Языческая оппозиция христианизации Римской империи (IV–VI вв.)

In the West, the senatorial aristocracy of Rome, consolidated by economic, political, social factors, most vividly manifested in adherence to paganism as a certain way of life, the system of socio-economic and political preferences of the Roman nobility, sought to maintain its traditional dominant position. The landholdings of the pagan colleges of Rome controlled by senatorial aristocracy were one of the pillars of its economic prosperity; the priestly magistracies were the source of fiscal immunities. In general, the exclusive status of the pagan cults of the capital was for this part of the ruling class a concentrated expression of its privileges, and, ultimately, the exclusive role of the senate and the senatorial aristocracy in the empire.

In the eastern provinces of the Roman Empire, the social base of the pagan opposition was the municipal aristocracy, which through the city councils — curiae — controlled most of the lands assigned to the cities and thus dominated the socio-political and economic life of the poleis. Municipal cults, which preserved its ideological, political and economic domination over poleis, were one of the foundations of the power of the local nobility over the civic collective.

Thus, both in the West and in the East traditional religious institutions acted as instruments of conservation of the structures of antique society and contributed to the economic and political dominance of elites based on the socio-political institutions of classical antiquity (the Roman Senate in the West, the Polis in the East). In other words, the opposition to Christianization in both parts of the empire was led by social groups of patrimonial landowning aristocracy, which grew out of the city-state model.

The state centralization of the Roman Empire, conducted from the end of the III century, manifested itself in creation of a powerful bureaucracy, unification of the socio-economic structures and imposition of a single ideology. All this factors contributed to the weakening of traditional socio-political institutions and to the growth of discontent of the groups of aristocracy, which power base was dependant of these institutions. After the establishment of Christianity as the official religion of the empire and the instrument of state policy of the spiritual and ideological centralization of the society, this discontent appeared in the form of religious opposition. It manifested itself as a direct resistance to the new religion and ecclesiastical organization that threatened the status of pagan cults as well as the discontent with the activity of the central government and the new Christianized nobility, which competed with the Curial and Senatorial aristocracy. In fact, the emergence of pagan opposition was the reaction of two different layers of the late Roman nobility to the process of centralizing the empire. The differences in the socioeconomic and political status of the senatorial aristocracy of Rome and the Curial nobility of the East predetermined that the processes of confrontation of these layers of the ruling class to Christianization of the Roman Empire were held in dissimilar conditions, took different forms and had unequal chronological frames. In other words, the process of confrontation between the nobility and the centralized state was manifested in different forms in the East and in the West.

The economic and political dominance of the senatorial aristocracy over the most developed provinces of the western part of the empire, the political and ideological consolidation of this estate did not allow the imperial power and the Church to follow a policy of active Christianisation of Rome for the most part of the IV century. In fact, during the period from 326 to 380 A. D. the imperial power fully supported the Roman cults, retained all the privileges and immunities of the priestly colleges. The comparatively narrow chronological framework of the acute phase of religious confrontation (380–410 A. D.) was primarily determined by the political cohesion of the opposition, the presence of a single center — the Roman senate and the relatively small quantity of the capital's nobility, which allowed the aristocracy to consolidate in the face of a common danger for the whole class. The close ideological and political connection of the members of the pagan opposition enabled it to act on a general imperial scale, but did not allow to resist the state policy of Christianization for a long time.