villages and remote rural areas maintained traditional ways for
centuries after officially being declared Christian.o It was often practiced in versions that were at odds with
orthodoxy as it developed. Thus, Persian Christians adopted
a teaching on Christ that was termed Nestorian, while new
Christians in Ethiopia and Armenia were monophysite
in their tendency; the Germanic converts in Europe were
predominantly Arian in their convictions.o The fringes of the empire thus became a refuge for “heretical”
versions of Christianity; the further from imperial control, the
greater the diversity of Christianity.The Organization of Space
• Another expression of Christian expansion as the imperial religion
was the organization of space in Christian terms.
• The contrast to the pre-Constantinian era is particularly sharp in this
regard given that Christianity formerly needed to be hidden because
of the threat of persecution.
o In the 2nd and 3rd centuries, Christians met for worship in
private homes, in buildings constructed for worship that
were like houses (Dura-Europos), or in the burial chambers
called catacombs.o Worship, in turn, was fitted to these small spaces, yet as we
have seen, there had already occurred (in the compositions
called the Church Orders) an expansion of organization and
rationalization of worship.• With the expropriation and construction of great basilicas as places
of Christian worship, liturgy expanded to fill the space allotted to it.
o The very term “liturgy” derives from the “public works,” such
as sacrifices, festivals, and processions, that were sponsored by
wealthy patrons in Greco-Roman civic religion.