Christianization has been a pivotal concept for understanding the transformations of the Roman world in Late Antiquity (Peter Brown 1993). Judged either positively or negatively in respect to its implications, few deny that the rise and later triumph of Christianity had a significant role to play in reshaping Greco-Roman culture and society. Scholars are nevertheless aware that its notional triumph never became complete, and therefore speak more in terms of a christianizing Roman Empire than a christianized Rome, a cautious approach that distantly echoes certain late antique Christians’ lament that their own society failed to become more fully transformed by Christian values (MacMullen 1984). What was principally at issue was not whether Christianity could prevail against the worship of the traditional gods, for the defeat of so-called paganism was narrated in triumphalist Christian texts that documented instances of bans on public sacrifice and of the destruction of temples to the gods (Gregory 1986; Trombley 1993-4; Hahn 2004; see McLynn, ch. 38). Rather, scholars have focused on the late antique debate among Christians regarding what was pagan (a category that came to be understood as those beliefs and practices that could no longer be tolerated in a christianizing society), what was Christian, and what belonged to a ‘‘third’’ category that was neither fully pagan nor Christian (North 2005).
Indeed, a christianizing Roman society continued to accommodate social and cultural institutions that were not and could not be readily assimilated into the ambit of what many ecclesiastical figures regarded as the sanctified Christian world. One key aspect of traditional life that most persistently resisted christianization was the pervasive public spectacles, such as gladiatorial combats (munera), animal hunts (venationes), theatrical performances (ludi scaenici), and chariot races (ludi circenses), all of which took place within the great entertainment spaces of the ancient city. The culture of Roman games that was built around the amphitheater, theater, and hippodrome bore little resemblance to the idealized piety defined in normative Christian texts of the time. The negotiations that ensued among various late Roman elites regarding the status of public spectacles reveal salient disagreements regarding the very definition and scope of christianization. Demonized by some as unremittingly pagan practices, the culture of public spectacles came to be represented by other Christian figures as part of the saeculum, the unsanctified world, to which various values were ascribed (Markus 1970; 1998; French 1985). In this process, the category of the secular was developed into an autonomous discursive space that helped buffer select cultural practices, including Roman spectacles, from the claims of those who advocated a more thorough christianization of Roman society.
World History
