Christianity in the Roman Empire

as we've talked about in multiple videos Christianity is a religion that grew out of the fringes of the Roman Empire it starts as a Jewish sect in Judea and Galilee with the teachings of Jesus and his early ministry but it's important to keep in mind at the time of Jesus's crucifixion around 30 C II he only had at most we're talking about the hunt in the hundreds of followers but in other videos we talked about his apostles who start spreading the faith not only to other Jews but also to non-jews to Gentiles we talked about Emperor Nero and his famous purges of Christians in particular you have the famous Roman fire or the fire of Rome in 64 C II that Nero blames on Christians and he uses this to do significant purge in Rome many historians believe that the Apostles Peter and Paul were killed during those purges this is a painting of Nero using Christians lighting them alive to punish them for that fire now other imperial acts that continue to have a significant effect effect on this very early Christian Church we talked about the the destroying of the Second Temple in Jerusalem in 70 CE II and that's under the reign of this patient and this is of course is a very significant event for the Jewish people but it also has a significant effect on Christianity because remember Christianity was really centered at Jerusalem it was a sect of Christianity or it was it Scott starts as a sect of Christianity but now with the destruction of the temple the Jews were dispersed from Jerusalem and this and and so are many of these early Christians and so the centers of Christianity became throughout the empire places like Antioch and you continue to have a discomfort with Christians especially as it became more and more in number and they started to have more and more power and you here you have these people who refused to obey the the Roman gods to do their rituals to worship the Roman gods and remember even there was Emperor worship here and the issue was more so than even the Jewish people who to certain degree kept to themselves these Christians were missionaries they were spreading their faith to Roman citizens families were being split apart where some decided to become Christians and no longer follow these Roman practices and so you have these various persecutions in these various purges and they get more and more significant as you go into the second and even to some degree in the third century as Christians become more and more prominent and more and more in number remember to have this missionary zeal and it really becomes a significant purge under the reign of Diocletian in previous videos we talked about Diocletian he's the one that famously split the empire between east and west but he's also famous for his purge of the christians the most extreme state-sponsored purges of Christians in the Roman Empire but what's interesting is right after or shortly after those purges we're talking a few decades here the next empire that would the next Emperor who would have constrained over the entire Roman Empire would be Constantine and at least relative to Christians he would be the opposite of Diocletian because as he's trying to consolidate his power in 312 C II you have the famous Battle of mill at the Milvian bridge outside of or entering into Rome and in this battle Constantine he sees a vision of the Christian cross centered on the Sun and he thinks that that is a sign that he should fight under the cross and he gets and he gets the symbols painted on his soldiers field and he's victorious and this date 312 milling the Milvian bridge the battle at Milvian bridge is viewed as the beginning of Constantine's conversion to Christianity viewing it as the phase chosen faith in 313 the he the Roman Emperor or the Empire issues the Edict of Milan which officially makes Christianity okay it legalized as Christianity which is a big deal because these folks have been persecuted all this time they haven't been worshipping the Roman gods then in 325 Constantine goes even further and he convenes the Council of Nicaea he brings the bishops from all of Christendom together to start having a more unified belief system they come up with an IC and Creed a lot of the debate is whether Jesus as son of God should be considered equal to God or as God or a little less as being the son maybe if he's the son maybe there was a time where there wasn't a son and there was just God but the Nicene Creed says no they are one and the same these two things are equivalent and then Constantine on his deathbed famously gets baptized and becomes a Christian the first Christian Emperor of this gigantic Roman Emperor Empire and so you can imagine you have more and more followers of Christianity but now this is supposed to speak primetime the Emperor of the Roman the Emperor of the Roman Empire has converted to Christianity and it's a okit's it's a legalized religion and then that gets even more momentum when we get to the end of the 4th century Emperor Theodosius who was Christian under him it becomes the official religion of the Roman Empire the same Empire that at one point Christianity was illegal and it was being persecuted now it was the official religion of the Roman Empire and Theodosius I mentioned him in other videos he was incidentally also the last emperor to rule over both eastern and western Roman empires so you have this empire that starts off very anti-christian actually in the beginning they don't really really take much note of what's going on in Judea and Galilee but more and more they start to persecute them but we go a few hundred years into this and it becomes a Christian Empire