Question by asdfre: When the Germanic pagans invaded and conquered the Christian Roman empire, why they adopted the Christianity?
If the pagans where the victorious conquerors , why they adopted the religion of the defeated enemy.
Best answer:
Answer by Ghost Wolf
Sutton’s law
western was crumbling, but eastern was still going strong.
Know better? Leave your own answer in the comments!
Unusual, isn’t it?
Perhaps they found it to be compelling and true?
they didn’t. roman christianity has nothing to do with the teachings of the Bible. the roman church is fully pagan; they break each and every one of the commandments and call themselves holy for it.
Your question lacks consistency. Obviously the enemy wasn’t defeated, because Rome was Christianized (or Catholicized for all you picky Protestants). Anyways, it was the priests who helped the tribes invade – and it was the priests who profited from the competition of all the available resources at the time. They adopted Christianity, because Christianity adopted paganism.
Perhaps you should not assume several hundred years of history occurred in a few nights.
I’m not sure about the Germanic pagans, but for the Norse/Scandinavian pagans, Christianity was imposed by one of their rulers, to make the people good obedient sheep and easier to rule.
The German pagans only wanted political power, not religion. It was a common strategy of the time. It would be kind of like a company takeover today. Christianity persists because people’s faith persists. Just because the leaders change, does not mean the religion changed. The Germans wanted to be in power but felt no need to change things because they knew the Romans already had a good thing going.
because they realized it was true
kind of a miracle, huh?
You need to do a bit more research on the subject. The Germanic pagans were primarily the Gauls, what we might call the pagan Celts. They were considered to be uncivilized people living off the land, laborers, farmers, people in a time when life was hard and living that life made hard people.
The Roman Empire was ‘civilized’ and the majority of it’s citizens were not dependent on the land or living off the land. They were not physically fit to stand up against the Gauls. Additionally their empire was not divided into two separate empires but instead was legally one empire with two administrative centers, Rome and Constantinople. These two administrative centers were governed by two co-equal emperors. The administrative authority in both sections was divided between a civil government structure and a military authority. The Roman Empire was unique in this separation of administration.
Only one of these was converting to Christianity, that of Constantinople. But the progression to that conversion took many decades, it didn’t happen over night and full conversion didn’t occur during Constantinople’s reign.
And while the Gauls invaded Rome, they didn’t remain. With continued skirmishes between the two over years of war, the invasion was not a take over.
Most of them were already christians, albeit heretics.
One of the kings of France who had to convert from protestantism to catholicism said “Paris is well worth a mass,” and I’m sure the Goths before him also felt Rome was “well worth a mass.”
Some reading material:
http://www.christianchronicler.com/history1/barbarian_breakthrough.html
Because Pagans were smart. they Understood that Jesus Christ is the only way.