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Month: August 2013
Excerpted from the prologue of Werner Ross’s Der ängstliche Adler
– Friedrich Nietzsches Leben (1980):
I
The two-volume work of Heidegger on Nietzsche begins with the lapidary phrase: “Nietzsche, the thinking man testifies to the content of his thought.” But in the following hundreds of pages he does not appear, only his philosophical activity.
Nietzsche had the misfortune to go down to posterity as a philosopher whereas he would have liked to do it as an apostle or officer of artillery; a lyric poet or composer; a revolutionary or reformer; ultimately, as a buffoon or a god.
Nietzsche argued against the claims of truthfulness of all doctrines, including his. He ardently sought for results: a reversal of all relations, the abolition of Christianity, the beginning of a new era. His aspiration was to divide the history of humanity with a single stroke into two halves. Instead, it has been classified with others; and in college textbooks his name appears next to Leibniz and Kant.
II
At the height of his self-consciousness, of his “delusions of grandeur,” Nietzsche came to think that the mere dissemination of his doctrine would cause the disintegration of the tablets of the law and of our civilization as the trumpets of the Israelites had caused the collapse of the walls of Jericho. But the earth did not shake nor the sun darkened when, in early January 1889, he went crazy.
Obviously, great works take time. Nietzsche indeed contributed to the destruction of something that, at the time, many wanted ardently: “the fundamental values.” He was convinced that his ideas were dynamite, but all blasting is, ultimately, a child’s play compared to the persistent action of erosion. And if no revolution took place after Nietzsche, at least he caused a radical change in the general climate.
III
Nietzsche became famous overnight the same year he was admitted to an asylum. But the person immediately disappeared behind the work, behind the exposed and fought doctrine. This work moved the spirits and divided them in twain; it also marked the beginning of a new era, which provided mottos and slogans. The literature on Nietzsche, for and against, increased greatly…
IV
In the circle of collaborators responsible for the historical-critical edition of his complete works, whose first volume appeared in 1934, the project finally came to publish a full biography of Nietzsche. This was undertaken by Richard Blunck during the Second World War. The owner of the Archive [Nietzsche’s sister] had died in 1935; Hitler had already visited her before and had brought with him as a gift Nietzsche’s swab.
Blunck was unlucky: the whole edition of the first [biographical] volume, which was printed in early 1945, was destroyed during air raids. The volume did not appear until 1953. Blunck died in 1962, when he was working in the other volumes. Curt Paul Janz, a professional orchestra musician that had received a solid philological training at Basel, continued the work of Blunck. The result was the three-volume biography published in 1978-1979 by Hanser Verlag. This is a thorough study that collects all the facts and circumstances of the life of Nietzsche. My work has a lot to thank him.
The following is excerpted from a big classic in Christological studies, Albert Schweitzer’s The Quest of the Historical Jesus, published in 1906: a scholarly yet readable introduction to the field of New Testament studies from a modern viewpoint. Schweitzer’s first chapter is titled “The Problem”:
When, at some future day, our period of civilization shall lie, closed and completed, before the eye of later generations, German theology [Schweitzer means what today is called exegesis] will stand out as a great, a unique phenomenon in the mental and spiritual life of our time. For nowhere save in the German temperament can there be found in the same perfection the living complex of conditions and factors—of philosophical thought, critical acumen, historical insight, and religious feeling—without which no deep theology is possible.
And the greatest achievement of German theology is the critical investigation of the life of Jesus. What it has accomplished here has laid down the conditions and determined the course of the religious thinking of the future…
When at Chalcedon the West overcame the East, its doctrine of the two natures dissolved the unity of the Person, and thereby cut off the last possibility of a return to the historical Jesus. The self-contradiction was elevated into a law. But the Manhood was so far admitted as to preserve, in appearance, the rights of history. Thus by a deception the formula kept the life prisoner and prevented the leading spirits of the Reformation from grasping the idea of a return to the historical Jesus.
This dogma had first to be shattered before men could once more go out in quest of the historical Jesus, before they could even grasp the thought of His existence. That the historic Jesus is something different from the Jesus Christ of the doctrine of the Two Natures seems to us now self-evident. We can, at the present day, scarcely imagine the long agony in which the historical view of the life of Jesus came to birth…
But it was not only each epoch that found its reflection in Jesus; each individual created Him in accordance with his own character. There is no historical task which so reveals a man’s true self as the writing of a Life of Jesus. No vital force comes into the figure unless a man breathes into it all the hate or all the love of which he is capable. The stronger the love, or the stronger the hate, the more life-like is the figure which is produced. For hate as well as love can write a Life of Jesus, and the greatest of them are written with hate: that of Reimarus, the Wolfenbiittel Fragmentist, and that of David Friedrich Strauss.
It was not so much hate of the Person of Jesus as of the supernatural nimbus with which it was so easy to surround Him, and with which He had in fact been surrounded. They were eager to picture Him as truly and purely human, to strip from Him the robes of splendour with which He had been apparelled, and clothe Him once more with the coarse garments in which He had walked in Galilee.
And their hate sharpened their historical insight. They advanced the study of the subject more than all the others put together. But for the offence which they gave, the science of historical theology would not have stood where it does to-day. “It must needs be that offences come; but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh.” Reimarus evaded that woe by keeping the offence to himself and preserving silence during his lifetime. His work, The Aims of Jesus and His Disciples, was only published after his death, by Lessing. But in the case of Strauss, who, as a young man of twenty-seven, cast the offence openly in the face of the world, the woe fulfilled itself. His Life of Jesus was his ruin…
It was easy for them, resolved as they were to open the way even with seeming blasphemy. But the others, those who tried to bring Jesus to life at the call of love, found it a cruel task to be honest. The critical study of the life of Jesus has been for theology a school of honesty. The world had never seen before, and will never see again, a struggle for truth so full of pain and renunciation as that of which the Lives of Jesus of the last hundred years contain the cryptic record.
Categories
Pinocchio, 1
Why I am starting this new series is explained: here.
In my blog in Spanish I said that I had recently watched again Spielberg’s Artificial Intelligence. Well, now that I lost my computer for a while, while it is in the shop and still write in a borrowed laptop, I decided to return to my childhood classics. (Sometimes it’s refreshing to forget the net and have direct contact with printed books.)
Artificial Intelligence is clearly a fairy tale inspired, in part, in Pinocchio and set in the future. I would suggest fans of Alice Miller to read the original story in an edition whose drawings respect Carlo Collodi’s tale.
Here is my Spanish-English translation of a passage from the preface of the splendid 1965 edition in Spanish that my father read to me and my brothers when we were little ones:
The error or the superficiality of many editions of Pinocchio lies mainly in the fact that the illustrations give primary attention for graphic designs, but without a clear interlocking with the text. In our edition, by contrast, the drawings have been made expressly in Tuscany, where the author imagined his masterpiece.
I sent the old serial installments of Editorial Codex to be bound by a traditional bookbinder: the very same issues that my father read us decades ago. Here I quote some passages that portray why the original story of Pinocchio is a perfect case of what Alice Miller called poisonous pedagogy:
“Geppetto had a very bad temper.” [Chapter II]
Pinocchio has not yet appeared and the story reveals the personality of its maker. Like many other distortions, the image of Geppetto in the Disney film as a kind old man grossly distorts Collodi’s tale.
But the Collodi tale distorts reality too, reversing colors like a photographic negative of what happens in the real world. Consider for example the following passage of poisonous pedagogy, in the sense of adult projections on a child unsure of himself, represented by the wooden puppet who aspires to become real. Anyone who has assimilated a little psychohistory knows that it is the parents who, over the millennia, have abused their children; not vice versa. As narrated in the birth of Pinocchio:
At that unexpected trick, Geppetto became very sad and downcast, more so than he had ever been before.
“Pinocchio, you wicked boy!” he cried out. “You are not yet finished, and you start out by being impudent to your poor old father. Very bad, my son, very bad!”
And he wiped away a tear. [Chapter III]
Of course: in real life it is parents who abuse the newborns; never, ever the other way. Collodi’s story is fiction, obviously, but in my opinion it perfectly reflects aspects in the dynamics Collodi had to bear with his own mother, with whom he lived all his life. After Pinocchio was “born” and escaped into the streets, the story goes:
“Poor Marionette,” called out a man. “I am not surprised he doesn’t want to go home. Geppetto, no doubt, will beat him unmercifully, he is so mean and cruel!”
“Geppetto looks like a good man,” added another, “but with boys he’s a real tyrant. If we leave that poor Marionette in his hands he may tear him to pieces!” [Chapter III]
He may tear him to pieces! The neighbors knew that this was how an acquaintance of them behaved. Although in that passage Collodi puts Geppetto as the victim, and Pinocchio as a miscreant who despised a loving father, the neighbors knew better. In real life, of course, runaway children do so because of horrific abuse at home. As I have had dealings with these children in Mexico City I have the impression that behind every street child, even those who I haven’t interviewed, there is a horror story at home.
It is very instructive that Collodi inverts reality in a story meant to subjugate the will of the child before the omnipotent adult. That is precisely the reason that his story became a bestseller in a world dominated by parents who want to “educate” their children through poisonous pedagogy.
Megalodon tooth with two great white shark teeth.
I have re-read my year-old post “Blaming the shark, sparing the Megalodon” and it struck me as solid.
Those familiar with my classification (see for example: here) are aware that “bicausalists type B” like me maintain a totally different cognitive process than “bicausalists type A”: those who basically blame the Jews for our woes.
One of the most important questions in the movement that both monocausalists and the type Bs avoid is, What enabled Jewish empowerment in the West? (keeping in mind that they never took over the media in, say, China or the Muslim world). We must never forget that in the aftermaths of the French Revolution, Adrien Duport, a member of the Jacobin Club, ascended the tribune and said:
I believe that freedom of worship does not permit any distinction in the political rights of citizens on account of their creed. The question of the political existence of the Jews has been postponed. Still the Moslems and the men of all sects are admitted to enjoy political rights in France. I demand that the motion for postponement be withdrawn, and a decree passed that the Jews in France enjoy the privileges of full citizens.
Duport’s proposition was accepted amid loud applause, which means that Whites empowered Jews; the members of the tribe did not empower themselves. To my mind, the event reflects white suicidal tendencies, with all the euphoria of a triumphant liberal Revolution, in a nutshell. If the West survives its current condition, historians of the future will surely mark this momentum event as the quintessential not only of French pathology, but of white pathology in general.
I am starting to suspect that my “bicausalism type B” stance is the reason why my metaphor of the witches’ brew, that I picked from Pierce, is not being taken seriously—let alone my initiative to identify each ingredient of the brew (yes: including the transferences resulting from child abuse).
If I could I’d poll readers of the pro-white blogosphere: TOO, CC, MR, OD, AmRen, AOT, AltRight, VNN and NWF to see who’s bicausalist type A and who’s type B; asking them to intuitively assign percentages of blame on Jew vs. White.
In such an hypothetical poll I would say this: Since Jewish power is completely derived from white treason I would assign, tentatively, a bicausal blame to whites approximately in proportion to the size of the Megalodon vis-à-vis a modern white shark (see e.g., this virtual image of these two animals in the sea). If this hypothetical assignation reflects reality, it would mean that white pathology is the main factor of the West’s darkest hour.
Of course, I could be wrong. But I need reasons and facts to change my mind rather than insults, especially because I still believe in final solutions to the J problem. (Even when, mixing metaphors, bacterial pneumonia is a secondary infection to viral AIDS, such bacteria is still killing us; we must get rid of them.)
I cannot emphasize strongly enough that I find it rather comical when either a monocausalist or a type A bicausalist drops Jewish names in discussions with me pointing out that some kikes were involved in the Revolution. The central issue in this debate is, again, that whites empowered them and precisely because of enlightened ideas developed by whites.
Moreover, if my reading of history is accurate, the most important century to understand our current dilemma is the 19th century. After those Jacobins I quoted above, in the next century European nation after European nation subscribed the French emancipatory ethos throughout that century. (The singular case of the U.S. is even more pathological as that nation was founded not only upon Enlightenment hubris in 1776, but even previously by the original founding fathers of puritanical extraction that used the Old Testament as their guiding star.) From this point of view, the 19th century was the traitorous century par excellence: European whites virtually started to hand over their banking, media and cultural institutions to a clearly subversive tribe.
I cannot figure out a best way to close this entry than to quote from the mentioned article “Blaming the shark, sparing the Megalodon,” where an intelligent commenter responded to Greg Johnson, a type A bicausalist, with these words:
Deinking said…
When 2 percent of a population controls 98 percent with impunity, it’s empirical proof that that the 98 percent is inferior. If they weren’t inferior, things would be the opposite. Blaming Jews would be understandable if they were 20-30 percent of our population, but when they’re just a tiny fraction and still rule over us, we have no one to blame but ourselves. If we were just one-tenth as motivated, organized, and pitiless as they are, there would be no possible way for them to dominate us. They would hardly matter at all.
We Whites have always been too naive, too gullible, too kind, and idealistic. That’s our problem. If we were hardened realists then we would have destroyed Judaism and Jewish identity thousands of years ago, when the Romans had total control over Judea. But even the Romans were too softhearted and continually let the Jews have their own society even after they viciously slaughtered Roman citizens in their various rebellions… and this was before Christian morality warped our minds. There’s something seriously wrong with us.
Greg Johnson said…
Are humans inferior to scorpions and spiders because we are vulnerable to their stings? The term “inferior” is misplaced here. We are vulnerable to Jews, just as we are vulnerable to bullets. When a man has been shot, you don’t blame him for not being bullet proof. You blame him, though, if he handed his gun over to a criminal.
Denikin said…
A human getting accidentally stung by a scorpion is one thing. But when millions of humans have been repeatedly stung by scorpions for 2,000 years and have not yet learned to stay away from them, it means there’s something wrong with the humans, not the scorpions.
Thanks Mr. Deinking. I have nothing to add.
I have been asked why the recent focus of The West’s Darkest Hour on Nietzsche. I replied that my intention is to explain (1) the “transvaluation of all values” (Nietzsche’s ultimate philosophy) and (2) “poisonous pedagogy” which goes together with the “trauma model of mental disorders” (illustrated in Nietzsche’s life).
As to #2, I believe that one of the ingredients of the witches’ brew that is killing whites is the toll of child abuse in the adult. In the white nationalist movement no one has suspected this. A few months ago Alex Kurtagic wrote on The Occidental Observer that the engulfing behavior of Jewish mothers towards their male children explained the haughty behavior of the grown-up Jew. But Kurtagic and the rest of writers of the pro-white blogosphere have failed to ask what could the engulfing behavior of white mothers cause on their white children.
I am the only one in the movement who has written on the implications of the trauma model on white pathology. See for example my seminal article, “A body-snatched Spaniard.” I even plan to translate to English the rest of my book Hojas susurrantes, the most didactic and comprehensive explanation of the model under a single cover.
However, since that kind of literature is very strong meat indeed, and since pro-white advocates are uninterested in the subject, I better start introducing it by means of baby steps, like my next series of entries on Carlo Collodi’s novel for children.
Pinocchio
The original Pinocchio tale by Collodi is must reading. A 1880 magazine series (Disney’s 1940 film is a betrayal of the original Italian tale), Collodi projected his feelings for his abusive parents onto the characters of the very manipulative Blue Fairy and Geppetto.
In chapter XV Pinocchio is hanged in front of the Blue Fairy mansion and the motherly Fairy didn’t help him at all. The wooden puppet exclaimed Jesus-like words on the cross:
The editor asked Collodi to rescue Pinocchio in the following issue of the magazine.
♣
As a child Collodi had been tormented in a Jesuit school (incidentally, as a child my father was also tormented in a Jesuit school). Since Collodi (like my father) never settled accounts with the perpetrators, he later identified himself with them; hated the children, illustrated boring school textbooks for them and always lived with his manipulative “Blue Fairy” mother.
The original Le Avventure di Pinocchio is poisonous pedagogy at its worst. The parents and the school system are idealized at the expense of the child’s true self. (Later in my series on Nietzsche you will see the relevance of the Prussian pedagogy applied to the child Nietzsche by his mother and other female figures and his adult breakdown.) A major bestseller, Collodi’s novel was used to manipulate and socialize children in the early 20th century.
In future entries I will show that together with the German biographers of Nietzsche I will be quoting, Alice Miller is the obliged reference to understand “poisonous pedagogy” and ultimately my interpretation of both Pinocchio and many people who have suffered mental breakdowns.
A revaluation of all values: this question mark, so black, so huge that it casts a shadow over the man who puts it down—such a destiny of a task compels one to run into the sun at every opportunity to shake off a heavy, all-too-heavy seriousness. Every means is proper to do this; every “case” is a case of luck. Especially, war. War has always been the great wisdom of all spirits who have become too introspective, too profound; even in a wound there is the power to heal… This little essay is a great declaration of war…
Turin, September 30, 1888,
on the day when the first book
of the Transvaluation of All Values
was completed.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
Categories
“Birth and Death”
From Faith and Action (1938) by Helmut Stellrecht for the Hitler Youth:
Birth and death are the same; they are the two sides of one door. To enter one room always means leaving another. It depends on which room or which life we are in as to whether we say “entrance” or “exit,” life or death.
§ For he who understands it, death holds no terrors. But he who did not go his proper way in life and sinned will see his guilt in death. But there is after death no place of torture, no hell. To see one’s guilt is the severest judgment and at the same time the greatest penalty. Judgment and punishment are within yourself.
§ Neglected work can only be made up by double effort. It will once more be your choice, either to work toward the world plan, or to be its enemy. That is the only death that there is, to become a force for destruction rather than for creation, and this death is not physical. It is your free choice to decide on which side you belong, on god’s or, to use an old term, “the devil’s.”
§ What we call birth and death is only the door between two worlds. There is no birth and no death, only change, and we can go confidently through the door, for all the worlds were created by one hand.
The History of the Decline and Fall
of the Roman Empire
Chapter XXIII
Reign of Julian
Part V
The zeal of the ministers of Julian was instantly checked by the frown of their sovereign; but when the father of his country declares himself the leader of a faction, the license of popular fury cannot easily be restrained, nor consistently punished. Julian, in a public composition, applauds the devotion and loyalty of the holy cities of Syria, whose pious inhabitants had destroyed, at the first signal, the sepulchers of the Galilæans; and faintly complains, that they had revenged the injuries of the gods with less moderation than he should have recommended.
This imperfect and reluctant confession may appear to confirm the ecclesiastical narratives; that in the cities of Gaza, Ascalon, Cæsarea, Heliopolis, &c., the Pagans abused, without prudenceor remorse, the moment of their prosperity. That the unhappy objects of their cruelty were released from torture only by death; and as their mangled bodies were dragged through the streets, they were pierced (such was the universal rage) by the spits of cooks, and the distaffs of enraged women; and that the entrails of Christian priests and virgins, after they had been tasted by those bloody fanatics, were mixed with barley, and contemptuously thrown to the unclean animals of the city.
Such scenes of religious madness exhibit the most contemptible and odious picture of human nature; but the massacre of Alexandria attracts still more attention, from the certainty of the fact, the rank of the victims, and the splendor of the capital of Egypt. George, from his parents or his education, surnamed the Cappadocian, was born at Epiphania in Cilicia, in a fuller’s shop. From this obscure and servile origin he raised himself by the talents of a parasite; and the patrons, whom he assiduously flattered, procured for their worthless dependent a lucrative commission, or contract, to supply the army with bacon. His employment was mean; he rendered it infamous.
He accumulated wealth by the basest arts of fraud and corruption; but his malversations were so notorious, that George was compelled to escape from the pursuits of justice. After this disgrace, in which he appears to have saved his fortune at the expense of his honor, he embraced, with real or affected zeal, the profession of Arianism. From the love, or the ostentation, of learning, he collected a valuable library of history rhetoric, philosophy, and theology, and the choice of the prevailing faction promoted George of Cappadocia to the throne of Athanasius.
The entrance of the new archbishop was that of a Barbarian conqueror; and each moment of his reign was polluted by cruelty and avarice. The Catholics of Alexandria and Egypt were abandoned to a tyrant, qualified, by nature and education, to exercise the office of persecution; but he oppressed with an impartial hand the various inhabitants of his extensive diocese.
The primate of Egypt assumed the pomp and insolence of his lofty station; but he still betrayed the vices of his base and servile extraction. The merchants of Alexandria were impoverished by the unjust, and almost universal, monopoly, which he acquired, of nitre, salt, paper, funerals, &c.: and the spiritual father of a great people condescended to practise the vile and pernicious arts of an informer.
The Alexandrians could never forget, nor forgive, the tax, which he suggested, on all the houses of the city; under an obsolete claim, that the royal founder had conveyed to his successors, the Ptolemies and the Cæsars, the perpetual property of the soil. The Pagans, who had been flattered with the hopes of freedom and toleration, excited his devout avarice; and the rich temples of Alexandria were either pillaged or insulted by the haughty prince, who exclaimed, in a loud and threatening tone, “How long will these sepulchres be permitted to stand?”
Under the reign of Constantius, he was expelled by the fury, or rather by the justice, of the people; and it was not without a violent struggle, that the civil and military powers of the state could restore his authority, and gratify his revenge. The messenger who proclaimed at Alexandria the accession of Julian, announced the downfall of the archbishop. George, with two of his obsequious ministers, Count Diodorus, and Dracontius, master of the mint were ignominiously dragged in chains to the public prison. At the end of twenty-four days, the prison was forced open by the rage of a superstitious multitude, impatient of the tedious forms of judicial proceedings.
The enemies of gods and men expired under their cruel insults; the lifeless bodies of the archbishop and his associates were carried in triumph through the streets on the back of a camel; and the inactivity of the Athanasian party was esteemed a shining example of evangelical patience. The remains of these guilty wretches were thrown into the sea; and the popular leaders of the tumult declared their resolution to disappoint the devotion of the Christians, and to intercept the future honors of these martyrs, who had been punished, like their predecessors, by the enemies of their religion.
The fears of the Pagans were just, and their precautions ineffectual. The meritorious death of the archbishop obliterated the memory of his life. The rival of Athanasius was dear and sacred to the Arians, and the seeming conversion of those sectaries introduced his worship into the bosom of the Catholic church.
The odious stranger, disguising every circumstance of time and place, assumed the mask of a martyr, a saint, and a Christian hero; and the infamous George of Cappadocia has been transformed into the renowned St. George of England, the patron of arms, of chivalry, and of the garter. About the same time that Julian was informed of the tumult of Alexandria, he received intelligence from Edessa, that the proud and wealthy faction of the Arians had insulted the weakness of the Valentinians, and committed such disorders as ought not to be suffered with impunity in a well-regulated state.
Without expecting the slow forms of justice, the exasperated prince directed his mandate to the magistrates of Edessa, by which he confiscated the whole property of the church: the money was distributed among the soldiers; the lands were added to the domain; and this act of oppression was aggravated by the most ungenerous irony. “I show myself,” says Julian, “the true friend of the Galilæans. Their admirable law has promised the kingdom of heaven to the poor; and they will advance with more diligence in the paths of virtue and salvation, when they are relieved by my assistance from the load of temporal possessions. Take care,” pursued the monarch, in a more serious tone, “take care how you provoke my patience and humanity. If these disorders continue, I will revenge on the magistrates the crimes of the people; and you will have reason to dread, not only confiscation and exile, but fire and the sword.”
The tumults of Alexandria were doubtless of a more bloody and dangerous nature: but a Christian bishop had fallen by the hands of the Pagans; and the public epistle of Julian affords a very lively proof of the partial spirit of his administration. His reproaches to the citizens of Alexandria are mingled with expressions of esteem and tenderness; and he laments, that, on this occasion, they should have departed from the gentle and generous manners which attested their Grecian extraction.
He gravely censures the offence which they had committed against the laws of justice and humanity; but he recapitulates, with visible complacency, the intolerable provocations which they had so long endured from the impious tyranny of George of Cappadocia. Julian admits the principle, that a wise and vigorous government should chastise the insolence of the people; yet, inconsideration of their founder Alexander, and of Serapis their tutelar deity, he grants a free and gracious pardon to the guilty city, for which he again feels the affection of a brother.
After the tumult of Alexandria had subsided, Athanasius, amidst the public acclamations, seated himself on the throne from whence his unworthy competitor had been precipitated: and as the zeal of the archbishop was tempered with discretion, the exercise of his authority tended not to inflame, but to reconcile, the minds of the people. His pastoral labors were not confined to the narrow limits of Egypt. The state of the Christian world was present to his active and capacious mind; and the age, the merit, the reputation of Athanasius, enabled him to assume, in a moment of danger, the office of Ecclesiastical Dictator.
Three years were not yet elapsed since the majority of the bishops of the West had ignorantly, or reluctantly, subscribed the Confession of Rimini. They repented, they believed, but they dreaded the unseasonable rigor of their orthodox brethren; and if their pride was stronger than their faith, they might throw themselves into the arms of the Arians, to escape the indignity of a public penance, which must degrade them to the condition of obscure laymen.
At the same time the domestic differences concerning the union and distinction of the divine persons, were agitated with some heat among the Catholic doctors; and the progress of this metaphysical controversy seemed to threaten a public and lasting division of the Greek and Latin churches. By the wisdom of a select synod, to which the name and presence of Athanasius gave the authority of a general council, the bishops, who had unwarily deviated into error, were admitted to the communion of the church, on the easy condition of subscribing the Nicene Creed; without any formal acknowledgment of their past fault, or any minute definition of their scholastic opinions.
The advice of the primate of Egypt had already prepared the clergy of Gauland Spain, of Italy and Greece, for the reception of this salutary measure; and, notwithstanding the opposition of some ardent spirits, the fear of the common enemy promoted the peace and harmony of the Christians. The skill and diligence of the primate of Egypt had improved the season of tranquillity, before it was interrupted by the hostile edicts of the emperor. Julian, who despised the Christians, honored Athanasius with his sincere and peculiar hatred. For his sake alone, he introduced an arbitrary distinction, repugnant at least to the spirit of his former declarations.
He maintained, that the Galilæans, whom he had recalled from exile, were not restored, by that general indulgence, to the possession of their respective churches; and he expressed his astonishment, that a criminal, who had been repeatedly condemned by the judgment of the emperors, should dare to insult the majesty of the laws, and insolently usurp the archiepiscopal throne of Alexandria, without expecting the orders of his sovereign. As a punishment for the imaginary offence, he again banished Athanasius from the city; and he was pleased to suppose, that this act of justice would be highly agreeable to his pious subjects.
The pressing solicitations of the people soon convinced him, that the majority of the Alexandrians were Christians; and that the greatest part of the Christians were firmly attached to the cause of their oppressed primate. But the knowledge of their sentiments, instead of persuading him to recall his decree, provoked him to extend to all Egypt the term of the exile of Athanasius. The zeal of the multitude rendered Julian still more inexorable: he was alarmed by the danger of leaving at the head of a tumultuous city, a daring and popular leader; and the language of his resentment discovers the opinion which he entertained of the courage and abilities of Athanasius.
The execution of the sentence was still delayed, by the caution or negligence of Ecdicius, præfect of Egypt, who was at length awakened from his lethargy by a severe reprimand. “Though you neglect,” says Julian, “to write tome on any other subject, at least it is your duty to inform me of your conduct towards Athanasius, the enemy of the gods. My intentions have been long since communicated to you. I swear by the great Serapis, that unless, on the calends of December, Athanasius has departed from Alexandria, nay, from Egypt, the officers of your government shall pay a fine of one hundred pounds of gold. You know my temper: I am slow to condemn, but I am still slower to forgive.”
This epistle was enforced by a short postscript, written with the emperor’s own hand. “The contempt that is shown for all the gods fills me with grief and indignation. There is nothing that I should see, nothing that I should hear, with more pleasure, than the expulsion of Athanasius from all Egypt. The abominable wretch! Under my reign, the baptism of several Grecian ladies of the highest rank has been the effect of his persecutions.”
The death of Athanasius was not expressly commanded; but the præfect of Egypt understood that it was safer for him to exceed, than to neglect, the orders of an irritated master. The archbishop prudently retired to the monasteries of the Desert; eluded, with his usual dexterity, the snares of the enemy; and lived to triumph over the ashes of a prince, who, in words of formidable import, had declared his wish that the whole venom of the Galilæan school were contained in the single person of Athanasius. I have endeavored faithfully to represent the artful system by which Julian proposed to obtain the effects, without incurring the guilt, or reproach, of persecution.
But if the deadly spirit of fanaticism perverted the heart and understanding of a virtuous prince, it must, at the same time, be confessed that the real sufferings of the Christians were inflamed and magnified by human passions and religious enthusiasm. The meekness and resignation which had distinguished the primitive disciples of the gospel, was the object of the applause, rather than of the imitation of their successors.
The Christians, who had now possessed above forty years the civil and ecclesiastical government of the empire, had contracted the insolent vices of prosperity, and the habit of believing that the saints alone were entitled to reign over the earth. As soon as the enmity of Julian deprived the clergy of the privileges which had been conferred by the favor of Constantine, they complained of the most cruel oppression; and the free toleration of idolaters and heretics was a subject of grief and scandal to the orthodox party. The acts of violence, which were no longer countenanced by the magistrates, were still committed by the zeal of the people.
At Pessinus, the altar of Cybele was overturned almost in the presence of the emperor; and in the city of Cæsarea in Cappadocia, the temple of Fortune, the sole place of worship which had been left to the Pagans, was destroyed by the rage of a popular tumult. On these occasions, a prince, who felt for the honor of the gods, was not disposed to interrupt the course of justice; and his mind was still more deeply exasperated, when he found that the fanatics, who had deserved and suffered the punishment of incendiaries, were rewarded with the honors of martyrdom.
The Christian subjects of Julian were assured of the hostile designs of their sovereign; and, to their jealous apprehension, every circumstance of his government might afford some grounds of discontent and suspicion. In the ordinary administration of the laws, the Christians, who formed so large apart of the people, must frequently be condemned: but their indulgent brethren, without examining the merits of the cause, presumed their innocence, allowed their claims, and imputed the severity of their judge to the partial malice of religious persecution. These present hardships, intolerable as they might appear, were represented as a slight prelude of the impending calamities.
The Christians considered Julian as a cruel and crafty tyrant; who suspended the execution of his revenge till he should return victorious from the Persian war. They expected, that as soon as he had triumphed over the foreign enemies of Rome, he would lay aside the irksome mask of dissimulation; that the amphitheatre would stream with the blood of hermits and bishops; and that the Christians who still persevered in the profession of the faith, would be deprived of the common benefits of nature and society.
Every calumny that could wound the reputation of the Apostate, was credulously embraced by the fears and hatred of his adversaries; and their indiscreet clamors provoked the temper of a sovereign, whom it was their duty to respect, and their interest to flatter. They still protested, that prayers and tears were their only weapons against the impious tyrant, whose head they devoted to the justice of offended Heaven. But they insinuated, with sullen resolution, that their submission was no longer the effect of weakness; and that, in the imperfect state of human virtue, the patience, which is founded on principle, may be exhausted by persecution.
It is impossible to determine how far the zeal of Julian would have prevailed over his good sense and humanity; but if we seriously reflect on the strength and spirit of the church, we shall be convinced, that before the emperor could have extinguished the religion of Christ, he must have involved his country in the horrors of a civil war.
Who among American white nationalists knows of Karlheinz Deschner’s monumental work about the criminal history of their religion?