What did the early Christians do that angered the Roman government?

Answer 1

The Romans were very relaxed about different religions. They recognised that one peoples' high god was the same as other peoples' including their own. When Pompey captured Jerusalem he immediately went up to the Temple and sacrificed to the Jewish high god. What they were not relaxed about was revolution. Revolutionaries had a habit of binding themselves in conspriacies with a mutual act of sacrilege, which carried the death penalty, so that none of them could chicken out, turn state's evidence and avoid punishment. When Roman administrations noted that the early Christians met in private houses and were reputed to drink blood and eat flesh, this rang alarm bells, and their meetings were prohibited. Also, they were still part of the Jewish congregation, and the more orthodox Jews were prone to denouncing these clandestine meeters in an attempt to distance themselves from retribution along with the Christian sect. Pliny, Roman governor of Bythinia in Asia Minor early in the 2nd Century CE mentions his problems with Christians, the imperial ban on them, and people denouncing them in his letters to emperor Trajan. It is plain in them that the problem is political not religious - in another letter Pliny asks for permission to form a fire brigade in Nicomedia. Trajan forbade it also on the same grounds - Greeks who band together plot revolution.

Answer 2

Answer
One of the ways of challenging ancient Roman beliefs was by the power of miracles. Edward Gibbon (The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire) tells us that in the days of lrenaus, about the end of the second century, the resurrection of the dead was very far from being esteemed an uncommon event.

The miracle was frequently performed on necessary occasions, by great fasting and the joint supplication of the church of the place, and the persons thus restored lived afterwards amongst them many years. He goes on to say, "A noble Grecian had rested on this important ground the whole controversy, and promised Theophilus, bishop of Antioch, that, if he could be gratified with the sight of a single person who had been actually raised from the dead, he would immediately embrace the Christian religion. It is somewhat remarkable that the prelate of the first eastern church, however anxious for the conversion of his friend, thought proper to decline this fair and reasonable challenge."

Since miracles were so important in challenging the beliefs of the Romans, Gibbon asks, "In the long series of ecclesiastical history, does there exist a single instance of a saint asserting that he himself possessed the gift of miracles?" He says it may seem somewhat remarkable that Bernard of Clairvaux, who records so many miracles of his friend St. Malachi, never takes any notice of his own which, in their turn, are carefully related by his companions and disciples.

Answer 3

By the third century CE, the Christians of the Roman Empire were arousing both fear and anger among the Roman authorities.

It seemed that the Christians, renouncing the gods and institutions of Rome, had constituted a distinct republic to be suppressed before it had acquired any military force, but which was already governed by its own laws and magistrates, was possessed of its own public treasury and was intimately connected to all its parts by the frequent assemblies of the bishops, to whose decrees their numerous and opulent congregations yielded an implicit obedience. In addition, there was a growing sense of rebellion among some Christians, who either refused military service or refused to serve an emperor who held different religious beliefs than their own.

Maximilianus, an African Christian youth, was produced by his own father before the magistrate as a sufficient and legal recruit, but obstinately persisted in declaring that his conscience would not permit him to embrace the profession of a soldier.

On the day of a public festival, Marcellus the centurion threw away his arms, and the ensigns of his office, and exclaimed with a loud voice that he would obey none but Jesus Christ the eternal King, and that he renounced forever the use of carnal weapons and the service of an idolatrous master. The soldiers, as soon as they recovered from their astonishment, secured the person of Marcellus. By his own confession, he was condemned and beheaded for the crime of desertion.

In both cases, the responses of the Roman authorities did not differ greatly from the responses that could be expected from authorities even today, under martial or even civil law. Examples such as these alienated the emperors and helped to justify the Great Persecution of 303-311 CE.

Answer 4

The early Christians were Greeks, and the Romans were always suspicious of Greek political plots. The early Christians met in private homes rather than in the temples, and there were reports of them eating human flesh and drinking human blood, which sounded like people committing sacrilege to stop members of a plot ratting on their fellows as sacrilege carried the death penalty.

Answer 5

christians angered Romans because they were both gods :)

Answer 6

Faithful Christians were "objects of hatred" by the Romans. Regardless of the reason, the opposers had but one objective-the suppression of Christianity.

Answer 7

They didn't.