The Christian Near East in Late Antiquity

Christianity is a Near Eastern religion but even throughout the area of its origin, it remained only one among several religions for most of antiquity. With Constantine, the newly favored religion started to dominate imperial politics, and imperial Christianity shaped the cultural and economic developments in the Roman Empire. As the cradle of Christianity, Jerusalem and the “Holy Land” attracted pilgrims from the Roman Empire and beyond. Christian asceticism flourished and Near Eastern monasteries played an important role for Christianization but also as economic and educational centers. The Christian quest for “orthodoxy, ” that is, Christianity’s urge for defining the “true” faith ultimately caused the establishment of independent Near Eastern churches at the end of antiquity with their own tradition and languages which still exist today.