Roman Bithynia and Christianity to the Mid-Fourth Century.

Abstract

This dissertation is an analytical survey of data pertaining to the history of Christianity in the Roman province of Bithynia (northwestern Turkey) before the mid-fourth century. Regional focus acknowledges the complexity of early Christian history, offers a clearly defined historical context within which to evaluate Christian data, and allows the sort of detailed study most likely to yield new information. Christians may be attested in Bithynia in the first century. The Great Persecution of Diokletian began there. Bithynia included Constantinople, capital of the first Christian emperor and Nikaea, site of the First Ecumenical Council. and Bithynia's bishops played an important role in the early stages of the Arian controversy. The typical Christian literary sources are utilized: ecclesiastical histories, lives of saints, etc. But considerable use is made also of epigraphical data. Epigraphy imbues the work with an unconventional perspective, and allows unconventional conclusions about the Early Church in Bithynia. Chapter 1 introduces a group of Christian funerary monuments from Nikaea which may date from as early as the mid-third century, and discusses the possible relationship between these monuments and other Christian monuments of similar date from central Anatolia. Chapter 2 concerns the origins of the Bithynian Church as illuminated by "factual" attestations of Christians, by foundation legends, and by the network of regional relationships established by the epigraphical data. Chapter 3 argues on the basis of both literary and epigraphical evidence that the Christians of Bithynia may neither have been isolated from pagan culture nor threatened with persecution to the degree commonly envisioned. Chapter 4 discusses the size and importance of the Bithynian Church in the early-fourth century and the significance (for Christian history) of the establishment of an imperial capital in the province.