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Category: Catholic Church

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Catholic Church Old Testament Psychology Table talks

Uncle Adolf’s table talk, 137

the-real-hitler

5th June 1942, midday

Pre-disposition of the Finns to mental diseases—Effects of study of the Bible thereon—Religious mania—Germans must avoid spiritual sickness.

 

The topic of conversation was the exceptionally large number of cases of mental disease in Finland. Among the causes put forward as possible explanations of the vulnerability of the Finns to these types of diseases were—the Aurora Borealis and the strong inclination prevalent among Finns to worry unduly over religious problems. In Finland the farms are often as much as thirty to fifty miles apart, and the inhabitants, condemned, particularly in winter, to a comparatively isolated existence, feel the need of mental exercise; an exceptionally strong tendency to religious surmise is therefore understandable. The Fuehrer expressed himself as follows: It is a great pity that this tendency towards religious thought can find no better outlet than the Jewish pettifoggery of the Old Testament. For religious people who, in the solitude of winter, continually seek ultimate light on their religious problems with the assistance of the Bible, must eventually become spiritually deformed. The wretched people strive to extract truths from these Jewish chicaneries, where in fact no truths exist. As a result they become embedded in some rut of thought or other and, unless they possess an exceptionally commonsense mind, degenerate into religious maniacs.

It is deplorable that the Bible should have been translated into German, and that the whole of the German people should have thus become exposed to the whole of this Jewish mumbo-jumbo. So long as the wisdom, particularly of the Old Testament, remained exclusively in the Latin of the Church, there was little danger that sensible people would become the victims of illusions as the result of studying the Bible. But since the Bible became common property, a whole heap of people have found opened to them lines of religious thought which—particularly in conjunction with the German characteristic of persistent and somewhat melancholy meditation—as often as not turned them into religious maniacs. When one recollects further that the Catholic Church has elevated to the status of Saints a whole number of madmen, one realises why movements such as that of the Flagellants came inevitably into existence in the Middle Ages in Germany.

As a sane German, one is flabbergasted to think that German human beings could have let themselves be brought to such a pass by Jewish filth and priestly twaddle, that they were little different from the howling dervish of the Turks and the negroes, at whom we laugh so scornfully. It angers one to think that, while in other parts of the globe religious teaching like that of Confucius, Buddha and Mohammed offers an undeniably broad basis for the religious-minded, Germans should have been duped by a theological exposition devoid of all honest depth.

The essential conclusion to which these considerations leads me is that we must do everything humanly possible to protect for all time any further sections of the German people from the danger of mental deformity, regardless of whether it be religious mania or any other type of cerebral derangement. For this reason I have directed that every town of any importance shall have an observatory, for astronomy has been shown by experience to be one of the best means at man’s disposal for increasing his knowledge of the universe, and thus saving him from any tendency towards mental aberration.

Categories
Catholic Church Francisco Franco Table talks

Uncle Adolf’s table talk, 139

the-real-hitler

 

7th June 1942, midday

A new revolution in Spain would spell ruin—all traitors should be shot—settling with “Bible students.”

During discussion about the Blue Division—the Spanish Division serving on the Eastern front—the conversation turned once more to the internal situation in Spain. Reichsleiter Bormann remarked that the increasing swing in favour of a monarchy received more than a little encouragement from the clergy. The Fuehrer agreed, and continued: The activities of the Church in Spain are no different from those of the Catholic Church in our own country, or indeed from those of most Churches in any other country.

Any Church, provided it is in a position to exert influence on the civil régime, will, as a matter of principle, support or tolerate only such a régime as knows and recognises no form of popular organisation other than one under the œgis of the Church, and is therefore dependent, for purposes of general administration, solely on the Church, as the only organised leadership of the people.

Unless it is prepared to renounce that striving for power, which is inherent in every Church participating in politics, the Church in Spain cannot recognise the present régime, which has created in the Falange an organisation of its own for the direction of the Spanish people. There is therefore only one thing the Falange can do to establish definite relations with the Church, and that is to limit the intervention of the latter to religious—that is, supernatural—affairs. If one once allows the Church to exercise the slightest influence on the governing of the people and the upbringing of the younger generation, it will strive to become omnipotent, and one makes a great mistake if one thinks that one can make a collaborator of the Church by accepting a compromise.

The whole international outlook and political interest of the Catholic Church in Spain render inevitable conflict between the Church and the Franco régime, and a new revolution thus comes within the bounds of possibility. Spain may well have to pay with her blood, in the not too distant future, for her failure to carry through a truly national revolution, as was done in Germany and Italy.

[eleven paragraphs of the talk omitted]

But we should not fail to point out to these elements which refuse to fight on religious grounds that they obviously still want to eat the things others are fighting to get for them, that this was quite contrary to the spirit of a higher justice, and that we must therefore leave them to starve.

I regard it as an act of exceptional clemency that I did not, in fact, carry out this threat, but contented myself with shooting one hundred and thirty of these self-styled Bible Students (Bibelforscher). Incidentally, the execution of these hundred and thirty cleared the air, just like a thunderstorm does. When the news of the shootings was made public, many thousands of similarly minded people who proposed to avoid military service on the score of some religious scruple or other lost their courage and changed their minds.

If you wish to wage war successfully or to lead a people successfully through a difficult period of its history, you must have no doubts whatever on one point—namely, any individual who in such times tries, either actively or passively, to exclude himself from the activities of the community, must be destroyed.

Anyone who for false reasons of mercy deviates from this clear principle is aiding, willingly or unwillingly, the dissolution of the State. We can see the beginnings of this process to-day in a country like Sweden.

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Catholic Church Table talks

Uncle Adolf’s table talk, 140

the-real-hitler

 

7th June 1942, at dinner

A procession at Barcelona—harassing the Falange—distrust of Serrano Suner—superior resistance of Italians to Church heresies—German emperors and the Church—Requiem mass for the protector of Bohemia and Moravia.

The Fuehrer was informed that on the occasion of the Corpus Christi procession in Barcelona, the Governor of the town forbade by edict the people taking part in the procession to wear the uniform either of the Falange, the Falangist Militia or any part of them. A solitary exception was made in favour of the regional Chief of the Falange and his suite. It appears from the report that this prohibition was obtained by the Nationalists through the medium of the Church authorities. In this connection it will be recalled that some weeks ago incidents occurred between the Nationalists and the members of the Falange, who nevertheless represent the official State Party. It is further significant that the Madrid newspaper Arriba attacks this ban and states roundly that the wearing of the blue shirt is a duty to which the Falangists are in honour bound, and that all those who oppose them are despicable creatures.

The Fuehrer’s opinion follows: What a pity it is that the blood shed in common by the Falangists, the Fascists and the National Socialists during the war has not brought better results! But in Spain, unfortunately, someone will always be found willing to serve the political interests of the Church. Serrano Suner, the present Minister for Foreign Affairs, is one of them. From my first meeting with him I was conscious of a feeling of revulsion, in spite of the fact that our Ambassador, with abysmal ignorance of the facts, introduced him to me as the most ardent Germanophile in Spain.

That the Fascists were spared a second civil war is due to the fact that the movement, initiated in Rome, succeeded in uniting the Italian nation in spite of the opposition of the Church. Further, Fascism clearly defined the position as regards what things fell within the sphere of the Church and what things fell within the sphere of the State. When the Church refused to recognise the law for the formation of the Fascist Youth Organisation, the Fascists retaliated by ruthlessly breaking up every religious procession from Rome right down to the South of Italy. The result was that within three days the Church had come to heel.

Speaking generally, the history of Italy shows that the Italian people adopt a very much more realistic attitude towards the Church than do the Spaniards or, alas, not a few Germans! Is it not a sad thought that each time the Italians flung out some Pope or other, there was always a German Kaiser ready and willing to restore order in the Vatican? I must be honest and confess that I myself have not been guiltless in this respect.

By creating a Bishop of the Reich I tried to bring a little clarity into the equivocal situation in the Evangelical Church. When I see what is happening to-day in Spain, I congratulate myself on the failure of my efforts. Once more Providence prevented me from committing a mistake I was on the point of making. Who, indeed, is prepared to give me a guarantee that one fine day the Protestant Bishop of the Reich will not make common cause against me with the Pope!

The established religions, and particularly the Catholic Church, are adepts at presenting an innocent mien and in flattering the man in power. I myself experienced this when, shortly after assuming power, I received a visit from the Bishop Bertram. He brought me the good wishes and the homage of the Catholic clergy with such unction that, had I not known differently from bitter personal experience, I would not have believed it possible that a single National Socialist could have been excluded from the Church on account of his convictions, or could have been persecuted, and even execrated after death.

It is with such semblance of humility that the Church has always wormed its way into power and succeeded in winning its way by flattery into the good graces of the German Emperors, from Charlemagne onwards. It is the same technique as that employed by sophisticated women, who at first exude charm in order to gain a man’s confidence, and then gradually tighten the strings, until they hold them so firmly that the man dances like a puppet to their whims. With a little diplomatic savoir faire such women manage even to persuade their husbands—exactly as in the case of the Church and the German Emperors—that it is they who rule the roost, and this in spite of the nose-ring on which they are so obviously being led!

Quite recently the Church tried to pull off a new one of this kind. The Bishop of Bohemia and Moravia begged permission to be allowed to hold a Requiem Mass with chimes for SS Obergruppen-fuehrer Heydrich. I told the gentleman bluntly that he would have been much better employed if he had previously offered prayers for the safety and welfare of the Reich Protector!

Categories
Catholic Church Charlemagne Reinhard Heydrich Table talks

Uncle Adolf’s table talk, 145

the-real-hitler

4th July 1942, at dinner

German Embassy at the Vatican—The Concordat must be ended—Faulty manœuvres by the Wilhelmstrasse—I refuse open war with the Church—the Bishops will soon fawn on the State.
 

Should we decide to recall our present representative from the Vatican, I can see no adequate reason for sending any fresh incumbent to this Embassy. The relations between Germany and the Vatican are based on the Concordat. But this same Concordat is no more than the survival of agreements reached between the Vatican and the different German States, and, with the disappearance of the latter and their incorporation in the German Reich, it has become obsolete.

Once the war is over we will put a swift end to the Concordat. It will give me the greatest personal pleasure to point out to the Church all those occasions on which it has broken the terms of it. One need only recall the close cooperation between the Church and the murderers of Heydrich. Catholic priests not only allowed them to hide in a church on the outskirts of Prague, but even allowed them to entrench themselves in the sanctuary of the altar.

The development of relations between State and Church affords a very instructive example of how the carelessness of a single statesman can have after-effects which last for centuries. When Charlemagne was kneeling at prayer in St. Peter’s, Rome, at Christmas in the year 800, the Pope, giving him no time to work out the possible effects of so symbolic an action, suddenly bent down and presto popped a golden crown on his head! By permitting it, the Emperor delivered himself and his successors into the hands of a power which subjected the German Government and the German people to five hundred years of martyrdom.

Today, as always, there are responsible people to be found who are careless enough to allow a crown of gold to be popped on to their heads, and one cannot exaggerate the enormous effects which such an action, seemingly trifling at the time, can later produce.

Much in the same class and equally stupid is the idea of the Wilhelmstrasse that every note from the Vatican must be answered. The very act of answering is tantamount to an admission of the right of the Vatican to interfere in German domestic issues—if only in ecclesiastical issues—and to maintain official correspondence with us.

When once the Concordat and its financial obligations have been repudiated, and the Church becomes dependent on the offertory, it will pocket a bare 3 per cent of the money it at present gets from the State, and all the Bishops will come creeping and begging to the Reichsstatthalter.

It will be the duty of the Reichsstatthalter to make it quite clear after the war that he will deal with the Church in exactly the same way as he deals with any other national association, and that he will not tolerate the intervention of any foreign influence. The Papal Nuncio can then return happily to Rome, we shall be saved the expense of an embassy at the Vatican, and the only people who will weep tears over the jobs that have been lost will be the Foreign Office!

Categories
Catholic Church Christendom Mainstream media Martin Bormann Table talks

Uncle Adolf’s table talk, 159

the-real-hitler

 

1st August 1942, evening

British lies—A comparison with America—The Church’s cunning wisdom—Exit the Pope.

Conversation turned to a book entitled Juan in America which Bormann had recently lent to the Fuehrer. In it the author paints a picture of the unbelievable conditions which reigned in the intellectual and political circles of the United States, and of the astonishing credulity of the American citizen. Hewel stated that this credulity was not an exclusively American characteristic, and that in Britain, too, the people swallowed everything they were told. Hitler said:

It is perfectly true that the British swallow everything they are told. At the moment, nevertheless, there is a certain amount of murmuring over faked reports. According to the Americans themselves, America has the finest, biggest and most efficient of everything in the wide world; and when one then reads a book like this about them, one sees that they have the brains of a hen! Well, the disillusionment will be all the more severe, and the consternation, when this house of cards collapses, will be enormous.

It is very difficult to argue with Americans. They immediately shout: “Say, take a look at what our workers earn!” True, but let us take a look at the shady side as well. The industrial worker earns his eighty dollars; but the man who is not in industry gets absolutely nothing. At one time they had no less than thirteen million unemployed. I have seen pictures of shelters built out of old kerosene tins which the unemployed had erected for themselves and which remind me of the holes of misery to be found in the Bolshevik industrial cities. I grant you that our standard of life is lower. But the German Reich has two hundred and seventy opera houses—a standard of cultural existence of which they over there have no conception.

To sum it up, the Americans live like sows in a most luxurious sty!

Reichsleiter Bormann drew attention to the gifts which France made almost every day to the Church, and on which the power of the Church was thriving mightily. The Fuehrer continues:

It was exactly the same in Bavaria! Held restored to the Church forest lands to the value of thirty or forty million marks, lands which by expropriation belonged to the State!

The Church has succeeded in striking a very pretty balance between life on earth and in the Hereafter. On earth, they say, the poor must remain poor and blessed, for in Heaven the earthly rich will get nothing; and the unfortunate poor on earth believe them!

It is only by keeping the masses ignorant that the existing social order of things can be maintained; in the eyes of the faithful, this is the justification for supreme Papal authority. Cramer-Klett told me one day that he had become a Catholic because he realised that Luther with his Reformation had completely destroyed authority as such.

Possibly—but I cannot help thinking that man has been endowed with a brain which he is intended to make use of, and that anything which is founded on a premise unacceptable to the human intellect cannot endure for ever. It is not possible to hold fast for very long to tenets which the progress of knowledge have proved to be false. I should be wrong if I condemned as a liar a man who believed firmly in the Aristotelean or Ptolemaic world, when he had no other alternative to choose from. But a man who still believes in this old conception of the world today certainly is a liar. No science remains stationary. In my eyes the ability of mankind to reject a proven untruth is one of its virtues. By the Church the Unknown is described and explained with precision, and if she advances with the times, the ground must inevitably be cut from under her feet. For this reason she is opposed to all progress. It adds little to our knowledge of the Creator when some parson presents to us an indifferent copy of a man as his conception of the Deity.

The most pressing danger, as I see it, is that Christianity, by adhering to a conception of the Beyond which is constantly exposed to the attacks of unceasing progress, and by binding it so closely to many of the trivialities of life which may at any moment collapse, is ripening mankind for conversion to materialistic Bolshevism. And that is a terrible tragedy. Man will lose all sense of proportion, and once he considers himself to be the lord of the universe, it will be the end of everything. And if the Church in Spain continues in the way it is doing, it will end on the refuse-heap.

In Venice, in 1934, the Duce once said to me: “One of these days the Pope will have to leave Italy; there is not room for two Masters!” The Church of today is nothing more than a hereditary joint stock company for the exploitation of human stupidity.


_____________________________

Consider obtaining a copy of the complete notes
published by Ostara Publications.

Categories
Ancient Rome Axiology Catholic Church Christendom

Christianity on the dock

Cristo_crucificado
 
In a recent thread on The Occidental Observer Jack Frost commented:

Very interesting talk by the professor referenced above. One thing that stood out for me was how, while he did spend a lot of time discussing Puritans and their universalistic outlook, he avoided the “C” word (Christianity) entirely. I’m with Sunic on this, and would even go him one better. I would venture to say you can’t hope to understand the origins of this white pathology without a full analysis of the way Christianity has shaped the culture of the West. Attempts to locate the source of the pathology in prehistoric times, as a response to severe environmental conditions, fail for at least a couple of reasons.

For one thing, if that were the case, wouldn’t individualism and pathological altruism also be found at similar latitudes all over the world? It isn’t. As KMD [Kevin MacDonald] himself acknowledges, whites were the only ones to develop in this way. Also, if the origins of individualism and pathological altruism were really that ancient, why didn’t it manifest itself in classical times?

Pre-Christian Roman society was decidedly un-altruistic, and un-empathetic. You can scour the history books all you want, and you will find no mention of Roman charity missions to help foreigners. They wouldn’t have understood that idea at all. Foreigners were taken to be useful as slaves and made into tributaries, but little else. Those who didn’t cooperate were put to the sword. And empathy? Forget it! The Romans were expert torturers and considered death an entertainment. On a typical weekend they’d watch gladiators hack each other to pieces just for fun! The excruciating and prolonged death by crucifixion was a Roman specialty of which they made frequent use. After the failed revolt of Spartacus they crucified the surviving rebels along a 300 mile stretch of roadway, about one every hundred yards or so. The bodies were left to rot, as a lesson to the rest.

All of this changed eventually only with the coming of Christianity. It is Christianity, in its manifold forms, and especially, in its cultural residue, which influences and shapes the perceptions of even non-believers, that is the source of the racial egalitarianism and philo-Semitism that rules modern life.

Christianity has even reshaped our genetics, as KMD has documented elsewhere in his paper that dealt with outbreeding as a policy promoted by the Catholic Church. Over time, it has become, in effect, a fully metastasized cultural and genetic cancer that has changed who we are.

There’s a tendency in our circles to think of Christianity as either completely good or completely bad. I would put forth the proposition—mind-blowing to some, no doubt—that it has both good and bad points; that as a means to an end it once offered advantages with respect to some ends, but that those advantages were obtained only at a tremendous cost. The consignment of the white race to oblivion may well be one such cost.

Categories
Catholic Church Miscegenation Portugal

Massive Iberian screw-up

As a postscript to my recent post about why the single-cause hypothesis in White Nationalism is untenable—that is, that “Whites can do no wrong and are the eternal victims of Jewish deceit and aggression”—, let me clarify something I said about the Iberian side of the conquest of America and New Spain in particular.

mestizo kid

(A Mestizo kiddie: the symbol of the Iberian blunder.)

The main culprit of the extremely thorough mestization that took place in the American continent at the south of Río Grande, all the way to the lands of the Incas in South America, was the Iberians’ lust for gold and silver.

That was the main culprit that in this blog I have called, inspired in Wagner and Tolkien, as falling prey of the One Ring or “economics over race” policies. That’s also why, at the very top of this blog, I include an image of the real god of spoiled whites, Mammon.

The second culprit was the Catholic Church that allowed the bachelor Spaniards in the continent to marry Amerindian women with a Pope bull only ten years after the conquest of the Aztec Empire. Christianity in general is blind to racial matters and the Church did not give a damn about the havoc that such bull would cause. (The Catholic Church was so powerful in New Spain that by the end of the 17th century it owned more than half of its territories.)

Those are, in my view, the two main factors that explain how the Iberians massively screwed up the continent.

As I said in my previous post, this case proves that whites are capable of committing ethno-suicide by themselves, without the help of the subversive tribe, the Jews, who were persecuted and dispatched when detected in the three-hundred year period that lasted the Colonial times. (Hernán Cortés was the first to burn at the stake a couple of kikes in 1528, even before the Inquisition was formally established in New Spain.) Yes, it is true that even with such controls some cryptos might have entered spheres of influence. According to one biographer, Bartolomé de Las Casas was of converso heritage, although others refer to Las Casas family as old Christians who migrated from France.

But the larger point is that even if Las Casas (and presumably other cryptos who escaped detection) was of Jewish ancestry, it would be ridiculous to claim that they “caused” the thoroughgoing mestization that, with time, ruined the genetic pool of the conquerors.

Bernal_Diaz_del_Castillo

If you want to breathe the zeitgeist of New Spain I would highly recommend reading the primary sources, starting with the stupendous chronicle of Bernal Díaz del Castillo (d. 1585), The Truthful History of the Conquest of New Spain, i.e., the conquest of Mexico-Tenochtitlan. Bernal was a foot soldier and fought with Hernán Cortés during the conquest of the capital of the Aztec Empire.

You will breath in The Truthful History, right from the beginning of the history of post-Columbian Mexico, how gold and religion provided the zeitgeist or axis around which the Iberian dominion over the Americas would move. Whatever happened in this large part of the American continent it had nothing to do with Jewish subversion. It was the Spanish and the Portuguese doing it to themselves. But judge it by yourself if you are interested in history. Read the primary sources that have been translated to English.

Categories
Ancient Rome Autobiography Carthage Catholic Church Catholic religious orders Celts Civilisation (TV series) Counter-Reformation Goths Islam Kenneth Clark Miscegenation Racial studies Recceswinth Reconquista St Francis

On Spain and Teresa of Ávila

Most of the television series I have been watching for critical review contain subtle and not so subtle anti-white propaganda. In a search to counter such traitorous series of the present century I also watched Teresa de Jesús, a mini-series premiered on Spanish television in 1984 that present the life of Spain’s great saint. Its dialogue is in Spanish but versions with English subtitles are available.

Teresa of Ávila (1515-1582) was a nun of the Catholic Church, a Spanish mystic and writer, and the founder of the Discalced Carmelites: a branch of the Order of Our Lady of Mount Carmel (or Carmelites). What struck me the most in the series is that many of the characters don’t look white at all, and in contrast with the obvious treason that I recounted in my previous post on The Hollow Crown the intention of the creators of the series was obviously different. The characters simply reflect the fact that many Spaniards are not real whites or Aryans.

See the important entry linked on the sidebar, “On anti-Nordicism.” If you want specifics about why most Spaniards are not pure Indo-Europeans let me say that the original Iberians, or iberos as we say in Spanish, men of the Aryan race, migrated from the Black Sea basin and went all over Europe up to the British isles, leaving a substantial proportion of people in the Iberian Peninsula which absorbed the previous inhabitants. Fifteen centuries before the Christian Era the Phoenicians and the Aryan Greeks (see the recent entries in this blog under the title, “Were the Greeks blond and blue-eyed?”) founded many colonies in the southern coastline, and with time merged with the original Iberians.

Visigoth_warrior_dress

Six centuries before the Christian Era the Celts arrived, who also were Aryan, and fought with the residents of those lands but with time the Celts also mixed with them, giving birth to the Celtiberians. In the 6th century the Carthaginians (white Mediterraneans mixed with Semites) took over Cadiz and established some colonies. In 205 B.C. they were defeated by the Romans during the Third Punic War and expelled from the peninsula.

By that time the ethnic elements of the interbred peoples in the Iberian Peninsula were: autochthonous peoples (of unknown ethnic group?), iberos (Aryan Iberians), Aryan Celts, Phoenicians (half-bloods?), Aryan Greeks, and Carthaginians (half-bloods), producing a culture founded on the will of Celtiberians. In the first centuries of the Christian Era the peninsula would suffer further invasions from the Vandals, the Huns (non whites!), the Alans, and finally the Visigoths or Goths who proceeded from the occidental region of the Dniester River. Those were the groups that had arrived to what the Romans called the Hispanias by 409 A.D., when their empire was in the throes of agony.

The fall of the Roman Empire produced a gap in political, cultural and military power that non-whites occupied. From 713 A.D. the Arabs conquered most of the Iberian territory with the exception of the mountainous Asturias, the first Christian state that started the long period known as the Reconquista. Re-conquering the peninsula for the original Europeans would last no less than eight centuries, but this meant eight centuries of miscegenation with Arabs and Semites, both non-whites. The Moor occupation of this part of Europe ended in 1492 with the conquest of Granada by the Catholic Monarchs Isabella and Ferdinand. So many centuries of Muslim domination resulted in the peculiar phenotype of the peoples we see today in Spain, and explain why quite a few of them don’t look like real whites.

It is worth remembering that the mess started before. In the first centuries of our era the Iberian Goths burned at the stake their fellow Aryans that dared to mix their precious blood with non-whites. Alas, the king of Hispania Recceswinth committed the greatest blunder in Iberian history: a blunder still unrecognized by Spanish intellectuals or historians but a gigantic blunder nonetheless. By converting to Christianity Recceswinth abolished the long ban on miscegenation (which reminds me the Spartan ban on miscegenation), which resulted in the subsequent mongrelization of the Visigothic Iberians. The king of Hispania’s decision allowed any person of any racial origin, as long as he professed Christianity, to intermarry with the Aryan Goths. Such failure of the nerve occurred just a few decades before these territories were invaded by the Moors.

It is not surprising to see, after eight centuries of unbeatable miscegenation, the formation of a superstitious culture that eventually would be called Spain. I must confess that the most incisive opinion I have ever read about Spain appears in the foreword to the printed version of Civilisation, the 1969 television series featuring Kenneth Clark:

Some of the most offensive omissions were dictated by my title. If I had been talking about the history of art, it would not have been possible to leave out Spain; but when one asks what Spain has done to enlarge the human mind and pull mankind a few steps up the hill, the answer is less clear. Don Quixote, the Great Saints, the Jesuits in South America? Otherwise she has simply remained Spain, and since I wanted each programme to be concerned with the new developments of the European mind, I could not change my ground and talk about a single country.

But what if even Cervantes, Spain’s great saints and the Jesuits were not so terribly cool from the viewpoint of racial preservation? What if the staunch Catholicism of the Counter-Reformation, which produced Cervantes, the Saints and the Jesuits was uncongenial to white interests? These are the sort of questions that move me to say something about the 1980s’ television series of St. Teresa.

Racial phenotype of the actors aside, what struck me about these series is that its creators depicted Teresa as suffering from a typical hysteria; in her case, to the point of a catatonia she suffered as a young woman. What caused her hysterics will remain unknown, although it is interesting to read her autobiography. A copy in the original language that I have in my bookshelf says that Teresa confessed that she “was the most cherished of my father” (this comes from an English translation), and the very first words of her first chapter are: “I had a father and mother, who were devout and feared God.” Although only a very idealized parental-filial relationship appears in the first paragraphs of Teresa’s autobiography, I suspect that her psychosomatic illness attests to something that she, the so-called expert of the “Interior Castle” (the human soul), never confessed.

Teresa_of_Avila

Whatever the dynamics of Teresa’s family it is interesting to see that even in these series, televised for a Catholic audience, Teresa is described by her sister nuns as pretending to be “the different one,” as always acting out her sufferings and psychosomatic ills. Some of the nuns interpreted her behavior as a trick to be the bossy of the nuns of the several convents she founded. Even Teresa’s hostile takeover of her original convent from the power of other nuns is depicted, albeit shown as something noble for the cause. As I have said, Teresa de Jesús has as its target group pious Catholics. So much that the (apocryphal in my opinion) story of Teresa’s miraculous levitation while praying is recounted as historical, as well as an instantaneous flourishing of an almond tree at the end of her life (“Everything she touches turns into life”).

Teresa was a religious genius only in the sense that St. Francis was a religious genius too. Both saints basically used theatrics big time to act out their emotional issues and gather large followings; followings that eventually reformed monastic orders. My Catholic father, who insufflated in me a love for St. Francis during my adolescence, was totally wrong in his statement that “the only supermen are the Saints.” I would say that Christianity has no saints in the sense of psychologically integrated, or truly emergent, individuals (William Pierce is what presently I regard as the closest specimen of the archetypal “overman”). In Teresa de Jesús for example the so-called saint is depicted as fairly tolerant about the New Christians, or Conversos with Jewish blood, while other Spaniards of the series are presented as suspicious about those rich merchants of dubious origins. Also, Teresa’s most famous vision in which an angel pierced her heart with a golden spear, in-out in-out delivering the poor woman into an ecstasy, has all the marks of an erotic sublimation in the mind of a celibate nun.

The last episode contains an epilogue describing what happened in this primitive culture after an agonic Teresa died. Hunting for relics fanatic religionists cut her hand, one of her fingers, an arm and an eye, thus mutilating her dead body. It surprised me that the creators of the series described such post-mortem atrocities, some even perpetrated by the dignitaries of the Church, as something sublime and noble.

The reformer of the Carmelite Order was canonized forty years after her death, and in the century when we were born Teresa was even named a “Doctor of the Church” by Pope Paul VI. Here in Mexico I recently visited a property of the Carmelite Order and their wealth impressed me. As I have said elsewhere, as to white interests is concerned Spain’s Counter-Reformation experiment in Europe and the Americas was “an utter disaster”…

Categories
Catholic Church Charlemagne Christendom Franks Inquisition Kriminalgeschichte des Christentums (books) Philosophy of history Protestantism

Kriminal

Below, translated excerpts from the first pages of Deschner’s 10-volume Kriminalgeschichte des Christentums, published in German in 1986.

 

______ 卐 ______

 

Introduction

To begin, I will say what the reader should not expect. As in all of my criticisms of Christianity, here there will be missing many of the things that also belong to history, but not to the criminal history of Christianity that the title indicates. That, which also belongs to history, may be found in millions of works that fill up the libraries, archives, bookstores, academies and the lofts of the parish houses. He who wants to read those materials can do so long as he has life, patience and faith.

This religion has thousands, hundreds of thousands of apologists and defenders; it has books in which many boast of ‘the luminous march of the Church through the ages’ (Andersen), and that the Church is ‘one’ and ‘the living body of Christ’ and ‘holy’ because ‘its essence is holiness; sanctification its end’ (the Benedictine von Rudloff). It is understood, on all this, that the unfortunate side details (religious wars, persecutions, fighting, famine) happened in the designs of God; often inscrutable, always just, full of wisdom and salvific power. Given the overwhelming predominance of the silly, misleading and deceitful glorifying, was it not necessary to show the opposite view insofar as it is much better proven? At any event, those who always want to see the bright side are shielded from the ugly side, which is often the truest.

The distinction between the Church and Christianity is relatively recent. As is known, there is a glaring contradiction between the lives of the Christians and the beliefs they profess: a contradiction which has always been downplayed by pointing to the eternal opposition between the ideal and the real. Nobody dares to condemn Christianity because it has not fulfilled all its ideals, or has fulfilled half of them, or not at all. But such an interpretation ‘equals to carry too far the notion of the human and even the all too human, so that when century after century and millennium after millennium someone does the opposite of what he preaches then becomes, per share and effect of all his history, epitome and absolute culmination of worldwide and historical criminality’ as I said during a conference in 1969 which earned me a visit to the courthouse.

Because that is really the question. Not that they have failed the ideals in part or by degrees, no: it is that those ideals have been literally trampled, without which the perpetrators lay down, for a moment, their claims of self-proclaimed champions of such ideals, nor stop their self-declaration of being the highest moral authorities in the world.

Western Christianity, in any case, ‘was essentially created by the Catholic Church’; ‘the Church, organised from the papal hierocracy down to the smallest detail, was the main institution of the medieval order’ (Toynbee).

Part of our question are the wars started or commanded by the Church, the extermination of entire nations: the Vandals, the Goths, and the relentless slaughter of East Slav peoples—all of them, according to the chronicles of the Carolingian and the Ottos, criminals and confused peoples in the darkness of idolatry that was necessary to convert by any means not excepting betrayal, deceit and fury. Of the fourteen legislated capital crimes by Charlemagne after subduing the Saxons by blood and fire, ten offenses relate exclusively to the religious camp. Under the old Polish criminal law, those guilty of eating meat during the Easter fast were punished by pulling their teeth out.

We will also discuss ecclesiastical punishments for violations of civil rights. The ecclesiastical courts were increasingly hated. There are issues that we will discuss extensively: sacrificial practices (the stolen goods from the Church to be repaid fourfold, and according to Germanic law up to twenty times); ecclesiastical and monastic prisons, especially of the ergastulum type (the coffins were also called ergastula), where they were thrown both ‘sinners’ as the rebels and madmen, and usually installed in basements without windows or doors, but well equipped with shackles of all kinds, racks, handcuffs and chains. We will document the exile punishment and the application of it to the whole family in case of the murder of a cardinal; which extended to the male descendants up to the third generation. Also very fashionable were torture and corporal punishment, especially in the East where it became furiously popular to mutilate limbs, pull out eyes and cut off noses and ears.

It is quite plausible that not all authorities indulged themselves in such excesses, and certainly not everyone would be as insane as the Abbot Transamund, who tore off the eyes of the monks of the Tremiti Convent, or cut their tongues (and, despite this, enjoyed the protection of Pope Gregory VII, who also enjoyed great notoriety). Without a doubt, the churches, particularly the Roman Church, have created significant cultural values, especially buildings, which usually obeyed no altruistic reasons (representing power), and also in the domain of painting, responding to ideological reasons (the eternal illustrations of biblical scenes and legends of saints). But aside from such opted love of culture that contrasts sharply with paleo-Christianity—that with eschatological indifference contemplated the ‘things of this world’, as they believed in the imminent end of all (a fundamental error in which Jesus himself fell)—, it should be noted that most of the cultural contributions of the Church were made possible by ruthlessly exploiting of the masses, the enslaved and the impoverished, century after century. And against this promotion of culture we find further cultural repression, cultural intoxication and destruction of cultural property.

The magnificent temples of worship of antiquity were destroyed almost everywhere: irreplaceable value buildings burned or demolished, especially in Rome itself, where the ruins of the temples served as quarries. In the 10th century they still engaged in breaking down statues, architraves, burning paintings, and the most beautiful sarcophagi served as bathtubs or feeders for pigs. But the most tremendous destruction, barely imaginable, was caused in the field of education. Gregory I, the Great, the only doctor Pope of the Church in addition to Leo I, according to tradition burned a large library that existed on the Palatine. The flourishing book trade of antiquity disappeared; the activity of the monasteries was purely receptive. Three hundred years after the death of Alcuin and Rabanus Maurus, the disciples were still studying with manuals written by them. Even St. Thomas Aquinas, the Church’s official philosopher, writes that ‘the desire for knowledge is a sin when it does not serve the knowledge of God’.

In universities, the Aristotelian hypertrophy aborted any possibility of independent research. Philosophy and literature were subject to the dictation of theology. History, as a science, was completely unknown. The experimentation and inductive research were condemned; experimental sciences were drowned by the Bible and dogma; scientists were thrown into the dungeons, or sent to the stake. In 1163, Pope Alexander III (remember in passing that at that time there were four anti-popes) forbade all clerics studying physics. In 1380 a decision of the French parliament forbade the study of chemistry, referring to a decree of Pope John XXII. And while in the Arab world (obedient to Muhammad’s slogan ‘The ink of scholars is more sacred than the blood of martyrs’) the sciences flourished, especially medicine, in the Catholic world the bases of scientific knowledge remained unchanged for more than a millennium, well into the 16th century. The sick were supposed to seek comfort in prayer instead of medical attention. The Church forbade the dissection of corpses, and sometimes even rejected the use of natural medicines for considering it unlawful intervention with the divine. In the Middle Ages, not even the abbeys had doctors, not even the largest. In 1564 the Inquisition condemned to death the physician Andreas Vesalius, the founder of modern anatomy, for opening a corpse and for saying that man is not short of a rib that was created for Eve.

Consistent with the guidance of teaching, we find another institution, ecclesiastical censure, very often (at least since the time of St. Paul in Ephesus) dedicated to the burning of the books of pagans, Jews or Saracens, and the destruction (or prohibition) of rival Christian literature, from the books of the Arians and Nestorians until those of Luther. But let us not forget that Protestants sometimes also introduced censorship, even for funeral sermons and also for non-theological works, provided they touched on ecclesiastical matters or religious customs.

The above is a selection of the main issues that I refer to in my history of the crimes. And yet, it is only a tiny segment of the overall history.

History!

Like any other historian, I only contemplate a history of the countless possible histories, a particular one, worse or better defined, and even this biased aspect cannot be considered the whole ‘complex of action’: an absurd idea, given the volume of existing data; theoretically conceivable, but practically impossible and not even desirable. The author who intends to write a criminal history of Christianity is constrained to mention only the negative side of that religion which weight has exceeded ultimately that of the perceived or real positives. Those who prefer to read about the other aspects ought to read other books: The Joyful Faith, The Gospel as Inspiration, Is it True that Catholics are No Better Than the Others?, Why I Love My Church?, The Mystical Body of Christ, Beauties of the Catholic Church, Under the Cloak of the Catholic Church, God Exists (I Have Known Him), The Way of Joy Toward God, The Good Death of a Catholic, With the Rosary to Heaven, SOS from the Purgatory, The Heroism of Christian Marriage.

The pro-Christian literature! More numerous than the sands of the sea: against 10,000 titles just one of the style of this Criminal History of Christianity, not to mention the millions of issues if we add the countless religious periodicals.

It turns out that truly there are among Christians men of good will, as in all religions and in every game, which should not be taken as data in favour of those religions and parties, because if that were allowed how many crooks would testify against such belief? And good Christians are the most dangerous, because they tend to get confused with Christianity, or to borrow the words of Lichtenberg, ‘unquestionably there are many righteous Christians, only that it is no less true that in corpore their works as such have never have helped much’.

What is the basis of my work? As with most historical studies, it is based on sources, tradition, contemporary historiography; especially texts. But when I expose my subjectivity bluntly, my ‘point of view’ and my ‘positioning’, I think I show my respect to the reader better than the mendacious scribes who want to link their belief in miracles and prophecies; in transubstantiations and resurrections from the dead; in heavens, hells and other wonders with the pretence of objectivity, accuracy and scientific rigor. Could it not be that, with my confessed bias, I am less biased than them? Could it be that my experience, my training, did not authorise me to form a more independent opinion about Christianity? At the end of the day I left Christianity, despite having been formed in a deeply religious household, as soon as it ceased to seem real.

Let’s face it: we are all ‘partial’, and he who pretends denying it is lying. It is not our bias what matters, but confessing it, without the pretence of impossible ‘objectivities’. We are all biased. This is particularly true in the case of historians who are more bent on denying it, because they are the ones who lie the most—and then they throw to one another the dogs of Christianity. How ridiculous, when we read that Catholics accused the Protestants of ‘bias’; or the Protestants accusing the Catholics, when thousands of theologians of various confessions throw over each other so common reproach; for example, when the Jesuit Bacht wants to see in the Protestant Friedrich Loofs ‘an excess of zeal against monastic status as such’, for which ‘his views are too one-sided’. And how would not the Jesuit Bacht opine with partiality when he refers to a reformed; he, who belongs to an order whose members are required to believe that white is black and black white, if mandated by the Church? Like Bacht, unquestioning obedience is imposed upon all Catholic theologians in the habit through baptism, dogma, the chair, the ecclesiastical license to print and many other obligations and restrictions. And so they live year after year, enjoying a steady income in exchange for advocating a particular view, a particular doctrine, a particular interpretation of history strongly impregnated with theology… not so much to deceive themselves but to continue cultivating the deception of others. For example, by accusing of bias the opponents of their confession and pretending to believe that Catholics are safe from such defect; as if it didn’t exist, for two thousand years, another bias sneakier than the Catholic.

Historiography is no more than the projection into the past of the interests of the present. The conservative historian who compared his job to that of the priest (for heaven’s sake!) and issued for himself reports of maximum impartiality and objectivity, claimed that he ‘erased his subjectivity’! This unshakable faith for objectivism, called ‘ocularism’ by Count Paul York Wartenburg and lampooned as a proposal for a ‘eunuch objectivity’ by Droysen (‘only the unconscious can be objective’), is illusory. Because there is no objective truth in historiography, nor history as it happened. ‘There can only be interpretations of history, and none is definitive’ (Popper). All historiography is written against the background of our personal vision of the world. It is true that many scholars lack such a worldview and thus are often considered, if not markedly progressive, at least notably impartial, honest and truthful. Those are the champions of ‘pure science’, the representatives of an alleged stance of neutrality or indifference as to value statements. They reject any reference to a particular point of view, any subjectivity, as if they were unscientific sins or blasphemies against the postulate of the true objectivity they advocate; against that sine ira et studio [without anger and affection] which they have as sacrosanct and that, as Heinrich von Treitschke ironizes, ‘nobody respects, let alone the speaker himself’.

The fiction of the concealment of the ideological premises of the historical presentation can serve to conceal many things: an ethical relativism and a cowardly escapism fleeing categorical decisions on principles—which still is a decision: irresponsibility on behalf of scientific responsibility! For a science that does not make assessments, whether they like it or not, is an ally of the status quo: it supports the dominating and hurts the dominated. Its objectivity is only apparent, and in practice it means nothing but love to one’s own tranquillity, security and attachment to a career. Our life does not run value-free, but full of it; and scientists, insofar as they start from life, if they claim they are value-free incur in hypocrisy. I have had in my hands works of historians who were dedicated to the wife who had died in the bombings, or perhaps dedicated to two or three fallen sons on the fronts; and yet, sometimes, these people want to keep their writing as ‘pure science’, as if nothing had happened.

That’s their problem. I think otherwise. Even if it existed, and I say it does not, a totally apolitical historical research, oblivious to all kinds of judgments, such an investigation would serve no purpose but to undermine ethics and make way for inhumanity. Moreover, it would not be true ‘research’ because it would not be dedicated to revealing the relationships between the factors; as much as it would be mere preparatory work, the mere accumulation of materials, as noted by Friedrich Meinecke.

Now, to what extent does the reality of history coincides with my statement? I prefer life on principle to science, especially when it starts to become apparent as a threat to life in the broadest sense. It is often objected that ‘science’ is not to blame, but only some of the scientists (the problem is that there are many, at worst almost all): quite a similar argument that says that we should not take Christianity to task for the sins of Christendom. All this does not mean that I am a supporter of pure subjectivism, which does not exist. A limited capacity of conviction would have my thesis of the criminal character of Christianity if, to prove it, I confined myself to only some examples. But, being a multi-volume work, no one will say that these are isolated or inconclusive examples. Because I write ‘out of hostility’ the story of those I describe has made me their enemy. And I would not consider myself refuted by having omitted what was also true, but only when someone proves that something I have written is false.

There are even those who believe that it is very wrong to criticise, especially when they are criticised, although the latter they would never confess. Quite the contrary, they always claim they have nothing against criticism: that all critiques are welcome but, yes, provided they are positive critiques, constructive; not negative or deleterious. With swollen anger they set those high standards, precisely against the ‘mania of judging’ (Aitmeyer), and display their scandal with ‘scientific’ trims when an author dares to ‘value’; when ‘the historian, given his inability as a moralist, assumes the role of prosecutor’. Is it not grotesque that the sworn representatives of an ancient mystery cult, those who believe in trinities, angels, demons, hell, virgin births, celestial assumptions of a real body, conversion of water into wine and wine into blood, want to impress us with their ‘science’? And could it not be the height of grotesqueness that such people continue to receive the honours of the scientific world itself?

We are invited to take care on behalf of the ‘zeitgeist’ so that we understand and forgive. But precisely Goethe satirised it in his Faust: ‘What you call the spirit of the times, is ultimately the spirit of the masters’. If we are not worth the testimony of the poet for being notoriously anti-Christian and not less anticlerical, let us go to St. Augustine: ‘Times are hard, miserable times, people say. Let us live well, and times are good. Because we ourselves are the times that run; so that how we are, so will our time be’. In his other sermons, Augustine reiterated this idea that there is no reason to accuse the times or the ‘zeitgeist’, but the very humans that (as the historians of today) blame everything on the times: those miserable, difficult and murky times. Because ‘time does not offend anyone. The offended are men, and other men are the ones who inflict the offenses. Oh, pain! It offends men who are robbed, oppressed, and by whom? Not by lions, snakes or scorpions but by men. And so men live the offenses on pain, but will not themselves do the same, if they can, and as much as they have censored it?’ Augustine knew what he meant, as he himself fits perfectly in the last sentence of the quotation (see the last chapter of this volume). As this, ultimately, cannot be denied by the apologists, they object that sometimes—i.e., every time it was necessary, whatever the historical period under consideration—the agents ‘were not true Christians’.

But look, when there were true Christians? Were they the bloodthirsty Merovingians, the Franks so fond of plundering expeditions, the despotic women of the Lateran period? Was Christian the great offensive of the Crusades? Was it the burning of witches and heretics? The Thirty Years War? The First World War, the Second or the war of Vietnam? If all those were not Christians, then who was it? In any case, the spirit of the times was not ever the same at each particular time. While Christians were spreading their gospels, their beliefs and dogmas; while they were transmitting their infection to always larger territories, there were not a few men, such as the first great debunkers of Christianity in the 2nd century, Celsus; and Porphyry in the third, who knew how to raise a comprehensive and overwhelming criticism, which we still feel justified. As Christianity was guilty of appalling outrages, Buddhism, which never had a Western-style organised church in India or central authority dedicated to homogenise the true faith, gave signs of a much higher tolerance. Non-priest believers contracted no exclusive commitment, nor were forced to recant other religions, or converting anyone by force. Their peaceful virtues can be seen, for example, in the history of Tibet, whose inhabitants, a warrior nation among the most feared of Asia, became one of the most peaceful under the influence of Buddhism. In every century there was a moral conscience, even among Christians, and not less among ‘heretics’. Why should we not apply to Christianity its own scale of biblical standards, or even occasionally patristic standards? Do not they themselves say that ‘by their fruits ye shall know them’?

For me, history (and what I said is but a drop in an ocean of injustices) cannot be cultivated sine ira et studio. It would be contrary to my sense of fairness, my compassion for men. He who has not as enemy many enemies, is the enemy of humanity. And is not anyone who pretends to contemplate history without anger or affection similar to the one who witness a large fire and sees how victims suffocate and does nothing to save them, limiting himself to take note of everything? The historian who clings to the criteria of ‘pure’ science is necessarily insincere. He wants either to deceive others or deceive himself. I would add: he is a criminal, because there can be no worse crime than indifference.

And if the sentence of St. John Chrysostom retains its validity today, ‘he who praises the sin is guiltier than he who commits it’, would then praising the crimes of history and glorifying the criminals be even worse than these crimes? Would not human affairs be better, and also the affairs of history, if historians (and schools) illuminated and educated the public based on ethical criteria, condemning the crimes of the sovereigns rather than the praising? But most historians prefer to spread the faeces of the past as if they had to serve as fertiliser for the future havens.

An example of it, to cite only one, is the daily glorification of Charlemagne (or Charles the Great). The worst looting expeditions and genocides of history come to be called expansions, consolidation, extension of the catchment areas, changes in the correlation of forces, restructuring, incorporation domains, Christianization, pacification of neighbouring tribes. When Charlemagne oppresses, exploits, and liquidates what is around him, that is ‘centralism’, ‘pacification of a great empire’. When there are others who rob and kill, those are ‘raids and invasions of enemies across the borders’ (Saracens, Normans, Slavs, Avars) according to Kampf. When Charlemagne, with bags full of holy relics, sets fire and kills on a large scale, thus becoming the noble smith of the great Frank empire, the Catholic Fleckenstein speaks of ‘political integration’. Some specialists use even safer, more peaceful and hypocritical expressions as Camill Wampach, professor of our University of Bonn: ‘The country invited immigration, and the neighbouring region of Franconia gave inhabitants to newly liberated lands’.

The law of the jungle, in a word: the one which has been dominating the history of mankind to date, always where a State intended it (or another refused to submit), and not only in the Christian world, naturally. Because, of course, we will not say here that Christianity is the sole culprit of all these miseries. Perhaps someday, once Christianity disappears, the world remains equally miserable. We do not know that. What we do know is that, with it, everything will necessarily remain the same. That’s why I have tried to highlight its culpability in all cases I have found it essential, trying to cover as many cases as possible but, yes: without exaggeration, without taking things out of proportion, as those could judge who either do not have idea about the history of Christianity, or have lived completely deceived about it.

 

Categories
Catholic Church Emperor Julian Free speech / association Julian (novel)

JVLIAN excerpts – III

“Why were you so ungrateful to our gods
as to desert them for the Jews?”

—Julian, addressing the Christians

Julian


Libanius to Priscus
Antioch, April 380

You cannot imagine the pleasure I experienced when your letter was brought to me this evening.

Since I wrote you, I have not been idle. Through the office of the praetorian prefect at Constantinople, I have proposed myself for an audience with the Emperor. Theodosius has met very few people of our set, coming as he does from Spain, a country not noted for culture.

How often in the past we have been horrified by princes reputed to be good who, when raised to the throne of the world, have turned monstrous before our eyes? The late Valens for example, or Julian’s own brother, Caesar Gallus, a charming youth who brought terror to the East. We must be on guard, as always.

The question that now faces us is this: how seriously will Theodosius enforce the edict? It is customary for emperors who listen to the bishops to hurl insults at the very civilization that created them. They are inconsistent, but then logic has never been a strong point of the Christian faith.

The extraordinary paradox is the collusion of our princes with the bishops. The emperors pride themselves on being first magistrates of the Roman imperium, through whose senate they exercise their power; and though in reality we have not been Roman for a century, nevertheless, the form persists, making it impossible, one would think, for any prince who calls himself August to be Christian, certainly not as long as the Altar of Victory remains in the senate house at Rome. But confusion of this sort are inconsequential to the Christian mind as clouds to a day in summer, and as a teacher I no longer try to refute them; since most of my students are Christian, I suppose I ought to be grateful that they have chosen to come to me to be taught the very philosophy their faith subverts. It is a comedy, Priscus! It is tragedy!

Meanwhile, we can only wait and see what happens. The Emperor grows stronger in health every day, and it is thought that later this spring he may take the field against the Goths, who as usual are threatening the marches of Macedonia. If he decides to go north, this means he will not return to Constantinople till late summer or autumn, in which case I will have to attend him at Thessalonica or, worse, in the field. If so, I am confident the journey will be my last. For my health, unlike yours, continues to deteriorate.

Over the years I have made a number of notes for a biography of Julian. I have them before me now. All that remains is the final organization of the material—and of course the memoir. Please send it to me as soon as the copy is ready. I shall work on it this summer, as I am no longer lecturing. I thought it wise to go into seclusion until we know which way the wind blows.

There have been no incidents so far. My Christian friends come to see me as usual (rather a large number of my old students are now bishops, a peculiar irony). Colleagues who are still lecturing tell me that their classes are much as usual. The next move is up to Theodosius, or, to be exact, up to the bishops. Luckily for us, they have been so busy for so long persecuting one another that we have been able to survive. But reading between the lines of the edict, I suspect a bloodbath. Theodosius has outlawed with particular venom the party of the late Presbyter Arius on the grounds that Galileans must now have a church with a single doctrine to be called universal… a catholic church, no less!

To balance this, we must compose a true life of Julian. So let us together fashion one last wreath of Apollonian laurel to place upon the brow of philosophy, as a brave sign against the winter that threatens this stormy late season of the world. I want those who come after us to realize what hopes we had for life, and I want to see how close our Julian came to arresting the disease of Galilee.

Again, my best wishes to the admirable Hippia, and to you, my old friend and fellow soldier in the wars of philosophy.