As (I'm sure) the reader, I have heard so often used as a club the philosophical argument that monotheism would have taken the place of polytheism, as "superior." Superior in what? Morally, ethically, economically, socially ...? And, in the case, to be measured with an instrument, and on what scale?
If the measure was purely economic, we should acknowledge that sadly, not long after the rise of Christianity, the Western world is plunged into a crisis of the darkest in its history, and ended up straight in what was then baptized Middle Ages skinny fit and imprecise, require temporally extended process of economic decline on at least a century and half (say the Edict of Constantine to the final fall of Rome). Today we are accustomed to economic crises in the next few months, or even hours, are plunging stock markets, but also with the necessary distinctions, a century and a half seems a bit 'too much. On the other hand, the other that it was imposing monotheism in the Near East seems to have rather led, in turn of the century and a half or so, 'political and economic rise of what today we would call a "pan-Arab union ". Party like a gang of beggars in the middle of the sixth century, the Abbasids are masters of half a century after the east, ready in a few decades to take the rest of North Africa and to place their capital at Cordoba, in the middle Spain, through the power of the Umayyads.
Not at all, we have not. I would say that historical events between the end of antiquity and the High Middle Ages to be interpreted with other parameters, the religious conflicts so 'just as they taught in junior high I do not think c'entrino much. We must resort to social pressures, demographic pressures, famine and the need for new areas to the west to the tribes "Aryan" Central European, and for those "Semitic" Arabs. Those should be the reasons, rather.
Yes, Okay, but then polytheism? Here, I needed to record the introduction in these pages a written Manacorda Mario ...
from polytheism to monotheism
Mario Alighiero Manacorda
from "Letter International
This article is the development of the introductory report to the Conference on" 2004: a secular Constitution for Europe "held in the hall of the Capitol Protomoteca in Rome, Saturday, February 9, 2002 at the initiative of plural and secular society.
Every time I go up here on Capitol Hill, I like to see, as well as Marcus Aurelius, the philosopher-emperor, but portrayed as a warrior on horseback with his arm raised in a sweeping gesture of peace, even at the Capitoline Museums, which house the tomb of two of the last representatives paganism, Praetextatus the consul and his wife Pauline, who died in 384 and 385 of our era. In the tomb the couple turn to each other verses carved in marble, in which he exalts her, "the devoted friend of the gods and temples, modest, faithful, pure in mind and body, all benign, useful Penati" , and she brings him, in the twelve gods of the Roman Empire saw the cult of the numen multiplex single god, the Sun god was the same one that Julian the Apostate (relative of the family with him Ciconia was also part of the circle Saturnalia) was revered as an image of the God father, Zeus pater, asking to show him "the road that leads up to you." In their home in Macrobius Saturnalia imagine that communicates in Liberal, alternating, as in Plato's Symposium, and some serious disputationes sermo iucundior, we revisit the cultural traditions as "pagan." These latter were "pagans."
will speak of their age, but intending to make a speech today, because what took place and ended the conflict between "paganism" (a good word for me, I will use from now on without the quotes) and Christianity. It was born then, thanks to the marriage with the imperial power in its most autocratic phase, inheriting the seat of power, and partly, the shape of Christianity as a revealed religion, dogmatic and intolerant, the subordination of the Roman papacy, was born then the antagonism of the two powers, unknown to the classical world, which, throughout the Middle Ages through modern age, is still present as a conflictual relationship between church and state.
The short fourth century
Let me briefly recall the minimum information about the history of this century, by which to frame the elements of the great battle for you.
The century opened with the victory of Constantine against Maxentius at Ponte Milvio, in 312, when Christianity, the religion of peace, raised against the imperial banner of Hercules the cross of Christ as a banner of war: In hoc signo vinces! Can we ignore that the victorious army was not a Christian, until the day before because he knew nothing of the Christian view of his master? And both armies consisted of mercenaries? When veterans leave acclaim Constantine ritual with the cry: "Of you Servent nobis" in the plural: and only two centuries after the Code of Justinian will correct in the singular. As you know, immediately after his victory, in 313, Constantine promulgated his famous edict: no Christian, mind you, but pay, at least in form, and therefore polytheistic, "tolerance", but soon his will be the practical outcome ' intolerance, a religion imposed by force, through an alliance between the imperial power and ecclesiastical. Then, in 330, transferred the imperial capital to Constantinople, leaving the Rome which was the stronghold of pagan senatorial aristocracy, and where you looked in the papacy but a rival power ally. Meanwhile, not surprisingly only now, under the aegis of the imperial power in the early ecumenical councils of Nicaea in 325 and Constantinople in 381, Christianity called his theology and his autocratic structure.
In this consolidation of power as opposed Christianity, between 361 and 364 on the brief attempt of Julian "the Apostate", after which the new Christian repression followed, here in Rome but also in Athens and Alexandria, a brief revival Pagan, who was in the circle Roman Saturnalia of its high expression. But in 396, while the imperial repression was expressed in a series of harsh edicts, in the battle on Frigid River, bordering the north-east of Italy, the "peaceful" Christianity by Theodosius won once again at war, and in 409, the sack of Rome by Alaric the Visigoth Christians to put the final seal.
These essential events of the century, also decisive for us, and millennia of history, archeology, anthropology, sociology, etc., we still do not fully explain why Christianity has won, and why the war. Culling, of course, vacuous hypothesis of divine intervention with its miraculous visions and massacres in the war, we must ask: what were these causes? Perhaps, within the complex socio-economic issues of the general crisis of the empire, the attraction of the initial revolutionary connotations of Christianity? Or, beyond the chance of war, the deepening division between intellectuals and people who left in a solitary pagan intellectuals defense of tradition, conservative-looking? Or a cultural and moral superiority of Christian monotheism to polytheism pay?
From myth to dogma
try to understand how the events of the battle of ideas in that decisive quarter century. A
historiographical clichés that still reflects the ideas of the winners Christians, continues to pass the dominant image: from a political party, the other monotheisms and intolerant Roman polytheists, monotheists and tolerant Christians, Roman persecutors and persecuted Christians, dedicated to the Roman circus devoted to churches and Christians, some fierce and other myths, and so on. What a rewarding historical imagination! But is it credible? In reality this is vulgate to overthrow, but to do so we must start from the clear ideas about monotheism and polytheism.
Echoing the paradoxical definition of Platonic ideas which Cross said that they heard from an old Neapolitan philosopher, we might suggest a pre-caution: do not monotheism and polytheism of "Caci appisi horses", that does not raise these names or abstractions bodies, giving them the material substance of real things, hanging over our heads. These names or labels are nothing more than allusions, which we use in every field of cultural research, assuming a common meaning in their minds of our stakeholders. But woe to forget that they live under, in particular social and cultural, living people, different, and contradictory, and trouble to give them a positive or negative connotation. However we will continue to use them, even in quotation marks ideals, provided with this awareness. You can
tell at a glance that the policy is a conception of the analytic conception monotheism synthetic nature of the universe, even though neither the one nor the other is depleted in these forms. Polytheism, in fact, presents itself in two aspects: on one side as the worship of a multiplicity of presences or forces of nature, sky and heavenly bodies, earth and seas, mountains, lakes, rivers, springs, forests, and weather events and so on, the premises of our life, conceived as divine manifestations, on the other, as a multiplicity of widespread ethnic monotheistic religions, in which all people worship their ancestors or founders of the eponymous heroes or, in constant comparison, competitive or less between them. And even monotheism has its own dual nature, first as a reference, beyond the multitude of natural events, in their single principle, the other, a form of polytheism intolerant widespread, but "jealous" (the definition is Moses), so that their god is superior to each other, so the only real. In this case, the intellectual and moral superiority in the minds of real men, by any version of religion, the monotheistic or polytheistic one, would be demonstrated, neither, for that matter, so you would write the history of philosophy.
typical in practical the example of the uncertain steps of the Jews between monotheism and polytheism. Yes, there is in Genesis, the presence of a single god, but so confusing that in fact there are two very different gods, one creator for the power of the word, the other a master of arid lands, which will irrigate them to him who waits and crops. But is politics the patriarch Abraham, who confronts the gods of other kings, receiving the blessing and paying their tithes. And among the Jews appear even smaller ethnic gods, or penates lari, as between Laban and Jacob, uncle and nephew, who declared: "The God of Abraham and the God of Nahor judges are among us." And Moses, having to give the "gang promiscuous and-together ", who fled with him from Egypt, a god ethnic and" jealous "that he would make her a people, imposes a civil war, the commandment" Thou shalt have no other god but me ", which is anything but monotheistic. And during the monarchy, the worship of one god - clear sky projection in the monarch's land - will establish itself with the weapons in the fight against cults of high places, where they worshiped the gods of ethnic clan. And the ambiguous process from polytheism to monotheism will be completed after returning from Babylonian captivity, when, with Ezra and Nehemiah, under the influence of the one god of the Persians of Cyrus, Yahweh will be with the one God of heaven and earth and the god jew jealous of the people: and, unfortunately, is also the emblem of a racist theology that inspire you to repudiate their wives and children of marriages Babylonians.
As for the Jews, monotheism and polytheism always appear variously interwoven, and can show up hours tolerant intolerant hours. Remains that, in general, outside the moments of conflict, the politician and the coexistence of multiple gods, and therefore tend to see religious tolerance and acceptance of others' religions, monotheism, worship is too often a jealous and maybe aggressive (or missionary). How, then, as the Roman polytheistic society, accustomed to welcoming all the gods in their pantheon, would be intolerant? And how, instead, a monotheistic religion would pose a new and deeper freedom?
Coming to Rome, his history shows an unbroken succession of what Cicero called "insitivae doctrinae", that is transplanted cultures or religions or imported, starting from the Etruscan and Greek: the inherent doctrine, Roman mores, he said. Even Christianity was an inherent doctrine, a myth foreign peregrinus: but it was rejected. Why different? And what? For his monotheism, the costumes, or what?
The Greco-Roman paganism, at least at the level of educated intellectuals, tends more and more, maybe even in the Christian thrust, to be equally monotheistic, while at the popular level, and not just Christianity seems too polytheistic. Pagans and Christians were not very different, because there was, if not nell'oleografia, a unique type of both, and many were reluctant to decide what name or label, perhaps, and maybe think again. And Christians themselves were divided into sects, each defined heretical, who fought with ferocity equal to that used against the pagans. And they also believed in the real existence of the pagan gods, even as gods or demons: Tertullian called the circus temple of all demons, and in the face of this mentality the most thoughtful Cipriano where to write a book explaining that the idols do not exist, Quod idola non sint. So, where was the diversity?
seems to me that the difference between pagans and Christians is not so much the opposition between the two "Caci appisi horses" of polytheism and monotheism, as in a different mental attitude towards religion, or of some type. This myth is that the pagans, Christians dogma is: and here is the distinction between tolerance and intolerance. In the words of Plato, the myth, which is used when the reason is not sufficient to explain things, imagination is a plausible, that still leaves open the search, even if "only God know if this is true and imagination. " This pagan intellectuals are well aware of: Julian the Apostate, discussing with Heraclius, explains that the myths are to be understood in a more than human, not thinking but simply investigating the hidden meaning "and his speech left unclear whether the same" is Myth or true discourse, "and it shows even intolerant of having to resort to the myth," also forces me to make me an inventor of myths. " Myth is imagination and research, and therefore tolerance, dogma, unknown to the classical tradition, imagination is crystallized in absolute truth, is not limited to all imagination, and so intolerance. But Christians become truth in the myth, the truth in doctrine and dogma in the imposition at all with the force of power. This is, historically, the essential difference between paganism and Christianity.
tolerance of polytheistic pagans
Tolerant was the Roman religion: and the show with the words of its protagonists. I'll start even three findings going back to the third and second century BC, from the same Romans, Greeks, and Jews.
While in Rome, as among all peoples, there were human sacrifices in the name of religion, like the vestal virgins sacrificed for their shortcomings with respect to the ritual, it is true that Pliny the Elder tells us, that in 287 BC, the Romans, first of all peoples, the old law in the amendment of the Twelve Tables, abolished "those sacrifices in which it was considered monstrous thing to kill a very religious man," decrees "that no one was slain" (ne homo immolaretur), that is condemned to death for the sake of religion. A great principle, never respected by Christianity from its rise to power in the fourth century until yesterday, when the state power has finally been removed. And even more clear on the spirit of tolerance, the testimonies of the Roman Greek and Hebrew. The ambassadors of Locri, heads Livio, honor them because "not only worshiped their gods, but welcomed and worshiped with even greater honor the gods of others. " And the Jews, in the two books of Maccabees, but Deuterocanonical historiographically of great interest, not only admired them for their power, but also "because grant friendship to the people, and there is no envy or jealousy in their" thing , said by experts of a god "jealous", clearly refers to religion. But that is to say, in a city that Livy called it "very religious" especially in hard times of war, in general the Roman intellectuals were, if anything, skeptical or indifferent: they considered religion a collection of traditional myths as to respect their inalienable inheritance culture, but to rethink freely in private. Consider, as examples of their attitude, all'epicureo Lucretius, who began his poem with a beautiful invocation to Venus, along with "mother of Eneadi" and images of beautiful nature, but then denounced all religious mentality, to the point of crying "How many evil religion could persuade", and secularly thought, "God is the mortal aid the mortal, and this is the way to eternal glory." Think of the pantheistic feeling of Virgil, with his Spiritus evoke the life-giving and that the mens' spread to the limbs, shake the whole mass and mingles with great body. " O Ovid, At the beginning of the great poem Metamorphoses, a masterpiece of polytheism as imaginative analytical reading of nature, covers the eastern two myths of origins with the same terms as those of the biblical Genesis, but marked differences openly, "this story is true or the other ". And here is to ask: but because we forgot to Ovid and we wanted to recall that great but stupid myth of Genesis, and make it a dogma? And then to think of Seneca and his moral reflection, high internal investigation of consciousness, that the same Christians wanted to grab. Rather, the limitation of these attitudes is that signal a division between intellectuals and people who will be not the least reason for the defeat of paganism.
But to come to more concrete aspects of the diversity between pagans and Christians, Cicero here willing to believe in gods and souls to heaven in a large (you piorum Manibus quis locus ...), but he did not believe in omens. And Livy, a great conservative, which in its history carefully recorded the events on the occasion of religious wars and ludi, and against the indifference of his time, declared: "To me, as I write these things obsolete, I do not know how, I do mind the old, and forces me to feel worthy of being reported in the annals of things that men my saggissimi understood in public worship. " Religiosity, therefore, only insofar as respect for tradition. So it was incomprehensible sectarianism (today we would call fundamentalism) Jewish and Christian, a superstitio. Pliny the Elder, thereby associating the religion of Moses to the "magic cult," he spoke of Jews as "a people famous for his contempt for the gods" Suetonius "a race of people for a new and malevolent superstition" of Tacitus "a people prone to superstition and contrary to religion," that "his stubbornness and religious hatred in his relentless all ... considers wicked everything is sacred to us ... despises the gods and to the home base. " Where home now means empire that, at the time of Praetextatus, Rutilio Namaziano exalt said, turning to Rome: "You have given to different peoples a common homeland" (Fecisti patriam diversis gentibus unam). What seems intolerable to the Gentiles is intolerance of Jews and Christians. And these their judgments will be largely confirmed by the Christians themselves, that it will indeed boast.
Later, the battle of ideas between pagans and Christians, there is also witnessed by one and the other: both Neoplatonists as Plotinus and Porphyry, that the Christians Tertullian and Lactantius and then Arnobius, which relate the accusation by the pagans to Christians, "worship a man, of more tortured and crucified by men, "to" hold that a man be born and died on the cross was a god, "to practice in the Eucharist, in which the body maintain its soul eat into eternal life, a cannibalistic ritual, not justified even from his intention mythological or allegorical. And by the pagans, as recalled Arnobius was the question: "If you care about the worship, because they worshiped other gods with us and do not practice religious rites in common?". And the pagan Symmachus, a friend of pretext in the circulation of the Roman Saturnalia, in demanding the return of the altar of Victory in the Senate that the emperor Constantius II in 357 was removed, clarified the meaning of pagan religion in the face of the Christian recognizes that "everyone has their own customs, its religion," explaining that "almost all the gods, Greek and Roman and Oriental cults, are nothing but representations of the Sun," and warning that to include "a secret so big you can not reach for one-way" and finally, no more wondering if not to "restore the condition of religion that has long benefited the state."
That was the way to see the pagans, who just could not understand why you want to delete the old religion and impose another authority.
Religious tolerance in Imperial Rome
I will say: OK for intellectuals, but the imperial power? Well, even the Roman power was respectful, even curious about the religions of others: after all, this was part of not only the costume, but also of a political general of the hoarding can please all the gods, as well as the ambassadors had Locride. And here we mention some examples.
According to the account of the historian Josephus jew, as early as 64 BC, Pompey conquered Jerusalem and entered the temple of Yahweh, not only refrained from touching the treasures, but reinstated the priests and ordered expiatory rites performed for the violation. Caesar renewed the old friendship of the time of the Maccabees, and Augustus not only allowed the Jews "were to follow their customs respecting the law of their fathers," but granted relief to the income of the temple. Adrian mused to raise a temple to Christ and "ordered that all the cities you did temples without images, just those of Hadrian. And Alexander Severus, who worshiped Abraham, Christ and Orpheus, he wanted to raise temples without images, but was dissuaded by advisers who warned that the result would be that eventually everyone would go to Christian churches. And yet, according to the Christian Paul Orosius, in 244, to celebrate the first millennium after the founding of Rome was a Christian emperor, Philip the Arab who, apparently without too much scandal, he even ignored the traditional pagan rites.
Thus, even if the empire was inclined to recognize religious freedom for all. And even after Constantine and his successors, harsh persecution of the pagans, Julian the Apostate formally worked in the tradition of tolerance of Constantine, when he reopened the pagan temples so close without the Christian churches. It is true however, that in reviving the classical tradition, he demanded that the university "to teach all those that require ... beliefs have not conflicting with those who profess ": you can not, he said, commenting on poets speak of Jupiter, and believe in Yahweh or Christ. Asked, in other words, coherence, leaving the Christian teachers the choice to "go in the churches of the Galileans to expound Matthew and Luke." Morally impeccable: even if there is a danger that precisely his speech can be served as a precedent for Christians to take the extreme consequences of intolerance.
I will say again: yes, I agree, not only the Roman intellectuals have been tolerant, but also that we can define some emperors intellectuals have been respectful, but there were imperial persecution, and sadistic, and cruel. Alas, yes, even though their ferocity is not part of a religious persecution, but of political repression in ways that are common to all antiquity. And certainly not to fly over here reticence: they are things that everyone knows by heart, because if nothing else, are part of the historiographical clichés. But you can not overlook other aspects, less known and certainly more real.
You can not call the religious persecution first by occasional repression of Tiberius, Claudius and Nero, directed against Jews and Christians who constantly squabbling with each other (adsidue tumultuantes): after all, the empire he knew very little, confusing the two sects, pure Jewish and Jewish-Christian. The applicants will be persecuted as a result, in the general escalation of social tension in the face of insurgency often linked to the name Christian, which have become endemic, especially in the face and the incomprehensible refusal of other Christian gods: an insult to all other men, before a rebellion in power. The imperial persecution, as fierce as all the relations of peace and war then (only then?), Is not religious but political: as already occurred in the small against the bacchanalian banned in 186 BC with the Senatus consultum de bacchanalibus, aimed not certainly against Bacchus, but against a license contrary to maiorum mos. It is not persecuting the religion, but Christian intolerance toward all other religions, the refusal to be part of our common country. Christians were not willing to gods of others, does not want the others to the Christian God: and this intolerance, I repeat, Christians boasted.
monotheistic intolerance of Christians
Christian submissive and peaceful? Another satisfying historical imagination! Things were so? Here too it is necessary to correct the Vulgate Christian. Faced with the hardness of the persecutions, the Christian response was strong: in those years Christians will not be outdone by pagan, first imagining revenge, then in practice.
But, first, then say that he wanted to be a Christian? In that century of conflict could be long hesitate between the two visions of life. Intellectuals pagans could believe in a god father and Christian intellectuals could be pagans to their cultural background, if not for the costumes is known the anguish of St. Jerome, who had declared in a dream to God, "Christianus sum", he answered: "Ciceronianus eg, non Christianus es." The Christian theology itself is often determined before the accusations of the pagans, which arise as a response to the dogmas of the ecumenical councils of this age. However, labels or distinguish them sure, tell all about them. So, to show the courage of Christians will quote, as I did to Gentiles, precise text, they too did not marginal, but a constant in their attitude.
In 202, Tertullian, having experienced persecution, sadistically dreaming, in his book spectaculis, the punishment of the persecutors of God in the final assessment: "What a great show then! What will admire? What laugh? Where you will enjoy, where many will rejoice seeing the king, who celebrated received into heaven, groaning with Jupiter himself and his witnesses in the deepest darkness? And, like them, the magistrates who persecuted the name of the Lord, droop on fire than most ruthless cruelty with which they had on Christians, insulting them? ". Admire, laugh, enjoy, rejoice, as no one was ever charged intellectual dreamed of doing.
And, a century later, Lactantius, in 316, he also enjoys, sadistically cruel in their listing details of the deaths of the persecutors, all gone wrong for the Wrath of God (titles of his books), and comments: "Those who had insulted God lie, those who had destroyed the holy temple fell with greater ruin, and those who had stripped the right, poured forth their souls and evil in the heavenly shots deserved torment. " Already, the well-deserved torment: thus it is not the idea itself of the torments that disturbs Christians, but the idea that they are applied to them and not to others.
and Eusebius, bishop of Nicomedia and biographer of Constantine, has in prefigure the divine vengeance: "So they can destroy the enemies of Christ." Maternal And Firmicus in error De profanarum religionum, exhorts the Christian emperors to persecute pagans: "The law of God requires that your high severity pursued in every way the crime of idolatry," and how the persecution cites Deuteronomy which prescribes that if a brother or a friend drives you to idolatry, "the charges, and your hand is the first to stand up for him to kill him ... And even entire cities, if they ever are caught in this sin, it is determined that perish. "
And the holy Jerome, author of the Vulgate New Testament, speaking in the debate about the cult of stones (the statues of the gods) by the pagans, and the bones (relics of the martyrs) on the part of Christians, he used his letters in this affectionate and elegant language: "Vigilantius reopen his foul mouth and throws his breath against the lousy relics of saints and martyrs against us, that we keep ", so piously suggested that the bishop" him over the death of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved ... and that the doctors cutting through the language ... ... a monster, madman. "
and prudence, in his Peristephanon, celebrating the Christian martyrs, so does talk about the virgin Eulalia during the process: "Behold, I am an enemy of your evil religion (daemonicis sacris hostile), and the idols I walk under my feet "and when the judge asked her not to give up his god, but to respect the gods of the other," shudders and spits in the eye of the tyrant, then down the statues and treads on his foot paid in emmer censers, "and then tortured," she sings cheerfully, "until his soul flies to heaven visibly in the form of a dove, leaving everyone stunned.
The only certainty in this legend tones sharply sadomasochistic is contempt toward other Christian religions and is not, however, that some then charged, allegedly demonic enemy of Christian worship, has been piously forgiven. And Symmachus, declare that we have heard the inability to understand the great mysteries of life one way, another saint, Ambrose, answered haughtily: "What you ignore it, we have known the voice of God, and what you are looking for with your hypothesis (suspiciones ), we have it for sure by the Wisdom of God and Truth. " It is, by those who feel that he had won, the rejection of any dialogue and the imposition of dogma, and his conclusion is a rebuff: "Your ideas do not agree with our", to be followed, unlike Giuliano that he had made, the closure of the temples and the end of all pagan worship.
The same intransigence are the ideal reading the history of Rome, on the merits or demerits of the pagan gods in its history. Arnobius already quoted the pagan accusation against Christians that "since the world began to be Christian people, the Earth's orb was gone to ruin," and we heard Symmachus invoke respect for religion that he "had long benefited from the state" (Christians will reverse the charge, making it indeed a workhorse).
Among other things, then there was a revival of pagan history, with stories of Ammianus Marcellinus, a friend of Julian, and with Eutropius and Festus or abstracts of the Historia Augusta, designed to create awareness in the new Roman, unaware, bureaucracy Byzantine and I was accompanied by a revival of poetry in Claudian, Rutilio Namaziano and others, tired and imitate what you want, but not without its own dignity and human suffering. Well, just to those accusations, that hint at the history of Symmachus and Augustine seems to replicate, when the City of God points out in the entire history of Rome anything but an uninterrupted series of disasters caused by the impotence of his false gods. Statement, to say the least, paradoxical, after the sack of Rome in 409, Christians at the hands of the Visigoths, but for him that was a victory over paganism.
Not content with this, Augustine chose to entrust the rewriting of the whole Christian Roman history to his disciple Paul Orosius, who earnestly set about the serious task: "To your command I obeyed, or most holy father, Augustine. He commanded me to show how in the annals of past centuries had been able to find any serious wars, corrupt to the disease, sad for the hungry, terrible earthquakes, unusual for the floods, volcanic eruptions of tremendous for , for a fierce lightning strikes and hail of miserable for patricide and scellerataggini. What sadistic inventory of the evils of the world, to show that the triumphant pagan Rome, creator of the most extraordinary empire in history, had suffered defeat worse than the bleak in the new Christian empire was suffering, sventuratissimi time! How stupid, one has to say, since this was also the culture of the time, to write history as a history of horrors! One way clouded by hatred theological, unknown to historians and other pagan historiography.
reading these texts, does not really seem that monotheism, let alone Christianity, has made men better.
The most Christian ecumenical councils
While Christian intellectuals thus demonstrating the superiority of their questionable doubt monotheism, it was difficult to consolidate the alliance between the imperial power and the Christian Church, meanwhile, which was defined in the ecumenical councils. You can not read these councils as an abstract process intellectual, divorced from reality near these councils are incomprehensible without the obvious references to the context of the time.
The first ecumenical councils, ie the whole of Christianity (of Nicaea in 325 and Constantinople in 381, which follows that of Edessa in 431), which were held behind a score of local councils in earlier centuries, were badly affected by the imperial supervision . They first established the doctrine, but also to its shelter, the Church's position on top of the faithful and of course to everyone. But it is above the pagan polemic that they intend to answer charges of making a boast, and turning them proudly openly irrational dogmas.
We know that not only pagans, but also many Christians, like Arius, refused the absurdity of a man-god and the identity of the Son with the Father, God the Church is necessary for the foundation. Here then is a Symbol or Creed Nicea in ending the dispute by adopting the tenets of the Trinity of God (something like that already in Plotinus), made of a God the Father, Creator of heaven and earth, the only begotten Son, "begotten, not made but "who," incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary, became man, "and finally the Holy Spirit, which by then will not say anything, so that later in Constantinople had to add that" proceeds from the Father " (Without defining child, as Christ is the only child), but also forgot to mention that proceeds from the Son, so that you will do so later saying "who proceeds from both" (ab utroque proceeding), say St. Thomas in the Pange lingua. And adding that the Spirit speaks through the Church "meant devoting a power, not as descended from a man, but a" true God and true man "is autocratic, theocratic indeed, and meant to confirm the immunitas the bishop of Rome, "taken from the puissance of kings, princes, of entire peoples, knowing, who is sitting in, represented Christ Our Lord! supreme principle to every hole and every rule, sanctioned by the council in Rome a year earlier.
was the prelude to his infallibility as the Church was placed on top of his own faithful, as theocratic power, like that of the Empire. All these theological nonsense, the result of compromises reached through bloody conflict, and imposed as dogma, however, won him to define the ambiguous system of coexistence of two conflicting powers, Empire and the papacy, that church and state, torn between caesaropapism theocracy and, unknown to the ancient world, and that marked the Middle Ages and still weighs on our political life.
The condemnation of the joy of living
If such were the hardness of the great Christian intellectuals dogmatic intransigence of the Church against all the pagan tradition, it equally hard to say which was also the orientation of the empire now cristianizzatosi. From the initial tolerance of Constantine, although only formally declared, he soon passed to an intolerance worse than that of the imperial power are charged.
In this process there is an aspect so striking as it usually overlooked: it is directed against not only the manifestations of cultural life but also, and perhaps more fun in life, physical and intellectual, that is, circus and theater. It may seem paradoxical, but insisted the controversial Christian in mania play against life, giving rise to another, among other unacceptable vulgata historiography, that the Romans did nothing more than giving a theater and circus, and in the excess of the circus that was the main cause of the fall of 'empire. In fact, the pagan polytheistic society had shown a complete consistency between the ideology and way of life: life was playful imitation of joyous life involved weapons and culture, theater and circus, play and of both gender (ludi utriusque generis), intellectual and physical, were religious acts, for the worship of the gods and the pleasure of men (cultus deorum et hominum voluptatis case). For this reason, What a far cry from today's culture, Varro had spoken in the ancient gods, and now confirmed Macrobius, inter alia, that "cults are celebrated when they ludi in honor of the gods." Well, for this, not only much of the Christian polemic is directed against the ludi, but also the emperors She will turn against them: the cancellation of the ludi is a religious persecution.
Already some local councils had very severe penalties against those who fulminate "ludi in circuses, theaters and arenas breaks down when driving by coconut trees and pose fool." These convictions of the Church joined in a resolution at the end of the century, those of the empire: Emperors Valentinian, Arcadius, Theodosius and Honorius, in 392, 394 and 399, reversing tolerance Constantine and distorting the moral lesson of Julian, forbade all pagan events, mentally and physically, temples, theaters and circuses. A few years later, in 409, Emperor of the East, Theodosius II, continued to condemn the same and even more precise words: "On Sunday, the first day of the week, and at Christmas, Easter and Quinquagesima, prohibits all fun theater and circus, all the minds of Christians and the faithful are employed in the worship of God. " Mind you, our minds from the polytheistic and pagan religious freedom, has now passed to the monotheistic Christian and coercion not only of the conduct (mores), but also of minds (the doctrine). You had to be Christians by force, think how they wanted the church and the empire. With these, which seemed to Augustine "merciful laws," threatening punishment divine and human, is brought about something new and terrible, unknown to the pagan polytheism: it created a duality of powers, one of which involved the domination over the mind.
Paradoxically, this was manifested in the argument against life playful, joyful imitation of real life. Yet even on this point there is a historiographical clichés that "from these festivals the Christians stay away for reasons of morality." That satisfying historical imagination, too! The wicked pagans and all dedicated to the theaters and the circus, pious Christians and reserved in church! The fact is that the imperial prohibitions deny: it is forbidden except what we usually do, and in general the first reading that would make laws in history, is telling us the opposite of what they require or prohibit, in particular , repeated a hundred times these laws against theater and circus show us how they were normally violated by the Christians themselves. Moreover, they are often the fathers of the Church to show us Christians crazy and sputtaneggiare (bacchari et moechari) in theaters and circuses. And Augustine tells us that after the great persecution during which many Christians had fallen, lapsed, in paganism, many Christians who would take back "I regret this very dangerous and yet ancient pleasure."
What to do? Simple: "It seemed appropriate to celebrate other holidays in honor of the saints and martyrs, though not with such sacrilege with that luxury." In short, we changed the name of god which dedicating the "pleasure", but so was lost the old consistency between ideology and life, took off for their religious value of ludi mimesis of life seriously, which was the highest virtues of paganism . From now on, including ludi and religion, leisure and establishes a moral irreconcilable contradiction, and it will become a hopeless spirit of hypocrisy, apart from a lecture and practice, which will accompany the entire Christian civilization.
Later, in the years around the fall of the Western Empire, Sage, Bishop of Marseille, will return to this issue by defining, with a bitter play on words, "the public ludi mockery of our lives" and, giving the circus the blame for the decline of Rome (confused, if anything, cause and effect), add: "The whole world is miserable and luxurious Roman. Who, I ask, is poor and it plays, who, waiting for the prisoner, thinks the circus, and he who fears death and laughs? We also fear imprisonment of play and put the fear of death, we laugh. Can you believe that all the people of Rome is saturated with poisonous plants: dies and laughs. " This strange idea of \u200b\u200ba Christian Rome dying laughing is another historiographic vulgate, serious echoed by many modern historians, beginning with the great Gregorovius. Yet, how is it that in ludi, joyful imitation of Roman virtus, expressing the nostalgia of the old size?
theological hatred and its failure
The controversy still rages against the Roma prostrate. Augustine, who lived at the time Theodosius celebrated the glories of his intolerance, because the emperor exulted From the start of his own empire did not stop to help the Church through his troubled just and merciful laws against the wicked "where opponents are such because the wicked, and threaten the penis becomes mercy even to the conscience. But, to point out the inconsistency of the charges Christian, is worth the controversy of Augustine on the death penalty. The pagans, he said, are accustomed to killing, while "Christians do not kill anybody." Too bad that soon after added a tremendous reserve, which recalls the threat of Theodosius and resonates all the more grim after the terrible massacres of Gothic Rome, that he and his regret that Christians had not been total, a Holocaust against the heathen, "not kill anybody, except those that God commands us to kill "(exceptis his, Quosa Deus occidi iubet). And, for the avoidance of doubt, repeated and stated: "Except those, therefore, that either a law or right generaliter the same source of justice, God commands us to kill specialiter ...". And what is this supposed command of God, if not the will of those who proclaim themselves its representatives on earth?
This theological sadism, which kills by denying to kill, it is exclusively Christian thing: Remember the Roman decree, quoted by Pliny the Elder, it immolaretur homo. But in Augustine there's more. How often have you written that Christianity abolished slavery? Well, here it is again: "It is clear that slavery is rightly imposed on the sinner ... The first cause of bondage is sin. " And sin, according to him, and still later by Theodosius, is above all the belief in a god other than the one preached by the blessed Apostle Peter, and imposed on everyone from the emperor. And to think that Seneca had already written, and Macrobius repeated: "But why so much unjustified hatred of the slaves? As if that were the same to you ... They are slaves, even men. They are slaves, or rather fellow-servants, if you think that luck carries out on each other in equal measure its power. " Augustine was one of the great Fathers of the Church, that he has learned for centuries, the reasons for his faith and his conduct, even on these two matters of principle such as the death penalty and slavery.
And if, as proof, I have given here a direct reference to that "today, I tried to show that originated in the fourth century, is the new Catechism of the Catholic Church, 11 October 1992, and accorded the right duty of legitimate public authority to inflict punishment proportionate to the seriousness of the crime, not excluding, in cases of extreme gravity, the death penalty: a sentence issued in the heat of worldwide efforts to abolish it. It would be little, if he does not intend to justify my position by explaining that "in past, by the legitimate authorities is cruel practices were commonly used to preserve law and order, often without protest from the Pastors of the Church, who in their own courts have themselves adopted the provisions of Roman law on torture " . To say that the fault lies with the Roman law, and yet the Church, as he quietly took part in this murder, it was erasing all traces in the cultural tradition and in its playful imitation. But the paragraph in the Catechism continues: "In addition to these regrettable events, however, the Church has always taught the duty of clemency and mercy, has prohibited the clergy to shed blood" of course, leaving spilled material for centuries, on his show and under its supervision, to the secular arm of the state, and even sanctified as auto-da-fe, an act of faith.
And speaking of Roman law, how can we forget that Christianity which was not able to destroy everything that was charged, if he is cornered? Justinian, the emperor who, according to Procopius, was "practically illiterate, which has not been seen in the Roman Empire ... and in the language, external appearance and mentality he behaved like a barbarian," ordered collection of Roman laws (there is perhaps something more pay?) titled in the name of Christ Prooemium Confirmation de Institutionum, In nomine Domini Jesu Christi our ...". That impudent forgery history! Christianity or delete or hoarding of what is vital in paganism: accept the legacy of its laws, prohibiting or sanctifies his ludi, transforms the temples into churches, as in "Santa Maria sopra Minerva," replaces the gods with angels and saints, the pope called Pontifex Maximus, takes his seat, out of which and without which the bishop of Rome would not be pope.
course, the Roman imperial society, already at the time of Livy "suffered by its very size, had now reached the culmination of a glorious and terrible historical parable. Yet, it has kept the eyes of history, a fascination, not only for its size, but also a virtue that made her look beautiful men of the Renaissance, and that subsequent Christian societies have lost forever: the coherence between the ideology and way of life, between the doctrine and mores.
For a new secular political
glad that this will give my critique of the historiographical clichés is not the whole story or paganism or Christianity. However, one aspect of their history have not been refuted, which I documented with actions and words are not occasional, but consistent of their players: If you assume, you do not understand anything. I know, on the other part, that Christianity is intolerant and hypocritical, however, represented a high point in human history, living inside sharp contradictions (good and evil lurk everywhere): I know that his "give to God what belongs to God" can have represented a vindication of freedom of conscience, I know that in his name, next to the infamy of power, there are the works of honest and deep affections of many people who proclaim themselves Christians. However, it is true that it (especially in what was at that crucial fourth century) is unable to evoke any consistent historical imagination of beauty or grandeur, such as evoking ancient Greece and ancient Rome. Of course is that Christianity did not improve the world, did not make men better and, for that time which may have had a deeply subversive, revolutionary, let's say, was, as always in history, a revolution captured by a new power. That's how the story is always one step forward and one step back: a step forward in the development, one back in its contradictions.
Let me conclude by expressing the hope that - echoing the nouveau christianisme socialist Saint-Simon's two centuries ago - I could call a new paganism, or a new secular political: that is a pluralism in which everyone believing what they want, like Constantine and Symmachus, no one presumes to impose another, by force of power, his word as the word of God which is true, indeed the only "blasphemy against the Spirit": the only spirit that positively know, that man.
The fight against this taxation lasted for a millennium and a half, but was, in fact, a struggle. The history of Europe is not so much the history of Christianity, as the perennial struggle for the liberation of men from the imposition of Christianity as a power "Theodosian" the conscience.
