From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Mithraism was an ancient religion, based on the worship of the god Mithras (probably of Persian origin), which was widely adopted throughout the Roman Empire. It probably existed by the first century BC, reached its apogee around the fourth through sixth centuries AD, and became extinct after the fall of the Roman Empire.
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1.1 Mithras the god
1.2 The Mithraeum 1.3 Mithraism and astrology 1.4 Mithraic ranks 1.5 Holidays and rituals |
Soldiers appeared to be the most plentiful followers of Mithraism, and women were apparently not allowed to join.
It is commonly believed that the cave in Mithraism imagery represents the cosmos, and the rock is the cosmos seen from the outside; hence the description of this god as 'rising from the dead'. According to some accounts, Mithras died, was buried in a cavernous rock tomb, and was resurrected. Some commentators, inspired by James Frazer's theories, have labeled Mithras a life-death-rebirth deity, comparable to Isis, the resurrected Jesus Christ or the Persephone/Demeter cult of the Eleusinian mysteries.
Other depictions show Mithras carrying a rock on his back, much as Atlas did, and/or wearing a cape that had the starry sky as its inside lining.
A bronze image of Mithras, emerging from an egg-shaped zodiac ring, found associated with a mithraeum along Hadrian's Wall (now at the University of Newcastle), and an inscription from the city of Rome suggest that Mithras may have been seen as the Orphic creator-god Phanes who emerged from the cosmic egg at the beginning of time, bringing the universe into existence. This view is reinforced by a bas-relief at the Estense Museum in Modena, Italy, which shows Phanes coming from an egg, surrounded by the twelve signs of the zodiac, in an image very similar to that at Newcastle. Phanes in Greek means 'manifestor', or 'revealer.' (In the Orphic tradition he is also called Love (Eros), and First-born (Protogonos).
It is surmised that the Mithraists worshipped Mithras as the mediator between Man and the supreme God of the upper and nether world.
The most important icon in the mithraeum was the tauroctony, a depiction of Mithras in the act of killing a bull. The tautochrony was either painted or depicted in a sculptural relief, sometimes on the altar. A serpent, a scorpion, a dog, and a raven are present. This killing is shown as occurring inside a cave, much like the mithraeum, where it is the central decoration.
One interpretation sees this imagery as a creation myth, depicting the slaying of Sacred Bull, from whose blood all living things will spring.
In light of this interpretation, it has been suggested in recent times that the Mithraic religion is somehow connected to the end of the astrological "age of Taurus," and the beginning of the "age of Aries," which took place about the year 2000 BC. It has even been speclated that the religion may have originated at that time (although there is no record of it until the 2nd century BC).
The identification of an "age" with an astrological sign is based on the Zodiacal position of the sun during the vernal equinox of that age, as generally viewed in the Mediterranean region of the Northern Hemisphere. Before 2000 BC, Taurus the Bull was prominent as spring equinox, culminating with Scorpio as the autumn equinox. Due to the precession of the equinoxes, every 2,160 years (approximately) this position advances to the next Zodiacal division. The current age started when the equinox precessed into the constellation of Pisces, at about the year 1 AD, with the 'age of Aquarius' starting within the next few centuries.
Indeed, the constellations common in the sky from about 4000 BC to 2000 BC were Taurus the Bull, Canis Minor the Dog, Hydra the Snake, Corvus the Raven, and Scorpio the Scorpion. Further support for this theory is the presence of a lion and a cup in some depictions of the tauroctony: indeed Leo (a lion) and Aquarius ("the cup-bearer") were the constellations seen as the northernmost (summer solstice) and southernmost (winter solstice) positions in the sky during the age of Taurus.
The precession of the equinoxes was discovered, or at least publicized, by the Greek astronomer Hipparchus in the 2nd century BC. Whether the phenomenon was known by Mithraists previously is unknown. In any case, Mithras was presumed to be very powerful if he was able to rotate the heavens, and thus 'kill the bull' or displacing Taurus as the reigning image in the heavens.
The new initiate became a Corax, while the Leo was an adept.
The titles of the first four ranks suggest the possibility that advancement through the ranks was based on introspection and spiritual growth, as these titles seem to correspond respectively to the Jungian concepts of the shadow, the anima, the persona, and the self.
Greek sculptors of the school at Pergamum in Asia Minor in the 2nd century BC produced iconic bas-relief imagery of Mithra Taurocthonos, Mithra the 'bull-slayer.' The cult of Mithras never caught on in the Greek homeland, but these sculptures may be the link between Persian Mithra and Roman Mithras.
Around the first century AD, the Greek historian Plutarch wrote about pirates of Cilicia who practiced the Mithraic "secret rites" around 67 BC. Since Cilicia was the name of an area near Turkey and Greece, the Mithras mentioned by Plutarch may have been worship of the Persian god Mithra; or may have been associated with Ahriman, the god who killed a bull.
The cult of Mithras began to attract attention at Rome about the end of the first century AD, perhaps in connection with the conquest of then-Zoroastrian Armenia. The earliest material evidence for the Roman worship of Mithras dates from that period, in a record of Roman soldiers who came from the military garrison at Carnuntum near the Danube River in the modern area of Hungary (the Roman province of Upper Pannonia). These soldiers fought against the Parthians and were involved in the suppression of the revolts in Jerusalem from 60 A.D. to about 70 A.D. When they returned home, they made Mithraic dedications, probably in the year 71 or 72.
Statius mentions the typical Mithraic relief in his Thebaid (Book i. 719,720), around A. D. 80; Plutarch's Life of Pompey also makes it clear that the worship Mithras was well known at that time.
By A. D. 200, Mithraism had spread widely through the army, and also among traders and slaves. The German frontiers have yielded most of the archaeological evidence of its prosperity: small cult objects connected with Mithra turn up in archaeological digs from Romania to Hadrian's Wall.
Concentrations of Mithraic temples are found on the outskirts of the Roman empire: along Hadrian's wall in northern England three Mithraea have been identified, at Housesteads, Carrawburgh and Rudchester. The discoveries are in the University of Newcastle's Museum of Antiquities, where a Mithraeum has been recreated. Recent excavations in London have uncovered the remains of a Mithraic temple near to the center of the once walled Roman settlement, on the bank of the Walbrook stream. Mithraea have also been found along the Danube and Rhine river frontier, in the province of Dacia (where in 2003 a temple was found in Alba-Iulia) and as far afield as Numidia in North Africa.
As would be expected, Mithraic ruins are also found in the port city of Ostia, and in Rome the capital, where as many as seven hundred mithraea may have existed (a dozen have been identified). Its importance at Rome may be judged from the abundance of monumental remains: more than 75 pieces of sculpture, 100 Mithraic inscriptions, and ruins of temples and shrines in all parts of the city and its suburbs. A well-preserved late 2nd century mithraeum, with its altar and built-in stone benches, originally built beneath a Roman house (as was a common practice), survives in the crypt over which has been built the Church of San Clemente, Rome.
The reign of Julian and the usurpation of Eugenius renewed the hopes of its devotees, but the victory of Theodosius in 394 may be considered the end of Mithraism's formal public existence.
Mithraism still survived in certain cantons of the Alps into the 5th century, and clung to life with more tenacity in its Eastern homelands. Its eventual successor, as the carrier of Persian religion to the West, was Manichaeism, which competed strenuously with Christianity for the status of world-religion.
Bull and cave themes are found in Christian shrines dedicated to the archangel Michael, who, in after the officialization of Christianity, became the patron "Saint" of soldiers. Many of those shrines were converted Mithraea, for instance the sacred cavern at Monte Gargano in Apulia, refounded in 493. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that the Mithras cult was transferred to the previously unvenerated archangel.
It has also been speculated that the ancient Orobouros of Mithraism (the serpent wrapped about to bite its own tail) was adapted for a Christian symbol of the limited confines of time and space. The snake around a rock also is reminscent of the Midgard serpent Jormungand who was said to surround Midgard (the Earth) according to Norse traditions.
Franz Cumont, a Belgian historian of some note in the 1800s, was the main proponent of the theory that Mithraism came originally from Persia. Cumont's student, Maarten J. Vermaseren, author of Mithras, the Secret God(1963), was very active in translating Mithraic inscriptions.
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