Conclusion: The darkening age or the victory of John Doe?

An exploration of both the rhetoric of manifest ideologies and complex daily realities is necessary for an understanding of the religious changes of the late Roman Empire, particularly the shifting position of dissenting religious groups. The dramatic accounts of violence need to be balanced with dreary everyday life. Changes in economic structures and the social factors in local communities were more influential in terms of religious transformation than the uproars depicted in hagiographies and church histories. The religious changes and diversity in Late Antiquity can be outlined in many ways, not only as ‘Christianization’, which presupposes a dichotomy between pagan and Christian practices. The Mediterranean area had for centuries been diffused with different cults, practices, religious ideas, and beliefs, which were continuously cross-pollinating each other. The spread of various Christian groups is a part of these religious changes in Antiquity.