Christianity is to know more than you can comprehend.

Did Christians Destroy Classical Culture and Create the Dark Ages? 1

If then dead books may be committed to the flames, how much more live books, that is to say, men.
Matthieu Ory, Inquisitor of Heretical Pravity for the Realm of France (1544)

The Origin of God’s Word
Pagan Libraries
Tit for Tat
Constantine
Theodosius and Ambrose

Abstract

Once the Empire was administered by Christians, public libraries had their Pagan books progressively replaced by Christian books. Christians closed Pagan temples and academies, destroying or scattering their libraries. Even as early as 235 AD Christians, like Sextus Julius Africanus, were in powerful and influential positions in Rome. By 391 AD, an edict of Theodosius prohibited visiting Pagan temples and even looking at their ruins. In Alexandria, Pagans revolted, led by the philosopher Olympius. They locked themselves inside the temple of the god Serapis—the Serapeion. Christians violently sieged and captured the building, demolished it, burnt its famous library and profaned its images. Christians try to deny that they ravaged the Pagan learning accumulated over the whole of previous history. Since this vandalism started the Dark Ages, it is difficult to prove…

The Origin of God’s Word

Christians try to deny that, when they achieved total power at the end of the fourth century, they ravaged the Pagan learning accumulated over the whole of previous history. Since this vandalism started the Dark Ages, it is quite difficult to prove, simply because the destruction of learning meant there was little recorded evidence about it that was not written down by Christians—the few left who could write.

Christians have come up with almost any other explanation because they cannot admit that their own saintly predecessors were in fact uncivilised bigots. They claim the destruction of classical works and libraries was caused by accidental or deliberate fires, neglect and barbarian invasions or the collapse of society caused by barbarian invasions. Christians, on the other hand tried to preserve classical and Pagan works, and it is because they succeeded so well that we have them today. That claim is belied even in the New Testament itself where in Acts 19:19, Christian converts burn magical books worth sixty thousand pieces of silver! If the vicar to the gentiles could condone that, then who were ignorant bishops to dissent from it?

Let us return to that later. First consider what the Christian bishops did as soon as they had any power at all. They had no power over anyone other than their own flocks until Constantine merged the solar cults of the Empire under the direction of the Christian bishops in the fourth century. But Jesus had scarcely settled on the right hand of God before the gentile bishops were telling their flocks what they could and could not read.

The original followers of Jesus thought his resurrection was the first of the general resurrection of Hosea 6:2. They believed that up to forty years would follow in which there would be many trials and tribulations because a cosmic battle was being fought between good and evil. That is the meaning of the mini-apocalypse of Mark 13. The battle would end with the angel Michael appearing with a heavenly host to cleanse the world of sin and corruption and instate the kingdom of God.

The archangel Michael was the heavenly messiah while the followers of Jesus believed he was the earthly messiah. The point though was that the righteous people, the saints, would be resurrected into incorruptible bodies. That meant they were angels. So it seems likely that the simple converts of Jesus believed that when he returned—his Parousia—he would be the archangel Michael. So the earliest Christians were content to wait for the kingdom of God. It is plain from much of the New Testament that the earliest Christians lived with the knowledge that, having repented and been baptised, they would enter God’s kingdom.

The point of this little explanatory digression is that nothing was written down about Jesus for about forty years after his death. The gospel was that the kingdom of God was nigh, and the resurrection of Jesus as the first fruits was sufficient proof. However forty years is a long time—time enough for two generations of Christians to have arrived. It seems likely that Mark composed his gospel toward the end of Peter’s life, to record the stories of Jesus to convince the latest generation of Christians of the good news. But the message it contains is still that the kingdom is nigh.

Jesus was crucified in 21 AD. It follows that by 61 AD he should have returned. It is incredible that the first Christians did not mark off the years in anticipation of the event and indeed they might have done just that. But the first Christians were Jews and we cannot be sure that precise details followed Paul into the gentile religion he was preaching in Greece and Asia Minor. Indeed Paul seems to know nothing precise about the events of Jesus’s life. Furthermore the bishops might not have been willing to tell their flocks any precise dates, just in case. If so, they were obviously very wise because nothing had happened by 61 AD!

In the new circumstances, the written record of Mark assumed new importance, but shortly thereafter the Jews began their revolt against the Romans, and there is little doubt that Mark was edited to make it anti-Jewish and pro-Roman in the war situation. Evidence that there was an earlier version of Mark actually exists in Mark as it stands. The repetition of the mass feeding is probably because two versions of the event were bound together making it seem as if there were two feedings. In truth there were probably many mass feedings but it is doubtful that Jesus, in an 18 month career presided over more than two, and only one need have been described.

By now the original gentile converts who believed the Parousia was due in their lifetimes were dying off, but the new generations were like every Christian since—happy to live and die believing it would happen soon! Anyway it started a publishing industry which in the second century really blossomed. Pious works were written by the barrow load. That was too much for the bishops who saw the situation getting out of hand. The campaign to restrict the reading of Christians to certain prescribed books was led by Marcion, a Christian bishop who—like many later Christians—was particularly incensed that the son of God was a Jew.

This was quite understandable at the time because the Jews had just been rebelling yet again and twelve legions were needed to suppress the unrest. This was the rebellion of Bar Kosiba in 132 AD. Marcion felt the Jews were giving everyone a hard time and particularly Christians whose god was Jewish. He concluded that it was all a lie and recommended that only ten letters of Paul, who Marcion considered sufficiently un-Jewish, and the gospel of Luke, suitably freed of its Jewish content, should be accepted.

Fortunately for Christianity as it is, Marcion was an unpopular man and his absurd views were rejected—but not the principle of controlling what the faithful could read. The Catholic bishops came up with their own list of approved works—all four gospels and thirteen of Paul’s letters! Marcion wanted to limit the reading of Christians to eleven books, but the church leaders were so liberal, they admitted another six!

Pagan Libraries

S Dominic, Burner of Books by P Berruguete, Prado Museum, Madrid. Pedro Berruguete was the court artist of Ferdinand and Isobella. He painted panels for the Dominican convent at Avila, ten of which are now in the Prado. The Dominicans were obviously proud that they burnt books! Click for higher resolution image

With that sort of background, it is hardly surprising that once the church leaders got control of the publication of books, they launched an all out destruction of any literature they did not like. To counter this, modern Christians like to claim that the church fathers cited classical works widely and favourably in their writings, maintained them in their personal libraries, and made attempts to preserve them. More to the point is that the earliest Christian intellectuals were converts brought up in the Pagan schools. Naturally Pagan books would have been the original stock of their libraries, but that is hardly an argument that Christians in general aimed to preserve Pagan books. Arguments like this are intended to fool the gullible and the simple minded.

Furthermore, these early church intellectuals, having taken the step of joining the new religion themselves, were keen to explain its benefits to their Pagan friends. In fact, their friends were not too friendly in the main. Mostly they regarded Christianity as a superstition for the ignorant. It lacked depth, had no philosophical background and seemed like a new version of the mystery religions. Nevertheless, the converts felt obliged to justify their new position and wrote apologetic works in defence of their newly adopted stance. To do this, they used the forms and styles of classical oratory and rhetoric and took instances from the Pagan books their opponents knew. Christian polemicists had to rely on the rhetoric and literature of the Paganism which had taught them. Christianity had little of its own, just a few gospels and a few more letters, and these were quite unfamiliar to most people.

Even if any of these early converts had tried to shrug off their old habits, it plainly would have been impossible. They had been brought up in Pagan culture, they had imbibed classical habits with their mother’s milk. In short, society itself was Pagan and there was no way they could avoid its influence. Christians might argue that these early saints were able to do it because they were guided by the Holy Ghost. It does not need saying, that, as an argument, this is fatuous, but even if we were to accept it, we could get no further because the Holy Ghost is quite inept to judge by its efforts to make the gospels coherent.

A few church leaders founded libraries and in the earliest days these libraries included Pagan works for the reason explained. The church never burned all Pagan books anyway. There were always some Pagan books, mainly now called “the classics,” the Christians book-burners allowed to survive, so they are the only ancient works that can be called “classics”. Books like Homer’s Odyssey were thought to be allegorical accounts of the struggle for faith. The books of Plato were thought quite compatible with Christian thought and particularly useful since Christianity had no philosophy of its own. It is therefore not surprising that these books were placed by Christians in their own libraries and have therefore survived to this day. Many other books were not so favoured and have been lost. One source has put it:

The study of classical literature was continued and the intellectual discipline involved valued so long as these could serve the Christian purpose, without endangering the new Christian Society.

Many Church fathers quoted from Pagan books not with approval but with scorn. They quoted them to mock them.

Where were the Pagan libraries in Greece and Rome that eventually were destroyed? Roman emperors liked to commission public libraries. Temples usually had libraries attached to them, and schools, colleges and even public baths had libraries. In addition there were public libraries funded by government or local government, official archives which were not public, and private libraries. The first private library in Rome was composed of the captured library of Aristotle, and they were common by 50 BC. According to Seneca, by 65 AD, almost all the upper-class homes in Rome had private libraries.

It is plain that as the Christians closed Pagan temples and the Pagan academies so too they destroyed or at least dispersed their libraries. Public libraries, once the Empire was administered by Christians, had their Pagan books progressively replaced by Christian books. Even as early as 235 AD Christians, like Sextus Julius Africanus, were in powerful and influential positions in Rome. Africanus, a Christian scholar, was put in charge of the public library founded by the Emperor Severus on a site near the Pantheon. Knowing the subsequent history of the Christians’ bigotry with their missionary zeal for foisting their One True God on to everyone else in the world, it is interesting to wonder what influential people like Julius Africanus got up to even before Christianity triumphed.

Official archives contained state reports and these too were purged of any sources which were not favourable to Christianity, once the Christians took control. This is why the official reports of Pontius Pilate to the Emperor Tiberius, the Acta Pilati, disappeared. It showed that Jesus was a Jewish rebel, a member of the gang of Galilaeans founded by Judas of Galilee when Jesus was a youth. Pagan private libraries were dispersed when the Pagan aristocracy were impoverished by the Christians.

Tit for Tat

Christians like to justify their own vandalism by citing the earlier persecution of Christians by the Pagan Romans. They claim persecutions under Nero (54-68), Domitian (81-96), Marcus Aurelius (161-180), Septimius Severus (193-211), Maximinius the Thracian (235-8), Decius (249-251), Valerian (253-260) and The “Great Persecution” under Diocletian (284-305). The dates given are to suggest that these persecutions went on for decades. They are actually the reigns of the respective emperors and even the “Great Persecution” of Diocletian only lasted from 303 until his abdication in 305 AD.

Christians pretend that the persecution of Christians under Diocletian was far more terrible than anything the Christians did afterwards though, even if true, quite how it justifies Christian barbarity defeats me. The old adage is that two wrongs do not make a right, and Christians claim to turn the other cheek in the interest of their immortal souls. They did not here. A tit-for-tat ensued in the fourth century between pro-Pagan emperors and pro-Christian ones vying for the victor ludorum of persecution. Christians, of course, were too sporting to try to win!

The circumstances at the time of Diocletian’s persecution were strange. Christians were already dominating the administration of the Empire. Though Diocletian prefered the old Pagan gods, Diocletian’s court was dominated by Christians. His wife and daughter were influenced by Christianity, his principal attendants had embraced the Christian faith, many of the senior officers of the palace were Christian as were their wives, children and slaves. The situation at the court of Constantius was even more weighted the Christian way.

Nevertheless, Diocletian, realising that Christianity was weakening the Empire, instituted the persecution, apparently persuaded by Galerius who, like several subsequent Emperors, hated Christians. Old soldiers like Diocletian and Galerius saw them refusing to serve in the army, at a time when the threat from the barbarians was already serious. The Christian doctrine of personal salvation seemed to them to be an evasion of public duty contrary to the old sense of noble self-sacrifice that had built the Republic and then the Empire. Furthermore, the parallel state organisation of the Church, they saw as a threat to Imperial control. Rightly or wrongly Diocletian decided he had to cut Christianity down to size but his intention was to limit its power and wealth not particularly to murder its practitioners, many of whom, we have seen were close to him. He aimed to destroy Christian literature and churches to avoid targeting people.

Diocletian issued an edict at Nicomedia on February 23, 303 AD ordering Christian books to be confiscated and burned by imperial agents and the demolition of churches. Punishments of persons only occurred for those who refused to comply with the edict or persisted in secret worship. We depend for accounts of what happened on later Christians and naturally they multiply martyrs, but they also speak particularly harshly about the “Traditors”, bishops and deacons willing to hand over the New Testament as demanded, so it is plain that Christians generally did not volunteer for death.

The Christian chroniclers do not tell us precisely what happened next but the situation escalated. A Christian illegally tore down the edict and was martyred. Christians twice tried to burn down the palace at Nicomedia, Diocletian’s capital city, in attempts to murder the Emperor. Galerius was so scared, even though he was a hardy old soldier that he decided to seek refuge with his legions. Diocletian responded with harsher measures.

Reading between the lines, there was at least a riot and probably an uprising. The old soldiers had precipitated what they feared—a Christian takeover. When he considered the immediate situation was under control Diocletian abdicated. Most authorities praise him as one of the few good Emperors, generally tolerant of religion too, except for one blot—the persecution of the Christians. Common sense dictates that such a shrewd operator would not have introduced his persecution just out of malice. In two years, Constantine, who favoured the Christians, was a joint Emperor and not many years after the sole Emperor. So the Great Persecution cannot have been as bad as the Christian chroniclers make out. And Diocletian died naturally in 311 AD. Even the Christians did not want to kill him in the end.

Constantine

Even Constantine, who all Christians revere, began by suppressing Christians. Constantine was not a Christian although he was brought up surrounded by them. He converted to Christianity, which he had already made the Imperial Religion, on his deathbed. He wanted to be rid of the potential divisions caused by Christianity by putting the widespread and effective Christian administration in charge of all the main solar religions of the empire. To be effective however, the Christians themselves had to be united and, of course, they were not. Have they ever been? The Council of Nicæa was convened to resolve problems:

Learned men, so called “Correctors” were, following the church meeting at Nicæa 325 AD, selected by the church authorities to scrutinize the sacred texts and rewrite them in order to correct their meaning in accordance with the views which the church had just sanctioned.
Prof Eberhard Nestle

Constantine passed severe penalties against the Donatists, and ordered anyone owning Arian books should burn them on the pain of death. The Eastern Roman emperor Arcadius made the reading of books written by the Eunomians a capital crime. Valentinian and Theodosius proscribed Nestorian books, and Valentinian and Marcian the books of Eutyches and Nestorius. The condemnation of any heresy by the church was followed by the proscription of the writings of members of the sect.

Constantine’s sons were more positively pro-Christian than their father. Pagan sacrifices were forbidden and Pagan temples of the mystery religions destroyed. Christians who go to admire the glory that was Greece, do not seem to realise that many of the broken Corinthian columns were tippled by Christian bigots not by invading Turks.

This, the fourth century was when the Roman branch of Christianity gained dominance over most rival branches, including the remnants of Nazarene “Christianity”. They began to persecute these rival churches and destroy their manuscripts. In 382 AD, to establish an orthodox position, Pope Damasus I instructed Jerome to revise and unify the Latin bible, and in 384 AD Jerome duly presented the same Pope with the Vulgate Latin Bible. The new definitive bible was the basis for the Church to claim orthodoxy and it began to eradicate divergent texts, declaring those who used them as heretics. Many manuscripts that sometimes come to light having been concealed for centuries, such as the Nag Hammadi library, most likely were buried by persecuted sects to avoid the book burning campaigns of the fourth century. This is why little now remains other than fragments of first, second and third century source material, and is the reason so little is known about the early church and its transformation from Essenism.

Julian the Apostate (360-363 AD) favoured Paganism and tried to revive it, though his edict of religious freedom was not issued until 4 February 362 AD, only the year before he was killed. His essential fairness is illustrated by his calling heretical Christian bishops back from exile, but Christian priests who had been exempted from paying taxes and municipal duties were again required to do so.

Christian zealots were incensed especially in Asia Minor where, of course, gentile Christianity was longest established. The Pagan temples which Julian had put up were immediately pulled down by Christians. Christians paid a priest of Apollo to burn down the temple of Daphne in Antioch, then claiming the Pagan had burnt it down accidentally by leaving candles burning. Candles had been left burning there for seven centuries, just as they are in Christian churches, and no one hears of them burning down as a consequence. It was an act of Christian vandalism. Julian closed the Cathedral at Antioch in reprisal and the riots between Christians and Pagans “added a few names to the church calendar of martyrs” according to Henry Chadwick in The Early Church. There must have been martyrs on the other side too, but losers are not counted, Christians ultimately prevailed and Chadwick is a Christian.

As noted above, Christians had taken to some of the classical authors as exemplars of style and oratory while scorning the content of their works. This had the double effect then of allowing Christians to be taught good style and rhetoric while deprecating the ancient Pagan knowledge. It has gone to further extremes today when Greek mythology is regarded as simple fairy tales for children. Julian thought it outrageous that Christians should treat Pagan classics merely as exercises. He banned Christians from teaching the classics, a decision which was widely criticised even by some of Julian’s supporters.

Theodosius and Ambrose

Theodosius, Emperor from 379-395 AD, took it on himself to suppress Paganism for good by persecuting the few remaining Pagan leaders of Rome and making Pagan worship punishable by death. He banned the Olympic games and stopped all Pagan worship. Mobs of Christians looted Pagan temples and destroyed temple libraries. Many fine Pagan buildings were also destroyed.

The Pagan countryside was dotted over with shrines to the gods, some large but mainly small. The murals on the walls of the villas of wealthy Greeks and Romans were scenes of the “divine landscape”, where these shrines of rustic peoples and noble country families hid in groves and glades, by springs and wells. Mostly these groves and shrines were looked after by slaves and eunuchs who tended the trees, replaced dead ones and kept the surrounding gardens neat. Tame animals wandered in the grounds as they do in India, unmolested because they were sacred. The fashionable landscapes of large eighteenth century country house parks in England like Stourhead House and Gardens are Renaissance imitations of this sacred landscape. Classic temples surrounded by deer and peacocks by the carefully sculpted lakes were modelled on the Pagan shrines of the Greeks and Romans.

Where did the originals go? Barbarians destroyed them, Christian say, and they are right! Ignorant and bigoted Christians took their axes to assault the sacred trees, groves and gardens. Graceful arboreta that were centuries old were chopped up for firewood. Christian monks set about destroying the rural shrines impelled by a manic fervour, but it still took them a century to complete. The orator, Libanius, impotently complained to the emperor Theodosius that “shrines are the very soul of the countryside”.

Theodosius was in the grip of the Christian bishop Ambrose who had excommunicated him for a massacre of Thessalonians, among the first gentile nations converted by Paul, who had attacked and murdered an army commander. Christians consider this a remarkably principled act by bishop Ambrose but they like to forget that Ambrose had already refused the eucharist to Theodosius for ordering the bishop of Callicinium in Syria to make restitution to local Jews when a gang of Christian thugs had burnt down a synagogue. Jews were Roman citizens and entitled to the protection of the state. Not for long! Ambrose, upholding the anti-Semitism which is inseparable from Christianity, told the Emperor that it was sinful for a Christian to help Jews against Christ’s church. Scared for the welfare of his immortal soul Theodosius withdrew his order for reparations and Christian thugs took it that synagogues could be destroyed willy-nilly. In Judaea, entire villages of Jews were set ablaze. Jews living in the empire were excluded from state office and forbidden from marrying Christians. Ordinary Christians were delighted at this move.

This Ambrose had been the provincial governor of Milan, a talented legal and administrative expert who the principled Christian authorities spotted and offered the bishopric of Milan. The only trouble was Ambrose was not a Christian! No trouble. Here was a man who would be useful. They arranged for a quick baptism and a lightening fast track through the lower orders of the church to deliver him the bishopric. They were shrewd. Ambrose soon had Theodosius eating out of his hand. The worst act of many vandal acts under Theodosius was in 391 AD when Christians pulled down the temple of Serapis at Alexandria which housed one of the world’s greatest libraries—said, at one time, to have had over half a million rolls—and scattered and burned the books.

Page Tags: Church Fathers, Bookburning, Classical Culture, Dark Ages, Barbarians, Books, Christian, Christianity, Christians, Church, Edict, Emperor Theodosius, Empire, God, Libraries, Library, Orders, Pagan, Pagans, Destroyed Temples

Last uploaded: 19 April, 2008.