The Transformation of Early Christianity from an Eschatological to a Socialized Movement: A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Arts and Literature in Candidacy for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy — John Shaqi
The Transformation of Early Christianity from an Eschatological to a Socialized Movement: A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Arts and Literature in Candidacy for the Degree of Doctor of PhilosophyEdwards, Lyford P. (Lyford Paterson)
Religion
The Transformation of Early Christianity from an Eschatological to a Socialized Movement: A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Arts and Literature in Candidacy for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy
Edwards, Lyford P. (Lyford Paterson)
Christian sociology -- History -- Early church, ca. 30-600; Eschatology -- History of doctrines; Theology -- History -- Early Church, ca. 30-600
We have in this account a marked advance, as regards the development of
the mob mind, over what is found in the martyrdom of Polycarp. Many of
the 'crowd' phenomena are indeed the same but the differences are even
more striking than the similarities. We find in Lyons no body of Jews or
other especially interested persons leading the mob on by manifestations
of peculiar zeal and forwardness. When the accounts are compared in
their entirety it becomes at once manifest that there is a consistency
of attitude, a whole heartedness in the actions of the Lyons mob
that is lacking in the case of the Syrmnaens. There is a degree of
familiarity with Christian doctrine--especially the doctrine of the
resurrection--which denotes a much more thorough permeation of the
public mind by Christianity. There may be no difference in the hatred of
the two mobs for the new faith, but it had more content in the mind of
the Gallic crowd. The degree of thought and pains taken by the Lyonese
persecutors--the guards placed to prevent the Christians from stealing
the relics of the martyrs, the elaborate efforts to nullify the
possibility of a resurrection--the very extent and thoroughness and
duration of the persecution are different from anything to be found in
the other martyrdom.
The difficulty to be explained--if it is a difficulty--from the point of
view of crowd psychology is that there is difference of only eleven
years--taking the ordinary chronology--between the two persecutions. It
is true that the Lyons persecution is the later, but the difference in
the mob behavior is such as might well demand the lapse of a generation
had the phenomena been exhibited by the public of the same city. There
must unquestionably have been a great difference in the demotic
composition of the populations of Lyons and Smyrna; the reference to
barbarians in Lyons shows as much, but the behavior of mobs as
controlled by the time needed for the focusing and fixation of attention
and the development of a disparate universe of discourse is very little
effected by difference of demotic composition. It has indeed been
suggested by one critic,[13] that the persecution at Lyons belongs in
the reign of Septimus Severus instead of that of Marcus Aurelius. This
would explain away the difficulty, but there seems no necessary reason
for adopting this opinion. It would rather appear that there existed
peculiar conditions in Lyons and vicinity which account for the fact
that the persecution, so far as we know, was confined to that locality
and also for the fact that the mob mind was in a maturer state of
antagonism to Christianity. Just what these peculiar conditions were, it
is impossible to say with entire certainty. However there is at least a
very suggestive hint in a paragraph by the greatest modern authority on
Roman Gaul[14] contained in his well known volume on Ancient France.[15]
The paragraph is also worth quoting as giving a valuable insight into
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