The East the Fountain of Religions
Influence of Magna Græcia
The East has always been the fountain of religions to the European mind. To the westward flowed the stream of doctrines which sprang up in
the Orient. We are beginning to see that Greece came to many of her gods through instruction from the Asiatic continent, and that her originality in religion lay chiefly in her refinement of nature worship and in the beautiful marble forms in which Greek genius enshrined her divinities. From Greece the stream reached Italy in Magna Græcia, and later by the adoption through Roman assimilation of the gods of the Greek Pantheon. The worship of Isis and Osiris came from Egypt to Rome, and became an influential cult there, as witness the abounding symbols of that worship still preserved in the Capitoline Museum.
The Charm of Judea to Christians
To the Christian no land could be so full of religious suggestions, remembrances, and associations as Judea. France, Spain, Italy, Britain were no sooner Christianized in any degree than pilgrims began to set out for the Jordan, for Bethlehem, for Jerusalem with its Gethsemane, its Calvary, and its Holy Sepulcher. Those who were taught that blessing came "by the work wrought," especially when the years prophesied a brief space of life left, eagerly sought to wash sin away in Jordan or to die near the hill of the atonement.
Greater Number of Pilgrims
Buildings by Constantine and Helena
When Christianity became imperial by alliance with the State, and corrupt by the ascendency of
Constantine in its Councils, the number of pilgrims greatly increased. Ambitions as well as devotions drew men to Palestine. Constantine had evoked Jerusalem again as a name and as a city from the ruins of the preceding three centuries. The liberality of Constantine and Helena had identified the holy places sufficiently for the credulous faith of the time, and has decorated them with churches and colonnades. Michaud says: "An obscure cavern had become a marble temple paved with precious stones. To the east of the Holy Sepulcher appeared the Church of the Resurrection, where the riches of Asia mingled with the arts of Greece and Rome."[2]