Christianity in Roman times

Crosses and chapels: if you look closely, you can see them everywhere in South Limburg. We partly owe that to the Romans. Thanks to them, Christianity spread rapidly from the year 394 AD. In that year Emperor Theodosius declared Christianity the state religion. A major step in the history of religion.

In the centuries before, the Romans were less friendly towards Christianity. When the religion arose, around the year 100, the Romans ruled in Palestine, the birthplace of Jesus. The Roman religion, which worshipped several gods, was the state religion: everyone had to practice it.

That was a problem for the many Jews in the east of the Empire. According to their faith, they could worship only God, just like the Christians, of whom there were more and more. The Romans blamed them for all the disasters that befell the Roman Empire and persecuted them, until Emperor Trajan forbade this in the second century.

Nevertheless, the Romans continued to see the Jews and Christians as a danger to society. Christianity remained forbidden. That changed only when Emperor Constantine won a war in 312 after praying to the God of the Christians. When, more than eighty years later, Christianity was declared the state religion, it changed from a forbidden religion into the only permitted one.