Chapter 27
第二十七章
Rise of the church
教会之兴
How Rome became the center of the Christian world
罗马如何成为基督教世界的中心新教徒到来
The average intelligent Roman who lived under the Empire had taken very little interest in the gods of his fathers. A few times a year he went to the temple, but merely as a matter of custom. He looked on patiently when the people celebrated a religious festival with a solemn procession. But he regarded the worship of Jupiter and Minerva and Neptune as something rather childish, a survival from the crude days of the early republic and not a fit subject of study for a man who had mastered the works of the Stoics and the Epicureans and the other great philosophers of Athens.
生活在帝国时代的普通罗马知识分子，他们对祖先们世代敬拜的神抵并无多大兴趣。他们每年定期去神庙朝拜几次，不是由于信仰，仅仅是出于对习俗的尊重而已。当人们神情肃穆地列队游行，庆祝某个重大的宗教节日时，他们只是耐心而宽容的冷眼旁观，少有参与。在他们眼里，罗马人对朱庇特（众神之王）、密涅瓦（智慧女神）、尼普顿（海神）的崇拜是些幼稚可笑的东西，属于共和国初创时期简陋的遗留物。对于一个精研斯多葛学派、伊壁鸠鲁学派和其他伟大雅典哲学家的著作的人来说，它显然不是一个合适的课题。
This attitude made the Roman a very tolerant man. The government insisted that all people, Romans, foreigners, Greeks, Babylonians, Jews, should pay a certain outward respect to the image of the Emperor which was supposed to stand in every temple, just as a picture of the President of the United States is apt to hang in an American Post Office. But this was a formality without any deeper meaning. Generally speaking everybody could honour, revere and adore whatever gods he pleased, and as a result, Rome was filled with all sorts of queer little temples and synagogues, dedicated to the worship of Egyptian and African and Asiatic divinities.
这种态度使得罗马人对宗教信仰非常宽容。政府规定，所有人民，无论罗马人、侨居罗马的外国人、以及接受罗马统治的希腊人、巴比伦人、犹太人等等，他们都应该对按法律竖立在所有神庙中的皇帝像表示某种形式的敬意。这就像好多美国邮局挂有总统画像，让人们可以行行注目礼。但这仅仅是一种形式，并无更深的含义。一般来讲，每一个罗马公民都有权赞颂、崇敬、爱慕他个人喜欢的神。这种宗教宽容的结果就是，罗马各地遍布形形色色、奇奇怪怪的小神庙和小教堂，里面敬拜着源自埃及、非洲、亚洲的各式各样的神抵。