Editing Late antiquity (section)

== Religion ==
{{See also|Christianity in late antiquity}}
One of the most important transformations in late antiquity was the formation and evolution of the [[Abrahamic religions]]: [[Christianity]], [[Rabbinic Judaism]] and, eventually, [[Islam]].<ref>{{Cite book |last=Anthony |first=Sean W. |title=Muhammad and the empires of faith: the making of the prophet of Islam |date=2020 |publisher=University of California press |isbn=978-0-520-97452-4 |location=Oakland (Calif.) |pages=1}}</ref>

[[File:Constantine York Minster.jpg|thumb|Modern statue of [[Constantine the Great|Constantine I]] at [[York]], where he was proclaimed [[Augustus (honorific)|Augustus]] in 306]]
A milestone in the [[spread of Christianity]] was the conversion of Emperor [[Constantine I (emperor)|Constantine the Great]] (r. 306–337) in 312, as claimed by his Christian panegyrist [[Eusebius of Caesarea]], although [[Constantine I and Christianity|the sincerity of his conversion is debated]].<ref>Noel Lenski (ed.), ''The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Constantine'' ([[Cambridge University Press]], 2006), "Introduction". {{ISBN|978-0-521-81838-4}}.</ref><ref>[[A. H. M. Jones]], ''Constantine and the Conversion of Europe'' ([[University of Toronto Press]], 2003), p. 73. {{ISBN|0-8020-6369-1}}.</ref> Constantine confirmed the legalization of the religion with the [[Edict of Milan]] in 313, which he jointly issued with his rival in the East, [[Licinius]] (r. 308–324). By the late 4th century, Emperor [[Theodosius I]] had made Christianity the state religion, a development which transformed the classical Roman world, characterized by Peter Brown  as "rustling with the presence of many [[Numen|divine spirits]]."<ref>Brown, ''Authority and the Sacred''</ref>

Constantine I was a key figure in many important events in [[History of Christianity|Christian history]], as he convened and attended the first ecumenical council of bishops at [[First Council of Nicaea|Nicaea]] in 325, subsidized the building of churches and sanctuaries such as the [[Church of the Holy Sepulchre]] in [[Jerusalem in Christianity|Jerusalem]], and involved himself in questions such as the timing of [[Resurrection of Jesus|Christ's resurrection]] and its relation to the [[Passover]].<ref>[[Eusebius of Caesarea]], Vita Constantini 3.5–6, 4.47</ref>

The birth of [[Christian monasticism]] the 3rd century was a major step in the development of Christian spirituality.<ref>{{Cite book |url=https://www.worldcat.org/title/on1148587171 |title=The Oxford handbook of Christian monasticism |date=2020 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0-19-968973-6 |editor-last=Kaczynski |editor-first=Bernice M. |edition= |series=Oxford handbooks |location=New York, New York, United States of America |pages=35–50 |oclc=on1148587171}}</ref> While it initially operated outside the episcopal authority of the Church, it would become hugely successful and by the 8th century it became one of the key Christian practices. [[Monasticism]] was not the only new Christian movement to appear in late antiquity, although it had perhaps the greatest influence and it achieved unprecedented geographical spread.<ref>{{Cite book |last1=Fafinski |first1=Mateusz |url=https://www.cambridge.org/core/elements/abs/monasticism-and-the-city-in-late-antiquity-and-the-early-middle-ages/38CBB3E9ED81B916BB54A6FF4037C778 |title=Monasticism and the city in late antiquity and the early Middle Ages |last2=Riemenschneider |first2=Jakob |date=2023 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=978-1-108-98931-2 |series=Cambridge elements in religion in late antiquity |location=Cambridge |pages=58–63 |access-date=2024-04-15 |archive-date=2024-04-16 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240416192023/https://www.cambridge.org/core/elements/abs/monasticism-and-the-city-in-late-antiquity-and-the-early-middle-ages/38CBB3E9ED81B916BB54A6FF4037C778 |url-status=live }}</ref> It influenced many aspects of Christian religious life and led to a proliferation of various ascetic or semi-ascetic practices. [[Holy Fool|Holy Fools]] and [[Stylites]] counted among the more extreme forms but through such personalities like [[John Chrysostom]], [[Jerome]], [[Augustine of Hippo|Augustine]] or [[Pope Gregory I|Gregory the Great]] monastic attitudes penetrated other areas of Christian life.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Vanderputten |first=Steven |title=Medieval monasticisms: forms and experiences of the monastic life in the Latin West |date=2020 |publisher=De Gruyter Oldenbourg |isbn=978-3-11-054378-0 |series=Oldenbourg Grundriss der Geschichte |location=Berlin Boston}}</ref>

Late antiquity marks the decline of [[Religion in ancient Rome|Roman state religion]], circumscribed in degrees by edicts likely inspired by Christian advisors such as Eusebius to 4th-century emperors, and a period of dynamic religious experimentation and spirituality with many [[syncretism|syncretic]] sects, some formed centuries earlier, such as [[Gnosticism]] or [[Neoplatonism]] and the [[Chaldaean oracles]], some novel, such as [[Hermeticism]]. Culminating in the reforms advocated by [[Apollonius of Tyana]] being adopted by [[Aurelian]] and formulated by [[Flavius Claudius Julianus]] to create an organized but short-lived pagan state religion that ensured its underground survival into the Byzantine age and beyond.<ref>Smith, Rowland B.E. ''Julian's Gods: Religion and Philosophy in the Thought and Action of Julian''</ref>

[[Mahāyāna]] [[Buddhism]] developed in India and along the [[Silk Road]] in [[Central Asia]], while [[Manichaeism]], a [[Dualistic cosmology|Dualist]] faith, arose in [[Mesopotamia]] and spread both East and West, for a time contending with Christianity in the Roman Empire.<ref>{{Cite book |title=Religions in the modern world: traditions and transformations |date=2016 |publisher=Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group |isbn=978-0-415-85880-9 |editor-last=Woodhead |editor-first=Linda |edition=3rd |location=London & New York |editor-last2=Partridge |editor-first2=Christopher |editor-last3=Kawanami |editor-first3=Hiroko}}</ref>

Many of the new religions relied on the emergence of the [[parchment]] ''codex'' (bound book) over the [[papyrus]] ''volumen'' (scroll), the former allowing for quicker access to key materials and easier portability than the fragile scroll, thus fueling the rise of synoptic [[exegesis]], [[papyrology]]. Notable in this regard is the topic of the [[Fifty Bibles of Constantine]].{{Citation needed|date=April 2024}}

===Laity vs. clergy===
Within the recently legitimized Christian community of the 4th century, a division could be more distinctly seen between the [[laity]] and an increasingly [[celibacy|celibate]] male leadership.<ref>Jerome of Stridon wrote in {{Circa|406}} the polemical treatise Against Vigilantius in order to, among other disputes concerning relics of the saints, promote the greater spiritual nature of celibacy over marriage</ref> These men presented themselves as removed from the traditional Roman motivations of [[public sphere|public]] and [[Private sphere|private life]] marked by pride, ambition and kinship solidarity, and differing from the married pagan leadership. Unlike later strictures on [[priestly celibacy]], celibacy in late antique Christianity sometimes took the form of [[Sexual abstinence|abstinence from sexual relations]] after marriage, and it came to be the expected norm for urban [[clergy]]. Celibate and detached, the upper clergy became an elite equal in prestige to urban notables, the ''potentes'' or ''[[dynatoi]]''.<ref>Brown (1987) p.&nbsp;270.</ref>

===The rise of Islam===
[[File:Byzantiumby650AD.svg|thumb|260px|The Byzantine Empire after the [[Early Muslim conquests|Arabs conquered]] the provinces of Syria and Egypt – the same time the [[early Slavs]] settled in the Balkans]]
Islam appeared in the 7th century, spurring Arab armies to invade the Eastern Roman Empire and the [[Sassanian Empire]] of [[Persia]], destroying the latter. After conquering all of [[North Africa]] and [[Visigothic Spain]], the Islamic invasion was halted by [[Charles Martel]] at the [[Battle of Tours]] in modern [[France]].<ref>For a thesis on the complementary nature of Islam to the absolutist trend of Christian monarchy, see Garth Fowden, Empire to Commonwealth: Consequences of Monotheism in Late Antiquity, Princeton University Press 1993</ref>

On the rise of Islam, two main theses prevail. On the one hand, there is the traditional view, as espoused by most historians prior to the second half of the twentieth century (and after) and by Muslim scholars. This view, the so-called "out of Arabia"-thesis, holds that Islam as a phenomenon was a new, alien element in the late antique world. Related to this is the [[Pirenne Thesis]], according to which the [[Arab]] invasions marked—through conquest and the disruption of Mediterranean trade routes—the cataclysmic end of late antiquity and the beginning of the [[Middle Ages]].<ref>{{Cite book |last=Pirenne |first=Henri |title=Medieval cities; their origins and the revival of trade |last2=Halsey |first2=Frank Davis |last3=Pirenne |first3=Henri |date=1980 |publisher=Princeton Univ. Press |isbn=978-0-691-00760-1 |edition=3. print., renewed 1980 |location=Princeton, New Jersey |pages=26}}</ref>

On the other hand, there is a more recent thesis, associated with scholars in the tradition of Peter Brown, in which Islam is seen to be a product of the late antique world, not foreign to it. This school suggests that its origin within the shared cultural horizon of the late antique world explains the character of Islam and its development. Such historians point to similarities with other late antique religions and philosophies—especially Christianity—in the prominent role and manifestations of piety in Islam, in Islamic asceticism and the role of "holy persons", in the pattern of universalist, homogeneous monotheism tied to worldly and military power, in early Islamic engagement with Greek schools of thought, in the apocalypticism of [[Schools of Islamic theology|Islamic theology]] and in the way the [[Quran]] seems to react to contemporary religious and cultural issues shared by the late antique world at large. Further indication that Arabia (and thus the environment in which Islam first developed) was a part of the late antique world is found in the close economic and military relations between Arabia, the [[Byzantine Empire]] and the Sassanian Empire.<ref name="hoyland">Robert Hoyland, 'Early Islam as a Late Antique Religion', in: Scott F. Johnson ed., ''The Oxford Handbook of Late Antiquity'' (Oxford 2012) pp. 1053–1077.</ref> In recent years, the period of late antiquity has become a major focus in the fields of [[Quranic studies]] and Islamic origins.<ref>{{Cite book |url=https://www.worldcat.org/title/on1371946542 |title=Early Islam: the sectarian milieu of late antiquity? |date=2022 |publisher=Éditions de l'Université de Bruxelles |isbn=978-2-8004-1814-8 |editor-last=Dye |editor-first=Guillaume |series=Problèmes d'histoire des religions |location=Brussels |oclc=on1371946542}}</ref>