How Christianity spread across Roman Europe ‘ like Starbucks’
CHRISTIANITY swept across Europe to become a ‘monopoly religion’ in much the same way Starbucks cornered the global coffee market, science writer Matt Ridley claimed yesterday.
Both had ‘ become ubiquitous, monopolistic and eventually intolerant’ of competitors said the journalist and Conservative peer.
Discussing his book The Evolution of Everything: How Ideas Emerge at the Chalke Valley History Festival, sponsored by the Daily Mail, he explained his thesis that ‘ bottomup’ trends are the key to understanding our world.
‘We give far too much importance to individuals in history – that is my claim and that is a pretty big claim,’ he said. Ridley, known for arguing that human minds form a great ‘collective brain’, said any of the ‘many little cults’ in the Roman Empire could have become Europe’s dominant belief system.
He added: ‘Religions are a good example of things that have taken a very specific form but have a sort of inevitability.
‘The notion that the Roman Empire was ripe for a monopoly religion to take it over at around the time of Christ is probably an inevitable one.
‘There were a huge number of different religions in the Empire and the chances were that one of them would “do a Starbucks”, become ubiquitous, monopolistic and eventually intolerant and kick the other ones out.’
In the first century AD, a mystic from Cappadocia was far better known and followed than Jesus – it was chance that his philosophy fell by the wayside for Christianity, said Ridley. ‘It’s a bit like Google. Maybe other companies were just as good at inventing search engines but Google just happened to scoop the pool.’
More than 140 speakers and living history events feature at the festival at Manor Farm, Ebbesbourne Wake, near Salisbury, Wiltshire. It runs until Sunday.