How Did Ancient Romans become Christians?

Summary

Dan Snow’s History Hit: “How Did Ancient Romans Become Christians?”

Date: January 1, 2026
Host: Dan Snow
Guest: Professor Alice Roberts
Episode Theme: The transformation of Christianity from a minor Jewish sect to the dominant and official religion of the Roman Empire, exploring the tangible social, political, and economic forces behind this seismic shift.

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Dan Snow sits down with historian, author, and broadcaster Professor Alice Roberts to unravel how a small, grassroots religious movement–Christianity–achieved explosive growth and ultimately became the state religion of the Roman Empire. Together, they explore the religious marketplace of the Roman world, the internal and external factors enabling Christianity’s survival and spread, and the continuity of Roman administration through Christian structures long after the empire’s official fall.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

The Roman Religious Landscape and Early Christianity

[03:40]

• Alice Roberts outlines the pluralistic and dynamic religious world of the Roman Empire: “The Roman Empire... is alive with different cults, different religions...you've got the old Greek gods...Mithras and Isis... And then you have this tiny little movement...a movement within Judaism.”
• The pivotal role of St. Paul is emphasized: by preaching to non-Jews (Gentiles), he opens the faith beyond its Jewish roots.

[04:56]

• Roberts, drawing on her archaeological background, pushes for a “granular” view. She notes that while Christians were a tiny minority by the early 4th century (“between 2 and 10%”), their organizational prowess in urban centers was striking.

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Christianity’s Urban and Organizational Edge

[06:05]

• Christianity’s initial spread was an urban phenomenon, closely tied to the growing cities and their administrative mechanisms.
• Early Christians held “administrative roles within Roman cities,” with bishops tasked by emperors like Constantine to manage important resources, such as Alexandria’s grain and oil supply, and legal/funerary services.

“We already have bishops by the 4th century and those bishops have certain administrative roles... Constantine... will task them with doing all sorts of things... being in charge of the grain and oil dole in Alexandria.”
— Alice Roberts, [06:05]

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Why Did Christianity Succeed? Social Ecology and Economic Realities

[07:04]

• Roberts challenges treating Christianity as an abstract force: “It can only be the people.”
• She introduces an evolutionary/ecological model: success depends not only on the attractiveness of ideas but how the faith’s adherents interact with their environment (economics included).

“If you’re looking at...how successful a species is...you can't understand it until you look at how that species is interacting with its wider environment... Economics has to come into it.”
— Alice Roberts, [07:12]

[09:36]

• Christianity was not as “alien” as it might appear. Many of its doctrines (life after death, resurrection) echoed ideas already present in Roman and Jewish traditions.
• The faith absorbed local philosophies (e.g., Stoicism, Platonism), making it less of a foreign import.

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Organizational Parallels: Collegia, Guilds, and Trust Networks

[11:30]

• Roman society was structured around collegia—guilds/professional associations providing mutual support.
• Christianity operated much like another collegium, networking professionals and elites (doctors, lawyers), which then enabled the Church to assume more civic administrative duties.

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The Top-Down Acceleration: Constantine and Elite Conversion

[14:01]

• The spread of Christianity shifted from grassroots to “top-down” as emperors, and later barbarian kings, converted and imposed the faith across their realms.
• Aligning with Christianity became a way for leaders (Goths, for instance) to pledge allegiance to Rome—even as the political empire fractured.

“We see alliances being formed between...Roman emperors and people on the fringes of the Roman Empire, particularly various groups of Goths. And they are able to express their allegiance with the Roman Empire by converting to Christianity.”
— Alice Roberts, [14:01]

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Economic and Administrative Takeover

[15:22], [17:27]

• Bishops and the Church infiltrated and gradually took over city administration, most vividly in Alexandria, controlling grain exports—vital to the empire’s stability and food security.
• The Church’s growing grip on such vital infrastructure is linked to pivotal events like the Council of Nicaea (325 AD), where Constantine’s concern about maintaining grain supplies and civic order played a major role.

Notable Quote

“Constantine is rather worried that if that turns into an actual clash in Alexandria... that the grain wouldn’t get out of the granaries, onto the barges, onto the ships, and off around the Eastern Mediterranean.”
— Alice Roberts, [19:00]

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Egyptian Monasteries and Christian Continuity

[22:09]

• Monasteries in Egypt evolved from the temple/bureaucratic economy, managing land, taxation, and social services—just as the Roman temples and officials had done before, illustrating institutional continuity.

[23:22]

• Roberts relates British and Gallic examples: elite families transitioned from Roman to ecclesiastical administration, maintaining their power through bishoprics as the secular empire disintegrated.
• The reality of deep Roman-Christian continuity: “The Western Roman Empire doesn’t disappear... Christianity is just Romanness continuing.” ([31:40])

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The Reality for Ordinary People

[33:45]

• Widespread, exclusive Christian practice among the masses? Unclear. Most evidence comes from elite or literate classes.
• Pagan rituals persisted, often absorbed by the Church (“Rosalia” becomes “Pentecost”).
• Churches re-purposed Roman city buildings—basilicas, bathhouses—and continued existing urban social infrastructure.

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Exclusive Religion and Imperial Benefits

[34:58]

• Christianity’s exclusivity made it attractive to rulers; it became the new imperial cult, the sign of loyalty to Rome and its emperor.

“Suddenly all those other religions and cults were completely excluded and Christianity was the only thing. And Christianity becomes the imperial cult.”
— Alice Roberts, [33:57]

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Architecture as Power: The Basilica

[37:26]

• The transformation of public Roman buildings into churches signified the fusion of administrative and spiritual power.
• The early Christian basilica evolved from the urban “city hall,” underlining the faith’s takeover of civic life.

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Motives and Mechanics of Religious Takeover

[39:17], [42:05]

• Mutual benefits: Emperors gained centralized legitimizing religion; bishops gained imperial favor and administrative control.
• Elite conversion and “revenue positivity” were critical. Paul targeted influential converts and ensured the collection of funds from his networks.

“It has to be a business as well, that is incredibly important... it is about funding it as well. It wouldn’t have continued had it not been well funded from the very beginning.”
— Alice Roberts, [42:11]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On why Christianity spread so fast:
  “Everything starts small. So for this minor movement, you might call it a cult... you then spin forward four centuries... suddenly got something... just about to become the state religion of the Roman Empire. It’s extraordinary.” — Dan Snow, [03:21]

• On urban organization:
  “They are very well organized already by the 4th century, and a lot of them have administrative roles within Roman cities as well.” — Alice Roberts, [06:05]

• On continuity after the fall:
  “The Western Roman Empire doesn’t disappear... Christianity is just Romanness continuing.” — Alice Roberts, [31:40]

• On the pragmatic worship and conversion practices:
  “…you see aspects of kind of pagan rituals continuing, but in some ways the Church accepts that and adopts that...” — Alice Roberts, [35:54]

• On lessons for would-be founders:
  “It has to be a business as well, that is incredibly important. That is there right from the very beginning for Christianity...” — Alice Roberts, [42:11]

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Important Timestamps and Segment Highlights

• [01:26] Episode begins, Introduction of Topic
• [03:40] Setting the Context: Roman Religion and the Christian Minority
• [06:05] Urban Spread and Administration
• [14:01] Elite Conversion and Top-Down Growth
• [19:00] Politics of Grain Supply and the Council of Nicaea
• [23:22] Roman Aristocratic Continuity in Britain and Gaul
• [31:40] Christianity as the Survival of Roman Administration
• [33:45] Popular Christianity and Syncretism
• [37:26] The Basilica: Architecture of Authority
• [39:17] Mutual Motives: Emperors & Bishops
• [42:05] How to Start (and Sustain) a Religion

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Episode Tone, Style, and Final Takeaways

Dan Snow’s conversational, widely curious tone makes for accessible and vivid history, while Alice Roberts brings rich, archaeological detail and a skeptical scholar’s lens. The episode flows from the concrete (bells at Llantwit Major, the architecture of Roman basilicas) to broad social patterns—always rooting major historical shifts in the real practices, networks, and decisions of people.

Key Takeaway:

Christianity’s Roman success was less about sheer theological novelty and more about organizational flexibility, administrative savvy, and economic acumen—ultimately fusing with and preserving the urban, civic world of Rome, even as emperors and armies faded.

Highly recommended for those pondering religion’s social power, or anyone seeking the story behind one of history’s greatest transformations.

Transcript

[A]

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[C]

Around about the year 50 AD, a tiny sect of travelers was spreading a radical idea that a Jewish man crucified by the Romans had risen from the dead. He was in fact the Son of God. He was God. You're listening to Dan Snow's History Hit and this is the story of the rise of Christianity. The followers of that faith preached love and forgiveness and eternal life. It proved an attractive, convincing message. Thousands of people converted by the early 4th century. A few hundred years later, it was a thriving religion, but it was still a minority one. It existed alongside lots of other religious groups within the Roman Empire, but during the hundred years that followed, it exploded. It even became the official religion of of the mighty Roman Empire. This is the story of how a small but tenacious minority out organized, outperformed and ultimately outlasted the Roman Empire to become the dominant cultural force in the Western world. For this, I'm delighted to be joined by the author, the presenter, the broadcaster, the professor, the legend, Alice Roberts. Let's get into it. Alice Roberts, Good to see you.

[D]

Nice to see you too.

[C]

Let's get things underway here. Ring the bell. Why are you ringing that bell?

[D]

I'm ringing this bell because it connects with bells in the ancient Celtic church. And there's been a really interesting dig carried out by the University of Cardiff at Llantwit Major, which we think may be the earliest monastery in Britain and possibly the earliest seat of learning in Britain as well. And it looks like they might have been making these bells there. And we know that bel like this were used in the Celtic Church for punctuating church services and calling monks to prayer.

[C]

Such an amazing topic. Why? I can't ask this too big question, but, like, why does this small grassroots sect movement just become so globally massive? And it all must start from the moment of Jesus death. Take me back to that time. What was Christianity back right at the point at which he dies.

[D]

It is a weird thing when you think about it, because the Roman Empire is this. Well, first of all, vast, sprawling empire, and it's alive with different cults, different religions. It picks up different religions from different places. And you've got the old Greek gods, which have been transformed into Roman gods, but then you've got Mithras and Isis and Kimberly and, you know, all of these different gods and goddesses. And then you have this tiny little movement which starts off as a movement within Judaism. They're all Jews, you know, Jesus was a Jew, his followers were Jews. And it gradually starts to build. I think that St. Paul is really important because he starts to preach it to non Jews, sometimes called Gentiles in the Bible. And once you do that, you're able to spread outside of Judaism. But still, for this minor, everything starts small. So for this minor movement, you might call it a cult to begin with, within Judaism, you then spin forward four centuries and you've suddenly got something which is just about to become the state religion of the Roman Empire. It's extraordinary. It does demand explanation.

[C]

You've looked at it as this sort of viral phenomenon on the ground. That's what's so exciting.

[D]

Yeah.

[C]

Where do we need to start? Like, is it with the individuals?

[D]

Yeah, I think so. And I think very quickly when I started exploring this, I wanted to get into that kind of granular detail. And I think coming more from an archaeological background helps with that, because I want to get down to people on the ground and I'm working back with. I mean, my book does go back to kind of the origins of Christianity and how it starts to spread. But what I was particularly interested in was when it's really transformed. And it is, crucially, the fourth century, because at the beginning of the fourth century, it's thought that only a very tiny minority of the Roman Empire are Christians. You know, you're probably talking something in the region, the estimates vary, but it's something between 2 and 10%. And then by the end of that century, it's been adopted as the state.

[C]

Religion of Rome, which is what a journey. And so at the beginning, as you pointed out, which I didn't really think about, so this is an empire actually, where there is quite a lot of this sort of stuff. There are religions popping up, you'd have met people and they're. Actually, I'm a follower of these guys over here. And you'd be like, that's interesting. And they sort of mud along with each other, roughly speaking. So the Christians is one little competing group within that big picture. So let's get to the beginning of that 4th century you mentioned. It's tiny proportion. What were they? Just isolated communities? Were they all in one area? How do they worship? How do they get together? How are they spreading the word?

[D]

It's interesting because actually, even though there is still quite a minority, a small minority of Christians within the empire, if you look at who they are and where they are, I think that's a really important thing. It does seem to be very much an urban phenomenon. So there's something about the growth of Christianity that tracks along with the growth of cities within the Roman Empire. And also they are very well organized already by the 4th century, and a lot of them have administrative roles within Roman cities as well. So we already have bishops by the 4th century and those bishops have certain administrative roles. And then by the time of Constantine, who's very important, and I spend quite a lot of the book talking about Constantine, he recognises that they're good at getting stuff done and he will task them with doing all sorts of things, like being in charge of the grain and oil dole in Alexandria, taking on the provision of some legal services and some funerary services, that kind of thing.

[C]

They're very useful, these Christians.

[D]

Yeah, yeah.

[C]

But then can we go back a bit? Like, why do you. What do you identify? Why do you think that is? Like what. What is it about Christians that is it. It's ticking.

[D]

See, you're doing the same thing. You're talking about Christianity in a completely abstract way. You're saying, was it Christianity or was it these people? It can only be the people. It can only be the people. So you've. I think there's lots and lots of different answers to this. I don't think there's one answer. And lots of people have looked at the spread of Christianity from the perspective of the attractiveness of the ideas, which is very kind of internal. I think you've got to look at the external factors as well. When I was writing the book, there's definitely a bit of me that is approaching it using kind of my background as a biologist as well. I know this sounds really weird, but if you're looking at, for instance, how successful a species is, you can look at the anatomical adaptations of that particular species and you're just looking at maybe an individual and how their body works. But you can't understand the success of that species until you look at the ecology. You can't understand it until you look at how that species is interacting with its wider environment. So you've kind of got to do both things. And there's an awful lot about energetics in evolutionary biology as well. And if you then transfer that into the world of human culture, because that's what we're doing when we're looking at the spread of Christianity, then what you're really looking at is how that idea is taken up by people and how they're able to support it as well. So economics has to come into it. Yeah, if that makes sense.

[C]

Makes sense. So.

[D]

So I'm looking at all those different things. I haven't looked in detail at how the package of ideas itself was attractive. I've kind of taken it for granted and lots of people felt victory about that.

[C]

Yeah, it's attractive, it's revolutionary, it's exciting.

[D]

The poor big zone, it's not that revolutionary. So that is one thing I would come back on, is that actually, maybe that's unfair, maybe the package is revolutionary, but none of the ideas in it are particularly novel or revolutionary.

[C]

Be really nice to each other.

[D]

Yeah, be really nice to each other. There might be some life after death. I mean, St. Paul was a Pharisaic Jew before he became a Christian, and so they would have believed in life after death anyway. And ideas of resurrection. And of course, Christianity changes over time. It's not just set in stone and it's emerging within the Roman Empire. So the people who are writing about it and helping to spread it further are actually working quite hard to make it attractive to bring other aspects of Roman culture into it. So we see philosophy being brought into it. It has aspects of Platon and Stoic philosophy. I think it gets the point where it doesn't feel like something exotic.

[C]

It's not alien for the Romans.

[D]

Yeah, yeah. It's just something that fits with Roman culture more generally. There's another interesting Thing that's happening within religions in the Roman Empire, which is there seems to be a trend towards what people have described as henotheism, which is that you have polytheism, but you might have one God that is kind of the supreme God, Theos Upsistos. They would. They would say in Greek, so you'd have your many and varied gods, but there might be one that you particularly admire and worship. And the Roman emperors did have a tendency to do that as well. So they would kind of identify with one God. Yeah. And, you know, very often that would be Jupiter or Sol. They quite like Sol because that's the sun God and the sun is there for everybody. You know, it kind of makes sense. And so you've got this monotheistic religion, which, again, you know, if we set monotheism against polytheism, it seems very, very different. But then if you set it in that context of there's this tendency almost towards monotheism anyway, and particularly with religions associated with the idea of empire and the idea of a single monarch, it helps to have a single God and a single monarch. But I haven't answered your question, have I? Because you were saying what was attractive and how did it kind of work or how did they make it work? And I think, again, we get big clues from looking at how Roman cities operated and what else was going on in Roman cities all the way through. That's what I wanted to do, was put Christianity in its context in the Roman Empire, in its context in these cities. For instance, what we see in these Roman cities is a really strong kind of level of civic organization in terms of collegia. So these guilds, effectively they would have been called later on in the Middle Ages, and there were all sorts of different guilds in Roman cities. So if you were a professional, if you were a doctor, you'd be a member of the Physicians Guild. If you were a follower of Mithras, which.

[C]

Another religion.

[D]

Another religion. Yeah, Another Eastern religion, then you could belong to a. Effectively a collegium of Mithras. And these collegia operated a bit like membership clubs, so you'd pay in your subs. And if you fell on hard times, then the collegiate might support you, and if you died leaving a widow, it might support the widow. And you can start to see how Christians are operating within cities as a kind of collegium. They are networking in that way. And then gradually it does seem to emerge amongst those kind of professional classes before it then gets into the elites in those professional classes. You've got People who have their professions already, so they're already doctors and lawyers and so they're going to bring that into the church with them. And so then we find the church as an organization actually starting to do things like providing legal services, providing healthcare and being asked by the city to do that.

[C]

Yeah, because if you're a religion that proof is very attracted to and is spread by warriors or farmers, there's going to be a very different character to that religion, Right?

[D]

Yeah. I mean, it's very popular amongst soldiers as well, amongst the military. But I think what's interesting about it is just to put all of that together. I think when we talk about a religion, I think it's really hard to talk about it because it's almost as though, I think particularly where we're used to the idea of separation of state and religion, even though it's imperfect in Britain we have quite a lot of influence, religious influence in our state. But if we have that kind of principle in our mind of a separation of state and religion, that just didn't exist in the Roman Empire and you know, a religion was always something else. And I suppose it's silly to imagine that it wasn't. Christianity had to be worldly in order to survive. If it hadn't have been commercial in some way, it just wouldn't have survived in the environment it was in.

[C]

I'm gonna get out of the abstract now. Got men and women, women important in this story. Are they important early Christians?

[D]

Yeah, they are. But it is very much within that heavily patriarchal society which is Roman. Yeah.

[C]

So we got important people in these cities, in these towns around the empire. And I guess if you're trying to expand a religion, it's good to be in the places where business is done, where orders are written down, where infrast projects. You're in the right place, right?

[D]

Yeah.

[C]

How do we get then from there to this mass adoption? What have you learned about this? Well, the archaeology, whatever it is, that that sees those people extend exponentially.

[D]

I think it's more top down than perhaps we've suspected. So it's really interesting because it's going to be different at different times and in different places. And I think when Christianity starts going, it is a small grassroots movement, but as it's expanding within the empire, it does become more and more top down. I mean, once it's adopted, I suppose if we spin forward, once it's adopted as a state religion of the Roman Empire, when you then get into the 5th century, we see alliances being formed between, for Instance, Roman emperors and people on the fringes of the Roman Empire, particularly various groups of Goths. And they are able to express their allegiance with the Roman Empire by converting to Christianity. And it's very much their leaders. So you'll see these Gothic kings just converting to Christianity because that for them is like pledging allegiance to a flag. And then it's top down, it's like, I've converted to Christianity, everybody in my particular territory is now a Christian. And it is about military allegiances on the fringes of the Roman Empire.

[C]

And in those cases, because this is so interesting, as Christianity expands and through the early medieval period, those Gothic, they're getting something out of that alliance, aren't they? But also then they're getting priests, they're getting bishops, they're getting useful people who can write things down and collect taxes and these professionals that you've talked about.

[D]

Yeah, the bishops are interesting because the bishops are gradually, and before Christianity is the state religion of the Roman Empire, the bishops are gradually taking on more and more of the business of a city, more and more of that administrative business of the city. So they're kind of working alongside the old Roman system of magistrates, but they're gradually taking more and more of that work on. And so they're very influential and we see that happening. I mean, I've written a lot in the book about Alexandria because I think that we find a lot of clues about how Christianity became quite so successful in Alexandria. And in Alexandria we can see that Certainly by the 4th century, the bishops are involved in the grain export business. Now this is the biggest business in Alexandria. Agribusiness is the biggest business across the empire anyway, and particularly for Egypt. So Egypt has got this huge export of grain that actually the Roman Empire ends up depending on. There's a beautiful coin of Commodus from the second century, where you've got Commodus on the back, you've got Commodus as Hercules holding his club and he's facing Isis, the mother Goddess of Egypt, who's standing there with her rattle, her sistrum, and then with the other hand handing a sheaf of wheat over to Commodus. And it says Providentiae Aug, the providence of the emperor. As emperor, Commodus was going to bring all that grain from Egypt and spread it around the empire. And of course, what emperors did was provide the grain dole to Roman citizens. So Roman citizens expected this kind of. It's not really welfare, but it's more like a kind of universal basic income. You get some wealth and A lot of that's coming from Egypt through of Alexandria. And by the 4th century, the bishops are pretty heavily involved in that. Then spin forward to the 6th century, they're completely running it. They own the granaries, they have their own fleet taking the export out of Alexandria. And of course, they own or are operating as franchises or the monasteries, which are also agribusinesses down the Nile.

[C]

And then do you get the effect, for example, like the Rothschild found in Europe, for example, if they're Christians, their counterparties in Rome, in Austria, are Christians. Is that like you mentioned? Those are fraternities. Is there a trust? It eases business. It takes some of the friction out of doing business. If you know you've got some Christians that you quite like over there, you can deal with them.

[D]

Yeah, I'm sure, I'm sure. And they are constantly sending letters to each other, so it's all very literate as well. And going back, I suppose, into earlier centuries, you realize that you are very much dealing with the elites in the Roman Empire because you are talking about a literate religion. It's a religion of the word. And, yeah, they are all keeping in contact with each other by constant letter writing. So we can actually see that happening. There's a lot of competition as well, though. So undoubtedly there are. Are effectively, I suppose, trading relations that are emerging in that way, but also a lot of competition. So the bishops of Alexandria would compete with each other to run that very lucrative grain business, even between the Christians. They're competing, yeah, yeah. And I think that's why Constantine meets them at the Council of Nicaea. So it's usually described as a real kind of turning point, a pivotal moment when a Roman emperor for the first time sits down and meets all these bishops, hundreds of bishops, and with the kind of assumption that he must have been Christian, he must have been very interested in Christianity. And not only that, but these minutiae of Christianity and the nature of God, which is what they were debating at the Council of Nicaea. But again, if you pull it down from the abstract and go, okay, well, who's debating and where did this argument about the nature of God? Were God and Jesus exactly the same thing or subtly different? Which is what the Arian heresy boils down to. Where did that happen in Alexandria? And you've got these competing factions with a man who's a presbyter, who I think probably wants to be Bishop of Alexandria and the then Bishop of Alexandria, and you've got these two political factions who are warring with each other. And I think Constantine is rather worried that if that turns into an actual clash in Alexandria, as it so often did, you had riots breaking out in ancient Alexandria all the time, that the grain wouldn't get out of the granaries, onto the barges, onto the ships, and off around the Eastern Mediterranean. 325. He'd only just become the single emperor of the Roman Empire, having deposed all the others of the tetrarchy, which is a polite way of saying slaughtering them. So he just become the single emperor. He just made Byzantium his new Rome. It's a city of half a million people that need feeding. He's got his army in the east as well. They all need feeding too. He is so dependent on that grain coming out of Alexandria. So I think that's why he was there.

[C]

And the grain is in the hands of the Christians.

[D]

Yeah, it's hard to absolutely prove that. In the early 4th century you've definitely got letters suggesting that there is already church involvement in that trade. And then it ramps up and later on we can see that the church is heavily involved with it. And by the 6th century, running the whole shebang.

[C]

You're listening to Dan Snow's history here. There's more to come.

[A]

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[C]

We talked about those monasteries down there. Now that sounds interesting. So they would have been previous to Christianity. What? Just sort of villas, Just, well, agro businesses. Yeah.

[D]

I mean, I think that this is potentially another book, Dan, because I think that the Roman Empire was, if we go back to sort of the first century bce, where you've got the Republic, and then into the kind of early Roman Empire. The Romans were quite interested in Egypt because of all the grain, but they also looked at Egypt as a kind of weird way to run a country because it was so bureaucratic. And I don't know whether that kind of temple economy then goes on to kind of influence the Roman Empire because it was undoubtedly very bureaucratic from a very early time. And certainly under the Ptolemy, it's a very bureaucratic setup.

[C]

And those bureaucrats might be priests of.

[D]

Oh, yeah, totally. It's all the temple economy. Okay. Yeah, yeah.

[C]

Okay. So big temples like Ramesses, funerary, whatever, they are in charge of big chunks of land, and that's where they get their income from.

[D]

They're carefully monitoring how much people are producing and making sure that exactly the right amount is being taken as effectively taxes.

[C]

And those transition to being Christian establishments.

[D]

Yes. So we get monasteries being set up in Egypt, and you get monasteries being set up everywhere else. And my book starts with Christianity in the Far West. So the appearance of monasteries in Britain and in the Southwest.

[C]

How interesting.

[D]

Yeah, I know, I know.

[C]

Thought you might get that in there somewhere. Home and native land.

[D]

Yeah. Well, it came back to about 20 years ago when I was looking at a coastal cemetery in Wales, and I was hanging off a rope, abseiling down this cliff, and there was a cemetery that nobody had known about, eroding out of the cliff face, and human bones were rattling down onto the beach. So we thought we'd go and have a look and at least try and map the extent of this cemetery. We kind of retrieved the bits of human bone that were just falling out. But obviously we're not going to burrow into the cliff and increase erosion. But we mapped the cemetery above, and then I got really interested in these early Christian Welsh cemeteries. And it seems to be that we do have Christianity very, very early in West Wales compared with anywhere else. But having said that, I mean, it's just very hard to spot it early because you've got Christians being buried with non Christians. And of course, we have this period in Britain which we call notoriously the Dark Ages, when we don't have much in the way of the written words. So that early medieval period after the Romans, I think, because we've got that lack of history, we've assumed that there's more of a hiatus between the end of the Roman period and then what we can start to see emerging several centuries later. And I think we've probably got wealthy families hanging onto power locally in a way that we have in Gaul. So in Gaul, we don't have that Dark Ages historically. We've got loads of literature and we can see quite clearly that that's exactly what's happening. So the elite families in Gaul are holding onto their position at the top of society and sons who would have gone off to be, you know, if I was a wealthy Roman matro, I would have expected my sons to go off and have a good Roman education and then go off to be lawyers and prefects and basically that governing class of the Roman Empire and bishop jobs start to enter these careers, so that that kind of layer of administration is replaced by ecclesiastical administration. And then what I've got no idea of is whether as a wealthy Roman matron or post Roman matron, whether I would have thought that that would have helped my sons to stay in those positions. As the Roman Empire crumbled, what had happened is, even if it was inadvertent, they'd invented a system which was robust and resilient as the Western Roman Empire crumbled. So we can see Gaul, for instance, crumbling into these different kingdoms after the end of the Roman period, which is late 5th century for Gaul. And because we've got such brilliant documentary records, we can see those same families just continuing through. There's one man who I got slightly obsessed about in the book called Sidonius, who wrote great letters, 147 letters. And you go, oh, my goodness, you know, what have we got in Britain from the 5th century? Nothing, really.

[C]

What Sidonius talks about in passing. Yeah, that's what we got.

[D]

Oh, my goodness. So sidonius, with his 147 letters, which he published during his lifetime. So it's somebody in the fifth century writing about the fifth century, writing about what it was like to live in the 5th century as the Roman Empire dissipates and disappears and he goes off to be prefect of Rome for a bit, I think, in the 460s, which is like effectively the metropolitan mayor of Rome. And then he comes back to Gaul into a top level administrative job, which is Bishop of Claremont, and he's there as Bishop of Claremont under the aegis still of the Roman Empire. But then the Visigoths, who've been given Aquitaine and then are expected to kind of help suppress Gallic uprisings when they happen occasionally. Just decide that they're going to take southern France for their own and they lay siege to Claremont. Sidonius is there with his brother, trying to keep them at bay. It's in vain. So then he is either exiled or runs away to Spain. And it's obviously rather annoyed that he had this fantastic job in Claremont, a very lovely villa, which he describes in great detail in one of his letters. And he writes to the Visigothic king, Urich, who he knows he's a Christian, even if he thinks he's maybe not the right sort of Christian. But he writes to him a very flattering letter and says, actually, I rather like you and can I have my old job back? And Urich says, yes. So I think if Sidonius. I think if that had happened decades earlier, in the 4th century, before Christianity was the state religion and before bishops were quite as powerful, if Sidonius had been a magistrate under the Roman Empire in what became Claremont, I don't think that Euric the Visigoth would have given him his job back. He gave him his job back because somehow it seemed separate enough from the Roman Empire, but all the good bits.

[C]

Of the Roman Empire. But he knew how to run the show, bring in fresh water, get the grain coming. So you're providing the services, but not necessarily as one of the Emperor's immediate.

[D]

No. And his God, who had obviously supported the Roman Emperor before, would now support Euric. So it was transferable. Any monarch will do.

[C]

Can we come back to Britain, do you think? The same thing's happening there? We just don't know about it. So the Roman state sort of disappears. But do you think there are still local officials, but we're now calling them bishops or clergy who are able to still do the kinds of things that the Roman Empire did?

[D]

Yes, I'm sure. And I think that, you know, we talk about the Romans leaving, don't we? But who leaves? I mean, the Roman army leaves in 410, and I think a couple of pro European administrators are booted out. But essentially, I think a lot of it's just going to continue because you have got these quite sophisticated systems of administration and they will continue. I imagine what's happening is something similar to Gaul. And what we might be seeing, and what we certainly see archaeologically, is that we start to see those kind of regional identities re emerging. And it's almost like Roman culture was this kind of veneer which makes everything look very similar on the surface, and especially at a higher level of society where you have got those kind of similarities, although there are still regional differences, but you have got these similarities in the way that you plan a town, for instance, or the way that you construct a villa. So somebody coming from southern Spain would go to Britain and they'd be familiar with some of the architecture, for instance. I think that what then happens is you then see more kind of regional differences emerging and you're almost going back to what Britain was like in the Iron Age. I mean, I find it absolutely mind blowing that we've still got some of that administrative pattern, that kind of administration in the landscape persisting to the present day. Because I think some of our modern counties are essentially these Iron Age kingdoms, which then become administrative units underneath the Roman Empire, when the whole thing is then governed as Britannia, and then when we're kind of seceding from the Roman Empire, those individual units return to being kingdoms again, but with some of that.

[C]

Romanness transmitted through these Christian institutions.

[D]

Yeah, because we're already at a point where the state religion of the Roman Empire has been Christianity for at least a generation. By the time that Britain is leaving the Roman Empire. So Christianity would have been quite embedded. We know there were bishops, so we have bishops from Britain traveling to some of these important church meetings. We just don't have a lot of information in the same way that we do in Gaul. But what we can see as well in Gaul is that people very much saw Christianity as a Roman thing. And you have other people writing, say, Paulinus of Pella, who converts to Christianity, he's a near contemporary of Sidonius, who actually says that he converts to Christianity because connects him back to a feeling of real Roman ness. And I suppose, I don't know why we. We haven't just seen Christianity as an extension of the Roman Empire because it's there, it's written in Latin. Rome is quite important. I mean, essentially that's what I ended up feeling with this book, was that the Western Roman Empire doesn't disappear. The connection back to the single emperor and the idea of a coherent, I suppose, political empire has gone, but the way that cities are administered is still the same. And essentially Christianity is just Roman ness continuing.

[C]

You listen to Dan Snow's history. Don't go anywhere. There's more to come.

[A]

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[C]

So through this fourth century into the fifth, we've got it's official religion. The key administrators are bishops, they're Christians. What about normal people? How Christian are they?

[D]

I don't think we know.

[C]

Really?

[D]

Yeah, I really don't think we know because they don't write. So it's really, really hard. And you obviously get to a point with Christianity where one of the answers to why it became so successful, I'm saying it again now, is that it becomes completely exclusive. So gone are the days of the Roman Empire when you could worship anybody or anything. You know, you could have all that range of different gods and goddesses and that was fine as long as you also worship the emperor. As long as you subscribe to the imperial cult, you could be a worshipper of Isis or Mithras or Jupiter or what you wanted. As long as you will say respected and worshiped the emperor. That was gone. And suddenly all those other religions and cults were completely excluded and Christianity was the only thing. And Christianity then becomes the imperial cult. So essentially Christianity is your way of showing that you are Roman and that you do respect.

[C]

That's also very attractive to emperors, isn't it? That actually.

[D]

Yeah.

[C]

Rather than just allowing this world where everyone believes their own thing, as long as they also believe in me. Let's cut to the chase. Let's just make sure that actually it is exclusive. Everyone has to believe in this thing, which also, by the way, celebrates me as emperor. Yeah, I become God's representative on earth, right?

[D]

Yeah, you can see it both ways, can't you? And I think it's interesting, you know Again, looking at Constantine meeting the bishops, it's interesting looking at it from Constantine's point of view and thinking, right, what did he have to gain? And was he worried about Alexandria and the grain export? But also all those bishops had an awful lot to gain and they were in his inner circle. So he definitely had bishops in his inner circle advising him. So they had a lot to gain if they could get a Roman emperor to really involve himself with the Church. I think there's different people with lots of different motives. Yeah.

[C]

But in terms of normal people, from what your archaeologist taught you, people might hedge their bets for a couple of generations. What's it had a few. Had a few crosses around the house, but kept some of the old ways going. What's your perception of that?

[D]

I think what's interesting is that you see aspects of kind of pagan rituals continuing, but in some ways the Church accepts that and adopts that. I mean, I've been really interested looking at particularly funerary practices. And in one of my earlier books, Buried, I was writing about these different kind of feasts of the dead which pre Christian Romans had, that were fixed points in the calendar and you'd have your own days of the dead as well, which were related to when your loved one had passed away and then perhaps the anniversary of that, that kind of thing. But there's also fixed days in the calendar, in the Roman calendar, when you would go to graves and you would have feasts at the graveside. And there was one of these that's called Rosalia, which is also a feast of roses too. And that just slides across into the Christian Orthodox calendar and becomes. In Romania, it's still called Rosalie. In France, it's packed a rose and it's otherwise known as Pentecost. So you do have these pagan rituals which just slide across and temples become churched as well.

[C]

I mean, literally, the physical fabric.

[D]

Yeah. Oh, God. The physical fabric of it is fascinating. And this is where it gets intensely archaeological. So what you find is this. This absolutely extraordinary transformation of Roman buildings into Christian buildings. Roman Christian buildings. And so I've been going on tour with my book and I've been saying to people in the audience, if I say the word basilica to you, what does it mean? What does it mean, Dan?

[C]

Well, it means a magnificent early Roman, Early Christian church.

[D]

Okay, so if I go back two and a half thousand years ago into ancient Greece and I say basilica to you, what is it?

[C]

Well, it's where the government gets run from.

[D]

Exactly, exactly. So it's the Greek word.

[A]

Yeah.

[D]

I know we didn't prepare this. People think I know about prepared. So Basilius is king in Greek, basilica is the king's house. And in your Greek city state, you're going to have a king in charge. He'll meet with his advisors in the king's house. That's the basilica. It's got a colonnade along the front. It's called the Basilica Stoa, and that's on the town square, the agora. And Romans just adopt a lot of Greek stuff. So.

[C]

Yeah, there's one in Pompeii right there.

[D]

Yeah, they do their towns the same. They do Greek style. We're going to call it Forum instead of an agora, but we'll have a basilica on the Forum and you might have a couple of basilicae. I think the biggest one that's ever been built was Trajan's Basilica Ulpia in Rome, which was enormous. But when we look at the architecture of those, they have a central chunk which on the ground plan is a central aisle with pillars and then two side aisles, or central nave, I should say, and then two side aisles and the central bit goes up to two storeys. The Basilica Ulpia went up to three. And then the side aisles go up to one story and come in. Then there's an apse at the end and you might put your statues of your emperor in there for the imperial cult. And then when the official religion of Rome becomes Christianity, that's where you're going to put your altar and it's like city hall.

[C]

So what we're talking about here is a fusion of imperial power and religion.

[D]

Yeah.

[C]

So then who took over? Which.

[D]

Yeah.

[C]

Did the politicians go, we are gonna take Christianity and make it an official cult? Or did these senior religious figures capture the executive branch? They capture the emperor.

[D]

Do you know, it's so complicated and there's so many different people involved in it. There's gonna be lots of people with lots of different motives. The emperor, as you said, had a lot to gain by allying himself with a cult which was about a single God and then having a single monarch on earth. Makes sense.

[C]

Makes sense.

[D]

And the biographer of Constantine says that about Constantine and says that he's reflecting this single God above. And then equally, the bishops have more and more to gain the more imperial favor they have coming in their direction. If you're a big villa owner and you're being hit with those really, really heavy taxes, then you can convert your villa into a monastery and you get a tax exemption. So there's. There's Good financial reasons to do it as well.

[C]

And yet the sting in the tail is that they create this astonishing imperial religion which then bizarrely allows that religion and Romanness to outlive the political military empire itself. La rafe of emperor.

[D]

Yeah, that's it. So weird, that is exactly what I would say is that I think that we've almost had the wool pulled over our eyes and we kind of talk about the end of the Western Roman Empire. I don't think it ever ended. Continuity or change, it carries on.

[C]

It's not university.

[D]

And in a city, it's going to have felt very, very similar. The same people, the same families.

[C]

German warlord comes in, knocks on the gate, they're like just, all right, bud, you can be in charge here, but we'll just keep everything running below the surface as it was before.

[D]

It's all just going to carry on. And so the monasteries operate like the villas did. They're big agricultural estates and they're essentially franchises of the church. And they're going to be taxed, so that tax is going to be levied and collected into the cities. We get Roman bath houses as well as basilicas being turned into religious buildings. We've also got monasteries evolving out of villas and bath houses. And the most beautiful example of that I've seen is in Sofia and there's this gorgeous building that's completely surrounded by these imposing Soviet blocks. And then you've got this absolutely beautiful brick built building at the end of the. The excavated bathhouse. It probably was a bathhouse of the palace of Constantine. And at the end, part of the bathhouse is still standing because it was made into a church. And it's called the Rotunda and It's this incredible 4th century building, but it was a bath house and then a church and a baptisterium was a plunge pool in a bathhouse before it was ever part of a church. Where I just imagine the Christians going, what do we do with this Wall street bit? What do we do with this pool?

[C]

Dunk people?

[D]

Or you can find a use for that.

[C]

Amazing stuff. So, Alice, after all this work that you've done, if anyone out there is trying to start a religion, what is the most important thing that occur? Is it convincing elites? Is it creating a groundswell, a grassroots movement, creating moments of virality or doing everything? What's your takeaway?

[D]

It's really hard. I mean, first of all, I wouldn't want to start a religion.

[C]

No, of course, I'm not suggesting you do.

[D]

Oh, I mean, I think the fact that, that it has to be a business as well, that is incredibly important. And that is there right from the very beginning for Christianity. I mean, when the man called Saul, who changes his name to Paul, is traveling around to different cities in the Eastern Mediterranean, he is going and talking to people, but he's also asking them to pay their subs as well. The collection for the saints. So it is about funding it as well. It wouldn't have continued had it not been well funded from the very beginning.

[C]

So you've got to be revenue positive.

[D]

You've got to be revenue positive. And one of the first people that Paul goes to see and converts to Christianity, it's very difficult to know exactly what happened, but apparently he struck this magician blind and then this person converts to Christianity was the governor of Cyprus. So he's going straight to influential people to get their buy in.

[C]

Okay, so it is elite conversion. Super important.

[D]

Yes, it is. Yeah. And I think it has to work for these elites, but it does have to offer things to everybody else as well, which it was very good at doing. But I think more than anything, it just seems to me that it just took over the administration of the Roman Empire and civic administration of the Roman Empire. And an awful lot of what bishops were doing was, yes, on the one hand, they're faith leaders, but on the other hand, they are administrators.

[C]

They're running the show.

[D]

They're running the show. Yeah.

[C]

Well, you're running the show. Alice Roberts, thank you for coming on the podcast. What's the book called?

[D]

It's called Domination.

[C]

Domination. Go and get everyone. Thank you so much for coming on the pod.

[D]

Thank you very much for having me. Dan.

[C]

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Dan Snow's History hit. You know, you could have watched this episode and others on YouTube. That's right. You can peek behind the curtain of how we record this podcast on our YouTube channel. Very exciting new development, development here. Just click the link in the show notes and head over to subscribe. New YouTube releases every Friday. Friends, don't miss out.