Relations between Christianity and the Roman government and the Hellenistic culture
Church-state relations
The Christians were not respectful toward ancestral pagan customs, and their preaching of a new king sounded like revolution. The opposition of the Jews to them led to breaches of the peace. Thus the Christians could very well be unpopular, and they often were. Paul’s success at Ephesus provoked a riot to defend the cult of the goddess Artemis. In ad 64 a fire destroyed much of Rome; the emperor Nero, in order to escape blame, killed a “vast multitude” of Christians as scapegoats. For the ... (100 of 126,827 words)
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Christ as Ruler, with the Apostles and Evangelists (represented by the beasts). The female figures are believed to be either Santa Pudenziana and Santa Práxedes or symbols of the Jewish and Gentile churches. Mosaic in the apse of Santa Pudenziana basilica, Rome, ad 401–417.
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Detail from Expulsion of Adam and Eve, fresco by Masaccio, c. 1427; in the Brancacci Chapel, Church of Santa Maria del Carmine, Florence.
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Moses expounding the law, illuminated manuscript page from the Bury Bible, about 1130. In Corpus Christi College, Cambridge.
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Greek Bible. Page from The Gospel According to Matthew, 6th century ad.
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Statue of Diocletian’s tetrarchy, red porphyry, c. ad 300, brought to Venice in 1258.
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Marble colossal head of Constantine the Great, part of the remains of a giant statue from the Basilica of Constantine, in the Roman Forum, c. ad 313.
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Apse of the church of St. Apollinare in Classe, Ravenna, Italy, second half of the 6th century.
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World distribution of Christianity, c. 2000.
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Communion of the Apostles, panel by Justus of Ghent, c. 1473–74; in the Palazzo Ducale, Urbino, Italy.
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St. Augustine, fresco by Sandro Botticelli, 1480; in the Church of the Ognissanti, Florence.