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Yesterday, after checking in, I went to visit the Pantheon. Today I visited San Clemente, the Mamartine Prison, and Constantine’s arch. It has me meditating on the very early church.
San Clemente brings this out most clearly. There are three levels: the 12th century church, just beautiful, then you go down to the Scavi (archeological dig) level below the church where you find the basilica of the third century and its frescoes . Then you continue one more level to a first century Roman street and Mithraium (temple to Mithras, a Persian God). This area included a house, a large house. It may be that this house is the first century church. For the first three centuries, Christian churches would have been house churches, because they were persecuted and hence had to hide. So the community, the ekklesia in Greek, would gather in larger houses, or in the Catacombs that I hope to visit on Monday. They would meet away from the Roman authority or eye.
It makes sense that when Constantine legalized Christianity after the battle of the Milvan Bridge, that the people would build their church where they had already been worshiping, filling in that area and building on top of it.
I sometimes wonder if becoming the official religion of the Roman Empire was the best thing for Christianity. Yes it ended the oppression and the persecution which had been an ongoing tragedy for the new religion. But it also conferred a privileged status to this religion and enforced it across the Empire. Christianity became and remained, until the 16th century, the ONLY spiritual choice. Despite corruption I the church, despite church politics.
It is no surprise that there were indeed reformers in the 16th century and before.
The church was pulled back to its roots in the Gospel again and again. The church was divided at times between the self-interested and the common, illiterate and uneducated people. The Medici popes, for example! There was much sun in the name of God. But for many the message got through!
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