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A History of Christianity's Harm to and Suppression of Science, Knowledge, books. reason, the mind, technology, and Human Progress.
Part 4: A History of Christian book burnings and the Destruction of Knowledge.
-The Book's bias agianst books.
- On book burnings.
- suppression of classics, the Chruch fights change.
-Library of Alexandria.
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Segment from the book, The Atheist Manifesto, by Michel Onfray Pg. 78-81.
The book's bias against books.
To establish the authority of the definitive version of the Koran, the political authorities ¡ª notably Marwan, governor of Medina¡ªbegan by collecting and then burning and destroying all existing versions in order to avoid historical confrontation and chancing upon vestiges of human, too human, manufacture. (One version indeed escaped from this auto-da-fe of the seven earlier versions, and still holds sway in certain African countries.) Marwan's act was a precursor of the many book burnings kindled in the name of the one book. Each of these three books claims to be "the only book that matters." Each of the three main religions claims that it alone possesses the one true holy book, which contains the whole of what needs to be learned and known. Like encyclopedia com- pilers, they have gathered the essentials, rendering it unnecessary
to look in other books (pagan, secular, heretical) for wisdom that is already found.
The Christians set the tone with Paul of Tarsus, who called for the burning of dangerous books (Acts 19:19). The demand did not fall on deaf ears: Constantine and most subsequent
Christian emperors sent philosophers into exile and persecuted polytheist priests, declaring them social outcasts, imprisoning them, and killing many. Hatred of non-Christian books resulted in an overall impoverishment of civilization. The establishment of the Inquisition and, later, the sixteenth-century creation of the Index of Forbidden Books were the climax of this campaign to eradicate everything that deviated from the official policy of the Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman Church.
The desire to be done with non-Christian books and the mistrust of unfettered thinking beggared philosophy, forcing its practitioners to give up the struggle, to remain silent, or to express themselves with extreme prudence. (The entire roster of important philosophers from Montaigne to Sartre, in a line including Pascal, Descartes, Kant, Malebranche, Spinoza, Locke, Hume, Berkeley, Rousseau, Bergson, and so many others ¡ª not to mention materialists, socialists, and Freudians ¡ª enjoys pride of place in the Index.) The Bible, claiming to contain everything, banned everything it did not contain. Over the centuries, the results were devastating.
Countless fatwas were proclaimed against Muslim authors even when they did not defend atheist positions, did not discredit the Koran's teachings, and did not indulge either in blasphemy or invective. It was enough simply to think and write freely for the thunderbolts to come crashing down. The slightest deviation came at a heavy price. Exile, prosecution, persecution, libel, even assassination, all these horrors were perpetrated by the likes of Ali Abderraziq, Mohammed Khalafallah, Taha Hussein, Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd, Mohammed Iqbal, Fazlur Rahman, Mahmoud Mohammed Taha.
In their implacable opposition to free expression, the priests of the three religions preferred to authorize the conjurers whose deft manipulation of language, verbal contortions, and jigsawpuzzle formulations blew smoke in their readers' eyes. What did these schoolmen achieve over the centuries beyond a verbal repackaging of ancient fables and ecclesiastical dogma? Jews, Christians, and Muslims love memory exercises, particularly in regard to the chanting of the faithful.
Muslims memorize the suras of the Koran at a very early age and learn to chant them with the correct elocution (tajwid) and the correct delivery (tartil). Proper articulation and intonation of the Koran (tajwid) requires a slow, melodious declamation with rich flourishes, such as singing several notes to one syllable of text. Tartil is a slow, rhythmic, measured, and meditative delivery. Traditionally, theological schools teach seven ways of reciting the Koran, the differences between them being a matter of linguistic and phonetic variables: consonants stressed, unstressed, without overtones; dropped vowels; change in inflection; very soft tone of voice; or verbal ornamentation, such as deliberate repetition of a phrase at the beginning of successive verses. All this contributes to subordination of the spirit and message of the text in favor of pure literary style. The words lose their meaning, and their repetition becomes an artistic performance.
The litanies we hear in Koranic schools ¡ª madrassas, often centers of hostility to falsafa, or philosophy¡ªbear this out. Students learn by reciting aloud, as a group, in cadence, in a collective and communal rhythm. Their dirges help them memorize the teachings of Yahweh or Allah. Jewish mnemonic technique also offers a method of apprenticeship in reading and the alphabet by an association of letters and contents that rests on Talmudic doctrine.
Thus, books aim paradoxically (after they have been memorized wholesale) at what virtually amounts to their own elimination! Rationally enough, students learn the Torah or the Koran by heart. Thus, when the danger of persecution raises its head or when conditions such as exile make it impossible to have the volume at hand, the believer still enjoys mental possession of the book and its teachings.
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Segment from the book, The Dark Side of Christian History, by Hellen Elerbe, pg. 47-50.
The Christian church had similar impact upon education and learning. The Church burned enormous amounts of literature. In 391 Christians burned down one of the world's greatest libraries in Alexandria, said to have housed 700,000 rolls.(1)
All the books of the Gnostic Basilides, Porphyry's 36 volumes, papyrus rolls of 27 schools of the Mysteries, and 270,000 ancient documents gathered by Ptolemy Philadelphus were burned.(2)
Ancient academies of learning were closed. Education for anyone outside of the Church came to an end. And what little education there was during the Dark Ages, while still limited to the clergy, was advocated by powerful kings as a means of providing themselves with capable administrators.(3)
The Church opposed the study of grammar and Latin. Pope Gregory I, or Gregory the Great, a man thought to have been one of the greatest architects of the medieval order,(4) objected to grammatical study. He wrote:
I despise the proper constructions and cases, because I think it very unfitting that the words of the celestial oracle should be restricted by the rules of Donatus [a well-known grammarian].(5)
Gregory the Great also condemned education for all but the clergy as folly and wickedness. He forbade laymen to read even the Bible. He had the library of the Palatine Apollo burned "lest its secular literature distract the faithful from the contemplation of heaven."(6)
The Fourth Council of Carthage in 398 forbade bishops to even read the books of gentiles. (7) Jerome, a Church Father and early monastic in the fourth century, rejoiced that the classical authors were being forgotten. And his younger monastic contemporaries were known to boast of their ignorance of everything except Christian literature.(8) After Christians had spent years destroying books and libraries, St. John Chrysostom, the preeminent Greek Father of the Church, proudly declared, "Every trace of the old philosophy and literature of the ancient world has vanished from the face of the earth."(9)
Monastic libraries, the only libraries left, were composed of books of devotion. Even the most significant monastic libraries carried little aside from books about Christian theology.(10) While monks did copy manuscripts, such work was not esteemed for its intrinsic value but rather considered part of the prescribed manual labor, necessary in the effort of "fighting the Devil by pen and ink," in the words of the Christian Cassiodorus.(11)
St. Gregory the Great, Pope from 590-604. While best known for strengthening the Pope's independence from the Byzantine Emperor, he also burned books and restricted reading and education to the clergy. Copying manuscripts, even if those manuscripts were classical, did not necessarily indicate an appreciation for classical learning.
An historian notes that the order of Cluni followed customs that implied a lack of respect for classical works. "If a monk wanted a book during the hours of silence, he made a sign of turning the leaves; if he wanted a classical book, he scratched his ear like a dog."(12)
Bibliography:
¡¡
1- The New Columbia Encyclopedia, 61, and Eisler, The Chalice and the Blade.
2- Graham, Deceptions and Myths of the Bible, 444.
3- Jeffrey Burton Russell, A History of Medieval Christianity (New York: Thomas Y. Cromwell, 1968) pg. 103.
4- Jeffrey Burton Russell, A History of Medieval Christianity (New York: Thomas Y. Cromwell, 1968) pg. 40.
5- Charles Homer Haskins, The Renaissance of the 12th Century (Cleveland & New York: Meridian Books, 1927) pg. 96.
6- Barbara G. Walker, The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1983) 208.
7- Haskins, Charles Homer. The Renaissance of the 12th Century. Cleveland & New York: Meridian Books, 1927. pg. 95.
8- John H. Smith, The Death of Classical Paganism (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1976) 223.
9- Walker, Barbara. The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets. San
Francisco: Harper & Row, 1983. 208.
10- Smith, John Holland. The Death of Classical Paganism, New York: Charles
Scribner, 1976. pg. 247.
11- Haskins, Charles Homer. The Renaissance of the 12th Century. Cleveland & New York: Meridian Books, 1927. pg. 34.
12- Haskins, Charles Homer. The Renaissance of the 12th Century. Cleveland & New York: Meridian Books, 1927. pg. 43.
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Segment from the book, The Christ Conspiracy, The Greatest Story Ever Sold, by Acharya S. pg. 10-11.
So far this despicable legacy and crime against humanity remains unavenged and its main culprit unpunished, not only standing intact but inexplicably receiving the undying and unthinking support of hundreds of millions, including the educated, such as doctors, lawyers, scientists, etc. This acquiescence is the result of the
centuries of destruction and degradation of their ancestors¡¯ cultures, which demoralized them and ripped away their spirituality and heritage. In annihilating these cultures, the Christian conspirators also destroyed countless books and much learning, prizing the subsequent illiteracy and ignorance, which assisted in allowing
for Christianity to spread. Wheless recounts the state of the world under Christian dominance:
With the decline and fall of the Roman Empire the Christian religion spread and grew, among the Barbarian destroyers of Rome. The Dark Ages contemporaneously spread their intellectual pall over Europe. Scarcely any but priests and monks could read. Charlemagne learned to wield the pen only to the extent of scrawling his signature. The barons who wrested Magna Carta from John Lackland signed with their marks and seals. The worst criminals, provided they were endowed with the rare and magic virtue of knowing how to read even badly, enjoyed the ¡°benefit of
clergy¡± (i.e., of clerical learning), and escaped immune or with greatly mitigated punishment. There were no books save painfully-written manuscripts, worth the ransom of princes, and utterly unattainable except by the very wealthy and by the Church; not till about 1450 was the first printed book known in Europe. The Bible existed only in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, and the ignorant masses were totally ignorant of it other than what they heard from the priests, who told them that they must believe it or be tortured and killed in life and damned forever in the fires of hell after death. It is no wonder that faith flourished under conditions so exceptionally favorable.(1)
1- Whelless, Joseph, Is It God¡¯s Word?, http://www.infidels.org/
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Segment from the book, The Atheist Manifesto, by Michael Onfray. pg. 148- 150.
Vandalism, autos-da-f¨¦, and the culture of death.
Like Paul of Tarsus, Christians were convinced that academic learning hindered access to God. All books (not just books by authors accused of heresy, such as Arius, Mani, and Nestorius) were at risk of being burned. Neoplatonist works were condemned as books of magic and divination. People who possessed libraries feared for their safety. In 370 the citizens of Antioch, terrified of persecution, preempted the Christian commissars and burned their own books in the public square. As for the Great Library of Alexandria, its daughter library was housed in the Serapeum, a temple dedicated to the god Serapis. In 391, by order of the bishop of Alexandria, the temple was leveled and the library went up in smoke.
In 591, the Neoplatonic school in Athens was closed, and the Christian Empire confiscated its holdings. Paganism had survived in the Greek capital for centuries. Plato's teachings could
point to a thousand years of uninterrupted transmission. The philosophers set out on the road to Persian exile. What a triumph for Paul of Tarsus, once mocked by Stoics and Epicureans
in the home of philosophy during his attempt at proselytization.
The posthumous victory of God's weakling and his disastrous neuroses! A culture of death, of hatred, of contempt and intolerance . . . At Constantinople in 562, Christians arrested "Hellenes" ¡ª an insulting name ¡ª parading them through the city to the accompaniment of hoots and jeers. On Kenogion Square, Christians lit a huge bonfire and tossed the philosophers' books and the images of their gods into the flames.
Justinian hammered in the final nail, stiffening Christian legislation against the unorthodox. Non-Christians were forbidden to bequeath their wealth to pagans; it was forbidden to testify in court against the church's followers; forbidden to own Christian slaves; forbidden to draw up a legal deed; forbidden to profess freedom of conscience (!). And in 529 Justinian made it mandatory for pagans to take instruction in the Christian religion and then undergo baptism, on pain of exile and confiscation of their goods; he forbade those converted to the religion of brotherly love to return to paganism; forbade them to teach or to draw official pensions. For at least a thousand years, philosophizing became dangerous . . . Now¡ªjust as in every succeeding period ¡ª theocracy stood unveiled as the opposite of democracy.
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The Burning of the Temple Library of Alexandria
Segment form the book, Christianity an Ancient Egyptian Religion, by Ahmad Osman, Prologue.
One day in A.D. 391, the Roman-appointed Bishop Theophilus marched from his headquarters in the Brucheion Royal quarter of Alexandria, at the head of a large howling mob, heading west for the Serapeum in the heart of the Egyptian quarter of Rhakotis. The Serapeum, which had been the center of Egyptian worship for seven centuries, was adorned with extensive columned halls, almost breathing statues, and a great number of other works of art, as well as being the house of the Great Alexandrian library. The frenzied people rushed through the streets along the Canopic way, turning into the short street that led to the temple-area of Serapis, meeting other crowds there, before climbing up the great flight of marble steps, ledby Bishop Theophilus. They jumped across the stone platform and into the temple, where the events of the final tragedy took place.
In their agitated mood, the angry mob took little heed of the gold and silver ornaments, the precious jewels, the priceless bronze and marble statues, the rare murals and tapestries, the carved and painted pillars of granite and many marbles, the ebony and scented woods, the ivory and exotic furniture¡ªall were smashed to
pieces with cries of pleasure. But that was not all. Those shouting men, full of demoniac delight, then turned to the library, where hundreds of thousands of papyrus rolls and parchments, inscribed with ancient wisdom and knowledge, were taken off their shelves, torn to pieces and thrown on to bonfires.
A few years later the last of the Alexandrian scholars was torn to pieces by a gang of Christian monks. On a Lenten day in March of the year A.D. 415 they stopped the carriage of Hypatia, who had succeeded her father as Professor of Philosophy in Alexandria, stripped her naked, dragged her into a nearby church, killed her, cut most of her flesh from her body with sharp oyster shells and burned what remained of her in the street. The charge against Hypatia, who had taught the philosophy of Plato, was heresy.
As a result of this barbaric killing of Alexandrian scholars and destruction of its library, which contained texts in Greek of all aspects of ancient wisdom and knowledge, the true Egyptian roots of Christianity and of Western civilization have been obscured for nearly 16 centuries.[...]
Until the destruction of its library in A.D. 391, Alexandria had remained the most important cultural center of the ancient world, and the focal point of the mutual influence exercised in the conjunction of Christianity and Hellenism, in spite of four centuries of Rome's political supremacy. Founded by Alexander the Great in 331 B.C., it was the first real cosmopolitan city in history, where Macedonians and Greeks lived together with Egyptians and Jews, and scholars flocked from all over the world to do their research. They came from Italy and Greece, from Anatolia and the Levant, from north Africa, Arabia, and even from Persia and India. Not only did they share a common habitation in Alexandria, they all had the same longing for knowledge and the same interest in philosophy and ancient wisdom, as represented in the teaching of Hermes Trismegistus* and the worship of Serapis. The city was also the center of Hellenistic Judaism. It was in Alexandria that Philo Judaeus, the first Jewish philosopher, wrote his 38 books in the first century A.D. The city had, in addition, the only library containing almost all the books of ancient civilizations, including the Greek text of the Old Testament. Hence it is not astonishing that Alexandria rapidly became the main Christian intellectual center.
The rich collection of ancient written knowledge in the Serapeum** proved irresistible for Diodorus Siculus, a Sicilian scholar, when he set out in the first century B.C., in the time of Julius Caesar, to research his ambitious Bibliotheca Historica¡ªthe "bookshelf of history." Diodorus, who was an enthusiast of the teachings of Hermes Trismegistus (which have survived until today in the teachings of Islamic Sufis, Jewish Qabbalah and Christian Rosicrucians and Freemasons), became convinced of Egypt's importance as a source of knowledge. The Greek and Roman gods, he believed, had been born there, life had originated there, and there the first observations of the stars had been made. The last famous scholar associated with the Serapeum before its destruction was Theon, a celebrated mathematician whose recension of Euclid's Element was the only text of this work until the last century, and whose daughter Hypatia was to meet a terrible death at the hands of Theophilus's nephew Bishop Cyril.
Up to the end of the fourth century A.D., the time when the Alexandrian library was destroyed, Egypt was regarded as the holy land of the ancient world, the source of wisdom and knowledge where the gods became known for the first time. Pilgrims then, including Roman emperors, came from all over the world to worship in the temples of Isis and Serapis, as well as at the foot of Mount Sinai.
This situation came to an end, however, in the latter years of the reign of the emperor Theodosius I, who was zealous in his suppression of both paganism¡ªthe belief in the many gods of pre-Christianity¡ªand heresy¡ª any opinion contrary to orthodox doctrine. Emperor of the East (A.D. 379-392), and then sole emperor of East and West (A.D. 392-395), he enforced the Creed of the Council of Nicaea (A.D. 325) as a universal norm for Christian orthodoxy and directed the convening of the second general council at Constantinople in A.D. 381 to clarify the formula.
"It is our wish and pleasure that none of our subjects, whether magistrates or private citizens, however exalted or however humble may be their rank or condition, shall presume in any city or in any place to worship an inanimate idol ..." declared Theodosius in his last edict.
Fanatical mobs of the Church then roamed the lands, razing old temples to the ground and plundering their wealth. Ancient tombs were desecrated, walls of monuments scraped clean of names and depictions of deities, statues toppled over and smashed. In Alexandria, Bishop Theophilus was as ambitious as the emperor, Theodosius I, who had appointed him. It was one of his zealous actions that led to the burning of an estimated half a million books stored in the Alexandrian library, described above.
Theophilus of Alexandria (A.D. 385-412) was one of the orthodox leaders who represented the imperial government dispatched from Rome to impose official orthodoxy on the Alexandrian Church. He led a campaign against paganism and heresy in Egypt that included destruction of the Serapeum (the temple of Serapis¡ªoriginally an ancient Egyptian god of the underworld, subsequently reintroduced as the official deity for Alexandria and Egypt by Ptolemy I [305-284 B.C.]) where the Alexandrian library was placed. The Serapeum, at the same time as being the center of worship for the ancient Egyptian trinity of Osiris, Isis and Horus, became a focal point for the emerging Christian Gnostic sects¡ªthose Christians who sought to gain spiritual knowledge through mysteries and the attempt to know oneself, interpreting the Scriptures allegorically.
The first Christian emperor, Constantine I (A.D. 324-337), had made Christianity the official religion of the Empire. He also granted political power to the Church. Bishops were not only recognized as councilors of state but obtained juridical rights: their solutions to civil suits were legally enforced. The bishops used their newly acquired power to spread the word of God and stamp out His enemies, who in this case were not only the pagans but the heretics¡ªand Rome regarded Egyptian Christians as heretics. According to tradition, the Church of Alexandria was founded neither by St. Peter nor by St. Paul but by St. Mark the Evangelist,
even before what is said to have been the first Apostolic Council of Jerusalem in c. A.D. 50 (mentioned in the Book of Acts, 15:28). The first theological school to be established in the world also flourished in Alexandria before the end of the second century A.D. and became an influential center of Christian scholarship. Among its directors were the famous Clement of Alexandria and Origen. Christian monasticism as an institution was initiated principally in Egypt by St. Antony the Copt (c. A.D. 251-356), who fled to the solitude of the western desert from his native village of Coma, not far from Tell al-Amarna, in Middle Egypt. Others followed his example and a monastic colony arose around his cave in the Red Sea mountains.
Although Alexandria made an important contribution in developing the first systematic Christian theology, the Alexandrian theologists were strongly influenced by the Neo-Platonists' philosophy.* Biblical exegesis at Alexandria was allegorical and mystical, following the same method as Philo Judaeus, who tried to harmonize
philosophy and the Bible. From the start, Alexandrian exegesis did not attach to the literal sense of the Bible. Their primary interest was concentrated on the mystery of divine revelation revealed in the historical and literary details of the Old Testament. It was therefore a question of discovering Christ in the older revelation.
The Alexandrian authors sought out in the Old Testament symbols of the New. For early Egyptian Christians, accepting one God was an evolutionary process in which the old system was assimilated into the new, and old deities became angelic beings and mediators between man and the unseen Lord (this will be examined in detail later). Idols, for them, did not represent the deities themselves but were merely a physical form in which the spiritual beings could dwell during prayer.
The Gnostic teachers found their followers at Alexandria, and much of the ecclesiastical history of this city was concerned with the heresies that appeared there. The Serapeum, originally established by the Ptolemies (the Macedonian kings who ruled Egypt after the death of Alexander the Great), later became also a center
for Gnostic communities, both Hermetic (i.e. adhering to the teachings of Hermes Trismegistus) and Christian. Some Gnostic Christian sects grew from within the cult of Serapis, who made no distinction between Christ and Serapis¡ªthis, too, will be explained as this book unfolds. The general library at the Serapeum gradually
became a focal point for scholars and intellectuals, from all over the Roman Empire, whose views contradicted the teachings of the Church. For this reason it became regarded as heretical and had to be destroyed.
With the destruction of the Serapeum, not only Egyptian knowledge was lost; Mesopotamian, Syrian, Phoenician, Jewish and Greek learning also vanished. The whole scientific achievement of the old civilizations, regarded as heresy by Bishop Theophilus, disappeared in a single day¡ªbooks on astronomy, anatomy, medicine, geometry, geography, history, philosophy, theology and literature, as well as copies of the early Gnostic gospels of Christ. The result was the beginning of the dark ages, which lasted for more than ten centuries after that. All branches of science, as well as heretical writings that did not adhere to the teaching of the orthodox Church, were forbidden by the state. This left the canonic books of the Scripture as the main source of Western knowledge until the Renaissance in the 15th century. While the discovery of some remaining copies of old forbidden manuscripts, especially the Hermetic and Neo-Platonic philosophies, produced the age of the Western renaissance from the 15th century in art, science and technology, history had to wait for modern archaeologists to dig out old remains and inscribed papyrus rolls before we could regain our memory. In his book Archives In The Ancient World, Ernst Posner, the American historian, has said of the achievements of archaeologists during this period that they are "momentous¡ªcomparable in a way to the discovery of America ... a new dimension of almost two millennia has been added to the history of mankind as it was known in 1850 ... Now we can view with profound respect the cultural achievements of the countries surrounding the eastern Mediterranean, and we can begin to assess their interrelations with, and their possible influence on, the cultures of Greece and Rome."
Segment from the book, The Dark Side of Christian History, by Hellen Elerbe. pg. 54-57.
The spirit of the Middle Ages challenged the Church's nowestablished authority. The Church responded by bolstering its authoritarian structure, asserting the Pope's supremacy over all imperial powers, and rallying Europe against Muslims, Jews and Eastern Orthodox Christians. When the crusades failed to unify Europe under its control, the Church attacked whomever it perceived as an enemy: money-lenders, supporters of nationstates, and the Cathars.
Dramatic changes after the turn of the millennium ushered in the high Middle Ages. An agricultural society began to give way to rapidly growing towns as the population exploded in a surge unparalleled in the Western world until the 19th and 20th centuries.1 Many more people began making their livelihoods in commerce and industry, giving rise to a new social class of traders and manufacturers.2 These merchants often served as examples that through wit, activity and industry one could change one's lot in life. Merchants also disseminated new information and ideas from the Arab and Greek worlds as they traveled along trade routes from northern Spain and southern Italy.
Latin classics, largely lost under Christian rule, were translated from Arabic back into Latin. When Aristotle's work was reintroduced to the West, its example of systematic thought spawned scholasticism, a discipline that challenged the Church's demand that one accept its assertions on blind faith. The twelfth century Peter Abelard, for example, used the scholastic method to encourage individual decision-making, to question authoritarian assertions, and to point out contradictions in Church doctrine and scripture.
The Church's confinement of all education and creativity to monasteries began to break down. Not only were lay schools created to provide elementary education to merchant and artisan classes, but universities were formed in urban areas such as Paris, Oxford, Toulouse, Montpellier, Cambridge, Salerno, Bologna and Salamanca.3 The age saw literary epics and romances such as The Romance of the Rose, The Song of the Cid, Arthur's Knights of the Round Table, the Nibelungenlied, and Dante's Divine Comedy.4 Court jesters or fools provided contemporary sources of vernacular poetry and literature. Renewed interest in architecture produced the culmination of the Romanesque style and the beginning of Gothic artistic and engineering feats. Even within twelfth century monasteries, the art of illumination and ornamentation of manuscripts came alive.5 Art, literature, philosophy and architecture all began to flourish again during the high Middle Ages.
Having prospered and thrived while society remained subdued and quiescent, the Church now resisted the many changes taking place. Papal prohibitions in 1210 and 1215 restricted the teaching of Aristotle's works in Paris. By 1272 discussion of any purely theological matter was forbidden.6 St. Bernard of Clairvaux gave voice to Church sentiment when he said of Abelard's scholasticism, "everything (is) treated contrary to custom and tradition."
Bernard wrote:
The faith of simplicity is mocked, the secrets of Christ profaned; questions on the highest things are impertinently asked, the Fathers scorned because they were disposed to conciliate rather than solve such problems. Human reason is snatching everything to itself, leaving nothing for faith.7 The Church demonstrated a similar disdain for the revival of classical literature. As the twelfth century Christian Honorius of Autun asked:
How is the soul profited by the strife of Hector, the arguments of Plato, the poems of Virgil, or the elegies of Ovid, who, with others like them, are now gnashing their teeth in the prison of the infernal Babylon, under the cruel tyranny of Pluto?8
The Church regarded poetry with particular disfavor, sometimes classifying poets with magicians whom the Church despised. The illustrations in the twelfth century Hortus deliciarum of Herrad of Landsberg, for example, depict four "poets or magicians," each with an evil spirit prompting him.9 Clerics insisted that court jesters also "have no use or virtue" and are "beyond hope of salvation."10
Orthodox Christians expressed disdain for the flourishing creativity and declared supporters of the arts to be heathens and pagans. The outspoken fifteenth century Dominican prophet Girolamo Savonarola believed that classical poets should be banished and that science, culture and education should return entirely to the hands of monks. He wrote:
The only good thing that we owe to Plato and Aristotle is that they brought forward many arguments which we can use against the heretics. Yet they and other philosophers are now in hell... It would be good for religion if many books that seem useful were destroyed. When there were not so many books and not so many arguments and disputes, religion grew more quickly than it has since.11
Savonarola carried out his moral reforms in Florence using techniques characteristic of a police state: controlling personal morality through the espionage of servants and organizing bands of young men to raid homes of items that were inconsistent with orthodox Christian ideals. Books, particularly those of Latin and Italian poets, illuminated manuscripts, women's ornaments, musical instruments, and paintings were burned in a huge bonfire in 1497, destroying much of the work of Renaissance Florence.
1. Jeffrey Burton Russell, A History of Medieval Christianity (New York:
Thomas Y Cromwell, 1968) 106.
2. Charles Homer Haskins, The Renaissance of the 12th Century (Cleveland & New York: Meridian Books, 1927) 62.
3. Albert Clement Shannon, The Medieval Inquisition (Washington D.C.: Augustinian College Press, 1983) 141.
4. Ibid., 141.
5. Haskins, The Renaissance of the 12th Century, 45.
6. Ibid., 364.
7. Walter Nigg, The Heretics: Heresy Through the Ages (New York: Dorset Press, 1962) 169.
8. Haskins, The Renaissance of the 12th Century, 96.
9. Ibid., 97.
10. Ibid., 55-56.
11. Jacob Burckhardt, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, edited by Irene Gordon (New York: Mentor Books, 1960) 336.
Part 4: A History of Christian book burnings and the Destruction of Knowledge.
-The Book's bias agianst books.
- On book burnings.
- suppression of classics, the Chruch fights change.
-Library of Alexandria.
________
Segment from the book, The Atheist Manifesto, by Michel Onfray Pg. 78-81.
The book's bias against books.
To establish the authority of the definitive version of the Koran, the political authorities ¡ª notably Marwan, governor of Medina¡ªbegan by collecting and then burning and destroying all existing versions in order to avoid historical confrontation and chancing upon vestiges of human, too human, manufacture. (One version indeed escaped from this auto-da-fe of the seven earlier versions, and still holds sway in certain African countries.) Marwan's act was a precursor of the many book burnings kindled in the name of the one book. Each of these three books claims to be "the only book that matters." Each of the three main religions claims that it alone possesses the one true holy book, which contains the whole of what needs to be learned and known. Like encyclopedia com- pilers, they have gathered the essentials, rendering it unnecessary
to look in other books (pagan, secular, heretical) for wisdom that is already found.
The Christians set the tone with Paul of Tarsus, who called for the burning of dangerous books (Acts 19:19). The demand did not fall on deaf ears: Constantine and most subsequent
Christian emperors sent philosophers into exile and persecuted polytheist priests, declaring them social outcasts, imprisoning them, and killing many. Hatred of non-Christian books resulted in an overall impoverishment of civilization. The establishment of the Inquisition and, later, the sixteenth-century creation of the Index of Forbidden Books were the climax of this campaign to eradicate everything that deviated from the official policy of the Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman Church.
The desire to be done with non-Christian books and the mistrust of unfettered thinking beggared philosophy, forcing its practitioners to give up the struggle, to remain silent, or to express themselves with extreme prudence. (The entire roster of important philosophers from Montaigne to Sartre, in a line including Pascal, Descartes, Kant, Malebranche, Spinoza, Locke, Hume, Berkeley, Rousseau, Bergson, and so many others ¡ª not to mention materialists, socialists, and Freudians ¡ª enjoys pride of place in the Index.) The Bible, claiming to contain everything, banned everything it did not contain. Over the centuries, the results were devastating.
Countless fatwas were proclaimed against Muslim authors even when they did not defend atheist positions, did not discredit the Koran's teachings, and did not indulge either in blasphemy or invective. It was enough simply to think and write freely for the thunderbolts to come crashing down. The slightest deviation came at a heavy price. Exile, prosecution, persecution, libel, even assassination, all these horrors were perpetrated by the likes of Ali Abderraziq, Mohammed Khalafallah, Taha Hussein, Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd, Mohammed Iqbal, Fazlur Rahman, Mahmoud Mohammed Taha.
In their implacable opposition to free expression, the priests of the three religions preferred to authorize the conjurers whose deft manipulation of language, verbal contortions, and jigsawpuzzle formulations blew smoke in their readers' eyes. What did these schoolmen achieve over the centuries beyond a verbal repackaging of ancient fables and ecclesiastical dogma? Jews, Christians, and Muslims love memory exercises, particularly in regard to the chanting of the faithful.
Muslims memorize the suras of the Koran at a very early age and learn to chant them with the correct elocution (tajwid) and the correct delivery (tartil). Proper articulation and intonation of the Koran (tajwid) requires a slow, melodious declamation with rich flourishes, such as singing several notes to one syllable of text. Tartil is a slow, rhythmic, measured, and meditative delivery. Traditionally, theological schools teach seven ways of reciting the Koran, the differences between them being a matter of linguistic and phonetic variables: consonants stressed, unstressed, without overtones; dropped vowels; change in inflection; very soft tone of voice; or verbal ornamentation, such as deliberate repetition of a phrase at the beginning of successive verses. All this contributes to subordination of the spirit and message of the text in favor of pure literary style. The words lose their meaning, and their repetition becomes an artistic performance.
The litanies we hear in Koranic schools ¡ª madrassas, often centers of hostility to falsafa, or philosophy¡ªbear this out. Students learn by reciting aloud, as a group, in cadence, in a collective and communal rhythm. Their dirges help them memorize the teachings of Yahweh or Allah. Jewish mnemonic technique also offers a method of apprenticeship in reading and the alphabet by an association of letters and contents that rests on Talmudic doctrine.
Thus, books aim paradoxically (after they have been memorized wholesale) at what virtually amounts to their own elimination! Rationally enough, students learn the Torah or the Koran by heart. Thus, when the danger of persecution raises its head or when conditions such as exile make it impossible to have the volume at hand, the believer still enjoys mental possession of the book and its teachings.
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Segment from the book, The Dark Side of Christian History, by Hellen Elerbe, pg. 47-50.
The Christian church had similar impact upon education and learning. The Church burned enormous amounts of literature. In 391 Christians burned down one of the world's greatest libraries in Alexandria, said to have housed 700,000 rolls.(1)
All the books of the Gnostic Basilides, Porphyry's 36 volumes, papyrus rolls of 27 schools of the Mysteries, and 270,000 ancient documents gathered by Ptolemy Philadelphus were burned.(2)
Ancient academies of learning were closed. Education for anyone outside of the Church came to an end. And what little education there was during the Dark Ages, while still limited to the clergy, was advocated by powerful kings as a means of providing themselves with capable administrators.(3)
The Church opposed the study of grammar and Latin. Pope Gregory I, or Gregory the Great, a man thought to have been one of the greatest architects of the medieval order,(4) objected to grammatical study. He wrote:
I despise the proper constructions and cases, because I think it very unfitting that the words of the celestial oracle should be restricted by the rules of Donatus [a well-known grammarian].(5)
Gregory the Great also condemned education for all but the clergy as folly and wickedness. He forbade laymen to read even the Bible. He had the library of the Palatine Apollo burned "lest its secular literature distract the faithful from the contemplation of heaven."(6)
The Fourth Council of Carthage in 398 forbade bishops to even read the books of gentiles. (7) Jerome, a Church Father and early monastic in the fourth century, rejoiced that the classical authors were being forgotten. And his younger monastic contemporaries were known to boast of their ignorance of everything except Christian literature.(8) After Christians had spent years destroying books and libraries, St. John Chrysostom, the preeminent Greek Father of the Church, proudly declared, "Every trace of the old philosophy and literature of the ancient world has vanished from the face of the earth."(9)
Monastic libraries, the only libraries left, were composed of books of devotion. Even the most significant monastic libraries carried little aside from books about Christian theology.(10) While monks did copy manuscripts, such work was not esteemed for its intrinsic value but rather considered part of the prescribed manual labor, necessary in the effort of "fighting the Devil by pen and ink," in the words of the Christian Cassiodorus.(11)
St. Gregory the Great, Pope from 590-604. While best known for strengthening the Pope's independence from the Byzantine Emperor, he also burned books and restricted reading and education to the clergy. Copying manuscripts, even if those manuscripts were classical, did not necessarily indicate an appreciation for classical learning.
An historian notes that the order of Cluni followed customs that implied a lack of respect for classical works. "If a monk wanted a book during the hours of silence, he made a sign of turning the leaves; if he wanted a classical book, he scratched his ear like a dog."(12)
Bibliography:
¡¡
1- The New Columbia Encyclopedia, 61, and Eisler, The Chalice and the Blade.
2- Graham, Deceptions and Myths of the Bible, 444.
3- Jeffrey Burton Russell, A History of Medieval Christianity (New York: Thomas Y. Cromwell, 1968) pg. 103.
4- Jeffrey Burton Russell, A History of Medieval Christianity (New York: Thomas Y. Cromwell, 1968) pg. 40.
5- Charles Homer Haskins, The Renaissance of the 12th Century (Cleveland & New York: Meridian Books, 1927) pg. 96.
6- Barbara G. Walker, The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1983) 208.
7- Haskins, Charles Homer. The Renaissance of the 12th Century. Cleveland & New York: Meridian Books, 1927. pg. 95.
8- John H. Smith, The Death of Classical Paganism (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1976) 223.
9- Walker, Barbara. The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets. San
Francisco: Harper & Row, 1983. 208.
10- Smith, John Holland. The Death of Classical Paganism, New York: Charles
Scribner, 1976. pg. 247.
11- Haskins, Charles Homer. The Renaissance of the 12th Century. Cleveland & New York: Meridian Books, 1927. pg. 34.
12- Haskins, Charles Homer. The Renaissance of the 12th Century. Cleveland & New York: Meridian Books, 1927. pg. 43.
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Segment from the book, The Christ Conspiracy, The Greatest Story Ever Sold, by Acharya S. pg. 10-11.
So far this despicable legacy and crime against humanity remains unavenged and its main culprit unpunished, not only standing intact but inexplicably receiving the undying and unthinking support of hundreds of millions, including the educated, such as doctors, lawyers, scientists, etc. This acquiescence is the result of the
centuries of destruction and degradation of their ancestors¡¯ cultures, which demoralized them and ripped away their spirituality and heritage. In annihilating these cultures, the Christian conspirators also destroyed countless books and much learning, prizing the subsequent illiteracy and ignorance, which assisted in allowing
for Christianity to spread. Wheless recounts the state of the world under Christian dominance:
With the decline and fall of the Roman Empire the Christian religion spread and grew, among the Barbarian destroyers of Rome. The Dark Ages contemporaneously spread their intellectual pall over Europe. Scarcely any but priests and monks could read. Charlemagne learned to wield the pen only to the extent of scrawling his signature. The barons who wrested Magna Carta from John Lackland signed with their marks and seals. The worst criminals, provided they were endowed with the rare and magic virtue of knowing how to read even badly, enjoyed the ¡°benefit of
clergy¡± (i.e., of clerical learning), and escaped immune or with greatly mitigated punishment. There were no books save painfully-written manuscripts, worth the ransom of princes, and utterly unattainable except by the very wealthy and by the Church; not till about 1450 was the first printed book known in Europe. The Bible existed only in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, and the ignorant masses were totally ignorant of it other than what they heard from the priests, who told them that they must believe it or be tortured and killed in life and damned forever in the fires of hell after death. It is no wonder that faith flourished under conditions so exceptionally favorable.(1)
1- Whelless, Joseph, Is It God¡¯s Word?, http://www.infidels.org/
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Segment from the book, The Atheist Manifesto, by Michael Onfray. pg. 148- 150.
Vandalism, autos-da-f¨¦, and the culture of death.
Like Paul of Tarsus, Christians were convinced that academic learning hindered access to God. All books (not just books by authors accused of heresy, such as Arius, Mani, and Nestorius) were at risk of being burned. Neoplatonist works were condemned as books of magic and divination. People who possessed libraries feared for their safety. In 370 the citizens of Antioch, terrified of persecution, preempted the Christian commissars and burned their own books in the public square. As for the Great Library of Alexandria, its daughter library was housed in the Serapeum, a temple dedicated to the god Serapis. In 391, by order of the bishop of Alexandria, the temple was leveled and the library went up in smoke.
In 591, the Neoplatonic school in Athens was closed, and the Christian Empire confiscated its holdings. Paganism had survived in the Greek capital for centuries. Plato's teachings could
point to a thousand years of uninterrupted transmission. The philosophers set out on the road to Persian exile. What a triumph for Paul of Tarsus, once mocked by Stoics and Epicureans
in the home of philosophy during his attempt at proselytization.
The posthumous victory of God's weakling and his disastrous neuroses! A culture of death, of hatred, of contempt and intolerance . . . At Constantinople in 562, Christians arrested "Hellenes" ¡ª an insulting name ¡ª parading them through the city to the accompaniment of hoots and jeers. On Kenogion Square, Christians lit a huge bonfire and tossed the philosophers' books and the images of their gods into the flames.
Justinian hammered in the final nail, stiffening Christian legislation against the unorthodox. Non-Christians were forbidden to bequeath their wealth to pagans; it was forbidden to testify in court against the church's followers; forbidden to own Christian slaves; forbidden to draw up a legal deed; forbidden to profess freedom of conscience (!). And in 529 Justinian made it mandatory for pagans to take instruction in the Christian religion and then undergo baptism, on pain of exile and confiscation of their goods; he forbade those converted to the religion of brotherly love to return to paganism; forbade them to teach or to draw official pensions. For at least a thousand years, philosophizing became dangerous . . . Now¡ªjust as in every succeeding period ¡ª theocracy stood unveiled as the opposite of democracy.
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The Burning of the Temple Library of Alexandria
Segment form the book, Christianity an Ancient Egyptian Religion, by Ahmad Osman, Prologue.
One day in A.D. 391, the Roman-appointed Bishop Theophilus marched from his headquarters in the Brucheion Royal quarter of Alexandria, at the head of a large howling mob, heading west for the Serapeum in the heart of the Egyptian quarter of Rhakotis. The Serapeum, which had been the center of Egyptian worship for seven centuries, was adorned with extensive columned halls, almost breathing statues, and a great number of other works of art, as well as being the house of the Great Alexandrian library. The frenzied people rushed through the streets along the Canopic way, turning into the short street that led to the temple-area of Serapis, meeting other crowds there, before climbing up the great flight of marble steps, ledby Bishop Theophilus. They jumped across the stone platform and into the temple, where the events of the final tragedy took place.
In their agitated mood, the angry mob took little heed of the gold and silver ornaments, the precious jewels, the priceless bronze and marble statues, the rare murals and tapestries, the carved and painted pillars of granite and many marbles, the ebony and scented woods, the ivory and exotic furniture¡ªall were smashed to
pieces with cries of pleasure. But that was not all. Those shouting men, full of demoniac delight, then turned to the library, where hundreds of thousands of papyrus rolls and parchments, inscribed with ancient wisdom and knowledge, were taken off their shelves, torn to pieces and thrown on to bonfires.
A few years later the last of the Alexandrian scholars was torn to pieces by a gang of Christian monks. On a Lenten day in March of the year A.D. 415 they stopped the carriage of Hypatia, who had succeeded her father as Professor of Philosophy in Alexandria, stripped her naked, dragged her into a nearby church, killed her, cut most of her flesh from her body with sharp oyster shells and burned what remained of her in the street. The charge against Hypatia, who had taught the philosophy of Plato, was heresy.
As a result of this barbaric killing of Alexandrian scholars and destruction of its library, which contained texts in Greek of all aspects of ancient wisdom and knowledge, the true Egyptian roots of Christianity and of Western civilization have been obscured for nearly 16 centuries.[...]
Until the destruction of its library in A.D. 391, Alexandria had remained the most important cultural center of the ancient world, and the focal point of the mutual influence exercised in the conjunction of Christianity and Hellenism, in spite of four centuries of Rome's political supremacy. Founded by Alexander the Great in 331 B.C., it was the first real cosmopolitan city in history, where Macedonians and Greeks lived together with Egyptians and Jews, and scholars flocked from all over the world to do their research. They came from Italy and Greece, from Anatolia and the Levant, from north Africa, Arabia, and even from Persia and India. Not only did they share a common habitation in Alexandria, they all had the same longing for knowledge and the same interest in philosophy and ancient wisdom, as represented in the teaching of Hermes Trismegistus* and the worship of Serapis. The city was also the center of Hellenistic Judaism. It was in Alexandria that Philo Judaeus, the first Jewish philosopher, wrote his 38 books in the first century A.D. The city had, in addition, the only library containing almost all the books of ancient civilizations, including the Greek text of the Old Testament. Hence it is not astonishing that Alexandria rapidly became the main Christian intellectual center.
The rich collection of ancient written knowledge in the Serapeum** proved irresistible for Diodorus Siculus, a Sicilian scholar, when he set out in the first century B.C., in the time of Julius Caesar, to research his ambitious Bibliotheca Historica¡ªthe "bookshelf of history." Diodorus, who was an enthusiast of the teachings of Hermes Trismegistus (which have survived until today in the teachings of Islamic Sufis, Jewish Qabbalah and Christian Rosicrucians and Freemasons), became convinced of Egypt's importance as a source of knowledge. The Greek and Roman gods, he believed, had been born there, life had originated there, and there the first observations of the stars had been made. The last famous scholar associated with the Serapeum before its destruction was Theon, a celebrated mathematician whose recension of Euclid's Element was the only text of this work until the last century, and whose daughter Hypatia was to meet a terrible death at the hands of Theophilus's nephew Bishop Cyril.
Up to the end of the fourth century A.D., the time when the Alexandrian library was destroyed, Egypt was regarded as the holy land of the ancient world, the source of wisdom and knowledge where the gods became known for the first time. Pilgrims then, including Roman emperors, came from all over the world to worship in the temples of Isis and Serapis, as well as at the foot of Mount Sinai.
This situation came to an end, however, in the latter years of the reign of the emperor Theodosius I, who was zealous in his suppression of both paganism¡ªthe belief in the many gods of pre-Christianity¡ªand heresy¡ª any opinion contrary to orthodox doctrine. Emperor of the East (A.D. 379-392), and then sole emperor of East and West (A.D. 392-395), he enforced the Creed of the Council of Nicaea (A.D. 325) as a universal norm for Christian orthodoxy and directed the convening of the second general council at Constantinople in A.D. 381 to clarify the formula.
"It is our wish and pleasure that none of our subjects, whether magistrates or private citizens, however exalted or however humble may be their rank or condition, shall presume in any city or in any place to worship an inanimate idol ..." declared Theodosius in his last edict.
Fanatical mobs of the Church then roamed the lands, razing old temples to the ground and plundering their wealth. Ancient tombs were desecrated, walls of monuments scraped clean of names and depictions of deities, statues toppled over and smashed. In Alexandria, Bishop Theophilus was as ambitious as the emperor, Theodosius I, who had appointed him. It was one of his zealous actions that led to the burning of an estimated half a million books stored in the Alexandrian library, described above.
Theophilus of Alexandria (A.D. 385-412) was one of the orthodox leaders who represented the imperial government dispatched from Rome to impose official orthodoxy on the Alexandrian Church. He led a campaign against paganism and heresy in Egypt that included destruction of the Serapeum (the temple of Serapis¡ªoriginally an ancient Egyptian god of the underworld, subsequently reintroduced as the official deity for Alexandria and Egypt by Ptolemy I [305-284 B.C.]) where the Alexandrian library was placed. The Serapeum, at the same time as being the center of worship for the ancient Egyptian trinity of Osiris, Isis and Horus, became a focal point for the emerging Christian Gnostic sects¡ªthose Christians who sought to gain spiritual knowledge through mysteries and the attempt to know oneself, interpreting the Scriptures allegorically.
The first Christian emperor, Constantine I (A.D. 324-337), had made Christianity the official religion of the Empire. He also granted political power to the Church. Bishops were not only recognized as councilors of state but obtained juridical rights: their solutions to civil suits were legally enforced. The bishops used their newly acquired power to spread the word of God and stamp out His enemies, who in this case were not only the pagans but the heretics¡ªand Rome regarded Egyptian Christians as heretics. According to tradition, the Church of Alexandria was founded neither by St. Peter nor by St. Paul but by St. Mark the Evangelist,
even before what is said to have been the first Apostolic Council of Jerusalem in c. A.D. 50 (mentioned in the Book of Acts, 15:28). The first theological school to be established in the world also flourished in Alexandria before the end of the second century A.D. and became an influential center of Christian scholarship. Among its directors were the famous Clement of Alexandria and Origen. Christian monasticism as an institution was initiated principally in Egypt by St. Antony the Copt (c. A.D. 251-356), who fled to the solitude of the western desert from his native village of Coma, not far from Tell al-Amarna, in Middle Egypt. Others followed his example and a monastic colony arose around his cave in the Red Sea mountains.
Although Alexandria made an important contribution in developing the first systematic Christian theology, the Alexandrian theologists were strongly influenced by the Neo-Platonists' philosophy.* Biblical exegesis at Alexandria was allegorical and mystical, following the same method as Philo Judaeus, who tried to harmonize
philosophy and the Bible. From the start, Alexandrian exegesis did not attach to the literal sense of the Bible. Their primary interest was concentrated on the mystery of divine revelation revealed in the historical and literary details of the Old Testament. It was therefore a question of discovering Christ in the older revelation.
The Alexandrian authors sought out in the Old Testament symbols of the New. For early Egyptian Christians, accepting one God was an evolutionary process in which the old system was assimilated into the new, and old deities became angelic beings and mediators between man and the unseen Lord (this will be examined in detail later). Idols, for them, did not represent the deities themselves but were merely a physical form in which the spiritual beings could dwell during prayer.
The Gnostic teachers found their followers at Alexandria, and much of the ecclesiastical history of this city was concerned with the heresies that appeared there. The Serapeum, originally established by the Ptolemies (the Macedonian kings who ruled Egypt after the death of Alexander the Great), later became also a center
for Gnostic communities, both Hermetic (i.e. adhering to the teachings of Hermes Trismegistus) and Christian. Some Gnostic Christian sects grew from within the cult of Serapis, who made no distinction between Christ and Serapis¡ªthis, too, will be explained as this book unfolds. The general library at the Serapeum gradually
became a focal point for scholars and intellectuals, from all over the Roman Empire, whose views contradicted the teachings of the Church. For this reason it became regarded as heretical and had to be destroyed.
With the destruction of the Serapeum, not only Egyptian knowledge was lost; Mesopotamian, Syrian, Phoenician, Jewish and Greek learning also vanished. The whole scientific achievement of the old civilizations, regarded as heresy by Bishop Theophilus, disappeared in a single day¡ªbooks on astronomy, anatomy, medicine, geometry, geography, history, philosophy, theology and literature, as well as copies of the early Gnostic gospels of Christ. The result was the beginning of the dark ages, which lasted for more than ten centuries after that. All branches of science, as well as heretical writings that did not adhere to the teaching of the orthodox Church, were forbidden by the state. This left the canonic books of the Scripture as the main source of Western knowledge until the Renaissance in the 15th century. While the discovery of some remaining copies of old forbidden manuscripts, especially the Hermetic and Neo-Platonic philosophies, produced the age of the Western renaissance from the 15th century in art, science and technology, history had to wait for modern archaeologists to dig out old remains and inscribed papyrus rolls before we could regain our memory. In his book Archives In The Ancient World, Ernst Posner, the American historian, has said of the achievements of archaeologists during this period that they are "momentous¡ªcomparable in a way to the discovery of America ... a new dimension of almost two millennia has been added to the history of mankind as it was known in 1850 ... Now we can view with profound respect the cultural achievements of the countries surrounding the eastern Mediterranean, and we can begin to assess their interrelations with, and their possible influence on, the cultures of Greece and Rome."
Segment from the book, The Dark Side of Christian History, by Hellen Elerbe. pg. 54-57.
The spirit of the Middle Ages challenged the Church's nowestablished authority. The Church responded by bolstering its authoritarian structure, asserting the Pope's supremacy over all imperial powers, and rallying Europe against Muslims, Jews and Eastern Orthodox Christians. When the crusades failed to unify Europe under its control, the Church attacked whomever it perceived as an enemy: money-lenders, supporters of nationstates, and the Cathars.
Dramatic changes after the turn of the millennium ushered in the high Middle Ages. An agricultural society began to give way to rapidly growing towns as the population exploded in a surge unparalleled in the Western world until the 19th and 20th centuries.1 Many more people began making their livelihoods in commerce and industry, giving rise to a new social class of traders and manufacturers.2 These merchants often served as examples that through wit, activity and industry one could change one's lot in life. Merchants also disseminated new information and ideas from the Arab and Greek worlds as they traveled along trade routes from northern Spain and southern Italy.
Latin classics, largely lost under Christian rule, were translated from Arabic back into Latin. When Aristotle's work was reintroduced to the West, its example of systematic thought spawned scholasticism, a discipline that challenged the Church's demand that one accept its assertions on blind faith. The twelfth century Peter Abelard, for example, used the scholastic method to encourage individual decision-making, to question authoritarian assertions, and to point out contradictions in Church doctrine and scripture.
The Church's confinement of all education and creativity to monasteries began to break down. Not only were lay schools created to provide elementary education to merchant and artisan classes, but universities were formed in urban areas such as Paris, Oxford, Toulouse, Montpellier, Cambridge, Salerno, Bologna and Salamanca.3 The age saw literary epics and romances such as The Romance of the Rose, The Song of the Cid, Arthur's Knights of the Round Table, the Nibelungenlied, and Dante's Divine Comedy.4 Court jesters or fools provided contemporary sources of vernacular poetry and literature. Renewed interest in architecture produced the culmination of the Romanesque style and the beginning of Gothic artistic and engineering feats. Even within twelfth century monasteries, the art of illumination and ornamentation of manuscripts came alive.5 Art, literature, philosophy and architecture all began to flourish again during the high Middle Ages.
Having prospered and thrived while society remained subdued and quiescent, the Church now resisted the many changes taking place. Papal prohibitions in 1210 and 1215 restricted the teaching of Aristotle's works in Paris. By 1272 discussion of any purely theological matter was forbidden.6 St. Bernard of Clairvaux gave voice to Church sentiment when he said of Abelard's scholasticism, "everything (is) treated contrary to custom and tradition."
Bernard wrote:
The faith of simplicity is mocked, the secrets of Christ profaned; questions on the highest things are impertinently asked, the Fathers scorned because they were disposed to conciliate rather than solve such problems. Human reason is snatching everything to itself, leaving nothing for faith.7 The Church demonstrated a similar disdain for the revival of classical literature. As the twelfth century Christian Honorius of Autun asked:
How is the soul profited by the strife of Hector, the arguments of Plato, the poems of Virgil, or the elegies of Ovid, who, with others like them, are now gnashing their teeth in the prison of the infernal Babylon, under the cruel tyranny of Pluto?8
The Church regarded poetry with particular disfavor, sometimes classifying poets with magicians whom the Church despised. The illustrations in the twelfth century Hortus deliciarum of Herrad of Landsberg, for example, depict four "poets or magicians," each with an evil spirit prompting him.9 Clerics insisted that court jesters also "have no use or virtue" and are "beyond hope of salvation."10
Orthodox Christians expressed disdain for the flourishing creativity and declared supporters of the arts to be heathens and pagans. The outspoken fifteenth century Dominican prophet Girolamo Savonarola believed that classical poets should be banished and that science, culture and education should return entirely to the hands of monks. He wrote:
The only good thing that we owe to Plato and Aristotle is that they brought forward many arguments which we can use against the heretics. Yet they and other philosophers are now in hell... It would be good for religion if many books that seem useful were destroyed. When there were not so many books and not so many arguments and disputes, religion grew more quickly than it has since.11
Savonarola carried out his moral reforms in Florence using techniques characteristic of a police state: controlling personal morality through the espionage of servants and organizing bands of young men to raid homes of items that were inconsistent with orthodox Christian ideals. Books, particularly those of Latin and Italian poets, illuminated manuscripts, women's ornaments, musical instruments, and paintings were burned in a huge bonfire in 1497, destroying much of the work of Renaissance Florence.
1. Jeffrey Burton Russell, A History of Medieval Christianity (New York:
Thomas Y Cromwell, 1968) 106.
2. Charles Homer Haskins, The Renaissance of the 12th Century (Cleveland & New York: Meridian Books, 1927) 62.
3. Albert Clement Shannon, The Medieval Inquisition (Washington D.C.: Augustinian College Press, 1983) 141.
4. Ibid., 141.
5. Haskins, The Renaissance of the 12th Century, 45.
6. Ibid., 364.
7. Walter Nigg, The Heretics: Heresy Through the Ages (New York: Dorset Press, 1962) 169.
8. Haskins, The Renaissance of the 12th Century, 96.
9. Ibid., 97.
10. Ibid., 55-56.
11. Jacob Burckhardt, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, edited by Irene Gordon (New York: Mentor Books, 1960) 336.
