What if Rome Had Not Adopted Christianity?

The blessing and curse of this inquiry if the wide range of possible outcomes that could have affected world history.  This hypothetical situation could affect art, exploration, religious freedom and expansion, colonialism, science, literature, language, and politics.  Cathedrals probably would not have influenced architecture and many buildings would probably be more heavily influenced by greco-roman buildings.  Michaelangelo would probably not have sculpted David or painted the Sistene Chapel.  Missions probably wouldn’t dot the California coast.  South and Central America may not have Spanish as a national language.  Would the founding fathers of the United States govern their lives by Judeo-Christian values and include those in the constitution?  Would our currency contain the phrase “In God We Trust”?

The first question that comes to mind is, “What would have happened to Rome and leaders such as Constantinople if he had not nationalized Christianity?”  Christianity was used as a tool of unification and subjugation for the rulers of that empire to keep it strong and centralized.  In place of Christianity, would they have used another religion to accomplish this, or would they have fallen due to their empire’s expanse and the possible lack of control that could have resulted from that?  While researching ancient European history, we found that at the time that Rome was adopting Christianity, Armenia and Georgia had already instituted Christianity as a state religion to counter the recently-created Sassanid Empire.  This empire was trying to impose a religion known as Zoroastrianism (which is a different monotheistic religion) as its own state religion.  Without Christianity, the Romans would probably have either had to pick a similar alternative or risk losing a valuable tool in their ongoing political and cultural struggle with the empire of Sassanid Persia.  After further research, we concluded that Christianity would probably have been replaced with Mithraism (which is a cultic religion based heavily on initiation, rituals, rites, and various objects of worship) or some accessible form of Neoplatonism.  In the case of the latter, Zoroastrianism probably would have continued in Georgia and Armenia, and maybe even much of Roman Asia, while some form of traditional polytheism continued in the rest of the Roman Empire.

Both of these religions are very mystic and ritual-based.  They rely heavily on symbols and various motifs in their art that are absent from Christianity.  Instead of the Sistene Chapel depicting biblical scenes, Michaelangelo may have painted lion-headed, man-like figures, symbols of the moon, stars, crowns, and the sun, or different elements without people featured in them.  This is actually being exhibited (hypothesized might be a better word to use here) in the picture posted.  It is a “Photoshopped” picture of the statue of David modified to show Mithraistic properties of art.  Cathedrals may have looked more like the Parthenon than the buildings we see in present-day Rome.  Many modern languages may not be latin based, but may be more like Iranian or Armenian languages.

In relation to the reading from this week by Bleecker, this assignment shows how deeply fact and fiction can be related.  Our inquiry addressed a choice made by an elect few and how deeply it has impacted world culture and history, whereas others generally deal with current impossibilities being possible or normal.  Bleecker also talks extensively about how fiction follows fact (and vice versa to some extent), and this points directly to our inquiry because the world we were trying to imagine is a fictional one, but so many facts world history would have changed if Rome didn’t adopt Christianity.