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Darkening Age
4 Apr 2024 13:01Just read a book called "The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction of the Classical World".
It's a decent read. Some of these passages in that book remind me of what's happening now: intolerant Christian leaders inflaming their flocks, stochastic terrorism, Christo-nationalists skirting laws (or disobeying them) - in order to force others to obey the rules of their religion, etc. I've seem so many articles lately quoting right wing Christian leaders speaking of the left as being demonic.
It's a decent read. Some of these passages in that book remind me of what's happening now: intolerant Christian leaders inflaming their flocks, stochastic terrorism, Christo-nationalists skirting laws (or disobeying them) - in order to force others to obey the rules of their religion, etc. I've seem so many articles lately quoting right wing Christian leaders speaking of the left as being demonic.
Excerpt from the book from the timeframe of year 382 CE:
In the crowing words of one triumphalist account: "The pagan faith, made dominant for so many years, by such pains, such expenditure of wealth, such feats of arms, has vanished from the earth.I did proofread the above, but any errors I can blame on my phone's image to text scanning :)
It had not. Nevertheless, it is clear that a staggering reversal had taken place. Tens of millions of people had converted — or were said to have converted — to a new and alien religion, in under a century. Religions that had lasted for centuries were dying with remarkable rapidity. And if some of these millions were converting not out of love of Christ but out of fear of his enforcers? No matter, argued Christian preachers. Better to be scared in this life than burn in the next.
The worshippers of the old gods pleaded eloquently with the Christian elite for toleration. One of the most famous requests was sparked by a dispute over an altar. The Altar of Victory had stood in the Senate House in Rome for centuries, and for centuries Roman senators had made offerings at it before meetings of the Senate. It was an ancient custom, dating back to Augustus, and a revered one. But Christians began to find it increasingly intolerable that they had to share the Senate with idols and breathe what they saw as the polluting demonic smoke. After decades of to-ing and fro-ing, in AD 382 the Christian emperor Gratian ordered the altar out.
Rome's senators— at any rate those who were still worshippers of the old gods - were dismayed. Not only was this a gross break with tradition, it was a serious insult to the gods. The brilliant orator Symmachus wrote an appeal. First, he begged the emperor to allow religious difference among his subjects. Echoing Heredots, Celsus, Themistius and many another before him, Symmachus observed that "each person has their own custom, each their own religious rite" and that mankind was ill-equipped to judge which of these was best, "since all reasoning is shrouded in ambiguity." He doesn't ask for any curbing of Christianity. It was, he said, "not possible to attain to so sublime a mystery by one route alone." One can dismiss this as mere pragmatism and politics - and true, Symmachus was hardly in a position to ask for more. But that is too cynical: whether the Greco-Roman polytheism was truly "tolerant" or not, there is no doubt that the old ways were fundamentally liberal and generous. Men such as Symmachus had no wish to change that. Or, as he put it to his intolerant Christian rulers: "We offer you now prayers, not a battle."
Symmachus might not have wanted a battle but a battle was precisely what the Christians saw themselves as fighting. For a Christian, reasoning was not shrouded in ambiguity: it was explicitly laid out in the Bible. And the Bible, on this point, was clear. As those thundering words of Deuteronomy had it, toleration of other religions and their altars was not what was required. Instead, the faithful were required to raze them to the ground. " No Christian could agree with the relativistic quibbles of Symmachus. To a Christian there were not different but equally valid views. There were angels and there were demons. As the academic Ramsay MacMullen has put it, "there could be no compromise with the Devil." And, as Christians made clear in a thousand hectoring sermons and a hundred fierce laws, objects associated with other religions belonged to the Dark Lord. "The Devil's worship," fulminated one Christian, "consists of prayers in the temples of idols, honours paid to lifeless idols, the lighting of lamps or burning of incense." Symmachus lost. His plea was ignored.
Then, some twenty years later, in AD 408, came one of the fiercest pronouncements yet. "If any images stand even now in the temples and shrines," this new law said, "they shall be torn from their foundations...The buildings themselves of the temples which are situated in cities or towns or outside the towns shall be vindicated to public use. Altars shall be destroyed in all places.
Rome's ancient cults were collapsing. And yet though Symmachus lost —perhaps because he lost — his words still have a terrible power. "We request peace for the gods of our forefathers," he had begged. "Whatever each person worships, it is reasonable to think of them as one. 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?"
