ABSTRACT
The final chapter of Ramsay MacMullen’s controversial but influential 1984 book, Christianizing the Roman Empire, advances the view that coercion, armed force, was necessary to convert the Roman Empire to Christianity.1 MacMullen reiterated this interpretation in his more recent work, Christianity and Paganism in the Fourth to Eighth Centuries, the first chapter of which is entitled “Persecution: describing the determination of Christian leadership to extirpate all religious alternatives, expressed in the silencing of pagan sources and, beyond that, in the suppression of pagan acts and practices, with increasing harshness and machinery of enforcement.”2 The steady drumbeat of armed force in the hands of churchmen and civic officialdom ultimately brought about the final triumph of Christianity in MacMullen’s view. This is a widely held view.3 But is it correct? Was armed force used by Roman magistrates and church leaders against not only property but above all people a significant cause of physical conflict between pagans and Christians and was physical violence of widespread and fundamental importance in spreading Christianity in the Western Roman Empire?
