A while ago, I watched a documentary on the Roman Empire. What struck me about episode one is how masculine the pagan world used to be. Demons seemed to have known who was in charge of that society, namely, men, so the sins were particularly male-based from the very start of the city of Rome: Fratricide, rape of the Sabine women (See above) and then, of course, centuries of conquering other nations. At the beginning of episode one, the documentary host reads a tombstone from about the 4th century BC where a certain “Scipio” boasts of how many hostages he took as a warrior.How did Christianity ever convert the Roman Empire? I read the Roman Martyrology almost every day, and it constantly employs the verbs “triumph” or “conquer” in a non-ironic sense. For instance, one martyr might “overcome” the flames of being burnt to death for Christ. How exactly did this “overcome” the early Roman Empire? This “overcoming” the flames specifically means in the Roman Martyrology that he or she refrained from denying Christ while being burnt to death.The martyrs lived in reflection of the Triumph of the Holy Cross of Jesus Christ, conquering not by violence but by their convictions of the Gospel. Their convictions overcame even the most exquisite tortures of the Roman Empire, to the point their religion was finally legalized in AD 313. The hard-nosed, flesh, Patriarchal Empire was conquered and converted by martyrs of both sexes acting virtuous (literally, manly) under torture.

Originally published in Padre Peregrino. Read original article