Clearly, this did not happen in Christian Byzantium (Norwich 1989), the
direct descendent of Christian Rome – they called themselves Romanaioi (the
Romans) – and which maintained for over 1100 years (May 11, 330–May 29,
1453 CE) the same economic class and social status structure as ancient Rome.
Although the Byzantine Empire maintained certain social institutions for the
poor, such as an orphanage in Constantinople, a communal system of grain
distribution, and a pension for soldier ’s widows (Norwich 1995), the concept
of personalsacrifice for the poor, or as Stark argues, the notion of personally
ministering to the needy, was unknown.
As the first Christian emperor (reigned 312–337 CE), Constantine the Great
neither practiced nor encouraged anything even remotely approaching Christian
charity and self-sacrifice. He and his successors, going all the way through
the Byzantine period (476–1453 CE), wielded Christianity in typically Roman
fashion – as a calculated instrument of control. Christianity survived and
prospered because the ruling class upheld it, not because it ministered to the
poor, plagued, and downtrodden masses. Rome and Byzantium survived for
a collective 2100 or so years because the class structure survived, and the rul-
ing class used its wealth and power to raise new armies or buy the loyalty
of neighboring rulers, and at the same time used its military power to crush
popular movements that threatened class privilege. In fact, the entire Byzantine
period, the first and longest lived Christian empire, endured numerous inter-
nal battles, all of which pitted one elite group against another; there were no
popular uprisings (Nicol [1972] 1993; Norwich 1995) in the name of religion.
Elites invoked Christianity in the service of empire, and not to mitigate depri-
vation and oppression.
Stark is correct, that the elevation of Christianity as the new official reli-
gion of the Empire meant the political and economic demise of pagan tem-
ples and the priestly class (Stark 1997:199), especially after its ascendance in
the Byzantine Empire. Yet Christianity did not prosper as a grass-roots move-
ment as Stark depicts it, but moved significantly beyond the ruling class only
after Constantine the Great (306–337 CE) decriminalized Christianity with
the Edict of Milan in 313, and embraced it officially at the Council of Nicea
in 325, although he did not do so personally until his deathbed (he was a
Mithraist). Like Constantine, subsequent emperors realized the political util-
ity of Christianity, as it now served as a loyalty test not to the one God, but
to the emperor (Chadwick [1967] 1993). Constantine’s successors, namely
Constantine II, Constantius II, Constans, Valentinian, Valens, and Gratian all
240 • George Lundskow