Restoration of Christianity
Jovian, a Christian, reestablished Christianity as the favoured religion of the Roman Empire, ending the brief revival of paganism under his predecessor Julian. Upon arriving at Antioch, he revoked the edicts of Julian against the Christians. The Labarum of Constantine the Great again became the standard of the army. He issued an edict of toleration, to the effect that, while the exercise of magical rites would be punished, his subjects should enjoy full liberty of conscience.
However, in 363 he issued an edict ordering the Library of Antioch to be burnt down, and another on 11 September subjecting those who worshiped ancestral gods to the death penalty. He extended the same punishment on 23 December to participation in any pagan ceremony (even private ones). Jovian entertained a great regard for Athanasius, whom he reinstated on the archiepiscopal throne, desiring him to draw up a statement of the orthodox faith. In Syriac literature Jovian became the hero of a Christian romance. From Jovian's reign until the 15th century Christianity remained the dominant religion of both the Western and Eastern Roman Empires, until the fall of Constantinople to the Turks in 1453.
Read more about this topic: Jovian (emperor)
Famous quotes containing the words restoration of, restoration and/or christianity:
“The 1990s, after the reign of terror of academic vandalism, will be a decade of restoration: restoration of meaning, value, beauty, pleasure, and emotion to art and restoration of art to its audience.”
—Camille Paglia (b. 1947)
“The King [Charles II] after the Restoration accused the poet, Edmund Waller, of having made finer verses in praise of Oliver Cromwell than of himself; to which he agreed, saying, that Fiction was the soul of Poetry.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)
“To die proudly when it is no longer possible to live proudly. Death freely chosen, death at the right time, brightly and cheerfully accomplished amid children and witnesses: then a real farewell is still possible, as the one who is taking leave is still there; also a real estimate of what one has wished, drawing the sum of one’s life—all in opposition to the wretched and revolting comedy that Christianity has made of the hour of death.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)