13.5

Christianity Comes to Rome (Box 13.2)

We don’t know when or how the Christian faith took root in the city of Rome, though for many centuries that city would serve as a focal point and virtual headquarters for the Christian religion. Two of our earliest references to Christianity in Rome offer different views on the phenomenon:

“Your faith is proclaimed throughout the world”; “you yourselves are full of goodness, filled with all knowledge, and able to instruct one another.”

—Paul (Rom. 1:8; 15:14)

“A most mischievous superstition . . . broke out . . . in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their centre and become popular.”

—Tacitus (Annals 15.44)

Complete Works of Tacitus, trans. Alfred John Church, William Jackson Brodribb (New York: Modern Library, 1942).