Abstract
Christianity emerged into a world of rich religious traditions in the first century CE. As the fledgling religion developed, Christians continued using some Jewish practices, excluded others and integrated some Pagan customs as well. Although both Pagans and Jews burnt incense as a signifier of sacred space and sacrifice, Christians prior to Constantine fiercely resisted this practice. In their rare mentions of frankincense or other resins, Ante-Nicene father strongly polemicize against censing in the church. By the sixth century, however, incense burning became \r universal liturgical practice in the church, as evidenced by liturgies instructing deacons to cense during mass, other literary evidence and censers in the archaeological record. This thesis seeks to offer an explanation and provide a date for the adoption of incense in the Late Antique Church. Using modern neurological research, literary and archaeological evidence I purpose that Christians were resistant to burning incense due to collective trauma of the proscriptions, in which Romans tested suspected atheists by ordering them to offer incense to Roman gods. Once Christians who experienced these horrific events had died out by sometime in the late fourth century, and members of the church no longer associated the scent of burning resin with the deaths of Christians, but rather with the scent of temples, and adopted the practice in the early fifth century.