CL 301 - The Church and the Roman Empire

(3.00 cr.)

Prerequisite: One HS 100-level course. A tiny, new religion and a vast, old empire collide. An examination of the early Church in the context of the Roman Empire. Topics include women in pagan and Christian societies; places and forms of worship; reasons for and pace of the Church's expansion; orthodoxy and heterodoxy in the early Church; myths concerning the persecutions; the Christians' debt to pagan ways of thinking and doing; the earliest Christian art; class and race as factors in the Christianization of the empire; the organization of the early Church; the Church's response to the sexual mores of its pagan neighbors; origins of the Christians' reputation for bizarre sexual promiscuity and human sacrifice; Constantine. Same course as HS 301 . IC/II/IM