Posted on 11/12/2006 10:29:21 PM PST by blam
Space impact 'saved Christianity'
By Dr David Whitehouse
BBC News Online science editor
Did a meteor over central Italy in AD 312 change the course of Roman and Christian history?
About the size of a football field: The impact crater left behind
A team of geologists believes it has found the incoming space rock's impact crater, and dating suggests its formation coincided with the celestial vision said to have converted a future Roman emperor to Christianity.
It was just before a decisive battle for control of Rome and the empire that Constantine saw a blazing light cross the sky and attributed his subsequent victory to divine help from a Christian God.
Constantine went on to consolidate his grip on power and ordered that persecution of Christians cease and their religion receive official status.
Civil war
In the fourth century AD, the fragmented Roman Empire was being further torn apart by civil war. Constantine and Maxentius were bitterly fighting to be the sole emperor.
Constantine was the son of the western emperor Constantius Chlorus. When he died in 306, his father's troops proclaimed Constantine emperor.
But in Rome, the favourite was Maxentius, son of Constantius' predecessor, Maximian.
With both men claiming the title, a conference was called in AD 308 that resulted in Maxentius being named as senior emperor along with Galerius, his father-in-law. Constantine was to be a Caesar, or junior emperor.
The situation was not a stable one, however, and by 312 the two men were at war.
Constantine overran Italy and faced Maxentius at the Milvian Bridge over the Tiber a few kilometres from Rome. Both knew it would be a decisive battle with Constantine's forces outnumbered.
'Conquer by this'
It was then that something strange happened. Eusebius - one of the Christian Church's early historians - relates the event in his Conversion of Constantine.
"...while he was thus praying with fervent entreaty, a most marvellous sign appeared to him from heaven, the account of which it might have been hard to believe had it been related by any other person.
"...about noon, when the day was already beginning to decline, he saw with his own eyes the trophy of a cross of light in the heavens, above the Sun, and bearing the inscription 'conquer by this'.
"At this sight he himself was struck with amazement, and his whole army also, which followed him on this expedition, and witnessed the miracle."
Spurred on by divine intervention, Constantine's army won the day and he gave homage to the God of the Christians whom he believed had helped him.
This was a time when Christianity was struggling. Support from the most powerful man in the empire allowed the emerging religious movement to flourish.
Like a nuclear blast
But what was the celestial event that converted Constantine and altered the course of history?
Jens Ormo, a Swedish geologist, and colleagues working in Italy believe Constantine witnessed a meteoroid impact.
Drill rig: Sampling the crater
The research team believes it has identified what remains of the impactor's crater.
It is the small, circular Cratere del Sirente in central Italy. It is clearly an impact crater, Ormo says, because its shape fits and it is also surrounded by numerous smaller, secondary craters, gouged out by ejected debris, as expected from impact models.
Radiocarbon dating puts the crater's formation at about the right time to have been witnessed by Constantine and there are magnetic anomalies detected around the secondary craters - possibly due to magnetic fragments from the meteorite.
According to Ormo, it would have struck the Earth with the force of a small nuclear bomb, perhaps a kiloton in yield. It would have looked like a nuclear blast, with a mushroom cloud and shockwaves.
It would have been quite an impressive sight and, if it really was what Constantine saw, could have turned the tide of the conflict.
But what would have happened if this chance event - perhaps as rare as once every few thousand years - had not occurred in Italy at that time?
Maxentius might have won the battle. Roman history would have been different and the struggling Christians might not have received state patronage.
The history of Christianity and the establishment of the popes in Rome might have been very different.
LOL, he does not appear to be a fan of the Jews does he? Well he lifted some restrictions placed on Jews and did not persecute them. Certainly he had the power to wipe them off the face of the earth had he wanted to. The Edict of Milan allowed Jews religious freedom too.
I am glad we had this conservation, I love history and was a little weak on Constantine and did not realize just what a great Emperor he was. He deserves the title "The Great" just on military victories alone, he gets it for founding the Eastern Roman Empire and opening the door for a Christan Rome, but he was also a Roman General of the first Rank.
A better way to put it is that God is natural, with all of nature being a product of His divine providence, including those phenomena we are inclined (arbitrarily) to call "miracles," or the "supernatural."
Much better, well said.
Yeah, that's what I thought.
It's like he was divinely inspired to do something so unusual.
I guess the losers didn't get to record what they thought- as usual.
That's not the Christian view of God. But maybe you know that already.
Yep, that's the one!
Let's not forget though, that God is nature . . .
A better way to put it is that God is natural, with all of nature being a product of His divine providence, including those phenomena we are inclined (arbitrarily) to call "miracles," or the "supernatural."
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fundamental to human thinking is cause and effect.
God is the uncaused first cause. God is the only uncreated being. He is the creator of all.
God works in mysterious ways, as they say.
The event was shown as an impact on "The Battle For Rome" (I think that
was the title) that played last night on Discovery Channel.
The narrator admitted there is uncertainty as to exactly what was witnessed.
The show was a pretty decent historical reenactment, but the fellow
looked like a blood relative to Monty Python's Eric Idle.
Got to admit, the period between the end of the Peloponnesian War and the invention of moveable type is kind of blurry for me.
LOL. That show is what promped me to repost this old article.
For me as well. Fortunately, we have search engines...
i.e. a few minutes ago I had no knowledge about that period ;-)
I seem to remember having read somewhere that Constantine did convert to Christianity, but it was at the very end of his life....practically on his death bed.
Interesting. Mithras was another popular religion. It's only problem was that it excluded women, so it did not have the popularity and resilience like Christianity.
If it wasn't t shaped than where would they have tacked the sign on it?
Wait a minute. I think we have a problem w/ communication here. When I say that God is nature, I mean he is the beginning and the end of all things, the sum total of all that exists. I mean that He rules the land, the oceans, the sky, and all that is above and below us, the creator and master of all that live, and all that will ever be. Is this out of sync w/ what you believe to be Judeo/Christian thinking? I'm curious as to what you consider to be nature, that God is not a part of.
Yes, I agree. Well said. BTW, love your screen name.
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