Christians made a name for themselves.
Historians have suggested that the terrible Antonine Plague [of the 2nd century], which might have killed off a quarter of the Roman Empire, led to the spread of Christianity.
As Christians cared for the sick and offered an spiritual model whereby plagues were not the work of angry and capricious deities but the product of a broken Creation in revolt against a loving God.
But the more famous epidemic...
is the Plague of Cyprian.
Named for a bishop who gave a colorful account of this disease in his sermons.
Probably a disease related to Ebola, the Plague of Cyprian helped set off the Crisis of the Third Century in the Roman world. But it did something else too: it triggered the explosive growth of Christianity. Cyprian’s sermons told Christians not to grieve for plague victims - who live in heaven - but to redouble efforts to care for the living.
His fellow bishop Dionysius described how Christians, ´heedless of danger, took charge of the sick, attending to their every need´...
~bron~
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