Below is Chapter 6 of my book on religion, “Disbelief”.
THE SLIDE INTO INSANITY
The Romans were greatly indebted to their predecessors, the Greeks, whose highly-developed culture dated to 700 B.C. The origins of Western literature and learning can be traced back to these ancient Greeks, and included among the immortal contributors are luminaries like Homer, Aesop, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Pythagoras, Hippocrates, Euclid, Archimedes, etc. Their discoveries and insights benefitting civilization were passed along to the Romans, and the Romans took the baton and ran with it.
Over a period of about eight hundred years (from roughly 400 B.C. to 400 A.D.) a sophisticated culture developed around Rome and within its ultimate Empire that, even today, is difficult to comprehend. Great urban areas were made possible by huge, grain-carrying merchant ships; concrete; and, efficient water supplies. Roman engineers improved on the Greek pillar-and-beam design with the load-spreading arch. Iron reinforcement and cement enabled the Romans to build with pre-stressed concrete…and underwater. Aqueducts and drainage systems made public fountains, baths, street drainage, and flush toilets possible. Romans introduced improved methods of brick-making, highway-building, and agriculture (though the use of the iron-bladed plough) to the far reaches of the Empire. Some of the Roman structures built with these innovations still stand today, including amphitheaters, bridges, and structural masterpieces such as Rome’s Colosseum and magnificent Parthenon.
The Greco-Roman planning, design, engineering, and construction management knowledge that made these projects possible was seemingly lost to Western civilization after 500 A.D., not to reappear for almost a thousand years. Historians call this time the “Dark Ages”, referring to a sustained period of intellectual darkness.
How and why did humanity’s great leap backward occur and who was responsible?
The Empire Goes to Seed
The founder of the Roman Empire was Augustus Caesar. During his 41-year reign, between 27 B.C. and 14 A.D., Augustus dramatically expanded the Empire to include Spain, Germany, Britain, Egypt, and north Africa. He initiated a two-hundred period which has come to be known as “Pax Romana”, or the Roman Peace. During this period, up through the reign of Marcus Aurelius, the military was able to govern the far-flung Empire, thanks to a succession of “The Five Good Emperors”. And the city of Rome grew into what was, perhaps, the greatest urban metropolis the world had ever seen.
Beginning with Marcus Aurelius’ son Commodus, the Empire began a long period when its top leaders were not up to the task of maintaining military, political, and economic order. Diocletian, who reigned from 284 to 305, saw the vast Empire as ungovernable, and therefore split the Roman Empire in half and created two equal emperors to rule under the title of Augustus. This was the situation when Constantine ascended the imperial throne as joint ruler of both halves of the Empire. Unfortunately for the Western half, however, Constantine chose to relocate the seat of power to his own new capital city, Constantinople, in the East. Members of the court and the imperial bureaucracy moved with him, and cities and pagan sanctuaries in the East were plundered to embellish the new metropolis with appropriate grandeur.
At the same time, Constantine began the process of metamorphosing the Empire into a state theocracy. In the beginning, the Christian religion was merely a “favored” religion. But, what this meant was that Christian influence began to be felt at the Imperial court. Bishops had the ear of leaders, and the children of the Emperor had Christian tutors. When these young royals later assumed power, they had a different agenda than their predecessors.
The sons of Constantine, and most of the 4th century emperors that followed them, had little in common with the military strongmen who had so often seized power a century earlier. At a time when regeneration of the military legions was most urgent to keep the Empire intact, the juvenile leaders spent an ungodly amount of resources padding the imperial court with Christian clergy, eunuchs, and regents. The Christian influence was immediately felt. The bishops’ top priority was consolidating and utilizing religious power. So, instead of focusing on the very real threat of barbarians at the gates of the Empire, the Church-influenced royal court preoccupied itself with issuing increasingly vindictive edicts against the perceived foes of Christianity. Monies that could have defended the provinces from Goths and Vandals were instead spent on the new, top-priority agenda of ridding the Empire of pagans, Arians, and other heretics.
Under earlier rulers, heavy taxation on the wealthy to support the governmental apparatus and the military was burdensome to society, but at least the public was protected from exterior threats. After Constantine, crippling taxation on all levels of society was instituted, but the military apparatus was not maintained. The menagerie of palace favorites produced nothing, yet continually demanded more, leading to an intolerable tax burden on the productive classes. Industry moved to the provinces, basically leaving Rome as an economic empty shell; still in receipt of taxes, grain and other goods produced in the provinces, but producing nothing itself.
In the fifty years after Emperor Diocletian, the Roman tax burden roughly doubled, making it impossible for small farmers to live on their production. This is what led to the final breakdown of the economy. As Lactantius, a 4th century author, put it, “The number of (tax) recipients began to exceed the number of contributors by so much that, with farmers’ resources exhausted by the enormous size of the (tax) requisitions, fields became deserted and cultivated land was turned into forest.” The grand old city of Rome was gradually reduced to the status of a provincial city and entered a period of neglect and decline. Roads, aqueducts, bridges, and other infrastructure, now inadequately maintained, began to crumble.
With the Empire preoccupied with internal issues, it wasn’t long before the militaristic hordes of northern Europe came a calling. Rome was sacked by Visigoths in 410 and by the Vandals in 455, and in 476 Romulus Augustus, the last Emperor of the Western Roman Empire, was deposed by Odoacer, a Germanic chieftain.
In his The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Edward Gibbon held that Christianity contributed to the end result by making the populace less interested in the worldly here-and-now because it was willing to wait for the rewards of heaven.
At its height, the City of Rome had numbered just over a million inhabitants. By the late 6th century, the population was perhaps 30,000, the city was in ruin, and Pope Gregory I was in de-facto control of what little was left. The Church had finally “won” Rome, but little remained of the once glorious city.
Eliminating the Opposition
The late 4th century was a good time for the Catholic clergy.
In 379, Emperor Gratian chose Theodosius I as Augustus Caesar of the Eastern Roman Empire. After falling dangerously ill in the late summer of 380, Theodosius regained his health after he was baptized by the local Catholic bishop in Thessalonica. The grateful new Christian immediately set to the task of making Catholic dreams come true. For starters, Theodosius issued the Edict of Thessalonica, compelling all Christians to adhere to the Catholic faith. Thereafter, Theodosius was more concerned with religious correctness than with the safety of the Empire.
When he and his army entered Constantinople in 380, his first order of business was to wade through hostile crowds at the church of St. Sophia and depose the Arian patriarch Demophilus. Shortly thereafter, in January, 381, Theodosius issued the first of fifteen edicts directed against heretics and pagans. Over the course of the next fourteen years, Theodosius sanctioned: the destruction of non-Christian temples and sanctuaries; the burning of heterodox writings; and the exile or execution of recalcitrant polytheists and all who refused to believe, or at least to profess, the truth. Though never entirely eliminated, sectarian Christians lost possession of their churches and were forbidden even to assemble together.
In May 381, Theodosius summoned one hundred and fifty bishops to a Council of Constantinople (known as the Second Ecumenical Council), which issued a canon condemning all unorthodox belief as heresy. The Emperor followed up this statement of policy with six laws over the next thirteen years which confiscated “heretic” churches, handed them over to Catholics, exiled their bishops and priests, and forbade assemblies of such “heretics”.
In 384, Theodosius took on the pagan religions, by criminalizing all of the many manifestations of pagan worship, including torch-bearing processions, the wearing of garlands, the burning of frankincense, the offering of libations of wine, etc. Even harmless household gods were proscribed. Eventually the sacred feast days of the polytheists were made workdays, further eroding the popular support for pagans.
Whereas earlier laws enacted against pagans had often been mitigated or ignored by local magistrates (who were themselves pagans), now a magistrate who failed to rigorously enforce the laws would himself become a criminal. To the delight of the Christian priesthood, their pious Emperor thus set the entire machinery of the state against the pagan establishment. And, by imperial permission, the Catholic clergy became vigilante goons, desecrating temples, destroying idols, and looting the accumulated wealth of a thousand shrines and temples.
Limiting the Human Mind
Once the Catholic Christians had emasculated their un-orthodox Christian brethren, eliminated the pagan opposition, and became an integral part of the Imperial entourage, they set about to consolidate their religious hegemony.
Big-shot Bishop Ambrose of Milan, a behind-the-scenes manipulator at the Imperial courts of several late 4th century Emperors, probably described the arrogance and hubris of the Catholic clergy best when he said, “Nothing can be found in this world more exalted than priests or more sublime than bishops.” Yes, some of the elite bishops even felt that they were of a higher pecking order than the Emperors themselves. Certainly they felt intellectually superior to others. Or, if not, they felt they were smart enough to bring the masses down to their level.
Once Catholicism got into the driver’s seat in the late 4th century, a concerted Church effort began to dumb-down the populace. Constantine’s goal of imposing a single “truth” or “faith” on the empire was meant in religious and political contexts. He simply wanted the religious bickering to stop, and wanted everybody rowing in the same direction. However, when the leech-like Catholic Church latched onto the Imperial host, it was determined to stay there. One of the best ways to do that was to teach, insist on, and help enact Imperial laws that declared that Scripture and Church dogma were the only knowledge that anyone needed, period. As someone once said, “If you control the head, the body follows.”
The Apostle Paul, in Colossians 2:8-1, made it pretty clear: “Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ…But if any man be ignorant, let him be ignorant…For I determined not to know anything among you, except, save Jesus Christ, and him crucified…God has chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise.” In other words, there is only one “truth” that is important in this world, and it is the product that the Apostle is selling.
Public ignorance and lack of education was henceforth a goal of Church leaders, and something noble to be sought by parishioners. Saint Anthony, an Egyptian monk, said, “In the person whose mind is sound there is no need for letters.” In other words, a person of sound mind is one who will recite back verbatim everything thing that is told to him at church, and keep his ears closed to everything else. Thus, being a “tool” for the Church punches your ticket to Heaven.
Lucius Lactantius, the first Latin theologian, propagandist for Emperor Constantine, and tutor of the Emperor’s son, stated, “What purpose does knowledge serve – for as to knowledge of natural causes, what blessing is there for me if I should know where the Nile rises, or whatever else under the heavens the ‘scientists’ rave about?” Well, actually, if it weren’t for the discoveries of the Greco-Roman thinkers and scientists that preceded Emperor Constantine, most of the infrastructure of the Empire, the armaments that made the Roman legions victorious, and the industry that made the Empire rich would never have happened. There would have been no Roman Empire, and, thus, no tax monies to support parasitic Catholic clergyman like Lactantius at the royal court. He probably never thought of that.
In the midst of the insanity, there was a plea from one of the last pagan senators, Aurelius Symmacus, to the boy emperor Valentinian II in 383, asking for freedom of thought: “What does it matter by which wisdom each of us arrives at the truth? It is not possible that only one road leads to so sublime a mystery.” Bishop Ambrose, the then-Imperial tutor and spiritual advisor, responded on behalf of the Emperor: “What you are ignorant of, we know from the Word of God. And what you try to infer, we have established as truth from the very Wisdom of God.”
Bishop Augustine, one of the Church intelligentsia of the 4th century, declared, “Scripture gives no false information.” Uh, what about the sun revolving around the earth?
What exactly was the basis of this divine knowledge? A mythology and theology constructed, word by word, by pious and ambitious clergymen like bishops Ambrose and Augustine in the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd centuries. It was not the Word of God, nor was it the Wisdom of God, but, rather, a self-serving literature designed to advance the priesthood and make mental slaves of the “true believers”.
Basil, the Bishop of Caesaria, was another who preferred parishioners accept that God was unknowable. A difference of opinion from the Church – merely thinking for oneself – was the Sin of Pride. “Let us Christians prefer the simplicity of our faith to the remonstrations of human reason”, Basil said, “For to spend much time on research about the essence of things would not serve the edification of the Church.” So, now we’ve come to the crux of it: the most important thing for humanity is the glorification of the Catholic Church!
Heresy was a dirty word back in the 4th century. Roman emperors and popes alike spent inordinate time and resources to stamp it out. But, what exactly was “heresy”? According to Bishop (later “Saint”) Isadore of Seville, “Heresy is named in the Greek from its meaning of choice, since each at his own will chooses what he pleases to teach and believe.” (This sounds reasonable, especially since the Catholic Church espouses the belief in “free will”.) But, Saint Isadore went on to elaborate on the Church position: “But we are not permitted to believe anything of our own will, nor to choose what someone has believed of his. We have God’s apostles as authorities…” Yes, those guys that no one ever heard of.
And, if a Christian parishioner were to have the audacity to ask questions about Scripture, the Trinity concept, or about Church dogma, surely the clergy would be happy to educate the true believer, right? Wrong. As Saint Basil stated, “It should be enough for you (the parishioner) to know that there is a good shepherd who gave his soul for his sheep…How big God is, what His limits are, and of what essence…such questions are dangerous…they shall be taken care of with silence.” So much for the Socratic method…
Two of Christendoms most dim-witted, pious, and hard-line clerics were Bishops John Chrystostom and Augustine of Hippo. Chrystostom urged Christians to “empty your minds of secular knowledge”. This was necessary, one supposes, so that the Church could fill it with stupid ideas. Saint Augustine, on the other hand, was a bottom-line guy. He flatly declared, “Since God has spoken to us it is no longer necessary for us to think.”
For this, and other brilliant ideas contributed by Bishop Augustine (like the doctrine of “Original Sin” and the theological argument for “just” wars) he was later proclaimed a Saint.
Erasing Human Knowledge
Once the Church got its believers (and Imperial supporters) into the right frame of mind, it set about the task of destroying the accumulated knowledge of humankind. Because, in the Christian future, the only knowledge would be that produced and disseminated by the Catholic Church.
Book-burning was not a new tool of tyrants. Back in the Old Testament, it had been used by the Hebrew patriarchs for supposed divine purposes. “Therefore, behold, I will proceed to do a marvelous work among this people, even a marvelous work and a wonder: for the wisdom of their wise men shall perish, and the understanding of their prudent men shall be hid”, said the Prophet Isaiah (Isaiah 29:14). Thus, it appears that the God of Abraham supported book-burning when it would serve the purpose of his earthly minions, namely the Hebrew priesthood.
In 364, Emperor Jovian ordered the burning of the Library of Antioch. Six years later Emperor Valens orders the burning alive of the philosopher Simonides and the decapitation of the philosopher Maximus. Afterwards, tons of books were burnt in the squares of the cities of the Eastern Empire. Two years later, the Emperor ordered the governor of Asia Minor to exterminate all the Hellenes and all documents of their wisdom. In 398, the 4th Church Council of Carthage prohibited everybody, including Christian bishops, from studying pagan (i.e. non-Christian) books.
Hypatia was a world-renowned Greek philosopher who was the first historically noted female mathematician. She was the head of the Platonist school at Alexandria, Egypt, where she taught philosophy and astronomy. Because of her wisdom, Orestes, the Roman prefect (provincial governor) of Alexandria, would often ask her for advice. Cyril, the Catholic Patriarch of Alexandria, had a running feud with Orestes which came to a boil in 415, when Cyril’s backers (actually, 500 Christian monks) physically attacked the Prefect. When the actual perpetrator was apprehended, he was tortured and died. In retaliation, a Christian mob kidnapped Hypatia and took her to the Caesareum (Basil’s church), stripped her, cut her to pieces with sea shells, and then burned her corpse. When the news broke of Hypatia’s murder, it provoked not one outraged response from the Christian community.
Some historians view Hypatia’s murder as marking the end of Classical antiquity.
Unfortunately, Bishop Cyril’s buddy, the fanatical Emperor Theodosius I, was followed on the imperial throne by his son, Theodosius II, who was also in the back pocket of the Christian Church. He quickly declared, “All the volumes that move God to wrath and that harm the soul we do not want to come to men’s hearing.”
In 448, Theodosius II ordered all non-Christian books in the Empire to be burned. And, thus, he personally ushered in the Dark Ages.