Ground Invictus Élagabal

Following the crisis of the 3rd century, the empire was at the edge of dislocation. The emperor Aurélien, victorious on Zénobie and restorer of the order, decided to found a worship common to all the Empire in order to reinforce the common bond between the provinces: indeed each city, each province, remained attached to the local worships, whose rites and forms could vary considerably. This new worship was to be for that sufficiently neutral to be accepted by the various populations of the Roman empire,

It selected with this intention a solar worship, the Sun being supposed universal being: it is the worship of Sol Invictus , the Unconquered Sun. Aurélien made him build with Rome a temple on the Champ de Mars, and created a college of Pontiffs of the Sun, and made worship of Sol Invictus a kind of religion of the State (and not a religion of State), substituent with the imperial worship fallen in disuse. This initiative, does not announce, as one said, the Monothéisme, because the new divinity, far from being exclusive the different ones, superimposed herself simply on the other worships, and remains basically polytheist. The great festival of the Unconquered Sun took place on December 25th, that is to say the date of the winter solstice according to the Calendrier Julien: it was the Dies Natalis Solis , “Day of birth of the Sun”, christianized thereafter in Occident ( Natalis gave Natale in Italian, Christmas in French).

This new worship badly was accommodated by the Roman preserving mediums (such as the writers of the Histoire Auguste ), was attached to the traditional religion Roman and being wary towards this newcomer whom it assimilated to discredit it in Elagabal which had shocked so much. Indeed, this new worship, erudite intellectual construction with political aiming, present well in fact few common points with Elagabal, Syrian local worship surrounded by an Eastern folklore (worship of a bétyle, crowned prostitution, transfer of the relics and the most crowned statues of Rome).

This religion of the Unconquered Sun was addressed more to the soldiers that with the civilians, who hardly made that to follow the movement, and it was, in fact, very widespread in the military mediums. If it is not particularly proposed by the imperial propaganda of Dioclétien (284 - 305) and of the Tétrarchie (293 - 306), it is seen that at the beginning of the 4th century it was always long-lived in the army since the emperor Constantin {{Ier}} (306 - 337), enthusiastic admirer of this god, will make strike the currencies the legend “ Soli Invicto Comiti ”, “With the Unconquered Sun which accompanies me”. It is him which, by a law of March 7th 321, will make “Day of the Sun” (i.e. Sunday) the day of the weekly rest (Code Justinien 3.12.2).

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