It is sometimes said that Christianity conquered the world by the sword. I would say that is not technically accurate. It used the sword and other things, like burning people alive, to suppress dissent, but the actual conquest was more subtle and less violent.
Basically you have two religious groups, the "pagans," and the Christians, and the latter are associated with a past great civilization and a complicated and superstitious plan of salvation (but they were superstitious people already believing in the value of sacrifice in lifting curses). The new religion, because of its history, has more prestige.
What they would do was get the king baptized, sometimes by force, sometimes by persuasion, and maybe everybody else. That was the foot in the door -- the old beliefs persisted -- but they would then get control of what education there may be, and safely send in missionaries, and slowly the old beliefs would fade out (it generally took a couple centuries, and was never completely complete).
The Muslim "conquest" of North Africa and the initial Christian "conquest" of Rome happened in similar ways. That is, nominal Christian at first, but the children and the grand-children become less and less nominal and more and more orthodox.
One should also remember that when the people in power are a certain religion, the ambitious and those who want to get along tend to go along.
Basically you have two religious groups, the "pagans," and the Christians, and the latter are associated with a past great civilization and a complicated and superstitious plan of salvation (but they were superstitious people already believing in the value of sacrifice in lifting curses). The new religion, because of its history, has more prestige.
What they would do was get the king baptized, sometimes by force, sometimes by persuasion, and maybe everybody else. That was the foot in the door -- the old beliefs persisted -- but they would then get control of what education there may be, and safely send in missionaries, and slowly the old beliefs would fade out (it generally took a couple centuries, and was never completely complete).
The Muslim "conquest" of North Africa and the initial Christian "conquest" of Rome happened in similar ways. That is, nominal Christian at first, but the children and the grand-children become less and less nominal and more and more orthodox.
One should also remember that when the people in power are a certain religion, the ambitious and those who want to get along tend to go along.
No comments:
Post a Comment