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Section: 2E - Superstitions.

Number of quotes: 10


A Chronicle of the Last Pagans
Pierre Chuvin
Book ID: 4 Page: 11

Section: 2E

When freedom of conscience disappeared under Justinian, pagans chose either a dangerous but exciting clandestine existence that promised the manifestation of supernatural powers or else a withdrawal to hinterlands as far removed as possible from the eyes of imperial authority. Justinian’s ruling of 529 that prohibited pagans from teaching shuttered the last window that enabled us to see them clearly.

Quote ID: 27

Time Periods: 67


A Chronicle of the Last Pagans
Pierre Chuvin
Book ID: 4 Page: 134

Section: 2E

The freedom of conscience instituted two centuries earlier by the edict of 313 was permanently abolished, and it is not without melancholy that one rereads its language: “It seemed to us a very good and very reasonable system to refuse to none of our subjects, whether a Christian or belonging to some other cult, the right to follow the religion that suits him best. In this way, the supreme divinity, whom each of us will forthwith venerate freely, can accord to each of us his customary favor and benevolence.” {5}

From Justinian on, all pagans were condemned to civil death. The laws passed against them went as far as the privacy of the family: the son who converted was removed from the authority of his father; as for the son who remained a pagan, he was incapacitated, and the inheritance passed to relatives of the orthodox confession. In short, as Justinian said on the subject of heretics, “it is more than enough [for them] merely to be alive.” {6}

Quote ID: 68

Time Periods: 67


A Chronicle of the Last Pagans
Pierre Chuvin
Book ID: 4 Page: 137

Section: 2E

The Academy’s endowment was confiscated by the emperor toward the end of 531 or the beginning of 532. {16} The philosophers of Athens then sought refuge in Mesopotamia among the Persians. This is surely one of the most fabulous episodes of the period: the worshipers of the Sun marching East, taking with them the treasures of Hellenic wisdom.

Quote ID: 70

Time Periods: 6


A Chronicle of the Last Pagans
Pierre Chuvin
Book ID: 4 Page: 137

Section: 2E

Chosroes, the young sovereign on the throne of the Sassanid empire, invited them to his court; he wanted scholars around him.

Quote ID: 71

Time Periods: 6


Christian Symbol and Ritual
Bernard Cooke
Book ID: 56 Page: 7

Section: 2E,2E6

However, it seems that one can go even further and say that the root of all symbolism in human experience and expression is the fact that we humans, because we have physical bodies, necessarily exist symbolically.

There is nothing we know that we do not know through our bodily powers of perception.

Quote ID: 1244

Time Periods: 27


Christianizing the Roman Empire
Ramsay MacMullen
Book ID: 58 Page: 18

Section: 2E

More sharply still, the real God was pictured as being at war against all rivals, ranged with his angels in combat against Satan.

Such a view “impiously divides the kingdom of god and makes two opposing forces, as if there was one party on one side and another at variance with it” (it is a non-Christian speaking here, of course).

Quote ID: 1421

Time Periods: 347


Execution of Paul, The
Randall Niles
Book ID: 595 Page: ?

Section: 2E

The Church of Saint Paul at the Three Fountains is one of the oldest churches in Rome, and the traditional site of Paul’s martyrdom on the Via Laurentina. The symbolic legend that passed down is that when Paul was beheaded, his head bounced three times, and at each spot a fountain appeared.

Quote ID: 9325

Time Periods: 47


Origen: Contra Celsum
Henry Chadwick
Book ID: 164 Page: 473

Section: 2E

That which is offered to idols is sacrificed to daemons, and a man of God ought not to become a partaker of the table of daemons. The Bible forbids things strangled because the blood has not been removed, which, they say, is the food of daemons who are nourished by the vapours rising from it, in order that we may not be fed on daemons’ food, perhaps because if we were to partake of things strangled some spirits of this nature might be fed together with us.

Quote ID: 3461

Time Periods: 23


Paganism to Christianity in the Roman Empire
Walter Woodburn Hyde
Book ID: 172 Page: 265

Section: 2E

The first certain mention of it is by Dionysius, Bishop of Corinth (ca. 170). In a letter addressed to the Roman Church in the time of Bishop Soter (166-174) thanking it for aid, he says: “You bound together the foundations of the Romans and Corinthians by Peter and Paul, for both of them taught together in our Corinth and were our founders, and together also taught in Italy in the same place Rome and were martyred at the same time.”{3}

Quote ID: 3816

Time Periods: 2


Saints and their Symbols: Recognizing Saints in Art and in Popular Images
Fernando Lanzi and Gioia M.G. Lanzi
Book ID: 594 Page: ?

Section: 2E

Fernando Lanzi and Gioia M.G. Lanzi are founders and directors of the Centro Studi Per La Cultura Popolare, a cultural association that studies and researches the expression of the sacred and the Christian faith. Fernando is a member of the Commission on Sacred Art and the Institute for the History of the Church of the Diocese of Bologna and Gioia is a professor of Sacred Art at the Phylosophical Dominican Stadium in Bologna.

Quote ID: 9324

Time Periods: 7



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