which, when talking about accepting candidates for baptism, mention professions that are incompatible with membership in the Church.
Baptism is not for the teacher
Regulations from the 3rd century, which we find in the so-called apostolic tradition, say, for example, that an actor, mime, sculptor or painter cannot be included in the list of those preparing for baptism unless they promise not to make images of deities.
The ban also covers gladiators and their coaches, racing chariot drivers and, in general, representatives of professions related to all kinds of performances. People on stage did not enjoy an especially good reputation at that time, but the key role was played not by the assessment of their morality, but by the religious nature of the performances, which were always associated with a holiday of a more or less religious nature. This does not mean that there was no moral assessment of baptismal candidates, and it is difficult to believe that, for example, the owner of a brothel could be baptized without any problems. But the religious nature of the above-mentioned prohibitions is indicated by the inclusion of a pagan priest and people participating in worship on the list of those excluded from baptism. It may seem strange that the temple staff wanted to accept Christianity without abandoning their former religion. In fact, we are dealing here with people who had to perform priestly functions due to their social position, and those for whom serving temples (bringing wood for sacrifices, lighting lamps, cleaning, etc.) was ordinary work, not an expression of piety.
Another, somewhat surprising category from this list deserves attention: teachers. The problem with teachers also lay in their association with the pagan religion. Teaching children consisted of familiarizing them with the canon of literature, the core of which in the Greek version were Homer’s poems, and in the Latin version, Virgil’s “Aeneid”. Papyrus pages have been preserved to this day, on which students laboriously and inexpertly copied lines from the “Iliad” and “Odyssey”. For us, these songs are colorful stories, talking primarily about people and their emotions. Ancient Christians recognized this human aspect of themselves, but they could not turn a blind eye to the fact that the stories of the Trojan War, the return of Odysseus and the journeys of Aeneas were full of stories about the same gods whose temples still stood in their cities. Their attitude towards this literary classic resembled the radically negative attitude towards the Harry Potter books, which can be found today in some Christian circles.
The only difference was that JK Rowling’s books are not the basis of the school canon of reading, which was considered irreplaceable even by Christians in ancient times. As a result, at the beginning of the 3rd century, Tertullian, who could hardly be accused of a lack of rigorism, claimed that Christians could by no means be teachers themselves, but he recognized that unfortunately they could, and even should, send their children to schools where they would learn Homer and Virgil. The apostolic tradition is even more reserved in this respect. Although he decrees that a teacher cannot be admitted to baptism unless he abandons his profession, he immediately adds: unless he is unable to find another job…
Robert Wiśniewski professor of the history of late antiquity, works at the Faculty of History of the University of Warsaw. He deals with the religious and social changes of this period, especially the cult of saints, fortune telling, monasticism, the history of the clergy and theft. He heads the Center for Research on Ancient Civilizations (UW).
Fragment of Robert Wiśniewski’s book “Christians of the First Centuries. Volume I: Faithful, bishops, hermits”, published by RN Publishing House
