Читать книгу World History For Dummies - Peter Haugen - Страница 92

After Rome was no longer an imperial capital, its name loomed so large and for so long in people’s minds that it continued to invoke power and an aura of legitimacy, in part because the Roman Catholic Church remained headquartered there. If you think of Romans as feeding Christians to the lions in the Coliseum, don’t forget that the empire later converted to Christianity. The Emperor Constantine, who built his capital in western Turkey, helped bring about a new Roman tolerance toward Christians and became the first Roman emperor to convert to Christianity, in 312 AD. Starting in 331 AD, Constantine also made the Roman Catholic Church rich by

 Seizing the treasures of pagan temples and spending them on magnificent new Christian churches from Italy to Turkey to Jerusalem.

 Handing out huge endowments.

 Authorizing bishops to draw on imperial funds as reparation for the years of enmity.

These moves helped establish the institution’s wealth and power for centuries to come. In 391 AD, Constantine’s successor, Theodosius I, added a final touch by prohibiting old-style Roman pagan worship, making Christianity the official religion. The empire—both in its western and eastern components—continued to promote, strengthen, and spread that religion in Europe, western Asia, North Africa, and beyond. Two centers of early, state sanctioned Christianity emerged—one in Constantinople and the other in the city of Rome.

Even as the empire shifted its energies away from Rome, it remained Christianity’s western headquarters and it is still the center of Roman Catholicism because of what the city had been at its imperial height.