god Sol Invictus, and his successors had continued to use the title until 379. This title was applied to the Bishop of Rome originally as a criticism, because of its pagan associations but that was soon forgotten. Popes also appointed themselves Bishops of Bishops, another title borrowed from the emperor and which Constantine himself had once borne. So, too, popes decided that they should be addressed as Your Holiness, as emperors had been. Since the fourth century they have issued decretals, documents with the name and style of imperial edicts. They even invested selected bishops with a fur tippet (or pallium, a circular band about two inches wide, worn about the neck, breast, and shoulders, and having two pendants, one hanging down in front and one behind), just as emperors had previously invested their legates. In short, it will be found that the whole system of Roman Catholic worship is founded on the pagan Roman Empire and the Jewish law, the latter fulfilled and abrogated by Christ. If the instruction delivered by Paul to the Galatians, is understood and acted upon, it will destroy the very foundation of Rome’s worship. The idea of dividing up Christ’s life into events and sections and then attaching festival days or distinct holy days to each event, was brought into church practice in imitation of Roman emperor-worship. There was not a month in the Roman Empire’s calendar that did not have its religious festivals.
Religion of the Romans
The Romans were polytheistic (with over sixty known gods), the greatest of their gods being Jupiter followed by Mars, Quirinus, Diana, Mercury, and Saturn. By the New Testament era, Roman emperors were themselves being worshipped as the embodiment of these gods. The Roman was, by nature, a very superstitious person. Emperors would tremble and even legions refuse to march if the omens were bad ones. The Pantheon in Rome was home to all their gods.
If anything, the Romans had a practical attitude to religion, as to most things, which perhaps explains why they themselves had difficulty in taking to the idea of a single, all-seeing, all-powerful god. Insofar as the Romans had a religion of their own, it was not based on any central belief but on a mixture of fragmented rituals, taboos, superstitions, and traditions they collected over the years from a number of sources. To the Romans, religion was less a spiritual experience than a contractual relationship between mankind and the forces which were believed to control people’s existence and well-being. Every conquest by Rome of a new territory resulted in her adoption of that territory’s gods with great pomp and ceremony, resulting in an absurd variety of religious worship. Provided that your choice was not to the exclusion of other deities from Rome’s list, anyone could express their preference for the deity of their choice, just as later in the Middle Ages, Roman Catholics could express their preference of patron saint.2, 3 In spite of such polytheism and syncretism, Rome was a sacral society, where religion and state were indistinguishable. (This was true of Old Testament Israel, which was a church-state and a state-church, and both this model and that of pagan Rome would be subsequently mirrored in the Roman Catholic Church).
If the pontifex maximus (greatest pontiff) was the head of Roman state religion, then much of the organization rested with four religious colleges, whose members were appointed for life and with a few exceptions, were selected from among distinguished politicians. The highest of these bodies was the Pontifical College, which consisted of the rex sacrorum, pontifices, flamines, and the vestal virgins. Rex sacrorum (the king of rites) was an office created under the early republic as a substitute for royal authority over religious matters. Later he might still have been the highest dignitary at any ritual, even higher than the pontifex maximus, but it became a purely honorary post. Sixteen pontifices (priests) oversaw the organization of religious events. They kept records of proper religious procedures and the dates of festivals and days of special religious significance. The flamines were priests to individual gods: three for the major gods Jupiter, Mars, and Quirinus, and twelve for the lesser ones. These individual experts specialized in the knowledge of prayers and rituals specific to their particular deity. The flamen dialis, the priest of Jupiter, was the most senior of the flamines. On certain occasions his status was equal to those of the pontifex maximus and the rex sacrorum. The vestal virgins (numbering two to six) were priests to Vesta, the god of home/family. The only female priests permitted in the Roman system, they kept a sacred fire burning in her temple in Rome.
The temptation by some in the church to imitate the Roman calendar is understandable when we remember that the early church was composed of many converted Jews and Gentile proselytes to Judaism, all of whom had been used to following the Jewish calendar with its feasts and holy days throughout the different seasons of the year. Such imitation was not novel to the second and third centuries AD, as it was already happening during the Apostolic era. Paul addresses the issue in Galatians, to which we have already referred. He condemned such days when he rebuked believers who wanted to retain the old covenant shadows.
But now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how can you turn back again to the weak and worthless elementary principles of the world, whose slaves you want to be once more? You observe days and months and seasons, and years! I am afraid I may have laboured over you in vain. (Gal 4:9–11)
James Bannerman writes:
And in the context it is not difficult to gather the twofold ground on which the apostle condemned such observances. First of all, he grounded condemnation of ecclesiastical days on the fact that, in attaching importance to them, and regarding them as ordinary parts of the service due to God, the Galatians, like “children, were in bondage under the elements (stoicheia) of the world;” in other words, he stigmatises these appointments of days and seasons as rudimentary observances suited to the infancy of the church, but only fetters to it now, when it ought to have arrived at spiritual manhood.
And again he characterises them as “the weak and beggarly elements (or rudiments) whereunto the Galatians desired again to be in bondage.” They were the empty and outward appointments of a carnal and worn-out dispensation.4
Since 500 BC (era of Esther), Roman pagans had kept the holiday of Saturnalia, a weeklong period of lawlessness celebrated between the 17th and 23rd of December, which had evolved out of worship of the mythological god Saturn, attributed with control of wealth and agriculture to name but a few of his supposed attributes. During this festival period, Roman courts were closed and Roman law dictated that no one could be punished for damaging property or injuring people during the weeklong celebration. It was largely wild, violent, and immoral. It was the only week of the year when gambling was permitted in public.
Costumes were worn and cross-dressing was common, as was role-reversal, where slaves were served by their masters and so on. All sexual prohibitions were lifted and erotic dancing in public was commonplace. The giving and receiving of presents was another feature (small dolls were a popular gift, although for an unpleasant reason, as they commemorated a myth that Saturn ate all his male children at birth to fulfill a pledge that he would die without heirs). All businesses were closed and the only vocations permitted to work were those of bakers and cooks. The festival began when Roman authorities chose “an enemy of the Roman people” to represent the Lord of Misrule. Each Roman community selected a victim whom they forced to indulge in binge eating and other physical pleasures throughout the week. At the original festival’s conclusion, December 23, Roman authorities believed they were destroying the forces of darkness by brutally murdering this innocent man or woman. This violent ending became less common with the passage of time and the influence of Greek customs and practice, so that by the New Testament era the festival had become more light-hearted. The Lord of Misrule was selected by the drawing of lots and adopted the role of a mock king in charge of all the revelry, who was expected to order outlandish and scandalous actions to be performed by himself and others.
In the fourth century AD, Christianity imported the Saturnalia festival hoping to take the pagan masses in with it. Church leaders in the west succeeded in converting to Christianity large numbers of pagans by