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.... thus shall ye deal with them;
ye shall destroy their altars, and break down their
images, and cut down their groves, and burn their graven
images with fire.
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Deuteronomy 7:5
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In this section we look at how the Christian Church has influenced
classical culture, European culture and world culture.
Whenever books are burned men also in the end are burned.
Heinrich Heine (1797-1856), Almansor
All religious traditions were tolerated under the Roman Empire,
although Christians suffered to some extent because of their
sedition, either real or imagined. As soon as the Empire became
Christian, this toleration ceased. The only writings to be permitted
were those supported by the line currently regarded as orthodox.
By 326 Constantine had authorised the confiscation and destruction
of anything that challenged orthodoxy (i.e. the orthodoxy established
the previous year). This included works by pagan authors as
well as all other Christian factions.
Christian power grew, and Christians were soon denying freedom
of religion to everyone except followers of the Christian faction
currently in favour. In the year that the Emperor Constantine
inaugurated his new capital at Byzantium, AD 330, he prohibited
the performance of rites of other faiths there. In 333, Christian
censorship, pillaging, dispossession and judicial killing started
in earnest. Not only were works of Arius, but also people who
owned such works, to be consigned to the flames. Gold and treasure
were removed from Eastern temples. The temples themselves were
demolished and replaced by Christian basilicas. Under Constantine"s
Christian sons, the trend developed further. More temples were
destroyed, and sacrifices were forbidden. Marriages between
Christians and Jews were declared illegal, and the crime was
punishable by death. Constantius II passed laws against pagans
in 341, and in the following years further laws were passed
to the effect that all superstition (i.e. other religions) be
completely eradicated. Soon, anyone performing traditional sacrifices
would be liable to the death penalty. In town and country, temples
were demolished or seized and turned into churches. Bands of
violent monks were deployed to ensure the domination of the
orthodox line. They were sometimes commanded by bishops. As
a modern, devout Christian, historian says:
The monks were often formed, or formed themselves, into black-robed
squads for the execution of the Church"s business, first
to smash up pagan temples, later to rampage through the streets
in time of doctrinal controversy. Monasticism attracted misfits,
bankrupts, criminals, homosexuals, fugitives as well as the
pious; it was also a career for raw peasant youths who could
be drilled into well-disciplined monkish regiments to be deployed
as an unscrupulous bishop might think fit*.
Other recruits included draft-dodgers, runaway slaves and lunatics.
Cultured pagans were appalled by their vandalism. The pattern
continued until Julian was declared emperor in 360. Julian,
known as Julian the Apostate, rejected Christianity in favour
of traditional religions. He reopened and repaired temples and
restored the tradition of universal toleration. His toleration
was not appreciated by Christians, who insulted and destroyed
new temples in Syria and Asia Minor. There is more than a suspicion
that Julian"s untimely death was attributable to some Christian
agency. Certainly, many Christians did not trouble to disguise
their glee at his demise.
After Julian, the Empire returned to Christian government.
Christian rulers resumed the destruction of temples. By 380
Christianity was the only recognised religion in the Empire.
As part of its campaign books were burned, works of art destroyed,
families dispossessed, and temples desecrated. Christians delighted
in their victory, and seized opportunities for destruction of
everything others held holy.
The Christian Emperor Theodosius I closed pagan temples in
Rome at the end of the fourth century, in line with the views
of St Ambrose. Under his influence, the Emperor adopted an official
policy of Christian uniformity. Christian mobs were free to
attack and destroy synagogues and temples with impunity. Spies
were appointed to expose those who were not sufficiently sympathetic
to the Christian cause. It was Ambrose who dissuaded the Emperor
from paying compensation for the destruction of a synagogue
in 388. Vandalism became ever more commonplace. At Alexandria
in 391, Bishop Theophilus personally directed the destruction
of the temple to the god Serapis, reputedly the largest place
of worship in the known world. The statue of the god was chopped
up and burned, its head being carried through the town for public
ridicule. The famous Temple of Apollo at Patara was destroyed,
possibly by St Nicholas, a bishop now better known as Santa
Claus. Certainly he, like many other bishops, was a keen destroyer
of other people"s holy places in the area. Throughout Egypt
bands of monks commissioned by bishops were given military protection
so that they could despoil the shrines of other faiths in safety.
In the fifth century, the cult of Alexander, which had survived
in the desert oasis at Siwa, was suppressed. By the sixth century
the Christian Emperor Justinian closed the last temples in Egypt
dedicated to the cults of Isis and Ammon. Centuries later Christians
were still seizing wooden icons from devotees of other religions
in Egypt. They were sent to Constantinople to be burned in the
hippodrome. Temples continued to be sequestered by the Church
and converted for Christian use. The famous shrine of the goddess
Ma in Comana in Cappadocia was converted into a church. The
Parthenon in Athens was also converted, and so was the Temple
of Rhea at Byzantium. The Temple of Athene at Syracuse was rebuilt
as a church. Often the temples that had been dedicated to goddesses
became churches dedicated to the Virgin Mary.
Even temples that Jesus himself had visited, such as the Æskelepium
in Jerusalem, were replaced by Christian churches*.
Numerous hilltop temples dedicated to Hermes (Mercury) were
replaced by churches dedicated to St Michael. A temple to Apollo
at Monte Cassino was destroyed by followers of St Benedict
in the sixth century, and a monastery was built in its place.
Many future saints assisted in such destruction. St Martin of
Tours, for example, was a keen destroyer of other people"s
holy shrines — attacking them with a pickaxe. Saints Justa
and Rufina won their martyrdom by vandalising an image of the
goddess Venus in Seville.
In Western Christendom, such practices were encouraged by Pope
Gregory I, who reigned between 590 and 604. In 609 Pope Boniface
IV turned the Pantheon in Rome into a church. It had been dedicated
to all the Olympian gods; now it was dedicated to St Mary and
all the Christian martyrs. Another Roman temple, probably dedicated
to Hercules, was preserved because it was converted into a Christian
church. It is now known, mistakenly, as the Temple of Vesta.
Another one, probably dedicated to Portunus, survived for the
same reason and is known, again mistakenly, as the Temple of
Fortuna Virilis.
The ancient Romans had a practice of adopting the gods of other
peoples. In a formal ceremony (exoratio) they induced
their enemies" gods to change sides before a battle with
promises of bigger sacrifices and better temples. As they conquered
new lands and acquired new gods, they sent effigies of them
back to the Temple of Capitoline Jupiter. This collection, which
should have been modern Europe"s inheritance from the ancient
world, disappeared in Christian times. Countless other works
of art from all over the known world were also lost under Christian
rule. "Lost" is the conventional euphemism to cover
anything from wilful negligence to deliberate seeking out and
destruction. Some classical art survived in the Eastern Empire,
especially in Constantinople. But when the Western Christians
besieged and took the city in 1204, they immediately set about
pillaging these ancient treasures, and destroying those that
they could not carry away. Nicetus, a contemporary Greek writer,
listed some of the treasures: statues of Juno, of Paris and
Venus, of Bellerophon, of Hercules, of Helen, of the Sphinxes,
and many others. Some of these statues were huge: four horses
had trouble dragging away the head of the statue of Juno. The
statue of Hercules (by Lysimachus) was so large that in girth,
the statue"s thumbs were equal to a man"s waist. Bronze
work was broken up and melted down so that it could be transported
more easily; marble work was simply vandalised. Much of the
loot ended up in St Mark"s Basilica in Venice, which to
this day is a treasure house of Byzantine art — from the
golden chalices and reredos (altar screens) to the emperors
carved in porphyry and the four magnificent gilt horses cast
in copper.
Much of what survived the vandalism throughout Western Christendom
did so either because of pagan care or Christian ignorance.
The Capitoline Venus, a Roman copy of Praxiteles" Aphrodite
of Cnidos, was hidden apparently to avoid its destruction by
Christians. It was found, walled up, in the seventeenth century.
Another Aphrodite, dug up on the Greek island of Milos, is now
celebrated as the Venus de Milo. According to modern
experts it is not in the same class as Praxiteles" original
Aphrodite, which is "lost". Other statues, like Laocoön
and his sons, and the Apollo Belvedere, both now in the Vatican
Museum, were rediscovered during the Renaissance. So was the
Farnese Hercules by Glycon, rediscovered in 1540. Some statues
were vandalised but not destroyed. For example a statue of Isis
in Rome now leads a second life as the liberally bosomed "Madama
Lucrezia".
Not only religious statues fell victim to the Christians. Early
Christians destroyed secular statues and inscriptions. The great
Church historian Eusebius gloated that Caesar Maximian was "the
first whose complimentary inscriptions and statues, and everything
else that is customarily set up, were thrown down as being reminders
of a foul monster"*.
Vandalised statues of him were left as objects for jests and
horseplay for anyone who might want to insult and abuse them.
His portraits were destroyed and so were those of his family
— some were flung from a height and smashed, others had
their faces blacked out and damaged beyond repair. Similar fates
befell others who were not sufficiently sympathetic to the Christian
cause. Unsympathetic people were executed, and all memorials
to their existence destroyed.
The West"s patrimony from classical times is tiny compared
to what it might have been if the early Christian authorities
had allowed artistic taste to encroach on their religious prejudices*.
The little that remains has survived despite the efforts of
the more zealous Christians. Statues were buried, or walled
up, or cast into the sea to avoid the Christian picks and hammers.
Had the Christians been more competent detectives, and less
ignorant about the subject matter, then the whole patrimony
would have been "lost". An equestrian statue of Marcus
Aurelius in the Campidoglio in Rome survived because Christians
mistook it for a statue of their hero Constantine
Religiously inspired philistinism extended to all corners of
life. Christians were responsible for putting a stop to the
original Olympic Games, of which they disapproved. The famous
statue of Zeus at Olympia, wrought in gold and ivory, one of
the seven wonders of the world, was carted off to Constantinople
where it was later destroyed. The workshops of Phidias, the
sculptor of the statue, were converted into a Christian church.
Other wonders of the world suffered similarly. The Temple of
Diana (Artemis) near Ephesus was destroyed along with the goddess"s
statue. The stones were used for a "tomb" for St John
and a bath-house. A cross was raised on the spot where Diana"s
statue had stood. Another wonder of the world, the Mausoleum
at Helicarnassus, was cannibalised to build a crusader castle,
which still stands near the harbour of modern Bodrum in Turkey.
During the reign of the Christian Emperor Theodosius I, the
library at Alexandria was burned. For years bands of Christian
monks had been sweeping down from their desert monasteries to
destroy shrines and temples. They ransacked houses, destroying
all non-Christian religious objects. In 391 when they burned
down the Temple to Serapis they also managed to set fire to
the nearby library — the greatest library in the Western
world. Some estimates put the number of volumes destroyed at
700,000 (although enough volumes remained for later Muslims
to enjoy more fires when they arrived in 642). The end of progress
in ancient mathematics is conventionally dated as 415, the year
Hypatia was murdered by Christians in the same city, during
the reign of the next bishop. The great tradition of learning
at Alexandria came to an end in 517 when its world famous School
of Philosophy was closed down. Elsewhere, rival Christian schools
had to be eliminated too. In 489 the Emperor Zeno had closed
the schools of Edessa. The end of ancient philosophy can be
equated with the closing of the Academy and other philosophical
Schools in Athens by the Christian Emperor Justinian in 529.
Any possibility of intellectual opposition was now eliminated.
Philosophy was considered dangerous to Christianity. Philosophers
were persecuted and their books burned. Such was the persecution
that men of learning were driven to destroy their own libraries
rather than risk a volume being seen by a Christian informer.
The few intellectual Christians that there were had to be careful
of offending the sensibilities of the less intellectual majority.
The philosopher Boethius for example was killed by the pious
Christian Ostrogoth Theodoric in the sixth century. He is reputed
to have met his end by having a bowstring tightened around his
temples until his eyes protruded from his head. His death marked
the end of the classical tradition of learning.
Any pagan work that referred to Jesus, and any works by Christians
who could not accept the theology agreed at the latest Church
Council, were suppressed. The only acceptable literature was
literature that conformed to the official Christian line of
the moment. Gospels that did not fit requirements were discarded,
and their existence denied. Other writings were creatively edited.
Works by educated pagan authors were destroyed along with those
of Christians whose views were not currently regarded as orthodox.
Histories were either "lost" or doctored to make them
acceptable.
Numerous works by pagan authors were known during the early
centuries of the Church, and many of them were subsequently
destroyed or otherwise "lost". We know for example
that several biographies of Pythagoras were written. All have
been "lost". One of the most famous Roman writers,
Aulus Cornelius Celsus, wrote De Artibus
— a work that is known to have covered agriculture,
military theory, philosophy, law and medicine. He was a highly
regarded thinker who had a poor opinion of the Christians, and
unsurprisingly his work has disappeared. Parts of his medical
writings were rediscovered in the Middle Ages, and from these
it is possible to gauge the scale of our loss.
Often we know that works were still current in the early years
of Christianity: for example St Augustine is known to have read
Cicero"s Hortensius, then part of the school curriculum
but since "lost". Some pagan tracts were given Christian
prefaces and conclusions, and presented as original documents.
Thus the letter of Eugnostos the Blessed was converted
into an account of the wisdom revealed by Jesus to the disciples
after his death. Anything that could not be cannibalised in
this way was discarded. Thus, no Greek secular works were preserved
in the original. Secular learning and secular art, along with
secular education, almost disappeared. Some works were recovered
during the Renaissance. Petrarch, for example, recovered other
works by Cicero. Poems by Catullus were reputedly found serving
as a bung in a Mantuan wine barrel. In the nineteenth century
Robert Curzon found "lost" works of Euclid and Plato
serving as stoppers in olive oil jars in a Coptic Monastery
(at Deir el-Suriani in the Wadi Natrum).
The loss is incalculable, but the scale of it can be estimated
from the shreds that survive. Tacitus"s surviving Histories
and Annals are both incomplete. One manuscript of Lucretius"s
De Rerum Natura, "On the Nature of the Universe",
survived the Dark Ages. Livy"s lost works include his 142
volume History of Rome of which only a small part has
survived. Pliny the Elder wrote numerous works of which only
his Historia Naturalis survives. There is of course
no way of knowing how many hundreds or thousands of important
works have vanished completely — without even a passing
reference in any surviving work. It was not only classical works
that were destroyed. When they had the opportunity to do so
Christians burned Jewish and Muslim books as well. After the
Muslim city of Tripoli surrendered to the crusaders in 1109,
the great library of Banu Ammar , the finest in the Muslim world,
was burnt to the ground with all of its contents.
Some works were preserved because they were taken out of the
reach of orthodoxy. When persecuted Nestorians fled eastward,
they took ancient works with them. They enjoyed much greater
freedom under Zoroastrian and Muslim rulers, and established
prominent communities in what are now Iraq and Iran. Along with
other refugees they translated the writings of Greek philosophers.
For 1,000 years these writings were lost to the West. When they
were eventually retranslated from Arabic into Latin they fired
the revival of learning that we know as the Renaissance. It
was through this route that the works of Aristotle were preserved.
Other works survived in other ways. In 1895 the ancient rubbish
dumps of Oxyrhynchus in Egypt yielded, amongst other things,
a forgotten song by Sappho and fragments of "lost"
plays by Aeschylus and Sophocles. Archimedes" The Method,
a mathematical text, was thought to have been "lost",
but a copy was found in 1906. Christian scholars had tried to
expunge the text so the parchment it was written on could be
reused for a collection of prayers and liturgies, but they had
not done a sufficiently thorough job of erasing the original
text. There is no way of telling how many other such palimpsests
there are on which they did a more thorough job.
A common claim made by Christians is that Christianity single-handedly
kept alight the guttering flame of learning during the Dark
Ages, in the face of marauding wild barbarians. The truth is
almost the exact opposite. The Church was largely responsible
for plunging western Europe into ignorance and darkness. Towards
the end of the fourth century for example Goths destroyed much
of the Western Empire, including great cities like Delphi and
Athens. But these Goths were not the pagan barbarians of traditional
history books, they were Christians. These barbarians marched
with bibles at the head of their armies. When they besieged
Rome it was not, as is often supposed, pagans besieging civilised
Christians but for the most part Christians besieging civilised
pagans. To be sure there were some Christians in the city, but
there is no reason to suppose that their faith was stronger
than that of their bishop. Their bishop (now regarded as a Pope)
consented to pagan sacrifices on the altar of St Peter"s
in order to save the city from the Christian hordes at its gates.
The Visigoths in Spain and southern Gaul, and the Ostrogoths
in Italy were also Arian Christians. So too, the Vandals who
plundered Gaul, Spain and North Africa were bible-toting Christian
believers. Popular stories about pagan barbarians sacking Rome
are pure fantasy. Rome was still in good shape until the middle
of the sixth century when the Christian Emperor Justinian tried
to reconnect Italy to the Empire. The city was repeatedly besieged
and plundered by Christian forces. The Christian Emperor Constans
II completed the destruction in 664 when he removed the last
items of value, including any metal he could lay hands on, not
only statues but also bronze fittings and lead roofs —
even metal clamps and ties that kept the stone walls together.
Rain and weather did further damage, but there was still enough
left for later Christians to exceed the efforts of all their
predecessors.
Europe
... the popes wantonly ruined more of ancient Rome than Goths
or Saracens had ever managed.
Guidebook to Rome*
The true torchbearers during the Dark Ages were Arabs, Jews,
heretics and pagans who kept alive pre-Christian teachings.
In western Europe Christianity enforced a monopoly of thought,
and the consequence of this was that Western Christendom spent
the Middle Ages in abject ignorance, regarded by Byzantines
and Muslims alike as hopeless philistines. Pope Paul II, a nepotist
and murderer, epitomised Western Christianity at the end of
the medieval period. When in 1466 the historian Bartolomeo Platina
commented on his ignorance, His Holiness had him imprisoned
and tortured. The same pope suppressed the Roman Academy, which
he thought encouraged paganism, and also banned the reading
of ancient poets by Roman children.
How great was Europe"s cultural loss can be assessed by
comparing the state of civilisation under the ancient Greeks
with that of Christendom at the close of the Middle Ages, almost
2,000 years later. All of these areas of cultural endeavour
had flourished under the Greeks — many of them are discussed
in more detail elsewhere in this book.
| Area |
Fate under Christian hegemony |
| Architecture: |
Stone buildings that had been built extensively for private
and public purposes were now limited to military and ecclesiastical
structures. Existing public buildings (forums, libraries,
odeons, theatres, amphitheatres, stadia, hippodromes, circuses,
schools, gymnasia, temples, baths, etc.) were often vandalised
or destroyed. Many building techniques were forgotten. |
| Education: |
Where even the poor had been taught to read and write
in pagan times, and the rich had been expected to build
public schools, education became a Church monopoly, and
was denied to all except prospective priests and sons of
the rich. The syllabus was restricted to Christian indoctrination. |
| Dance: |
Dance was prohibited as pagan and tending to promote lust. |
| Democracy: |
Democracy was condemned as un-Christian, since the Bible
presupposed kingdoms. |
| History: |
Factual history was replaced by fabrications and propaganda
(such as “legends”), except for sympathetic
chronicles that did not reflect badly on the Church. Unsympathetic
histories were "lost". |
| Law: |
Law was converted from an instrument of justice to a system
featuring trials by ordeal, frequently serving the interests
of the Church and denying the principles of natural justice.
Inequality was a fundamental principle of ecclesiastical
law. |
| Literature: |
All literature, including the Bible, was banned to the
population at large. The few who were allowed to learn to
read were restricted to prayer books and Christian Legends
presented as fact. Other books were generally destroyed
or hidden away in monasteries. |
| Mathematics: |
This was limited within the Church to the arithmetic
necessary to calculate the date of Easter. Otherwise it
was treated with suspicion or hostility. |
| Medicine: |
All medical progress was halted. Illness was considered
to be a punishment for sin. Hygiene and public health were
abandoned as un-Christian. |
| Music & Singing: |
Music and singing were periodically restricted to Church
music. Otherwise they were regarded as satanic. Classical
opera died out under the Christian hegemony — it was
re-introduced in the sixteenth century. |
| Natural history: |
The study of nature, popular in the ancient world, stagnated
until the Enlightenment. Research was suppressed until then
because the Church insisted on a literal interpretation
of the Bible and its infallibility as a handbook of all
world knowledge. |
| Painting and Art: |
All representation was first banned, then restricted to
religious themes from the fifth century. Existing non-Christian
art was destroyed. The rules of perspective, known in ancient
times, were “lost” until rediscovered by Brualleschi
at the dawn of the Renaissance. In 1563, the Council of
Trent confirmed Art as a conformist naturalistic propaganda
tool. |
| Philosophy: |
A Church monopoly was established. The subject was then
reduced to scholasticism. Existing philosophical works were
destroyed. No significant progress (except by “heretics”)
was to take place until Cosimo de" Medici revived ancient
philosophy with his Platonic Academy in Florence* |
| Public Service: |
The charitable endowment of public buildings (schools,
libraries, theatres, sports stadia, baths, etc.) ceased
almost completely when the Church enjoyed total control.
Almost every village in Europe has a medieval church, generally
built in better materials than any other local building.
A vanishingly small number have comparable church built
schools, hospitals or other useful public buildings. The
first modern public library was founded by Cosimo de"
Medici, “godfather” to the Renaissance* |
| Sculpture: |
  Non-religious
sculpture ceased to be produced. The best examples from
antiquity were "lost". Inferior material was produced
for the Church, generally for propaganda purposes. Nothing
comparable in quality to classical work was produced until
the Enlightenment. |
| Sport: |
Sports were suppressed, along with international sporting
events. They were replaced by various kinds of animal torture
and pastimes too local to be controlled by the Church. |
| Theatre: |
Acting was banned, except for propaganda purposes: religious
ceremonies, mystery plays and morality plays. |
It is notable that all of these areas flourished again as the
dead hand of the Church was progressively relaxed, its claws
prized off by Renaissance Humanists, Enlightenment thinkers,
scientists and secular philosophers.
Church vandalism continued for centuries after the Middle Ages.
The canopy under the dome of the present St Peter"s is
made from 200 tons of bronze stripped from the Pantheon in the
sixteenth century (the rest reputedly went to make papal canon).
Construction of St Peter"s had been started by Bramante.
He destroyed much that could have been preserved from the old
basilica, and pillaged various old buildings for marble and
other materials. Raphael, who took over after his death, called
him Ruinante. Roman Christians were not content with
destroying their own city. Rome, the Eternal Parasite,
is still furnished with treasures pillaged from elsewhere. There
are for example more large obelisks in Rome than remain in Egypt.
Book burning — that favourite activity of the Christians
throughout the Dark Ages — continued after the Middle
Ages. When 240 wagonloads of Jewish books were burned in 1242
the incident provoked an official inquiry. A committee, including
the great churchman Albertus Magnus, was appointed by Pope Innocent
IV. The committee approved of the destruction of the books.
As a result more mass burnings were held. Talmudic studies were
banned, and centres of Jewish scholarship were destroyed. In
1415 a papal bull forbade Jews to possess or read the Talmud.
Hundreds of thousands of Jewish books, including rare manuscripts,
were burned in Italy by the Roman Inquisition. In 1629 an Italian
cardinal could boast of having collected 10,000 Jewish books
for destruction*. Classical
books, if discovered, were burned or hidden, Arabic books were
burned, heretical books were burned, books exposing forgery
and corruption were burned, books containing original thought
were burned. Not only were factual information and opinions
in need of suppression. Some churchman could generally be found
to condemn any item of innocent fun, amusement, interest or
beauty. In 1497 the Christian citizens of Florence were inspired
by the Friar Savonarola (and armed guards) to burn material
possessions. Countless works of art went onto a "bonfire
of the vanities". Pictures, books, musical instruments,
songs, poems, even jewellery — all were consigned to the
flames. Known books included works by Ovid, Cicero, Boccaccio,
Petrarch, and Poliziano. One bonfire, lit on Shrove Tuesday
1497, was 100 feet wide and sixty feet high. The crowd sang
Te Deum laudamus as it burned.
Soon the Church would be suppressing nudity too. Paul IV (pope
1555-1559), defaced many statues and paintings by covering up
or painting over disconcerting genitals. Michelangelo"s
Last Judgement in the Sistine Chapel was sanitised
in this way, the artist who carried out the task, Daniel of
Volterra, earning the nickname il braghettone ("the
trouserer"). Innocent X (pope 1644-1655) installed metal
fig leaves on the nude statues in the Vatican.
Numerous keen Christians have occupied their time in chipping
the genitals off male statues throughout Christendom. This is
one of the areas where Protestants and nonconformists have excelled
Roman Catholics. In the nineteenth century notable figures like
Comstock campaigned in the USA to protect the public from much
of the greatest art ever produced. Others established pressure
groups to clothe animals and to suppress other manifestations
of vice. Such attitudes persisted throughout the twentieth century.
In 1996 devout American Christians mounted a campaign to have
two statues used for the Olympic Games covered up. They were
offended that representations of human figures should be furnished
with genitalia. Not so long before that the Australian authorities
had impounded a copy of Michelangelo"s David on the grounds
that it was indecent.
Ancient monuments throughout Europe also suffered at the hands
of Christians. Following the methods advocated by Pope Gregory
I, wherever the Church spread it destroyed or took over the
sites held holy by the local inhabitants. In Britain the traditional
holy sites included yew groves, which helps to explain why yew
trees are so common in English churchyards to this day. Neolithic
stones were revered too. Churches were often built next to them
in the hope that they would inherit the stones" sanctity.
In this way the Church could represent itself as belonging to
an existing sacred tradition. Christian churches were sometimes
built within ancient circles.
In later centuries, when the population had been converted
and the earlier beliefs forgotten the Church could denounce
the ancient stones as satanic, and set about destroying them.
Many ancient standing stones were vandalised by the Church on
this pretext. Lacking the elementary technology for splitting
them, priests often had them tipped over or buried in pits.
Later, they rediscovered an ancient method of breaking up large
stones. They lit a fire around the stones, then doused them
with water so that the thermal shock splintered them. The practice
was called stone killing. It was popular wherever ancient
stones were to be found, and its religious significance was
clearly recognised.
Everywhere the Church took hold, it made a point of either
adopting local gods as saints or denouncing them as satanic.
Sacred trees, groves and other sites were desecrated everywhere.
St Martin had felled holy trees in Gaul in the fourth century.
John of Ephesus felled them in Asia Minor in the sixth century.
Other zealous Christians committed arboreal genocide all around
the Mediterranean. In the 770s a holy wood at Eresburg, also
sacred to the Saxons, was taken in battle by Charlemagne. The
victorious Christian forces destroyed the holy irminsul, a tall
pillar in the wood representing the world-tree Yggdrasil. Surviving
Saxon boys were carried off to be indoctrinated and trained
as missionaries. Sometimes, for policy reasons, the sacred places
were tolerated for a while, but the end result was much the
same. As Robert Graves explained of Ireland:
...the age of toleration did not last long; once Irish princes
lost the privilege of appointing bishops from their own sept,
and iconoclasts were politically strong enough to begin their
righteous work, the axe rose and fell on every sacred hill*.
Prince Vladimir"s forcible conversions in Russia around
AD 1000 were complemented by the destruction of an image of
the god Perun, at Kiev. Such destruction was adduced as evidence
of the powerlessness of pagan gods, although it cannot have
proved more than the destruction of Christian icons by Muslims
and other iconoclasts. It merely deprived Europe of its history.
Darvell Gathern, the wooden image of a Welsh god, was brought
to London to be publicly burned in the 1530s. The result of
such destruction is that we now know much less about pre-Christian
European cultures than we otherwise would. We know next to nothing
about Druidism, the religion of the ancient Britons. Neither
do we know much about our Anglo-Saxon ancestors. Their extensive
writings are for the most part "lost". The only substantial
early ones that have survived, such as Beowulf, are
ones that deal with Christian themes. We know little about the
related Germanic and Norse religions either. Some of what we
do know comes from Iceland, where Christianity was late on the
scene, although even there much history was lost, including
an unknown number of Eddas (collections of folk-tales) and even
histories of the Kings of Norway written in Latin*.
Without Christianity the European patrimony from the ancient
world might have been ten times what it is; perhaps a hundred
times; perhaps a thousand times; perhaps more. We shall never
know.
…it is putting a very high value on one"s conjectures
to roast a man alive on the strength of them.
Montaigne (1533-1592), Essay "Of Cripples"
Once Europe was won, European Christians began to spread the
word more widely. Europeans had rediscovered the Canary Isles,
known to the ancients, in 1336. The native people, called Guanches,
become subject to a Christian monarch. They originally numbered
between 80,000 and 100,000, but within 200 years they had been
wiped out*. This style
of cultural interaction between Christian Europe and lands to
the west and south was to become a regular pattern.
Christopher Columbus was a devout Christian. In his Book
of Prophecies he made it clear that he felt himself to
have been chosen by God. In later life he sometimes wore the
habit of a Franciscan. His vocation was partly to find gold
to finance a new crusade against the Muslims and partly to bring
Christianity to the benighted heathen. The winning of new souls
for God was a principal objective of his westward voyages. Wherever
he went he made a point of leaving a cross standing as a mark
of Christian domination. The pattern in the Canaries was soon
being imitated on other islands. On Hispaniola, Columbus"s
men were instructed to reduce the country to the service of
the Roman Catholic Sovereigns Ferdinand and Isabella. The native
Tainos soon discovered the ramifications of this. Christians
kidnapped Taino boys for slaves and Taino women for concubines.
They hunted Taino men with dogs, for sport, then killed them.
Public burnings at the stake were introduced. So were clippings
of noses and ears, and the lopping off of limbs. A form of slavery
was introduced under the euphemistic name of encomienda.
If a recalcitrant Taino killed a Christian, 100 Tainos would
be killed in retribution. Sometimes the Tainos would be hanged
from gallows then fires lit underneath them. They were roasted
alive in groups of thirteen "in honour and reverence for
our Redeemer and the 12 apostles"*.
The new Christian masters picked up infants, held them by their
feet, and smashed their brains out against rocks.
By the time Columbus returned to Spain in 1496 he had not managed
to convert a single Taino. Partly through wanton murder and
partly through infectious diseases brought from Europe, the
population of Hispaniola fell rapidly. In 1492, when Columbus
planted his first cross, the Taino population of Hispaniola
had probably been somewhere between 3 and 8 million. By the
mid-sixteenth century the Tainos were extinct*.
Disease could have decimated the population but could not have
extirpated it. Genocide such as this was the work of man and
his Christian God, not of nature. Christians developed fictions
to justify their behaviour. A popular one was that their victims
were so bestial that it was doubtful whether they were human
at all. Sub-humans did not have souls, so it could not matter
what was done to them. Such sub-humans might look fully human,
but their true natures were given away by activities such as
cannibalism and sodomy. Almost every society that Christians
encountered was sooner or later accused of these practices and
thus dehumanised (as were heretical sects within Christendom).
There is no real evidence — linguistic, historical, archaeological
or anthropological — that cannibalism was any more widespread
in the Caribbean or the Americas, or among heretics, than it
was among orthodox Christians*.
Cortés, the leader of the Conquistadores was
another keen Christian. He carried around with him an image
of the Virgin Mary. The primary aim of his expedition to the
Americas was "to serve God and spread the Christian faith".
His record was even worse than that of Columbus. Here is an
extract from a proclamation read out by the Conquistadores to
their new subjects:
The Lord God has delegated to Peter and his successors all
power over all people of the earth, so that all people must
obey the successors of Peter (i.e. the Pope). Now one of these
popes has made a gift of the newly discovered islands and
countries and everything that they contain to the kings of
Spain, so that, by virtue of this gift, their Majesties are
now kings and lords of these islands and of the continent.
You are therefore required to recognise Holy Church as mistress
and ruler of the whole world and to pay homage to the King
of Spain as your new lord. Otherwise, we shall, with God"s
help, proceed against you with violence and force you under
the yoke of the Church and the king, treating you as rebellious
vassals deserve to be treated. We shall take your property
away from you and make slaves of your women and children.
At the same time, we solemnly declare that only you will be
to blame for the bloodshed and the disaster that will overtake
you*.
They apparently genuinely believed that they were colonising
on behalf of God. The country now known as El Salvador was originally
baptized by Spanish conquistadors as “Provincia De Nuestro
Señor Jesucristo El Salvador Del Mundo” (“
Province Of Our Lord Jesus Christ, The Savior Of The World”).
When Christian Europeans first arrived in the Americas they
had been greatly impressed by the indigenous peoples" simplicity
and friendliness, as well as their way of life. They thought
they had literally found Paradise — the Garden of Eden
described in the book of Genesis. The Spanish were so impressed
by Aztec medicine that the King"s physician was sent to
study it, and he spent seven years doing so. We do not know
how much he learned because only a part of his record has survived.
Some idea of the sophistication of the Aztec"s medical
knowledge may be adduced from the fact that they knew of some
1,200 medicinal plants. Much of their knowledge was lost or
destroyed. Their treasures were stolen, buildings razed, and
historical evidence burned. Valuable information about Mayan
and Aztec culture was lost forever. Religious, legal and cultural
records were sought out, seized and burned by men like Archbishop
Zumárraga in Mexico and Bishop Landa in the Yucatan.
Zumárraga, the first Bishop of Mexico, did his best to
obliterate all trace of pre-Christian religions — including
countless manuscripts. In 1531 he claimed personally to have
destroyed over 500 temples and 20,000 icons. If people hid their
icons they were tortured in order to force them to divulge where
they were hidden. Conversions were effected by beating and imprisonment,
or by kidnapping children to be indoctrinated into the faith.
The established pattern was repeated in one location after
another. Accusations of cannibalism and sodomy arose to excuse
Christian atrocities. Inquisitor-Governors like Don Nuño
Guzmán taught that the indigenous population did not
have human souls, and so were subhuman, and incapable of understanding
Christian doctrine. This meant that it was not wrong to rape,
torture, enslave or kill them. Living men could be dismembered
for fun, and their limbs fed to dogs. Babies could be seized
and have their heads dashed against rocks. This was no more
a sin than killing an animal — ie not sinful at all. Not
all authorities agreed with this view. One Dominican in particular,
Bartolomé de Las Casas, championed the rights of the
native peoples, but he was almost a lone voice. In any case
his objections to killing babies could be easily accommodated.
Priests baptised native infants before their brains were dashed
out. Now, if the babies did have souls they were assured of
immediate admission into Heaven. If they didn"t have souls,
then it didn"t matter anyway You can read an English
translation of the full text of De Las Cases's exposé
here.
The Conquistadores killed millions of the indigenous inhabitants
of what are now Mexico and the Yucatan. Before the conquest
the population is believed to have numbered some 25 million;
immediately after it fewer than seven million. By 1650 only
about one and a half million pure-blooded natives remained*.
The pattern in Peru was much the same: Christianity almost destroyed
the Inca civilisation. Knowledge of their written language,
like that of the Mayans and the Aztecs, was somehow "lost",
although it had been well enough known when the Spanish arrived.
Our knowledge of their culture is fragmentary. Following traditional
Christian techniques, temples were pulled down to be replaced
by cathedrals. Whole cities were destroyed, and new Christian
ones constructed. For example modern Mexico City stands on the
site of the Aztec city of Tenochtitlán and its cathedral
on the site of one of the greatest Aztec temples. Some remote
cities that survived for a time were concealed under encroaching
jungle and have only recently been rediscovered. We know the
Incas were great artists because some of their art has survived.
As luck would have it they depicted medical topics on their
pottery. This is how we know of their spectacular accomplishments
in surgery. We know of their interest in public health through
the ruins of their bathing establishments and drainage systems.
When Roman Catholics from Portugal arrived in the Americas,
their record was much the same as that of the Spanish Catholics,
except that they did not trouble to find a euphemism for slavery.
Since the Portuguese arrived in the sixteenth century, the native
population of what is now called Brazil has fallen by over 95
per cent from an estimated 5,000,000 to around 220,000 by the
late twentieth century. The indigenous peoples of South American
probably owe their survival to the size of their continent.
If it had been smaller, with no remote areas to flee to, their
fate might have been the same as their extinct island cousins.
In North America the picture was similar. The Native American
population was reduced from 14,000,000 to around 4,000,000 between
1492 and 1600*. In God"s
own country the only good Indian was a dead one, and the only
good Indian nation was one that had been exterminated. Nations
and tribes were systematically erased. As churchmen noted, the
dramatic reduction in one population after another must have
been arranged by God to make way for Christian colonisation.
God was killing, or helping kill, millions of Native Americans
in order to help the Christian colonisers. The modern explanation
is that European diseases were to blame. But this is difficult
to square with the facts. No doubt European diseases to which
the Native Americans had no natural immunity played a part but,
as in Hispaniola, disease can account for only part of the death
toll. Another curiosity is that non-Christian Europeans, notably
Scandinavians, had been visiting North America for centuries
without their gods perceiving the need to exterminate native
populations — indeed apparently without causing any harm
at all. The genocide brought by the new arrivals was, as they
said themselves, related to Christianity. Perhaps the Churches
were right. Perhaps God really did help in the genocide.
Wherever Christians discovered countries that were climatically
and economically desirable, the inhabitants were either expelled
or exterminated. This happened under Roman Catholics and Protestants
alike irrespective of the settlers" country. British Protestants
did it in North America, Australia and New Zealand. Dutch Protestants
did it in the Far East. French Catholics did it in Canada, while
Spanish and Portuguese Catholics did it throughout South America
and elsewhere around the world. We might know a great deal more
about the history of mankind if the Christian Churches had not
gone so far out of their way to destroy the vestiges of their
victims" tradition and culture. The purpose and history
of the great stone heads on Easter Island was apparently well
known when missionaries first arrived there, but the missionaries
were more intent on destroying information than on preserving
it. So it is that the details were lost. Sacred objects throughout
Africa, South America and New Guinea have been seized and destroyed,
and this is still happening today. Any small remote tribes lucky
enough to have avoided contact with Europeans are sought out
to be told the Good News. The inevitable result, which the missionaries
must know, is that their traditional ways will be undermined.
Some will die of diseases like measles, influenza, typhus, pneumonia,
tuberculosis, diphtheria and pleurisy, to which they have no
natural immunity. Most of the remainder will find themselves
without a stable way of life, deprived of their religion, their
culture, their way of life, even their traditional clothing.
Emotional turmoil takes its toll as well. Suicide was rare or
even unknown in many communities before Christianity arrived.
It was for example unknown to the Guarani-Kaiowa in Brazil until
the 1980s. Then Protestant missionaries arrived to save them
for Jesus. By 1991 their suicide rate was 4.5 per 1,000 —
almost 150 times Brazil"s national average.
As the tentacles of Christianity have spread overseas it has
become expert at destroying other cultures. Undeveloped countries
find missionary activity increasingly unacceptable. At the time
of writing over 75 countries have excluded Christian missionaries
as undesirable, and the number is steadily increasing at around
3 per year. Not to be thwarted the missionaries run undercover
illegal operations, referring to themselves as tentmakers after
St Paul, who did the same thing (Acts 18:1-4). The story is
the same from the Americas to Africa, Indo-China, and Australasia.
All around the world the sad refuse of humanity can be found
bobbing in the wake of well-meaning Christian missionaries.
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