How christians were treated in rome?

Answer 1

The times were puncuated by many, religions and many gods. Caesar himself was considered to be god. Temples were erected throughout the Roman Empire to various gods. Christians came along teaching that there was only one God, and that Jesus was his devine son. Temple worship money-making enterprises lost money because those converting to Christianity stopped spending their money in these temples, and stopped buying idol figurines to the local gods. Others distrusted the Christians because they didn't have the same beliefs or life styles as the common populace. The Roman government used the religion of Caesar as a political strong-hold on people, and that power was not present in Christians because they saw God as greater than Caesar or the Roman Empire.

Answer 2

AnswerA strongly held Christian tradition is that persecution of Christians began under Emperor Nero and continued almost unabated until the time of Emperor Constantine, yet the third-century Church Father, Origen, writing of the total of Christian martyrs up to his own time, in Rome and elsewhere, states (Contra Celsum, 3.8) that there were not many - and that it was easy to count them. As for Nero's supposed widespread persecutions, the New Testament gospels were written after the time of his death, but appear to go out of their way to be complimentary about the Romans as compared wirh Jews. Acts of the Apostles makes not the slightest reference to any persecution by Nero of Christians at Rome.

Edward Gibbon (The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire) concludes about the attitude of the emperors to the Christians:

• That a considerable time elapsed before they considered the new sectaries as deserving of the attention of government.
• That in the conviction of any of their subjects who were accused of so very singular a crime, they proceeded with caution and reluctance.
• That they were moderate in the use of punishments; and
• That the afflicted church enjoyed many intervals of peace and tranquillity.

Gibbon says that the Christian traditions of extreme persecution of the Christians were created by the ecclesiastical writers of the fourth or fifth centuries, who ascribed to the magistrates of Rome the same degree of implacable and unrelenting zeal which filled their own breasts against the heretics or the idolaters of their own times. This is not to say that there were not periods of widespread persecution, but they were of short duration and not as severe as often supposed. The Great Persecution instituted by Emperor Diocletian lasted only from 303 to 305 in the western empire and was, as far as practicable, ignore by those who were supposed to enforce it. The Great Persecution lasted until 311 in the eastern empire.

Answer 3

They were brutalized by being burnt alive, crucified, eaten by wild animals, made to fight to the death against gladiators, tigers, lions, wolves, and that sort of thing, unarmed and slaughtered by soldiers, drawn and quartered (they rip out your intestines while you still live, tie a horse to each of your limbs and slap the horses on the rump and you are pulled into pieces), publicly raped and tortured to death, sometimes the lot all at once, pretty much any sick messed up thing you can imagine was done to the Christians by the Romans. How is that for the pinnacle of civilization'.

Answer 4

A:

This answer looks at the Christians of Rome in the first two hundred years of Christianity.

At the time of Emperor Nero, there is known to have been a reasonably visible area of Rome dominated by Christians, who seem to have openly professed their faith, and probably even proselytised to other Romans. Paul wrote an epistle to the Christian community in Rome, and probably visited the city later, on his way to Spain. After the Great Fire of Rome, Nero needed a scapegoat. He did not start the fire himself, in spite of later Propaganda, but he was expected to find and punish the culprit. The fire had apparently started near the Christian quarter, so the Christians became convenient scapegoats and were expelled from the city, although it is unlikely they had intentionally started the fire that destroyed much of Rome.

The Christians gradually began to trickle back into Rome after Nero's death. Michael Grant (The Emperor Constantine) says there was a house-church of the early second century at St Prisca in Rome, and that similar house-churches are recorded at Rome in the 230s. The evidence is that the emperors of this period treated the Christians sympathetically and even at times employed Christians in their households. Because of his avowed interest in the cult, it was rumoured that Emperor Philip the Arab (244-49) was secretly a Christian, a matter that has still not been entirely resolved.

Answer 5

At first they were persecuted by the Romans until it was made the official religion of the empire

Answer 6

Julius Cesar had them throne into the circus maxims or the Colosseum to be killed by gladiators or lions or tigers or panthers or bears and heaps of other exotic animals pleasant isn't it =P

Answer 7

It was persecuted for the first 300 years. That was what the Book of Revelation was all about.

Answer 8

Define ancient Rome. There were periods in Romes history where being a Christian was illegal and periods where it was illegal not to be a Christian.

Answer 9

Across the vast sweep of history: anything from ignored, persecuted, in charge, asked for an autograph, and many more.