Home > Work > The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction of the Classical World
101 " stood for centuries collapsed in an afternoon; statues that had stood for half a millennium had their faces mutilated in a moment; temples that had seen the rise of the Roman Empire fell in a single day. This was violent work, but it was by no means solemn. The zealots roared with laughter as they smashed the “evil,” “idolatrous” statues; the faithful jeered as they tore down temples, stripped roofs and defaced tombs. Chants appeared, immortalizing these glorious moments. “Those shameful things,” sang pilgrims, proudly; the “demons and idols . . "
― Catherine Nixey , The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction of the Classical World
102 " Cross the bishop of Alexandria and, as locals knew to their cost, he might send some of the eight hundred parabalani to visit you. Argument incarnate, they massed outside the town hall, the theater and the law courts. Their mere presence was enough to bully opponents into submission. They have been described as a “terrorist charity”—a strange oxymoron, but a good one. These men did, at times, do good deeds but they also sowed fear. “Terror” is the word used in Roman legal documents about them. "
103 " Once inside a monastery, the monk’s life was no longer his own. Certainly his property was not. Even clothes had to be given up and left outside so that the monks might obtain equality ‘in all things and desire might not find a place among foolish people’. The monastery itself, however, not only desired possessions but categorically demanded them: a condition of entering was that each monk and nun must sign all their earthly possessions over to the monastery, in writing, within three months of joining. If they did not, then for this too they would find themselves, in the words of the rules, ‘cursed’. "
104 " Once a monk had given himself to his new monastic master he had to obey him – or face the consequences. Numerous rules begin with the formulation ‘Cursed be . . .’. Cursed were those who didn’t give all their wealth to the monastery; cursed were those who shaved without having been ordered to; cursed were those who looked at another monk with desire. If a monk ate, say, the forbidden fruit of cucumber at the wrong time then, the law informed him, ‘he sins’. At least sixty of the rules were devoted to sexual transgressions. Looking desirously at the nakedness of your neighbour while he washed was wrong; as was staring ‘with desirous feeling’ at your own nakedness; those who sat ‘close to one’s neighbour with a filthy desire in their heart’ were also ‘cursed’.Note that last one: ‘with a filthy desire in their heart’. No sin had been committed. The mere intention of sin was now a sin in itself. In Shenoute’s monastery even thoughts were policed. ‘Can any hide himself in secret places that I shall not see him?’ the Lord had asked. The answer from the White Monastery at least was a resounding no. As this new generation of hard-line Christian preachers constantly reminded their congregations in fierce, hectoring speeches, there was nowhere to hide from the all-seeing eyes of the Lord. "
105 " Damascius’s own brother had been arrested and tortured to make him reveal the names of other philosophers, but had, as Damascius recorded with pride, “received in silence and with fortitude the many blows of the rod that landed on his back.”6 Others in Damascius’s circle of philosophers had been tortured, hung up by the wrists until they gave away the names of their fellow scholars. A fellow philosopher had, some years before, been flayed alive. Another had been beaten before a judge until the blood flowed down his back. "
106 " In Celsus’s time they were utterly unremarkable. It wasn’t just the fact that Christians were ignorant about philosophical theories that annoyed Celsus; it was that Christians actually reveled in their ignorance. Celsus accuses them of actively targeting idiocy in their recruitment. “Their injunctions are like this,” he wrote. “Let no one educated, no one wise, no one sensible draw near. For these abilities are thought by us to be evils. "
107 " Hypatia’s own father, Theon, had studied here. He was a mathematician of astonishing perspicacity, not to mention longevity: the commentaries he produced on Euclid were so authoritative that they form the foundation of modern editions of his texts. Read Euclid today, and you are reading, in part, the work of Hypatia’s father. "
108 " Even children don’t escape. At the edge of a lake filled with the “discharge and the stench” of those who were tortured are babies that are “born before time”—a blameless crime one might have thought, but not so here. These babies will cry for eternity, alone. "
109 " Damascus, he had hoped to pursue the more glamorous life of a public orator. Mere chance had brought him into the philosophical fold, but once he had converted to the cause he not only devoted his life to philosophy, he also risked his life for it, repeatedly. He would develop a deep contempt for anyone who did anything less, and in his writings poured scorn on those who were adept at talking about what should be done but inept at actually doing anything.7 Words without deeds were useless. "
110 " To allow someone to follow a path other than the true Christian one was not liberty; it was cruelty. Freedom to err was, Augustine would later vigorously argue, freedom to sin—and to sin was to risk the death of the soul. “The possibility of sinning,” as one pope later put it, “is not freedom, but slavery. "
111 " The lightest knowledge of Latin literature, for example, would have brought the interested reader into contact with Ovid’s Metamorphoses. This epic but tongue-in-cheek poem opened with a version of the Creation myth that was so similar to the biblical one that it could hardly fail to make an interested reader question the supposed unique truth of Genesis. "
112 " Far from encouraging the escape of Christian slaves, senior clerics cracked down hard on any who attempted to escape their mortal bondage by disappearing into the desert for a more heavenly servitude. When one bishop advised slaves to desert their masters and become ascetics, the Church was appalled and promptly excommunicated him. "
113 " Just as Augustine advocated the beating of heretics with rods out of fatherly care, so Basil advocated the removal of great tracts of the classical canon as an act of “great care” to ensure the soul was safely guarded. "
114 " In the spring of the year 415, relations between Christians and non-Christians in Alexandria were tense. The sky above the city might have been darkened by only a few scudding white clouds but in its streets the atmosphere—always quarrelsome—was more precarious than ever. To make matters worse the city had a new bishop, Cyril. After the zealot Theophilus, many Alexandrians must have hoped that their next cleric would be more conciliatory. He was not. "
115 " The heavenly realm weighed in to help too. In the fourth century, St. Theodore appeared: a saint whose specialty was finding missing slaves. Sleep on St. Theodore’s tomb and, it was said, he would appear in your dream and show you where your recalcitrant slave was hiding. "
116 " To oppose another man’s religion, to repress their worship—these were not, clerics told their congregations, wicked or intolerant acts. They were some of the most virtuous things a man might do. The Bible itself demanded it. As the uncompromising words of Deuteronomy instructed: “And ye shall overthrow their altars, and break their pillars, and burn their groves with fire; and ye shall hew down the graven images of their gods, and destroy the names of them out of that place. "
117 " A few years earlier, the preacher John Chrysostom had said that “the synagogue is not only a brothel . . . it also is a den of robbers and a lodging for wild beasts . . . a dwelling of demons . . . a place of idolatry.”24 St. John Chrysostom’s writings would later be reprinted with enthusiasm in Nazi Germany. "
118 " Early Christianity would have to spend a considerable amount of time and effort policing the boundaries between sanctity and sorcery. A large amount of ink was spilled on the subject of Simon Magus (the Magician). A quick summary of Simon’s life makes it clear why he was so threatening: Simon performed various miracles, gathered a following of people who thought he was a god—including a former prostitute—and one of Simon’s disciples “persuaded those who adhered to him that they should never die. "
119 " This was the end. The “impious and wicked pagans” were to be allowed to continue in their “insane error” no longer.18 Anyone who refused salvation in the next life would, from now on, be all but damned in this one. A series of legal hammer blows fell: Anyone who offered sacrifice would be executed. Anyone who worshipped statues would be executed. Anyone who was baptized—but who then continued to sacrifice—they, too, would be executed. "
120 " We see the same stars, the sky is shared by all, the same world surrounds us. What does it matter what wisdom a person uses to seek for the truth? —the “pagan” author Symmachus "