Origin + State-Religion Conversion (30-476 CE)

Historical baseline: Tacitus Annals 15.44 (c. 116 CE) + Josephus Antiquities (c. 93 CE) + Pliny the Younger Trajan correspondence (c. 112 CE) establish 1st-c. sect's empirical footprint. Council of Jerusalem (c. 50 CE) is the game-theoretic inflection: Paul of Tarsus decouples movement from Jewish dietary + circumcision constraints → scalable transnational Gentile franchise.

Institutional hardening: Ignatius of Antioch epistles (107-110 CE) establish monarchical episcopate — single bishop absolute executive authority over local church. Command-and-control topology that prevents doctrinal fragmentation.

Persecution-to-sponsorship phase transition: Edict of Milan 313 (Constantine) legalizes Christianity. Council of Nicea 325 establishes ecumenical-council template (homoousios, Nicene Creed). Edict of Thessalonica 380 (Theodosius I) mandates Nicene Christianity as exclusive Roman state religion — absolute monopoly power.

Roman-to-Catholic bureaucratic transfer (5th c.): Western Empire collapses 476 CE. Pope appropriates pagan title Pontifex Maximus. Church inherits Roman diocesan boundaries + Curial administration + civic-magistrate functions. Augustine's De Civitate Dei (426) provides ideological software — Church as eternal City of God outlasting temporal Rome. Canonical case of Club of Rome BAU2 framework — institution surviving civilizational collapse by absorbing host's infrastructure.