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The rise of a Christian elite


The above plot from a Peter Turchin blog post, Easter, Early Christians, and Cliodynamics, illustrates a sigmoid curve in the rise of Christianity among Roman elites (elites are relevant since we have data from them). If this is a topic you are interested in, Michelle Salzman’s The Making of a Christian Aristocracy: Social and Religious Change in the Western Roman Empire and Peter Brown’s Through the Eye of a Needle: Wealth, the Fall of Rome, and the Making of Christianity in the West, 350-550 AD are excellent reads on how this transition happened.

Moving away from the autocatalytic model, and describing what happened verbally, in a given population only a minority is strongly motivated on particular details of religion or ideology. Most seem comfortable aligning themselves with the “spirit of the times.” This is true even in the early modern period, as England was forced into Protestantism, while much of Austria and Hungary were dragged back to Roman Catholicism (see Divided by Faith: Religious Conflict and the Practice of Toleration in Early Modern Europe). Only in the 17th century do you start to see populations resisting the demands or preferences of their rulers (e.g., the House of Hohenzollern converted to the Reformed faith but their subjects remained Lutheran, while the Saxons remained Lutheran after the Wettins converted to Catholicism).

What does this imply? The pagans who remained pagan in 450 AD could be more sure about the sincerity and conviction of their fellow dissenters from regnant orthodoxy than pagans from 350 AD. The Christians of 400 AD were less sure about the deep sincerity of the beliefs of their peers than Christians in 300 AD were.

10 thoughts on “The rise of a Christian elite

  1. The pagans who remained pagan in 450 AD could be more sure about the sincerity and conviction of their fellow dissenters from regnant orthodoxy than pagans from 350 AD. The Christians of 400 AD were less sure about the deep sincerity of the beliefs of their peers than Christians in 300 AD were.

    Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius.

    – Arnaud Amalric

  2. One of my “to do” list items for a rainy day is to fit survey data on “no religion” identification in the U.S. to a logistic curve similar to the one done by Turchin in this case. The slope is steepest in the middle which is where were are starting to get now.

  3. Turchin’s post seems bizarre to me, it sounds like he thinks the triumph of Christianity was inevitable anyway and only due to “natural” growth. A statement like “Then, it suddenly explodes during the fourth century. Actually, nothing changes in the generating mechanism — slow initial growth followed by blow-up is what exponential models do.” is completely missing the fundamental change in the status of Christianity after Constantine’s conversion which brought massive imperial patronage and made conversion to Christianity not only non-dangerous, but actually a way to personal advancement (total reversal of the situation under the Tetrarchs). Without Constantine’s conversion (not totally “accidental”, since a religious change of that kind was in the air, as indicated by Aurelian’s henotheistic sun God cult, and even the religious ideas of the Tetrarchs – but far from preordained either) conditions would have been rather different.
    Turchin also doesn’t show awareness of regional variation – you can’t just take a centre of early Christianity like Egypt as representative for the entire Roman empire (especially its Western part), let alone its elites. Makes me rather wary of Cliodynamics and its more excessive claims.

  4. My writings often focus and attempt to give a different perspective on falsified or hidden history or on backgrounds of contemporary events unravelling before our eyes. Mostly, some less known data are used but sometimes, the common peasant’s logic is more than sufficient. Razib’s blogs unintentionally (maybe even unwillingly) give a huge contribution to uncovering these falsifications. Sometimes, some individuals get irritated (it should be acknowledged their right to feel comfortable in warm deep shit without much ripples), but they never come back with counterarguments or questions for additional clarifications.

    Well, let see what we can get from this short introtext.
    Wiki: Peter Turchin is specializing in cultural evolution and cliodynamics—mathematical modelling and statistical analysis of the dynamics of historical societies.

    Maybe it is possible to do accurate modelling but only if you have good data. Otherwise, it applies – shit in, shit out. Quick references what is missing from the denoted books what gives us a distorted picture. For e.g:
    “House of Hohenzollern converted to the Reformed faith, but their subjects remained Lutheran, while the Saxons remained Lutheran after the Wettins converted to Catholicism”

    >>> Is it important that the HoH, Dukes and Kings of Prussia were of Serbian origin (so as all Prussians, see the connection with goddess Rhea in my previous comment) or this is not important at all? So as Luther (real surname – Ljutic) himself who, as all converts, became later a strong Serbophobe? All of them are presented in Eupedia as I2 haplogroup members together with Novak Djokovic. So as Saxons (even wiki started writing about them as so-called Slavics) including the Empress Catarina who even had this in her name.

    “Pagans” is a Serbian word (maybe also not important), even one Serbian province at that time had the name ‘Pagania’.
    What the referred Peter Brown’s book “…and Making of Christianity in the West, 350-550 AD” says? Why West? The book writes about ‘Latin Church’ (cca 310AC???), ‘Latin Christianity’, even before Christianity was legalised. It writes about Rome although the center of Empire was not in the Rome than in Sirmium, 40 km from Belgrade. Many Emperors were born there, it had Colosseum bigger than that in Rome, money was minted there, not in Rome, for all the time. The first Christian diocese was established there in 29AC, st. Peter first visited Sirmium before going to Rome, St. Paul was hiding in caves in previously mentioned Pagania where he baptised people in the river Trebisnica. Is all this important?

    More than 40 Emperors were Serbs including both co-emperors from Tetrarchy, Constantine and Licinius. Serbs were later Jovian and Julian, one tried to go back to ‘paganism’ the other restored Christianity again. So as Valentinian, Justinian and his uncle Justin. Why the book only focuses on ‘Latin West’ if the Church was still unique and Emperors ruled from Sirmium, Belgrade, Nis and Constantinople. Who consisted the elite Roman Empire army? For e.g. Greeks did not give any emperor nor were a part of army fighting units. Which arms prolonged the Eastern Roman Empire for another 1000 years? Who were gladiators, who was Spartacus? Who was St Jerome who translated the Bible to Latin?

    There are so many other history things which are unknown or hidden. It is amazing how this wall of silence is functioning. It must be something big at stake that none dares to write about this nor provide counterevidence to prove that the previous is incorrect. To be fair, wiki shyly started putting some of previous between the lines, but the first millennium processes are still the Kafkian history world.

  5. @Milan Todorovic

    Which arms prolonged the Eastern Roman Empire for another 1000 years?

    For most of its history, the Eastern Roman Empire was an Anatolian-centered empire, with most of its population in Anatolia, the majority of its soldiers from Anatolia and most of its emperors with Anatolian origins. It was an empire dominated by Anatolian J2a, G2a, R1b-Z2103, J1 and E1b1b individuals for most of its history. Also, as you know, there were no Slavs in Anatolia except for some groups relocated by the Eastern Roman Empire from the Balkans, who would quickly be absorbed by Anatolian natives. Deal with it. Even the Ottoman Empire was not so Anatolian-centered due to its high reliance on Balkan populations.

  6. In fact, if it was not for the Slavs and their frequent invasions of the Eastern Roman lands, the Eastern Roman Empire would probably last much longer.

  7. @OD – Thanks for your reply. It seems that you follow the corrupted taxonomy where we don’t know the real meanings of: Indo-Europeans, steppe, Byzantium, Anatolian, Slavic, etc. ‘Slavic’ is a fairly recent term and invented to disguise the Serbian name. It is unclear who were ‘Anatolians’. Are Brigian (as Greek say – Phrygians) Anatolians? What was their language? Where they came from. Plato in his Cratylus discusses some Phrygian words which are actually Serbian words. Maybe, instead of haplogroups, it is easier to explain who was for e.g. Justinian, his uncle emperor Justin and his military commander Belisarius? Who was Constantine? Who was Diocletian? Who lived in Troy? Who were Thracians, the biggest nation in the world after Indians and what’s happened with them and their language which was a mother tongue for dozens of R.Emperors?

    The convention is to use the specific tribe name or their language, not mute expressions as Slavic and Anatolian. Ancient Serbs are sc. proto-Slavic, all Slavic nations and their languages evolved from ancient Serbian languages (for e.g. Russian name was first mentioned in the 8th c.AC). Some Serbian tribes were fighting West Roman Empire and as a result they got Roman citizenship. Other Serbian tribes, outside of the RE border were kept fighting the Empire which elite legions were Illyrian (Serbian) and which gave few dozens of emperors. The same case was with E.Roman Empire which was fighting Vandals and new Serbian state which was establishing (in Dalmatia, today’s Albania, etc) on the West Roman Empire ruins. Serbian tribes were widespread up to the Baltic on the north and up to China and India (Aryans) on the East. I would be interested to know your opinion who was Alexander the Great.

  8. @Milan Todorovic

    I would be interested to know your opinion who was Alexander the Great.

    Easy: the greatest Greek in history.

  9. @OD – This is enough for me to see the level of your knowledge. I can give you a list of all Macedonia (why the name of the state is a Serbian name?) rulers since 800+BC up to Alexander and you tell me who was a Greek. I can give you the name of 100s of Macedonian tribes which are now modern Serbian surnames. Can you give me the name of only ONE Greek Macedonian tribe? A can give you the names and a map of 1000 Macedonian Serbian toponyms/places/villages which names were, after thousands of years, changed to Greeks after the 1st World War. I can give you his real name – Lesandar (what does this name means in Serbian and what in Greek?). Why Alexander does not look as Tsipras for e.g. then as …uhm…a Serb? Greek warriors who conquered the whole known world? And, why they were not involved later in any Roman fighting units? Finally, could you repeat your statement to the Athenian mayor and famous speaker Demosthenes? What do you think, what he would answer to you? It would be good that Razib opens discussion about this because it is an issue of global significance and can clarify so many other things.
    And, what about Justinian (and Constantine and many others)?

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