Note: this topic is from 6/25/2003. Thanks Davea.
- The day the sky fell in [02/24/2003 4:06:52 PM PST]
- 'Asteroid Impact Could Have Prompted Constantine's Conversion' [06/18/2003 4:45:56 PM PDT]
- It Came from Outer Space? [11/25/2004 5:13:07 PM PST]
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Posted on 06/25/2003 8:26:22 PM PDT by Davea
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.
...a most marvellous sign appeared to him from heaven...
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?
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.
You old dog, this looks like the first Catastrophism bump on FR!
Note: this topic is from 6/25/2003. Thanks Davea.
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Note: this topic is from 6/25/2003. Thanks Davea.
A meteor that wrote "In hoc signo vinces" in fiery letters across the sky?
Very clever meteor indeed.ROTFL!!
GOOD ONE!!
LOL!
If you want to take out the supernatural from the vision of Constantine, as an amateur historian I will say that by Constantine's era Christianity did not need saving - it was winning - especially in the east.
Constantine came from the eastern part of the empire and was surrounded by easterners even though his base was in the western empire. So even if he was not making a cynical play, he was already aware that Christianity was on the rise in the eastern empire and maybe he was sympathetic to the religion already and susceptible to signs.
If you are cynical and claim no signs were seen, that works too. Constantine knew his base of power had to be in the healthy eastern part of the Roman empire. The western empire was crumbling. In order to overthrow the current power structure of the empire which had an advantage over his smaller forces he needed to appeal to an untapped base of support that was NOT loyal to the empire in the east - the Christians. The Christians at this time made up a very wealthy and powerful base.
Not much is mentioned on this but by this late stage in the Roman empire, Christian businessmen had acquired a reputation for honesty and good business practices and steadily grew in wealth. Roman persecution against Christians was strongest a generation before Constantine and failed badly. A smart power hungry Roman from the east would have taken notice of such untapped potential.
And many of his troops were already painting the Chi Ro on their shields prior to this event.
I did not know that - primary source?
I really doubt if I could find a primary source for that. Would be challenge just to find a secondary source.
Still has some old Quix posts.
The past always catches up.......
Speculation on my part——Constantine’s soldiers were already were predominately crypto Christians. Christ’s biggest selling point in the early Church was he conquered death. soldiers recruited from the east would have gravitated to that kind of religion. The story of St. Maurice (Maurice is Greek or Latin for black) and his Christian Egyptian legion comes to mind.
Why does this title remind me of a grade-C science fiction movie title?
And who is to say He didn't intervene, or that He didn't send the asteroid? Must God always use lightening bolts or booming voices from the clouds?
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