The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism

by Cumont, Franz Valery Marie

• ISBN13: 9781438530017
• ISBN10: 1438530013
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2009-11-30
• Publisher: Book Jungle

Summary

Franz Cumont was a Belgian archaeologist and historian, a philologist and student of epigraphy, who combined these isolated specialties in studying the syncretic mystery religions of Late Antiquity, notably Mithraism. He studied the impact of Eastern mystery religions, particularly Mithraism, on the Roman Empire. Les religions orientales dans le paganisme romain was published in 1906. During the time of the Roman Empire Christianity was one of many religions coming out of the East. Rome viewed it one of many cults. Cumont sums up conditions in his introduction by saying, "Let us suppose," says M. Cumont, "that in modern Europe the faithful had deserted the Christian churches to worship Allah or Brahma, to follow the precepts of Confucius or Buddha, or to adopt the maxims of the Shinto; let us imagine a great confusion of all the races of the world in which Arabian mullahs, Chinese scholars, Japanese bonzes, Tibetan lamas and Hindu pundits should all be preaching fatalism and {viii} predestination, ancestor-worship and devotion to a deified sovereign, pessimism and deliverance through annihilation--a confusion in which all those priests should erect temples of exotic architecture in our cities and celebrate their disparate rites therein. Such a dream, which the future may perhaps realize, would offer a pretty accurate picture of the religious chaos in which the ancient world was struggling before the reign of Constantine."