History of Rome the City Research Paper

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By about 400 AD, the old social and physical structures of Rome were in decline, the city losing power both within its own empire and within the West as a whole (Miles 41). The decline of the old order in Rome allowed a space for the ascension of Christianity, which began in the first century AD. For the first two centuries of the Christian era, Roman authorities classified Christianity as simply a sect of Judaism and so did not react to it as if it were its own distinct religion.

To the extent that Christians were persecuted in the first few centuries after the beginning of the Christian era, it was only by local officials, with the imperial government warning those officials not to do so. However, in the first century of the Christian era, there was considerable anger at Christians in some quarters of Rome, especially after the Emperor Nero attempted to put the blame for the Great Fire of Rome (in AD 64) on Jews, and thus on Christians as well as one of the Jewish sects (Kertzer 49). Nero's attempts to blame Jews for both the fire and the many financial and moral excesses of his rule led both to his own suicide and to a civil war that badly damaged the city.

However, while it was true that initially Romans in general classified Christians and Jews as the same (at least for administrative purposes), it was also true that by Nero's reign, he was sufficiently aware that Christianity was emerging as a new type of religion, with its followers a group that was given to a high level of "superstition" and whose views warranted their being punished (Ward-Perkins 38).

The official shift to Christianity in Rome is credited to the emperor Constantine I (who ruled in the third and fourth century), who was the first Roman emperor to convert to Christianity.

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However, despite his conversion, the shift from the traditional beliefs and religious practices of Rome were not immediately pushed aside by Christianity. For centuries the two would co-exist to different degrees, in some measure because Constantine himself issued the Edict of Milan in 313. This edict required that all religions be treated as equally meritorious throughout the entire empire (Kertzer 198).

Over the next centuries, until Rome was overtaken by northern, Germanic tribes, Rome would rise to become that center of the world's Christian powers, all of which would be lost with the beginning of the Middle Ages (Kertzer 214).

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