23 Sep 20
@wolfgang59 saidDo you have any idea what happened to the statues? Where they placed elsewhere or destroyed? Rome didn't become exclusively Christian until circa 400 AD so I wonder about this.
Hesychius of Miletus wrote that Constantine built Hagia Sophia with a wooden roof, and removed 427 (mostly pagan) statues from the site.
I'm personally insulted that those statues were removed!
From your source
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hagia_Sophia
23 Sep 20
@philokalia saidDid you?
When did I say that the building is not important?
If you said it why ask me when?
23 Sep 20
@deepthought saidNo idea.
Do you have any idea what happened to the statues? Where they placed elsewhere or destroyed? Rome didn't become exclusively Christian until circa 400 AD so I wonder about this.
I'm just making the point that something existed.
Even if it was farm land, a public urinal or a basket ball court.
23 Sep 20
@deepthought saidIt would be debatable if it even was at that point, either.
Do you have any idea what happened to the statues? Where they placed elsewhere or destroyed? Rome didn't become exclusively Christian until circa 400 AD so I wonder about this.
However, if you read guys like Bury, who would never be accused of being friends of the Church, the late Roman Empire / early Byzantine period was pretty tolerant of pagans, and the shift from paganism to Chrsitianity was very natural.
The most interesting aspect of it was how Julian the Apostate basically tried to create his own reformed form of Paganism that could not catch on at all, and how weak the attempts to revitalize Paganism generally were. It was a fully defeated religion - long before Julian the Apostate. You can even go back hundreds of years earlier and you find pagan apologists quibbling over how to interpret the gods at all -- making distinctions between the gods of the philosophers, and the gods of the poets.
It is likely that there weren't that many people left who particularly cared for those statues, and those who were most likely to remain devout pagans would be believers in the gods of the philosophers, many of them would be even henotheists.
It's really an interesting period, and certainly this single line from a single source cannot be used to conclude that there was a gross plundering of some active Pagan temple by the Christians.
23 Sep 20
@philokalia saidThere is some academic dispute concerning Julian's religious beliefs. You've presented one theory. The opposing theory is that he represented what was essentially mainstream Pagan thinking for the time. I think that your claim that Paganism was "a fully defeated religion" comes under the heading of partisan. Since Julian was a Christian for the first 20 years of his life he could hardly have become a Pagan in a vacuum.
It would be debatable if it even was at that point, either.
However, if you read guys like Bury, who would never be accused of being friends of the Church, the late Roman Empire / early Byzantine period was pretty tolerant of pagans, and the shift from paganism to Chrsitianity was very natural.
The most interesting aspect of it was how Julian the Apostate basically ...[text shortened]... be used to conclude that there was a gross plundering of some active Pagan temple by the Christians.
The principle reason for the final collapse of Paganism was his death was it's violent suppression starting with Theodosius I who made Nicene Christianity the State religion and effectively permitted the destruction of Pagan centres of worship, and dissolved the Vestal Virgins. Despite the proscriptions Roman Paganism survived for another couple of hundred years.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_pagans_under_Theodosius_I
23 Sep 20
@deepthought saidWow, thanks for your input.
There is some academic dispute concerning Julian's religious beliefs. You've presented one theory. The opposing theory is that he represented what was essentially mainstream Pagan thinking for the time. I think that your claim that Paganism was "a fully defeated religion" comes under the heading of partisan. Since Julian was a Christian for the first 20 years of his l ...[text shortened]... r couple of hundred years.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_pagans_under_Theodosius_I
Of course, Theodosius I was a scarce 16 years after Julian the Apostate, who tormented Christians, and the emperors immediately preceding him were often short-lived or juggling all manner of problems. The memory of Julian must've been very strong, which is why he was repressive -- something that Church doctrine does condemn, and which seems to be relatively aberrant.
J. M. Bury portrays Julian the Apostate learning from a guy who was something of a self-styled magician and huckster. of course, Julian would have been very familiar with the grand poetry and language of his pagan ancestors, but yeah, I do not believe it was even intended to function in the same way that Pagan ever functioned.
Both Zoroastrianism and Paganism actually had to adapt themselves very much because of Chrsitianity -- just like Judaism did -- because religion itself was basically changed, so strong was the impact of it.
It is really odd to see an honest-to-God post reaching into the depths of the topic in the Spirituality forum.
I will start effort-posting more and hoping to have more of these interactions. Maybe I'll even pull out Bury and extract some relevant quotes later. Let me know if you have any book recommendations.
