This may be of interest. There's a new open access volume out that examines the nexus between empires and religion - including chapters on the Roman and Byzantine empires.
Jörg Rüpke , Michal Biran and Yuri Pines eds (2024). 'The Role of Religions in Imperial History'. Empires and Gods, Vol 1. De Gruyter.
"... in most cases divine support was not a significant factor behind the empires’ expansion and for sure not its primary trigger (for a major exception of the early Caliphate, see Peacock 2021). Although the empires’ military success could at times engender belief in divine support and prompt further conquests, as was the case of the Mongols (Biran 2021), more often claims of the divine backing were used to justify the territorial aggrandizement in retrospect rather than provide a mobilizing motif in the first wave of imperial expansion. Even in the case of proselytizing religions, the expansionist zeal bolstered by the idea of “one God—one empire—one emperor” was usually short-lived (Fowden 1993). Neither the two Christian (Preiser-Kapeller, Scales) nor the two Muslim empires (Tezcan, Wink) discussed in this volume committed resources for territorial expansion for the sake of proselytization, even though incidentally their leaders could invoke the concept of “holy war” in conflicts with the infidels. The proselytizing religions, in turn, could piggyback on successful empires to facilitate their own expansion; but the history of Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam shows that the imperial backing was an important but not necessarily the decisive factor behind the religion’s success in attracting new converts." (p.10)
It's my understanding that the problem with Arianism lay in the idea that "the son" came after "the father", thus not only making him somewhat subordinate, but also setting up TWO "gods". The Trinitarians resolved it by saying that "God exists outside of time" (thus violating causality-but apparently you can do that if you're God). It's a little like quantum superposition, but clerics just explained it as "the mystery".
The Visigoths, who conquered Spain before the Muslims, were regarded as "pagans" even though they were Arians. I will probably read this book, and I will be interested to see if they explore Lithuanian "paganism". The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was known as a "commonwealth" instead of an "empire" because the Lithuanian monarchs reverted to paganism between 1263 and 1387 and lost the "kingdom" status that had been granted by the pope. We don't give a lot of thought to it today, but there was a time when Lithuania was a fairly major power.
You've probably already read it, but I highly recommend, "God Against the Gods: The History of the War Between Monotheism and Polytheism", by Jonathan Kirsch.
Sounds like a very interesting book, Rob. Thanks for sharing your thoughts about it.
I used to give my older sister a hard time for majoring in classics in college since it was so impractical. But then when I went to college six years later, I majored in philosophy! 😏
This may be of interest. There's a new open access volume out that examines the nexus between empires and religion - including chapters on the Roman and Byzantine empires.
Jörg Rüpke , Michal Biran and Yuri Pines eds (2024). 'The Role of Religions in Imperial History'. Empires and Gods, Vol 1. De Gruyter.
https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783111342009-003/html
From the Introduction:
"... in most cases divine support was not a significant factor behind the empires’ expansion and for sure not its primary trigger (for a major exception of the early Caliphate, see Peacock 2021). Although the empires’ military success could at times engender belief in divine support and prompt further conquests, as was the case of the Mongols (Biran 2021), more often claims of the divine backing were used to justify the territorial aggrandizement in retrospect rather than provide a mobilizing motif in the first wave of imperial expansion. Even in the case of proselytizing religions, the expansionist zeal bolstered by the idea of “one God—one empire—one emperor” was usually short-lived (Fowden 1993). Neither the two Christian (Preiser-Kapeller, Scales) nor the two Muslim empires (Tezcan, Wink) discussed in this volume committed resources for territorial expansion for the sake of proselytization, even though incidentally their leaders could invoke the concept of “holy war” in conflicts with the infidels. The proselytizing religions, in turn, could piggyback on successful empires to facilitate their own expansion; but the history of Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam shows that the imperial backing was an important but not necessarily the decisive factor behind the religion’s success in attracting new converts." (p.10)
It's my understanding that the problem with Arianism lay in the idea that "the son" came after "the father", thus not only making him somewhat subordinate, but also setting up TWO "gods". The Trinitarians resolved it by saying that "God exists outside of time" (thus violating causality-but apparently you can do that if you're God). It's a little like quantum superposition, but clerics just explained it as "the mystery".
The Visigoths, who conquered Spain before the Muslims, were regarded as "pagans" even though they were Arians. I will probably read this book, and I will be interested to see if they explore Lithuanian "paganism". The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was known as a "commonwealth" instead of an "empire" because the Lithuanian monarchs reverted to paganism between 1263 and 1387 and lost the "kingdom" status that had been granted by the pope. We don't give a lot of thought to it today, but there was a time when Lithuania was a fairly major power.
You've probably already read it, but I highly recommend, "God Against the Gods: The History of the War Between Monotheism and Polytheism", by Jonathan Kirsch.
Don't know the Kirsch. Will get it. I didn't explore Lithuanian "paganism", but would like to know more.
Sounds like a very interesting book, Rob. Thanks for sharing your thoughts about it.
I used to give my older sister a hard time for majoring in classics in college since it was so impractical. But then when I went to college six years later, I majored in philosophy! 😏
It's gloriously impractical.
But I bet we are both glad we picked such impractical majors!
I admit, I would do things differently if I could do it all over again. But then, I would have chosen to go with my partner in 1974.