Paolo, the last apostle, and his travels

The beginnings of the history of the history of Christianity (I- 5th century)

Paul dominates the entire apostolic generation, both for its theology and for its missionary strategy, but also for his dazzling writing, which still today proves to be exceptionally topical. Since he had not known Jesus in life, Paul was not a disciple like the others. His faith and his adherence to Christ were the result of a series of ascetic experiences on which he would have based his anthropological conception of a recreation of the believer through mystical union with Christ. The first experience took place on the way to Damascus: party to break down, of the militant Pharisee, a sect that he considered deviant and unholy, Paul had a vision and received a call that converted him immediately, leading him to preach the Gospel with the same ardor with which he had set out to fight. Always independent from the group of disciples, Paul recognized the authority of James, Giovanni and Pietro, from which he received direct teaching. It would therefore be improper to make him the founder of a new religion, very far from the preaching of Jesus as addressed to the Greeks. In reality, his whole life destined him to be a vehicle of culture: Jew from the Diaspora on Greek soil, polyglot, he managed to combine the Greek education received in Tarsus, the hometown, his training as a Pharisaic in Jerusalem. Undoubtedly belonging to a family of international stature (certainly dedicated to the trade of fabrics), Paul was immediately able to recognize the great possibilities of travel and encounters offered by the Roman Empire. His path crossed Peter's several times, in Antioch, Corinth and Rome.

The great poles of the mission

The apostolic missions were not intended to cover the largest possible space, but rather to be able to implant Christianity locally. The traditions of the Church suggest the existence of some fundamental poles or points of departure for the mission. The first was evidently Jerusalem. The day of Pentecost, the missionary horizon of the group of Jesus' disciples opened up in three directions. In the first place, the Eastern Diaspora of Mesopotamia and the Iranian buttresses, beyond Damascus, regions that actually had ongoing relations with Jerusalem, but of which we have no information until the appearance, starting from the 3rd century, of Syriac Christianity and traditions relating to the apostle Thomas. The second axis of the mission developed from Jerusalem to Asia Minor along a path from east to west, starting with the continental regions of the Anatolian plateau and ending with the more Hellenized cities of the coast. According to the testimony of the Letters, the axis corresponded to the missions of Paul and Peter, which flowed into the development of the Johannine communities in Asia, around Ephesus: the best documented missionary area. The third sector corresponds to the space dominated by Alexandria - Crete, Cyrenaica, Arabian desert and Egypt - where, after a century of silence, an intellectually brilliant Christianity manifests itself in the middle of the second century. Between Jerusalem and Alexandria the movements and exchanges were continuous. In the east, the first Christian horizon was inscribed in the fairly conventional geographical context of the Hellenized Jews of the first century, for example that of Philo. In other words, the support of the Diaspora was decisive in the elaboration of the first missionary projects.

Roma, capital of the Empire, he was already celebrating Pentecost, as evidenced by the mention of the Jews of Rome who arrived in Jerusalem for the feast. The religion of Christ had arrived in Rome before the arrival of Peter and Paul, no doubt during the reign of Claudius, in 49 and in subsequent years, that is to say when the Roman and Christian sources gave news of disorders in the synagogues of the capital. Indeed, Rome was the stage from which the Christianization movement of the western provinces started (France, Africa and the Iberian Peninsula). In Africa, where Christianity officially entered history only in 180, at the time of the first martyrs, it is presumable that it penetrated through the Jews who came from Ostia, the port of Rome, since it was a Latin-speaking Christianity. In Gallia, where Christianity emerged around the same time (177), on the occasion of the persecution suffered by the Churches of Vienne and Lyon, the first Christian communities were based in the Rhone basin and claimed an Asian origin, but apparently Rome acted as an intermediary in sending missionaries. The Christianity of Lyons was a Hellenistic community, as indeed the churches and synagogues of Rome; it was inserted in an environment of merchants and professionals from the East, all Greek-speaking.

It is impossible to date the beginnings of Christianity in the Iberian Peninsula Paul had set that goal at the end of the three missions in the Greek world, as he prepared his arrival in Rome. At that time, in the sixties, the peninsula represented an extremely innovative goal, as the eastern Hellenized restricted their travel prospects to the eastern Mediterranean, within the limited scope of the Acts of the Apostles. Paul was therefore one of the first to integrate the totality of the space controlled by Rome and the universalism of the empire, coming to conceive the universality of the Church a little at a time. This Far Western goal was reaffirmed by Clement I in the 1990s.

The Pauline missions in the fabric of the Roman Empire

Once the great poles have been identified, it is possible to analyze with greater precision the process of expansion of Christianity thanks to the Letters of Paul, concerning its missions ad Antioch, a Cipro, in Anatolia, in Macedonia, in Greece e, finally, in the Ephesus region. Luck has it that we are in possession of precise chronological references: in 52 Paolo was a Corinth, so that his entire mission took place over the years 30-60, with a cadence that remains largely hypothetical. His conception of his missionary journeys was entirely traditional, always dealing with circumnavigation or circuits starting from Jerusalem, with return to the starting point to report to the Church of Jerusalem o, the third time, for a pilgrimage. Often considered a great traveler, However, Paul should not be mistaken for an adventurer or a discoverer. At the time, those trips had nothing extraordinary. Paul did not attempt to cover as much space as possible, but rather it aimed at creating Christian poles, making use of the infrastructure of the empire to transmit his Gospel.

After all, Paul toured the provincial capitals of the Roman Empire: Antioch, capital of Syria; Pafo, capital of Cyprus; Thessalonica, capital of Macedonia; Corinth, capital of the province of Achaea, corresponding to ancient Greece; Ephesus, capital of the province of Asia. To this must be added the evangelization of colonies of Roman veterans in charge of controlling the road junctions, such as Antioch of Pisidia and Philippi of Macedonia, which Paul himself always considered as the starting point and support of his mission in Greece. Likewise, on a larger scale, it was always starting from the provincial capitals, Alexandria, Carthage or Lyon, that Christianity spread to the provinces. The provincial capitals were hubs for the inhabitants of the region, who were regularly recalled there by the presence of the Roman administration and by the holding of judicial meetings; function, this, which was increased when the cities were also pilgrimage or holiday destinations, such as Corinth or Ephesus. In those chosen places of Roman times, Paul was perhaps aiming to reach the Roman elite, the environment of the governor; this is how the Acts of the Apostles describe him in Cyprus. Mostly, as he himself explains in the Letter to the Thessalonians, he used the news network, so that his message always preceded his arrival. The dissemination of information starting from a capital can be estimated at a radius of about three hundred kilometers. When, in the Letter to the Romans, Paolo takes stock of his mission in Greece, says he has reached theIlliria, a term that can designate only the region of the Illyrian language, where the Greek ceased and the northern barbarian world began; the land of miri, on the shores of the Adriatic, it was in fact evangelized much later. The linguistic limit in question was located in the area of ​​Lake Ohrid, in the center of the Balkans, about three hundred kilometers from Filippi. It is the same that separates Ephesus from the Pauline foundations of Hierapolis, Colossi and Laodicea. It is easy to understand why Paolo stayed for a long time in those capitals, real hubs of communication and dissemination of information: in fact he remained for eighteen months in Corinth and three years in Ephesus.

The examination of Paul's itineraries and his passages from one region to another help to paint him as a man able to weave networks. As envoy of the Church of Antioch, he had been joined by Barnabas, originally from Cyprus, for a mission on that island: the two apostles came to find themselves in a familiar universe, Cyprus being an intermediate stage between Syria and Cilicia, homeland of Paolo. The first surprising and significant choice was the passage from Cyprus to Pisidia, in the center of Anatolia. Antioch of Pisidia was the place of origin of the family of the proconsul of Cyprus met by Paul, with whom he had maintained relations. As a Roman citizen, as was then the custom of travelers of rank, Paolo availed himself, of the official infrastructures of the time such as letters of recommendation or the escort of official convoys. The second equally crucial step was that from Asia to Europe, from the Troad to Macedonia: the Acts of the Apostles, which solemnize this event with the story of a vision, they do not clarify the concrete conditions, but from the structure of the story it is possible to deduce that Paul undoubtedly responded to an invitation from the Macedonians of Philippi, who in fact played a decisive role in his entourage. The mission therefore took place from stage to stage, depending on the meetings and hospitality relationships. Although the passage to Europe seems highly symbolic, in reality the crossings and exchanges were incessant between the two shores of the Thracian sea. The figure of Lydia, trader of purple from Philippi originally from Thyatiro in Asia, it corresponds perfectly to what appears from the inscriptions on the trade in fabrics and on migratory movements between the cities of Macedonia and those of Lydia. In Ephesus and then in Rome, Paolo was preceded and called by an itinerant entrepreneur, Aquila, for which he had worked in Corinth, From Macedonia to Corinth, he had the support of some of his relatives, as often happened in the eastern diasporas, Phoenician or Jewish

The networks of the Christian mission

The Pauline mission, the only one we are actually able to study, it was conceived as a capillary penetration that made use of all the networks of ancient statehood, functioning as an intertwining of communities, from the smallest - the family - to the largest, - the state. The mother cell of the mission was the "house", l’oikos, together a family community and a community of activities, agricultural exploitation, laboratory or warehouse. Unlike the modern nuclear family, l’oikos ancient included people of different status, including women and children, slaves and freedmen, in a fairly high number in the families of notables: its composition transcended the split, typical of the ancient city, between Greeks and barbarians, men and women, free and not free. The Christians of a city gathered for both oikos and in the largest home of a notable who welcomed neighbors and friends. A practice, this, destined to last for two centuries. A Roma come a Doura Europos, in Syria, the first Christian buildings to be found in the urban fabric, dating back to the mid-3rd century, they were the result of the reorganization of large urban homes: the so-called "church houses".

The activities and relationships between the members of theoikos they ended up making the latter the basis of all socialization channels, according to family development or affinity, based on professional interests or mutual assistance services, within associations, communities of emigrants such as synagogues, sports or cult associations. Associative life was a characteristic feature of the cities of the Roman East at the time when Christianity spread. With all evidence, Paolo made use of close professional ties in the textile branch, to which it belonged and to which it lent its activity on the occasion of the different stages: Aquila's enterprise provides the example of an itinerant Church which moved from Corinth to Ephesus and Rome. The importance of assodative relationships, based on conviviality, explains the importance assumed, to Corinth, from issues of convivial pluri-ethnicity and the consumption of sacrificial meat. finally, to strike contemporaries, from the writer Luciano to the emperor Julian, it was the ability of Christians to develop mutual aid structures, thus assuring Christianity a first visibility, even in the absence of images and monuments. Christians organized themselves into small, highly personalized communities of six, ten, twelve individuals, still existing at the time of the first tales of martyrs in the second and third centuries. In the cities they formed separate groups and therefore risked appearing sectarians, which Paul clearly saw in Corinth.

This typology of the Pauline mission can be generalized. The rest, Paul's missions, of Peter and the Johannine movement followed the same itineraries and pursued the same objectives in Asia Minor, sometimes giving rise to real phenomena of overlap with the Paulines in the area of ​​Ephesus, although John's and Peter's preaching favored urban centers with large Jewish settlements. Starting from these extremely limited settlements in the urban area and centered on charismatic personalities, the unity of the Church gradually expanded through the same dynamics, around reference figures embodied by the bishops and thanks to the new networks they weave through their travels e, especially through their correspondence.

Bibliography:

History of Christianity, curated by A. Corbin