At the center of the Christian Dark Ages stood the Bible. This fabricated compendium of garbled history, borrowed mythology, genocidal conflict and pious platitudes was elevated as the font of all wisdom, even as the bonfires set by Christian zealots reduced the science of a millennium to ash.

In the new Christian tyranny all scientific thought which contradicted the Bible was suppressed. If rationality and observation contradicted the "revealed Word of God" then it was rationality and the observer who were in error.

"For the Christian, it is enough to believe that the cause of all things, whether in heaven or on earth, whether visible or invisible, is nothing other than the goodness of the Creator."

– St. Augustine (Enchiridion 3.9)

St Paul himself had instructed his acolytes to "avoid profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of science falsely so called." (1 Timothy 6.20). In the new Christian commonwealth free thought itself was under seige.

The Gathering Darkness

In the early 340s a fanatic, Firmicus Maternus, wrote to the emperors Constantius and Constans ('De Errore'). He was one of the first Christians to urge the persecution of pagans, for which he promised the 'reward from God.' The monarchs needed little encouragement – persecution began immediately, with pagan sacrifice made a capital offence in 353. Recorded Gibbon:

"The sons of Constantine trod in the footsteps of their father, with more zeal, and with less discretion ... every indulgence was shown to the illegal behaviour of the Christians; every doubt was explained to the disadvantage of Paganism; and the demolition of the temples was celebrated as one of the auspicious events of the reign of Constans and Constantius."

Even during the brief reign of the pagan emperor Julian, the Temple of Apollo at Daphne (Antioch) had been burned down by Christian arsonists. His successor, the sadistic Valens, restored tax and other privileges to the Church, rescinded by Julian, and waged a particularly vicious campaign against the dead emperor's supporters (in vain, attempting a coup under Julian's cousin Procopius). In Italy, Gratian chose this moment to seize the immense wealth of the Temple of Vesta, protector goddess of the city of Rome.

Within a generation, the wildest dreams of Firmicus were fulfilled with the institution of the theocratic tyranny of Theodosius and the subsequent murder of scientists, the destruction of libraries, and eliminated and silencing of intellectuals.

"All heretics we pronounce mad and foolish ... these are to be visited first by the divine vengeance, and secondly by the stroke of our own authority, which we have received in accordance with the will of Heaven."

Thus spoke Theodosius in 380 (Norwich, p118).

A new and darker culture emerged. In 397, at the 4th Church Council of Carthage, the synod drew up a list of approved books of the Catholic canon and at the same time instituted a prohibition on anyone, including Christian bishops, from studying pagan literature. Non-Christian teachers, army officers, public employees and judges were dismissed from office. Early in the 5th century John Chrysostom (erstwhile patriarch in Constantinople) recorded with delight:

"And as for the writings of the Greeks, they are all put out and vanished" 

– On John, Homily 2, Trinity, Sophists, Philosophers, 5.

He goes on to describe Pythagoras as a sorcerer and barbarian!

Within half a century, imperial edicts required the burning of non-Christian books. Many libraries of antiquity had been attached to temples, academies, and public baths and therefore suffered in the general attack by Christians on these vulgar pagan edifices. Plato's Academy, and the last of the pagan schools, were closed by Justinian in 529.

In contrast to the assault upon science and paganism, imperial patronage and wealth from the elite poured into a plethora of new churches, monasteries and nunneries – glorifying God and securing for their patrons 'a place in heaven.' Starved of funds, as well as legality, scientific research inevitably withered and died.

End of Scientific Method

The 'philosophy of the pagans' and secular public education were thus marginalised and eliminated. Lamented Ammianus Marcellinus, Rome's last great historian (who died in 395):

"Those few mansions which were once celebrated for the serious cultivation of liberal studies, now are filled with ridiculous amusements of torpid indolence ... The libraries, like tombs, are closed forever."

For those bright and privileged enough to seek education, career opportunities now lay exclusively within the hierarchy of the church and a Christianised state bureaucracy. With the active cooperation of the imperial court the Church had grasped complete control over education and, having done so, restricted instruction to potential priests.

Initially, rhetoric and grammar remained on the syllabus but knowledge which did not serve the purposes of the Church was suppressed. Mathematics, with its historic link to the 'demonic' philosophy of the Pythagoreans, was especially suspect:

"The good Christian should beware of mathematicians, and all those who make empty prophecies. The danger already exists that the mathematicians have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and to confine man in the bonds of Hell."

– St. Augustine, De Genesi ad Litteram, Book II, xviii, 37.

Some classic writers – Homer (in whose work Christians saw allegories), Plato and Aristotle (philosophies which 'anticipated' Christianity'), and some poetic and rhetorical works (Juvenal, Ovid and Horace) useful as teaching aids – were preserved; most were destroyed.

Such was Christian hostility to general learning and practical knowledge that access to scripture itself was forbidden to any lay-person who might still be literate. Preoccupied with ceremonial and holy pageants, within a few generations most members of the priesthood could not even read their own Bible. Ritual had replaced reading, iconography had replaced words.

Scientific method – empirical observation of the natural world, the testing of hypotheses and revision of assumptions – had no role in an age in which eternal truth had been made known to man by the revealed Word of God.

The Natural World Demonized

In this harsh and solemn world of Christ the rich variety of public entertainments of an earlier age were replaced by a meagre diet of pious ceremonials in which the Christian monarch and his retinue appeared ever-grander, ever more remote from mere mortals. (The emperor Hadrian had once been accosted by an old woman and chided for ignoring her petition; he read it. Christian monarchs could only be approached by courtiers, forced to prostrate themselves and kiss the hem of the imperial garments.)

The frequent public holidays – more than half the year during the empire's golden age – disappeared with the gods they honoured. The pagan festivals had not only provided generous leisure time but had brought nature and the seasons into peoples lives.

In the Christian monarchy 'Nature' was now seen as the domain of evil spirits, not a realm worthy of respect and exploration. Joyful public holidays were replaced by solemn commemorations of biblical events.

"The Platonists and their Christian successors held the peculiar notion that the Earth was tainted and somehow nasty, while the heavens were perfect and divine. The fundamental idea that the Earth is a planet, that we are citizens of the Universe, was rejected and forgotten."

Carl Sagan (Cosmos, p188)

 

The popular nature gods of a millennium became the 'demons' of the Christians, infesting streams, forests, mountains and animals – and of course the temples and shrines of the pagans.

The Christians, if anything, feared the old gods more than the pagans, particularly as they preferred a diabolic rather than a natural explanation for mishaps and disasters. Far from exposing the old gods as merely wood and stone (the fate of Serapis in Alexandria, for example), most Christians of the 4th and 5th centuries invested the pagan deities with a new, and sinister, power. Instead of contempt, now only the utter extirpation of the old gods could make the world safe for Christians.

God's Domain

To a plague of malevolent spirits was added the chastising hand of the Lord himself. Unlike the humanoid and capricious old gods of Greece or Rome – in the main, getting on with their own bawdy lives – the 'true God' of the Christians was pervasively interventionist, knowing every human thought, 'looking into men's hearts,' and able to suspend natural law at will.

The course of nature could be anything that God chooses it to be; human 'knowledge' of natural causes could be overturned simply by God's decision to do things otherwise. In this brave New World Order, divine caprice and cosmic lawlessness had triumphed and rationality had died. All that remained was to glorify God and await his judgement.

Flight from Reality: Theology the Source of all 'Wisdom'

As early as 221 AD the Bishop of Emmaus (in Palestine), Sextus Julius Africanus discovered that he could write a Christian 'history' by a close reading of scripture. His "Chronographiai" used the Bible to begin human history with creation in the year 5499 BC.

His framework was used in the next century by another, more notable fantasist, Eusebius, who shamelessly declared:

'We shall introduce into this history in general only those events which may be useful first to ourselves and afterwards to posterity.'

– Ecclesiastical History (Vol. 8, chapter 2).

Thus was history reduced to ecclesiastical propaganda and the Bible used to 'prove' its own veracity. In all subsequent histories (Socrates, Sozomen, Theodoret, etc) theology was the guide. For example, the Lux Ex Orient ('the Light Comes from the East') doctrine emerged which said that all civilization originated in the "fertile river valleys" of the Middle East, the scene of the supposed Biblical events.

This belief was largely unchallenged until the middle of the 20th Century, when scientific advances in radiocarbon dating and other methods established that some of the oldest great structures had in fact been built in northern Europe – megaliths predating the Middle Eastern civilizations by perhaps thousands of years.

Cartography takes a Detour

Whether willfully or by neglect ancient understanding of world geography went into free fall with the emergence of the Christian theocracy. Ptolemy's 1st century "Geographica" – a handbook for Roman mariners (which not only promoted a spherical earth, but detailed the grid system of latitude and longitude still used today) – was lost to the west for well over a thousand years, as was the 2nd century "Periplus of the Erythraean Sea," which hints at knowledge of southeast Asia and China. In its place, Christian scribes developed theological maps which detailed such unlikely places as Heaven and Hell, and filled in the gaps with "terra incognito" and "here be dragons". Empiricism was unnecessary. Records one scholar:

"With the Christian God established under state protection as the source of all wisdom, and the highlighting of miracles as a sign of God's favour, scientific and mathematical research became redundant."

– C. Freeman, The Closing of the Western Mind, xvii.

Mapping the stars: What Did it matter?

Mapping the stars was not an idle leisure activity.

The lifeblood of Alexandria – as of other cities – was trade, particularly the export of grain and papyrus to the rest of the Mediterranean, and developments in astronomy allowed sailors to do away with the consultation of "oracles" and priests and be able to risk year-round navigation out of sight of the coast.

As early as 300 BC Aristarchus had argued for a heliocentric theory, a sun-centred universe, though many thinkers continued to support an earlier Aristotelian system which had the Earth at the centre of several 'spheres' – despite various observed 'anomalies' in the movement of the planets.

400 years after Aristarchus, Ptolemy worked out a system of 'epicycles' to explain away the irregularities and maintain the geocentric, Aristotelian view. The Christians seized upon this Ptolemaic system with relish and their thinking never moved beyond that point.

In the following centuries, mariners were forced, once more, to rely on "oracles" and the ship's Bible. Hazards of the sea consumed unfortunate sailors and, with so many cities in headlong decline, maritime trade collapsed.

Banned by church, it was the rediscovery of the heliocentric theory by Copernicus which got Galileo into trouble in the 1600s.

In the New World Order  – God's Manifest Magic

Sources:
K.D. White, Greek & Roman Technology (Thames & Hudson, 1984)
Trevor Williams, The Triumph of Invention (Macdonald Orbis, 1987)
Thomas Crump, A Brief History of Science (Robinson, 2001)
John Gribbin, Science, A History (Penguin, 2003)
J. Dyson, History of Great Invention (Constable, 2001)
Joan Evans (Ed.), The Flowering of the Middle Ages (Thames & Hudson, 1998)
Lisa Rosner(Ed.), Chronology of Science (Helicon, 1999)
F. G. Bratton, A History of the Bible (Robert Hale 1961)
R. McKitterick, The Early Middle Ages (Oxford, 2001)
Michael Wood, In Search of the Dark Ages (BBC, 1987)
Frank Delaney, A Walk in the Dark Ages (Fontana, 1990)

Related articles Home Winter of the World – The Terrible Cost of "Christendom"   Lost World – Civilization Erased by Piety and Fanaticism   Dwarfs on the Bones of Giants – The Withering of Culture   The World that was Lost – Christianity Wrecks Civilization   The Rise of Christian Tyranny – Ruin of Public Health   For Good or Evil – 1000 years of Carnage & Barbarity in the name of Christ MAJOR SECTIONS Do you really think it all began with a sanctimonious Jewish wonder-worker, strolling about 1st century Palestine? Prepare to be enlightened.   Jesus – The Imaginary Friend Still holding to the idea that some sort of holy man lies behind the legend? Better check out... Godman – Gestation of a Superhero A closer look at the glib assertion that the Jesus story "got off the ground quickly and spread rapidly." What DID the Early Christians Believe? Many currents fed the Jesus myth, like streams and tributaries joining to form a major river. Sourcing the legend – The Syncretic Heritage of Christianity Much of the mythology of Christianity is a rehash of an older and even more transparent fabrication – Judaism. Jew Story – The Way of the Rabbi Human ingenuity and cunning is matched by mankind's equally monumental credulity and wishful thinking. Christianity's Fabrication Factory Church organisation, authority and membership preceded rather than followed the justifying doctrine. As the organisation and its needs changed so has the ‘Testament of God’ adapted accordingly. Dogma – The Word in all its Savage Glory From religious policeman to grandee of the church, from beast fighter in Ephesus to beheading in Rome, Paul's story has more holes than a swiss cheese.  St Paul the Apostle – Dead in the water? Orchestrated by ambitious Christian clerics, a cancer of superstition, fear and brutality was imposed across Europe. Heart of Darkness – The Criminal History of the Christian Church The Christian Heaven may have been a vain folly but the Christian Hell has been real enough. Hell on Earth – A Brutal Superstition Spreads Across the World Raised to the status of State religion the Christian Church reigned over the destruction of civilization. As the centuries passed religious barbarism grew ever more vicious. Winter of the World – The Terrible Cost of "Christendom" For two millennia Christianity's anti-sexual, puritanical doctrines have inflicted untold damage on the mental, emotional and physical lives of countless millions of people. Those SEXUALLY hung-up Christians – Loved-up for Jesus With a Jewish father (stern patriarch) and a Christian mother (obsession with guilt and heaven) it is not surprising that Islam grew up a bit of a tartar. Islam's Desert Storm – 'Christendom' Reaps a Whirlwind Heaven help us. The richest, most powerful nation in history has a psychotic infatuation with Jay-a-sus the Lawd! The Christianizing of the Americas

Some fifty articles are now available as a book. For your copy order: