For ten centuries, the Church’s explanations of the entirety of the universe and human experience were enough to attract, build, and retain a large following for the Church and the values and morés it endorsed. The values, in turn, fostered more honest and diligent communities, ones that began to get observable results. In evolutionary terms, that was all that mattered. 

Christian communities began to enjoy periods of increasing prosperity as they found their way to internal stability again. Even though by modern standards, they were not very progressive, and by the standards of the glory days of Rome, not very affluent, the later Middle Ages were a big improvement on what had come for several centuries right after the fall of Rome . The synthesis of Roman patriotism and Christian compassion got more and more viable as the contradictions were worked out in the minds and lives of the citizens. Gradually, Christian Europe began to climb its way back to order once more. But under a moral operating system very different from that of the Roman Empire. 

The behaviors Christian values produced had seemed effete to most of the citizens of the middle Roman Empire. Compassion for the indigent? Why that was just stupid. Who was this “Chrestus”? What system had he proposed that was stealing their children into its cult? The cross as its symbol yet! The cross was a symbol for losers.

But that system, which gave moral status to all humans (even serfs had rights), mutual support through all tribulations (war, famine, and plague), and honesty in all dealings (God watches all) proved superior to the Roman one in the final test. Dissatisfied with what had become the Roman way of life, a life filled with material comforts and pleasures but devoid of ideals, more and more people became converts. Constantine's making the Christian faith Rome's official one was only acknowledging the social reality of his times. 

   

               gladiators in ancient Rome (artist: J. L. Gerome) (credit: Wikimedia Commons) 

Christianity offered something else—a worldview that felt personal and a way of life that made sense to its adherents because over the long term, it fostered more efficient, more inclusive communities. As contemptible as Christianity seemed to mid-Empire Romans, who cheered themselves hoarse as men killed each other in the arena, it nevertheless assimilated the old Roman system under which it had risen. Its beliefs didn’t just sound nice; over millions of people and hundreds of years, they worked.