Temples Converted into Churches: The Situation in Rome
The intimate connection between religious rites and civic activities in ancient Rome made it imperative that the Christian Church establish early certain tolerant policies. In a society where even granaries and police barracks had altars to guardian deities, where a citizen could not pay taxes, ente...
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Cambridge Univ. Press
1953
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| In: |
Church history
Year: 1953, Volume: 22, Issue: 3, Pages: 175-180 |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (JSTOR) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Parallel Edition: | Electronic
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| Summary: | The intimate connection between religious rites and civic activities in ancient Rome made it imperative that the Christian Church establish early certain tolerant policies. In a society where even granaries and police barracks had altars to guardian deities, where a citizen could not pay taxes, enter a museum, or collect his dole without coming into contact with an official religion, it was impossible to designate certain areas or buildings as “secular” and others as “religious,” to permit entry to some places and forbid it to others. Thus we find Tertullian about 200 A. D. writing in his De Spectaculis: “There is no law forbidding the mere places to us. For not only the places for show-gatherings, but even the temples, may be entered without any peril of his religion by the servant of God, if he has only some honest reason for it. … The places themselves do not contaminate, but what is done in them.” With the adoption of the new religion as that of the State itself, however, the situation changed. Buildings like the Senate chamber, inaugurated as templum and dedicated to the goddess Victoria, had to continue in their civic functioning. But what of the temples proper—those buildings which could not now justify their existence in terms of civil, social, or political activity? |
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| ISSN: | 1755-2613 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Church history
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.2307/3161858 |