The Christian Destruction of the Classical World
The Ancients
History Hit
4.7 • 4.5K Ratings
🗓️ 1 May 2022
⏱️ 60 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The rise of Christianity in the first few centuries AD is one of the most significant stories in world history. But it’s also an incredibly turbulent one. It’s a story filled with (in)famous episodes of conflict with the Roman state. It’s a story of co-existence, but also one of intolerance and of violence.
From martyrdom to monasticism; from Celsus to Hypatia; from the Emperor Constantine hedging his divine bets to early Christians burning down one of the greatest architectural wonders of the ancient Mediterranean World. In today’s episode Tristan chats to author and journalist Catherine Nixey about the rise of Christianity and the sometimes-violent interactions that early Christians had with the Classical World.
This episode contains mentions of religious violence.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | It's the ancients on history hit. I'm Tristan Huse your host and in St. |
| 0:16.5 | A's podcast we're talking about one of the most significant, one of the most important |
| 0:20.7 | topics of ancient history which still has ramifications arguably to this day. Because |
| 0:26.5 | we're talking to an author and a journalist who a couple of years back wrote a book entitled |
| 0:32.2 | The Darkling Age, the Christian Destruction of the Classical World. Her name is Catherine |
| 0:37.3 | Nixie she's currently a journalist at the Economist in London and a few months back I |
| 0:41.8 | headed over to the Economist HQ to interview Catherine all about her book. Its fed |
| 0:46.9 | States had quite a lot of reaction over the past few years and today in this podcast |
| 0:51.7 | we're going to be really delving into this parts, into the evidence for this violent aspect |
| 0:58.7 | of the story of the rise of Christianity in the fourth and say fifth centuries AD. We've |
| 1:04.7 | done a podcast similar to this in the past when we chatted to Dr. Amelia Brown about how |
| 1:09.1 | Corinth became Christian and this needs to be a violent element in that story. And today |
| 1:13.6 | we're going to be looking at cities, at settlements such as Alexandria, the destruction of a building |
| 1:18.4 | called the Serapayam. We're going to be talking about figures such as Hypatia such as Julian |
| 1:23.8 | the apostate and we're going to be exploring this destructive element in the rise of Christianity |
| 1:30.2 | and how it did affect certain bits of art and architecture from the classical world, from |
| 1:35.8 | the ancient Mediterranean Greco-Roman world. So without further ado to talk through all |
| 1:41.1 | of this and so much more, here's Catherine. Catherine it is great to have you on the podcast |
| 1:46.0 | today. Oh well thank you very much for having me. You're very welcome. I'm so glad that we |
| 1:49.2 | could do this podcast. This whole topic of Christians and the classical world in the late |
| 1:53.4 | antique period because the Roman Empire embraced many different religions over its time, didn't |
| 1:57.8 | it? But it's embracing of when it embraced Christianity, everything seemed to change. |
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