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Why Europeans must reject Christianity, 9

by Ferdinand Bardamu

 
Section III: Censorship and the Christian War on Western Culture
The ecclesiastical decision to censor and suppress classical literature was influenced by militant Christian “fundamentalists,” bigoted anti-intellectuals like Ambrose and John Chrysostom. These men, because of their prominence in ecclesiastical affairs and importance for the patristic canon, were able to aggressively push for an agenda calling for the eradication of all pagan artistic, cultural and scientific achievement. The patristic attack on the intellectual foundations of the ancient world was continued by the medieval church. Isidore of Seville, the most influential and widely read author of the Dark Ages, repeatedly warned his flock of the spiritual dangers posed by reading secular philosophy and science. The canon law of the church had long prohibited Christians from reading secular literature, excluding clergy who consulted these writings to combat heresy and paganism.
The Christianization of 4th century Rome made the church sole inheritor of the great storehouses of ancient wisdom that had been accumulated throughout the centuries. As pagans dwindled in numbers and influence, the monastic scriptoria came to dominate textual transmission, especially after 400. Guided by ecclesiastical censure and canon law, the scriptoria, with few exceptions, ceased copying secular writings for over 300 years, severing medieval Europe from the great scientific and technological achievements of the ancient past. During the Dark Ages, nearly all Greco-Roman literature was removed from circulation and replaced with patristic, biblical and liturgical writings. Works of science and philosophy, some well ahead of their time, were discarded by ecclesiastical officials as rubbish. Sometimes they were re-used for mundane purposes; relics were once found wrapped in the pages of Livy’s Histories. Italian Renaissance scholar Pietro Bembo estimated that less than 1% of all Greek literature survived the turmoil and chaos of the Dark Ages. Modern scholars have made similar estimates for the survival of Latin literature.
Christian religionists allege barbarian invasion as a significant factor in the loss of Western scientific and technical knowledge; they neglect to mention that the barbarians who terrorized the western half of the empire were also Christians. At any rate, barbarian invasion played virtually no role in the destruction of the West’s literary heritage; the majority of Greek and Latin literature was still extant by 500 AD, as the age of Germanic migration was drawing to a close. Although there is no evidence of barbarians burning books or libraries, there is an abundance of evidence implicating Christians in the active destruction and censorship of an entire civilization’s repository of secular knowledge. After the Christian destruction of the Library of Alexandria, the second most destructive act of Christian literary vandalism was the burning of over 120,000 manuscripts by crusaders during the sack of Constantinople in 1204.
Apologists for Christianity emphasize the role of economic and material factors in the disappearance of Western culture during the Dark Ages. In their view, most pagan works simply disintegrated because they were written on papyrus, a fragile material. But this is a myth; papyrus is a highly durable medium, able to withstand the centuries under the right conditions. They cannot explain why the fragility of papyrus was never an issue for the transmission of classical texts until after late antiquity, when the Christian church was at the apogee of its power and influence in Europe. Other religionists speculate that the transition from papyrus to parchment in late antiquity made the copying of pagan literature a costly enterprise. This argument fails because the relative cost of papyrus and parchment cannot be ascertained from the available sources; cost is irrelevant anyway because parchment replaced papyrus in Egypt.
The Christian religionist unwittingly reveals another mode of ecclesiastical censorship and suppression: the refusal to recopy pagan works from papyrus to parchment, which happened during the large-scale replacement of papyrus with parchment in the early medieval period. Still, and embarrassingly enough for the Christian religionist, he cannot explain why Christian writings, whether patristic, liturgical or biblical, outnumber pagan writings by a staggering ratio of 25 to 1. Only widespread Christian censorship and suppression of pagan science and philosophy can adequately account for these glaring statistical discrepancies.
Apologists say Islamic conquest of Egypt in 642 disrupted trans-Mediterranean shipments of papyrus, which resulted in the loss of much ancient literature. However, the historical record reveals that the West’s barbarian rulers, as well as the Byzantine emperor, always had access to a steady supply of Egyptian papyrus. Although Egypt came under Moslem rule, papyrus manufacture remained a Christian enterprise, with Moslems now exporting it to Europe. The irony is that, although Byzantine rulers always had access to an abundant supply of papyrus, the Greek and Roman literature in their possession still gradually dropped out of circulation and vanished from library shelves.
In the Latin-speaking West, decline in papyrus as a writing material is related to large-scale abandonment of Roman forms of government. For example, the Code Justinian contains legislation mandating the use of papyrus for government documents. In keeping with Roman bureaucratic norms, the Merovingian chancery used papyrus until the late 7th century. This practice disappeared under the Carolingians, a dynasty originating in the Germanic east. Unlike the Romanized west, which was more urban and centrally administered, the Germanic east was decentralized and rural. For these reasons, parchment gradually supplanted papyrus in Europe.
In the Christian religious mind, Irish monasteries played an instrumental role in the “preservation” of Western scientific and technical knowledge, but this is a risible claim. What work of preservation was there when over 99% of all secular writings were either destroyed or suppressed by the Christian church? There was no preservation. What did manage to survive, did so in spite of Christianity, not because of it.
That almost nothing of this literature managed to survive shows that the Christian church conducted a remarkably successful campaign of censorship and suppression, the most successful in all history. This is further reinforced by statistical data on book production from 400 to 800 AD. In the fifth century, 27% of extant manuscripts copied were pagan, with the rest being works of a largely patristic, biblical or liturgical nature; this declined to 7% in the sixth century, 2% in the seventh century and 1% in the eighth century, out of a grand total of 834 extant Latin manuscripts.
Over a 400-year period, we see classical works being gradually removed from circulation. This is a pattern indicative of widespread and systematic literary censorship and suppression. If the steep decline in the number of classical texts copied had continued uninterrupted, all pagan scientific, technical and philosophical knowledge would have vanished from memory.
Contrary to the bigoted claims of Christian religionists, we do not see “preservation.” Careful examination of the historical record reveals that the Christian church bears sole responsibility for the destruction and suppression of over 99% of Greek and Latin literature.
Christianity’s eradication of the accumulated wisdom of the ages is one of the greatest crimes ever committed against the West. No act of censorship has been more destructive in world history than the one carried out by this institution. Without the life-giving knowledge of the ancient world, maintaining an advanced pre-industrial civilization became virtually impossible. Christian censorship and suppression of secular knowledge is the main reason behind Europe’s descent into the Dark Ages after the collapse of imperial rule in the West.
Apologists foolishly condemn all criticism of the church for suppressing the technical and scientific knowledge of antiquity as anachronistic. The fact of the matter is that progress, curiosity and reason are among Europeans’ most important inheritance from the classical world. Modern Western civilization would cease to exist without these values.
The decision of the scriptoria to discard works of science, mathematics, engineering and philosophy was a complete rejection of progress, intellectual curiosity and reason. It was the rejection of civilization in favor of a prehistoric existence as the Christian ideal. As a direct result of Christianization, the scriptoria nearly ceased copying the writings of antiquity for centuries; for the first time in history, Europe was in danger of losing her ancient storehouse of scientific, technical and philosophic knowledge that would be so crucial for the Renaissance and the Scientific Revolution.

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Architecture Autobiography Axiology Catholic Church Christendom Hate Protestantism

La Santa Furia

Finally, La Santa Furia, the oratorio-opera of my late father, was premiered this Friday, and also today, at the Palacio de Bellas Artes.

La Santa Furia is a tribute to the Dominican Friar Bartolomé de Las Casas. One of the main prelates of the order of the Dominicans crossed the Atlantic, from Rome, to attend the premiere.

After today’s event, at the private banquet with over fifty select guests, I sat at a table with four Catholic priests who attended the opera. Never in my life had I shared the table with so many priests.

About La Santa Furia I have already written a bit on this blog (see e.g.: here) and will expand my criticism in a book. For the moment I would just like to respond to an email that came to me today from a most traditional Christian:

Cesar,

On your blog, you fantasise about burning all Churches to the ground. Did you ever hear Émile Zola’s quote on the issue? ‘Civilisation will not attain to its perfection until the last stone from the last church falls on the last priest’.

Of course, I, as a pre-Conciliar Roman Catholic, disagree with you, here. Do we really want to burn down Saint Peter’s—designed by Freemasons Bernini and Michelangelo? Its Egyptian Obelisk? Domed Roof? Do we really want to burn down Pisa Cathedral and other sublime architectural triumphs?

The Notre Dame in Paris was built by Templars. It has the twin towers, of Joachim and Boaz, representing the balance of hatred and love; black and white. Again, this is architecture that contradicts the ‘love your enemies’ slave morality of the Gospels.

A ‘bonfire of the vanities’ would be welcomed by Biblicists and puritans. The Bible—promoting mediocrity in everything—wants you to pray in your closet/inner room. It’s funny that in the KJV, Jesus Christ tells you to go into the closet! The KJV was translated by homosexuals.

I follow the fundamentalist protestants quite closely, and a lot of them only believe in house churches: worshipping Adonai and Messiah at home. Burning a lot of these crypto-Masonic and crypto-druidic edifices would be to play into their hands.

I agree with you: everything derived from Judaism, in Catholicism, needs to be ruthlessly expunged. In the Marcionite version of the myth of Our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, He shows up, miraculously; in Palestine, condemns Jews, calls for their extermination, and then ascends to Heaven. Crucifixion optional.

Unfortunately, the cause of Marcion did not prevail within the Catholic Church.
C.

Playing into the hands of the Protestants? Hardly: In my little Utopia no Protestant would remain alive.

As to the buildings, even before receiving this letter I had thought about the subject. I would respect the cathedrals, although I would order not to repair them throughout the millenary Reich. With time they would collapse by themselves, in an era when there is no longer any Christian on the face of the Earth.

In the case of St. Peter’s Basilica things are very different. The third article of Nietzsche’s Law against Christianity must be fulfilled: ‘The execrable location where Christianity brooded over its basilisk eggs should be razed to the ground and, being the infamous spot on earth, it should be the horror of all posterity…’

At this point it is necessary to confess something to my readers.

Several times I have said on this site that Day of Wrath is just a selection of Hojas Susurrantes and ¿Me Ayudarás? What I have not clarified with enough emphasis is that these last two books are basically autobiographical, where I tell a family tragedy in which Christianity played a central role. From that family drama, the selection I made for Day of Wrath astutely eluded the tragic narrative. The internet is not the place to tell personal tragedies. (Incidentally, La Santa Furia translated into English reads Holy Wrath.)

The only thing I can say here is that I can only be vindicated with the absolute destruction of Christianity and those I call Neanderthals: something that could only happen posthumously, insofar as I do not have the philosopher’s stone.

But vindication is not only mine. The fate of the Aryan race is closely linked, in a negative way, to the religion of our parents.

Of the living men whose name every pro-white has heard, I only have met two of them personally, both in England. One of them, a traditional Catholic, was not long ago, along with other protesters, in the Jewish quarter of London to protest publicly.

I would never do such a thing. For me it is obvious that the white traitor is worse than the Jew, and that we should focus on the cause instead of the symptom. Without White betrayal there would be no Jews in power. This is even inferred from Rome vs. Judea, as well as in my comments on the Kriminalgeschichte translations. To paraphrase Codreanu, there would be no mosquitoes without the swamps of our sins. Superficially, white nationalists focus on mosquitoes. This site focuses on the swamp.

So instead of going to protest a kike neighbourhood, if I did activism I would do a demonstration never done before in the West. I would do picketing outside the Vatican, or the most important churches in Europe and America, with slogans like Nietzsche’s ‘Transvaluation of all values!’ Or Zola’s quoted above: ‘…until the last stone from the last church falls on the last priest!’

No swamps, no mosquitoes. If whites abandoned Christian ethics the JQ would be resolved overnight. In other words: if the tens of thousands of white nationalists were not like Franklin Ryckaert but shared the santa furia of this blog, the non-gentiles would already be trembling.

Obviously I did not say any of these things during today’s meal sitting next to so many priests, including the Dominican who made a special trip from Rome.

I behaved like a saint.

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Catholic Church Christendom Goths Kriminalgeschichte des Christentums (books)

Kriminalgeschichte, 56

Below, an abridged translation from the first volume of Karlheinz Deschner’s Kriminalgeschichte des Christentums (Criminal History of Christianity). For a comprehensive text that explains the absolute need to destroy Judeo-Christianity, see here. In a nutshell, any white person who worships the god of the Jews is, ultimately, ethnosuicidal.

 
The Ambrosian policy: archetype for the Church to the present
The same as Athanasius, Ambrose (in his post of 374-397)—according to Augustine’s testimony, ‘the best and most renowned bishop of Milan’—was not so much a theologian as a politician of the Church: equally inflexible and intolerant, although not so direct; more versed and ductile and acquainted with power since birth. His methods, more than those of Athanasius, remain to date an example for ecclesiastical politics.[1]
The agents of the saint are among the highest officials of the Empire. He acts skilfully from the background and prefers to let be that the ‘community’ does things, which he fanaticised with so much virtuosity that even the military proclamations directed against it fail.
Son of the prefect of Gaul, Ambrose was born about 333 or 339 in Trier. Orphaned at an early age he grew up, with two brothers, under the tutelage of Roman aristocrats. Having studied rhetoric and law he was appointed, around 370, administrator (consularis Liguriae et Aemiliae) in Milan. On December 7, 374 he would be consecrated bishop, barely eight days after his baptism and without even having the Christian knowledge of an educated layman.
Milan (Mediolanum), founded by the Gauls and a remarkable knot of communications, especially with important roads that lead to the alpine passes, was in the 4th century the capital of Italy and increasingly the imperial residence. Valentinian II sought to stay there as long as possible; Gratian still more, and Theodosius I remained there from 388 to 391, and also after his victory over Eugene (394).

Roman columns in front of basilica di San Lorenzo
in what remains of Mediolanum, the ancient Milan.

Sometimes Bishop Ambrose saw the sovereigns daily. Since when Valentinian II was proclaimed Augustus (375) he was barely five years old, his tutor and half-brother Gratian had just turned sixteen and the Spanish Theodosius was at least a very determined Catholic, the illustrious disciple of Jesus could handle perfectly their majesties. Valentinian I died a few years after Ambrose’s inauguration. His son Gratian (375-383), of just sixteen years of age, succeeded him on the throne.
The emperor, blond, beautiful and athletic had no interest in politics. ‘I have never learned what it means to govern and be governed’ (Eunapius). He was a passionate runner, javelin thrower, fighter, rider, but what he liked most was killing animals. Neglecting the affairs of state, every day he killed countless of them, with an almost ‘supernatural’ ability, even lions, with a single arrow. In any case, he also prayed every day and was ‘pious and clean of hearing’, as Ambrose affirmed so that he would soon deliver biting hints: ‘His virtues would have been complete had he also learned the art of politics’ (Epit. de Caesaribus).[2]
However, this art was practiced by Ambrose for him. Not only did he personally guide the young sovereign, effectively since 378: he also influenced his government measures. At that time the sovereign had promulgated, by an edict, precisely tolerance towards all confessions, except a few extremist sects. However, Ambrose, who four years before was still unbaptized, hastened to write a statement, De fide ad Gratianum Augustum, which he quickly understood.
And as soon as Gratian himself arrived at the end of July 379 in Milan, neutral as he was from the point of view of religious policy, he annulled on August 3, after an interview with Ambrose, the edict of tolerance promulgated the year before. He decided then that only would be considered ‘Catholic’ what his father and he in numerous decrees had ordered eternal, but that ‘all heresies’ should ‘be muted for eternity’. He thus prohibited the religious services of the other confessions. Year after year, except for 380, he issued anti-heretic decrees, ordering the confiscation of meeting places, houses and churches; he dictated exiles and, as a fairly new means of religious oppression, repealed the right to make wills. He was also the first of the Christian emperors who got rid of the title of Pontifex Maximus (that the Roman monarchs used since Augustus), or rather, he refused to accept it, although the year is still the subject of discussions. The military under Sapor was ordered to ‘expel from religious facilities the Arian blasphemy as if they were wild animals and return them to the true shepherds and flocks of God’ (Theodoret). Tolerance towards paganism, which was common among his predecessors, also soon disappeared. In fact, his father still allowed the reparation of damaged temples, making the government pay the expenses. In 381, Gratian moved to northern Italy. In 382 he attacked the pagan cult of Rome, most probably advised by Ambrose; although sanitation of the State coffers may also have played an important role. He also persecuted the Marcionists and, like his father, the Manichaeans and the Donatists: whose communities in Rome had been dissolved without further ado, at the request of Pope Siricius (383-399), with state aid.[3]
Valentinian II (375-392), much younger still, had a remarkable influence on the saint. He habitually used him against the Senate of Rome, mostly pagan, and against the entire Council of the Crown. And the last Westerner on the throne of the East, the independent Theodosius (379-395), dictated in almost every year of his government laws against pagans or ‘heretics’. However, according to Father Stratmann, he was more tolerant than the bishop of the court, who encouraged him to take stricter measures on all sides against the pagans, the ‘heretics’, the Jews, and the extreme enemies of the Empire. The reason: ‘It is no longer our old life that we continue to live but the life of Christ, the life of maximum innocence, the life of divine simplicity, the life of all virtues’ (Ambrose).[4]
The way in which Ambrose lived the life of Christ, the life of maximum innocence, of divine simplicity and of all the virtues, manifests itself in multiple ways—for example, in his behaviour against the Goths. We will deal with them because the Goths played a very important role in the history of Europe, especially between the 5th and 6th centuries. The sources are better in this case than in the other tribes of eastern Germans, and richer is the historiography on them.[5]
 
_______________
Note of the translator: The footnotes still lack the general bibliography, which will be ready as I finish the abridgement of this first volume.
[1] August. conf. 5,13.
[2] Eunap. Excerpt. de Sent. 48. Auson. Grat. Act 64 f. Ammian. 27,6,15; 31,10,18 f. Soz. 7,25,11. Vict. Epit. de Caesaribus 47,5 f. Seeck, Untergang V 165. Dudden I 217 f.
[3] Ammian 30,9,5. Theodor. e.h. 4.24.2 f; 5.2; 5.21.3 f. Socr. 5.2; Cod. Theod. 13,1,11; 16.5.4 f. Cod. Just. 1,5,2. Soz. 7,1,3. Ambros. ep. 1 f; 7 f. Auson. Grat. Act. 14.63. Epistula Gratiani imperat. (CSEL 79.3 f). Zos. 4,36,5. Rauschen 47.49 f. RAC II 1228 f. Kraft, Kirchenväter Lexikon 27. Seeck, Regesten 252. The same, Untergang V 104 f, 137. Sesan 60 f. Stein, Vom römischen 304 f. Heering I 60 f. Dudden I 191 f. V. Campenhausen, Ambrosius 15, 36, 40 f. Alföldi, A Festival. According to this author, Gratian abandoned the title of Pontifex Maximus at the beginning of 379, p. 36. Kornemann, Römische Geschichte II 420. Ensslin, Die Religionspolitik 8 f. Lorenz 38. Diesner, Kirche und Staat 23. Maier, Verwandlung 53. Hornus 168 f. Widmann 59. Grasmück 131 f, 151 f. Lippold, Theodosius 16, 34 f. Kupisch I 91. Schneider, Liebesgebot 46. Aland, Von Jesus bis Justinian 224. Heinzberger 12, 227 Notes 37; here the corresponding bibliography. Thraede 95. Grant, Christen 177. – Chronology, as so often happens, is still subject to controversy. G. Gottlieb, who is not followed here, in his work of opposition to chair in Heidelberg fixed for the writing of the first part of ‘de fide’ not the 378 (or 379), that is, not as was done until the date immediately before (or shortly after) the battle of Adrianople, but a year later. Cf. G. Gottlieb, Ambrosius von Mailand und Kaiser Gratian, Zusammenfassung 83 f. G. discusses even any influence of Ambrose on Gratian’s legislation on matters of the Church and faith, 51 f, or at least explains that such influence ‘cannot be seen anywhere’ (87). Cf. in this regard also Gottlieb, Gratianus RAC VII 718 f, especially 723 f.
[4] Ambros. Über die Flucht vor der Welt 44. Heilmann, Texte II 396. Stein, Vom römischen 296 F. Stratmann III 76. V. Campenhausen, Ambrosius 166. Bloch 197. Aland, Von Jesus bis Justinian 225. Rubin I 27 speaks precisely of the ‘submission’ of Theodosius to Ambrose.
[5] Cf. recently Strzelczyck 1 f.

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Catholic Church Christendom Kriminalgeschichte des Christentums (books)

Kriminalgeschichte, 55


Editor’s note: Judging from how he treated the synagogues, we can infer that St. Ambrose was not ethnically Jewish. But he clearly was not white, as can be seen in this early mosaic.
Christianity arose in the lower strata, the mudbloods and sandniggers and in the Semitic regions of the Roman Empire. These were people who harboured a deep rancour towards the white Greco-Roman world.
In the chapter that Deschner dedicates to this very influential figure of the 4th century, we will see how this bishop committed all kinds of crimes: not only against classical culture but also the Aryan genotype itself (especially the Goths).
 

______ 卐 ______

 

Chapter 19: Ambrose, doctor of the Church
(toward 333 or 339 to 397)

‘An outstanding personality in which the virtue of the Roman with the spirit of Christ was united to give a complete unity: man, bishop and saint from the feet to the head; together with Theodosius the Great, the most important figure of his time, the counsellor of three emperors, the soul of their religious policy and the support of their thrones: a formidable champion of the Church’.

—Johannes Niederhuber, Catholic theologian [1]

‘Ambrose, the friend and counsellor of three emperors, was the first bishop to whom the princes came to support their tottering thrones… His extraordinary personality exuded an enormous influence, carried by the purest thought and a complete altruism… Together with Theodosius I, the most brilliant figure of his time’.

—Berthold Altaner, Catholic theologian [2]

‘Ambrose is a bishop who, in terms of the importance and scope of his activity, leaves in the shade all the others… not only surpasses the popes of the first period, but also all the other guides of the Western Church we know’.

—Kurt Aland, Protestant theologian [3]

 
_______________
Note of the translator: The footnotes still lack the general bibliography, which will be ready as I finish the abridgement of this first volume.
[1] Niederhuber LThK 1st ed. 350. Cf. also the “Allgemeine Einleitung” of Niederhuber in BKV 1914 IX f. Kraft also sees in Ambrose ‘Roman virtue completed and augmented with Christian virtue’. Kirchenväter Lexikon 23.
[2] Altaner 330 f.
[3] Aland, Von Jesus bin Justinian 230.

Categories
Catholic Church Christendom Kriminalgeschichte des Christentums (books)

Kriminalgeschichte, 53

Below, an abridged translation from the first volume of Karlheinz Deschner’s Kriminalgeschichte des Christentums (Criminal History of Christianity). For a comprehensive text that explains the absolute need to destroy Judeo-Christianity, see here. In a nutshell, any white person who worships the god of the Jews is, ultimately, ethnosuicidal.

 
The scene of the bishops Lucifer of Cagliari and Liberius of Rome
A tragicomic curiosity of sacred history was the bishop Lucifer of Cagliari, a fanatical anti-Arian of scarce formation who, for the dogma of Nicaea, suffered a long exile almost alone in Syria and Palestine. Since a clergyman should pay no homage to a ‘heretic’ emperor, he drafted a host of writings against him, in which, among numerous biblical quotations, he interposed all kinds of primitive expletives, calling him the antichrist in person and worthy of the fire of hell.
Nevertheless, Lucifer also antagonised Liberius of Rome and with Hilary of Poitiers he did not recognise the opportunistic measures of Athanasius in the ‘synod of peace’ (362). Rather he turned his back on the Catholics, frightened by their wealth, relaxation and accommodation, and from Sardinia he organised his own circle, which lasted until the 5th century: a small but very active council, branched from Trier to Africa, Egypt and Palestine. Lucifer had supporters even among the Roman clergy.
After his death (370- 371) the head of the Gregory movement, bishop of Elvira, was in his origins also a radical defender of orthodoxy. The Luciferians, ‘those who profess the true faith’, rejected the Catholics as schismatics, censured their belonging to the State and the avidity of their prelates for honours, wealth and power, the ‘luxurious basilicas’, the ‘overflowing basilicas of gold, covered with sumptuous and expensive marbles, with ostentatious columns’, ‘the extensive real estate of the rulers’. The strict Catholic Theodosius I recognised them as Orthodox. They even had a bishop in Rome, Ephesus, who tried in vain to deliver justice to Pope Damasus. The prefect of the city, Bassus, categorically refused ‘to persecute Catholic men of irreproachable character’.[1]
But the lords themselves handled the problem. In Oxyrhynchus, Egypt, Catholic priests smashed with axes the altar of the Luciferian bishop Heraclides. In Trier, the priest Bonosus was persecuted. In Rome, the police and the papal clerics mistreated the Luciferian Macarius in such a way that he died as a result of the wounds in Ostia, where he had been exiled. (However, the local bishop, Florentinus, did not want to have anything to do with the ‘Damasus crime’ and moved his mortal remains to a pantheon.)
In Spain, the Catholics forced the doors of the church of the presbyter Vicenç, dragged the altar to a temple under an idol, beat the acolytes of the ecclesiastic, tied him with chains and left him to die of hunger. Bishop Epictetus de Civitavecchia carried out a much shorter process. He tied the Luciferian Rufinus to his carriage and tormented him to death. However, Bishop Lucifer of Cagliari was venerated as a saint in Sardinia, which for the time being was closed to the central Church, and as such he was recognised in 1803 by Pope Pius VII.[2]
The fact that the history of the popes is not in short supply of curiosities is also demonstrated by Bishop Liberius.
In vain did the emissary of the emperor, the praepositus sacri cubiculi, Eusebius, a eunuch of ill repute who was executed under Julian, persuade Liberius to condemn Athanasius. Donations and threats were useless, so Constantius had the Roman kidnapped at night and brought him to Milan. There he explained the damage that Athanasius had done to everyone, but especially to him. ‘He has not been satisfied with the death of my elder brother and has not ceased to instigate the already deceased Constant to enmity against us’. The sovereign added that even his successes against the usurpers Magnentius and Silvanus did not mean so much to him ‘as the disappearance of this impious man from the ecclesiastical scene’. Apparently Constantius placed a high price on the capture of the fugitive Alexandrian and sought the help of the kings of Ethiopia.[3]
However, the Roman bishop wanted to oppose to the maximum the ‘heretic’ emperor, even ‘dying for God’. Therefore, Constantius interrupted the conversation: ‘What part of the inhabited earth are you, that you alone stand beside an ungodly man and disturb the peace of the whole world?’ ‘You are the one who, by yourself, cling to the friendship with that person without conscience’. Liberius received a period of three days to reflect, but remained unperturbed. ‘For me, the laws of the Church are above everything’, he said. Send me wherever you want. ‘And this despite the fact that, according to Ammianus, he was convinced of Athanasius’ guilt.
But after two years of exile in Veria, with the brainwashing applied to him by the local Bishop Demophilus and Fortunatus, bishop of Aquileia, Liberius capitulated. The Roman so admired in Milan, the ‘victorious fighter for the truth’ (Theodoret), had to expel from the Church, in a very special spectacle, the ‘father of orthodoxy’: the doctor of the church Athanasius, and signed a semi-Arian creed (the so-called third formula, according to which the ‘Son’ is only similar to the ‘Father’), bringing to light his free will. In reality, what Liberius did was buy his return. All he wanted was to get out of this deep affliction and return to Rome. Even the father of the Church Jerome explained in his time that Liberius, broken in exile, had given a ‘heretical’ signature.[4]
Constantius authorised in 358 the return of Liberius under the condition that he should administer the bishopric of Rome jointly with his successor Felix.
 
_______________
Note of the translator: The footnotes still lack the general bibliography, which will be ready as I finish the abridgement of this first volume.
[1] Socr. 2,36 f. Soz. 4,9. Athan. hist. Arian. ad mon. 31 f. Lucif. Calar. Den non parcendo in Deum delinquentibus. Cf. De non conviendo cum haereticis.- De regibus apostaticis. – De San Athanasio. – Moriendum esse pro Dei filio. Cf. also to complete the history of cults written in 384 by clerics Faustinus and Marcellinus, the so-called Libelus precum in Collectio Avellana. Cf. esp. also Coll. Avell. ep. 2,85. Pierer X 567 f. LThK 1st ed. IV 673, VI 677 f. Bertholet 331. Altaner 320. Kraft, Kirchenväter Lexikon 354. Krüger, Lucifer 39 f. Rauschen 140. Stein, Vom römischen 234 f. Caspar, Papsttum I 201 f, 216 s. V. Campenhausen, Ambrosius 6. Lietzmann, Geschichte IV 40 f. Hemegger 403 f. Haendier, Von Tertullian 96 f. Klein, Constantius II 56 f, 121 s. Joannou 119, 139 f.
[2] Libellus precum 21; 23 f. Pierer X 567 f. Rauschen 199 f, Caspar, Papsttum I 202 f, 216. Hemegger 403 f.
[3] Soz. e. h. 4,11,3. Ammian. Rerum gestarum 15,7; 22,3. Athan. hist. Arian. 38 f. apol. ad Const. 29. Socr. e. h. 2,16. Theodor. e.h. 2,13; 2,16. Wojtowytsch 122 f. Klein, Constantius II 137 f.
[4] Theodor e. h. 2,16 f. Liberius, ep. 10 (Hilar. 4,168); ep. 12 (Hilar. 4,172); ep. 18 (Hilar. 4,155). Hilarii Coll. antiar. (frg. hist.) «Pro deifico», “Quia scio”, “Non doceo”. Soz. e. h. 4,15. Theodor. e. h. 2,16 f. Philostorg. 4,3. Sulp. Sev. Chron. 2,39. Hieron. de vir. ill. 97. Ammian. 15,7 f. Athan. hist. Arian. 38 f. LThK 1st ed. VI 549 f, IX 597 f. Altaner 307 f. Grisar, Geschichte Roms 281. Caspar, Papsttum 1171 f, 183 f. Hermann, Ein Streitgespräch 77 f. Wojtowytsch 121 f. Klein, Constantius II 86, 140 f. Aland, Von Jesus bis Justinian 181. Haendier, Von Tertullian 94 f. Jacob, Aufstände 152.

Categories
Catholic Church Christendom Kriminalgeschichte des Christentums (books)

Kriminalgeschichte, 52

Below, an abridged translation from the first volume of Karlheinz Deschner’s Kriminalgeschichte des Christentums (Criminal History of Christianity). For a comprehensive text that explains the absolute need to destroy Judeo-Christianity, see here. In a nutshell, any white person who worships the god of the Jews is, ultimately, ethnosuicidal.

 
Shelter with a twenty-year-old beauty
After the worldly [events] of Trier and Rome[1], Athanasius now began something more intimate: the relationship with a maid of about twenty years and ‘of such extraordinary beauty’ —as all the clergy testified— ‘that for her and her beauty they avoided any meeting with her to prevent suspicions and reproaches’.[2]
The story comes not from a malicious pagan but from a monk and bishop of Helenopolis in Bithynia, Palladius, also a good friend of St John Chrysostom. In his famous Lausiac History, an important source on ancient monasticism which as a whole ‘closely approximates the true story’ (Kraft), Bishop Palladius speaks of the girl who was shunned by all the clergy so as not to provoke gossiping.

St. Athanasius

But it was different with Athanasius. Suddenly approached by the minions in his palace, he took ‘dresses and mantle and fled in the middle of the night to this maid’. She welcomed him kindly, but also fearful ‘in view of the circumstances’. But the saint reassured her. He had fled only because of a ‘supposed crime’, so as not to be considered a fool ‘and not to sink those who want to condemn me to sin’.[3]
How considerate! And since the assault on his cathedral had cost wounded and dead, his new flight had been censored even by friends and ridiculed by his enemies. He defended himself with references to biblical celebrities inspired by God who, like him, had escaped: Jacob from Esau, Moses from Pharaoh, David from Saul, etc. ‘For it is the same to kill oneself as to give oneself to your enemies to be killed’.
Athanasius always managed to justify his actions. He knew that running away was the right thing to do at that moment, ‘to worry about the persecutors so that their fury does not claim blood and they become guilty’. This man did not think about his own life when he left his people abandoned to fate, as well as many brave generals in battle.[4] To censure him would be ingratitude to God, disobedience to his commandments. He could also take advantage of the flight to announce the Gospel while he flees. Even the Lord, writes Athanasius, ‘hid and fled’. ‘Who do we have to obey? To the words of the Lord or to gossip?’ [5]
Of course, not everyone who runs away finds shelter with a beautiful woman of twenty years. Athanasius had luck or grace:

God showed me tonight: ‘Only with her can you save yourself’. Full of joy she left all her scruples and gave herelf completely to the Lord.

Well said!

Apparently, she hid the holiest man for six years, while Constantius lived. She washed his feet, got rid of his waste, took care of everything he needed…

It is sticking to learn about Athanasius’ great sanctity at the same time as his long shelter with the young woman: a timeframe that is also confirmed by other sources. However, today it is assumed, in favour of the saint, that he stayed with that beauty ‘only transiently’ (Tetz), an elastic concept. The coexistence of a cleric with a maiden consecrated to God, a gyná syneísaktos or ‘spiritual wife’, was widespread in the 3rd and 4th centuries, and even included the closest community: that of the bed. However, naturally, Athanasius was above suspicion.

I took refuge in her [he defends himself] because she is very beautiful and young [!]. Thus I have won twice: her salvation because I have helped her, and my reputation.

Some men are always immaculate. In our century,[6] the man who would later be Pope Pius XII took, when he was 41-years-old, as a companion a nun of twenty-three until he died.[7]
_______________
Note of the translator: The footnotes still lack the general bibliography, which will be ready as I finish the abridgement of this first volume.
[1] Note of the Ed.: This refers to the previous page, about Athanasius’ return to his town in the year 346, that does not appear in this abridged translation.
[2] Pallad, hist. Laus. c. 63.
[3] Ibid. Kraft, Kirchenväter Lexikon 404 f. LThK 1st ed. VII 896 f. Altaner 188 f.
[4] Note of the Ed.: See note 1 above.
[5] Cf. Tetz 172 f.
[6] Note of the Ed.: Deschner published Vol. I in 1986.
[7] Pallad, hist. Laus. c. 63. Tetz 171. Vööbus, Entdeckung 36, esp. 40. Deschner, Das Kreuz 182 f. The same, Heilsgeschichte II 21 f.

Categories
Art Bible Catholic Church Christendom Martin Luther Matt Koehl Protestantism Science

Faith of the Future, 3

by Matt Koehl

 

III. The Decline of Christianity


The imposition of Christianity on the Aryan peoples of Northern Europe had one lasting effect. It resulted in an inner tension, a disquiet—an angst—which has been a protruding feature of Western culture from its inception. Throughout the history of the West, there has always existed a soul struggle keenly felt by the more perceptive spirits of the race, occasioned by the contradiction between the inverted values and tenets of an Oriental/Semitic belief system on the one hand and the natural religious feeling of Nordic/Aryan man on the other.
If the former furnished the ideological matrix of the culture, it was the latter which provided the creative inspiration, the divine spark. Indeed, the greatest moments of Western culture as a manifestation of Aryan genius—whether expressed in a specifically Christian or extra-Christian form—occurred despite the stricture of Church dogma, rather than because of it. Dante, Chaucer, [Edmund] Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton, Goethe, Schiller, Shelley, Wordsworth, Keats, Byron, Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raphael, Botticelli, Dürer and Rembrandt all testify to this, no less than do Vivaldi, Bach, Handel, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Wagner and Bruckner.
As we have seen, the external character of Christianity was greatly modified in its metamorphosis from a small Jewish cult into the mighty religion of the West. The medieval institution known as chivalry, in fact, with its refined honor code—which save for its Christian trappings more properly reflected the outlook and mores of a pre-Christian time—resulted from this very process, and provided a modus vivendi for opposing spiritual interests during the Middle Ages.
Thus, through a mutual accommodation of sorts was the underlying contradiction largely contained. And yet despite any institutional adjustment, the unease deriving from an alien idea remained latent within the fabric of the culture. The social and intellectual response to this inner tension varied. For their part, the kings, emperors and other secular rulers tended to treat the matter with cynical detachment, accommodating and offering resistance as political requirements dictated.
Among scholars and thinkers, on the other hand, there were those who, like Giordano Bruno, rose in open revolt against Church dogma. More often, however, the stirrings of disquiet were manifested in subtle attempts to orient Christian doctrine toward innate Aryan religiosity. This was particularly true of the mystics of the Middle Ages, like Scotus Erigena, Amalric of Bena and Meister Eckhart, who—going beyond the theology of the Church—looked inward into their own souls and to Nature itself to discover the kingdom of God.
It was with the Renaissance, however, that there appeared the most significant movement to challenge Church doctrine—a movement which would, in fact, set in motion an irreversible chain of events leading ultimately to the discrediting of that very doctrine as the core idea of a culture.
Now, for the first time, was the Promethean impulse able to break out of the clerical mold. Art came to express, not merely a sterile Semitic outlook, but the feelings of a Northern racial soul—a most notable development, which announced that creative vitality had stepped beyond the mythic prescriptions of the culture. The entire Judeo-Christian cosmology was called into question by new discoveries in the natural and physical sciences. Exploration across unknown seas commenced. Perhaps the most revolutionary single development of this time, however, was the discovery of movable type by Johannes Gutenberg, which enabled a much wider circulation of knowledge—knowledge other than that bearing an ecclesiastical imprimatur, knowledge transcending the basic ideology of the culture.

* * *

The most important consequence of the Gutenberg invention is to be seen in the Protestant Reformation, to which it was a contributing factor and whose development it greatly influenced. Up until the time of Martin Luther, the focus of Christian authority was the Papacy, whose word was unquestioned in matters of faith and dogma. Now, with the great schism in Christendom, a direct challenge was presented to ecclesiastical authority. It certainly was not, of course, die intent of Luther and the other dissenters to undermine or eliminate the Christian faith; rather the opposite. They merely wished to reform it. And yet, by challenging the one unifying institution of Christendom and causing a split in Christian ranks, they inadvertently opened the door to disbelief in the Christian mythos itself.
To replace papal authority in matters religious, Luther proposed to substitute the authority of the Book; and so, with the prospect of employing the Gutenberg invention, he undertook the prodigious task of translating obscure Hebrew scriptures into the German language—to the everlasting misfortune of Christianity.
It is ironic that in his quest for spiritual freedom, the Great Reformer should have rejected the despotism of the Papacy only to embrace the tyranny of the Torah and the ancient Jewish prophets. The arcane texts which had remained on musty shelves behind cloistered walls and accessible only to priests and theologians now became universal property. And now, instead of one single authority in matters of Christian exegesis, everyone—and no one—became an authority. Out of this there could be but one result: contradiction and confusion.
The effect on intelligent minds, of course, was devastating. For here it was now possible—in the best Talmudic fashion—to prove mutually exclusive points of view by reference to the same Semitic texts. Not only that, but critical examination of biblical literature gave rise to serious doubt concerning the veracity and validity of the subject matter itself, not to mention the peculiar mentality of its various authors. For the first time, perceptive minds could observe the obvious contradiction between empirical reality and what was claimed as holy writ.
Gradually there grew the inner realization that the faith itself was flawed, and creative genius began to look beyond the ideology of the Church for inspiration and direction. Even in those instances where Christian motifs continued to provide the external form for artistic expression—such as in the works of Bach, Corelli and Rubens, for example—the vital daemon which spoke was clearly extra-Christian and of a religious order transcending Church dogma.
And so even the Counter-Reformation, and the stylistic mode it inspired, succumbed to widening skepsis. A lessening of traditional belief had set in, and Aryan creativity now began to look increasingly in other directions for the divine. At the intellectual level, philosophy—which had long separated itself from theology—pursued its own independent quest for truth, while at the artistic level a succession of stylistic periods—impelled by irrepressible inner tension—sought ever newer forms of expression. Thus, the Baroque, having exploited all of its possibilities, gave way to the Rococo and the Classical, which in turn yielded to the Romantic of the last century and to the Impressionist, which has now been succeeded by the Modem era—which concludes the historical experience of the West.

* * *

Today, Christianity has reached its final stage. From both a spiritual and a scientific standpoint, its fundamental beliefs have become untenable. The advances of Aryan science have forever shattered the old Jewish myths. The cumulative impact of such figures as Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, Newton and Darwin could not be eternally suppressed by ecclesiastical edict. When Church dogma, for example, insisted that the earth was the center of the universe and scientific investigation demonstrated otherwise, Aryan man was compelled by his innate regard for the truth to accept the latter at the expense of the former. In so doing, he came to question all other aspects of a once-sacrosanct belief system.
For the modem Church, this poses an impossible dilemma. The more it adheres to its fundamental doctrines, the more preposterous they must appear and the quicker will be its demise. On the other hand, once it attempts to reconcile itself with the findings of science by reinterpreting and redefining its basic tenets, it automatically concedes its moral position and its very reason for existence as an arbiter of truth.
The fact is that Christianity, as the dominant ideology of the West, has failed. It has exhausted all of its historical possibilities. No longer does it carry the emotional, mythic, polarizing force necessary to direct the spiritual life of a culture. Indeed, it is a spent cultural force no longer capable of adapting successfully to new organic realities.
All of this can be readily seen in the emptiness and sterility of modem cultural expression—reflecting the absence of any real spiritual values—as well as in the secularization of the Christian idea itself into liberal democracy and Marxism. Especially is this to be noted in the self-devaluation process of ecumenism and interfaith/inter-ideological dialogue, which constitutes the clearest concession by Christianity that it has failed and no longer has anything vital to offer. For once the Church admits that its doctrines are coequal with those of the nonbeliever, then what reason is there to be a believer?
It is not without significance that while the influence of Christianity is waning in the West, it is—through the sheer force of demographic pressure—gaining souls and expanding among nonwhites. Not only is this particularly true in Latin America, but also in Africa and—to a lesser extent—in Asia as well.
This development has, of course, not escaped the notice of the Church, which—with obsequious interracial posturing and attempts to divorce itself from its historical Western setting—has chosen to redirect the Christian appeal toward the colored world as the primary area of its interest and concern. In abandoning its Western role, however, Christianity has announced its conclusion as a cultural force. And so, whatever it may have traditionally represented for past generations of Europeans and North Americans no longer obtains.
Accordingly, it would be a mistake to assume that the Judeo-Christian idea has anything to offer the white peoples in their contemporary struggle for survival—that it might in any way be capable of addressing the vital needs and concerns of endangered Aryan life on this planet.
What now exists in the name of Christianity—apart from certain nostalgic, retrograde attempts to revive a historical corpse in a world of uncertainty and personal insecurity—is nothing more than fossil formalism and sterile nominalism without genuine vitality or substance, reflecting the marginal relevance of this particular ideology in today’s society. For in the face of modem realities, the Christian worldview simply has nothing more to say. It has fulfilled its historic role; it is now moribund. At best, it is irrelevant. At worst, it is an avowed enemy, a deadly menace to the Aryan race and its survival.
It may well be argued that the worst consequences of such ideological and spiritual error were far less conspicuous before the Second World War. Does the same hold true today, however, when the final effects of that error can be plainly seen? For well over a millennium now, Christianity has held a monopoly as the self-proclaimed custodian of the spiritual and moral well-being of an entire cultural order—for which one must reasonably assume that it has accepted concomitant responsibility.
What, then, are the fruits of its spiritual regime? We see them all around us. They are the symptoms of a diseased civilization: decadence, degeneracy, depravity, corruption, pollution, egoism, hedonism, materialism, Marxism and ultimately atheism. Yes, atheism. By destroying whatever natural religious feeling once existed in the hearts of our people and substituting alien myths and superstitions, it must now bear full responsibility for the diminished capacity for spiritual belief among our folk.
It will perhaps be objected that the Church itself is opposed to all of the above indesiderata. I am sorry: the responsibility for what has been claimed as a divine charge cannot be so easily evaded. Words aside, these happen to be the actual results of its earthly reign.
The Promethean spirit of Aryan man, for its part, must now look in other directions.

Categories
Blacks Catholic Church London Miscegenation

SSPX ethnosuicide

It is incredible the quantity of Christians in white nationalism. All of them are clueless that their religion is more evil than Judaism: as it implies ethnic treason.
These days the Christians on The Occidental Observer have been discussing traditional Catholicism in the form of the Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX). Although I left the below comment at the comments section, I am pretty sure they won’t pay due attention to the inherent problems in the religion of our parents—even if I manage to translate the ten volumes of Christianity’s Criminal History in the coming years!
 

______ 卐 ______

 
One Sunday during my August 2014 visit to London I visited the Drake House, where SSPX masses were held. I had to get to the last subway station in London, Wimbledon, to get closer to that house.
When I arrived at the parish I realized that it was not a common temple but a small and modest house adapted for religious services. Bishop Richard Williamson was not in London apparently. A gentleman from the London Forum whom I met on the trip had told them that someone coming from Mexico was going to visit them. The kindly people of that place that aspired to church had placed an image of the Virgin of Guadalupe in front of the community! I suspected they had put it for me, so I did not dare to tell them that I was an apostate.
When the service ended, I spoke with the head manager on days when Williamson was absent. He began to speak of the painting of the Virgin of Guadalupe as a miraculous image: just what I had heard a million times in Mexico! The traditionalist Catholics with whom I spoke at the Drake House knew who was Father Joaquín Sáenz y Arriaga. I told them that Father Sáenz had baptized me, but not that I had lost my faith. Sáenz, the priest of my family when I was a child, was also excommunicated for reasons fairly similar to Williamson’s excommunication.
I took a brochure from Drake House, ‘Our program of events’ among the propaganda booklets of the house. The brochure showed the picture of a fifty-year-old black woman on the cover. That was not all. The list of events at the Drake House included dancing from Brazilian Samba to African Dummers referring to events scheduled for mid-September. This in a city that has no longer white majority and where everywhere I saw mixed couples!
At a London Forum meeting I had heard wonders about Williamson’s anti-Semitic stance. When I met his faithful, I realized that the ultra-traditional group was ethnically as self-destructive as the ultra-liberal Argentinean pope.
So my friends [addressing TOO commenters], I must ask again: Has a Christian in this thread started to read my ongoing translations of Christianity’s Criminal History? I am doing it from the POV of white preservation of course.

Categories
Catholic Church Christendom Emperor Julian Kriminalgeschichte des Christentums (books)

Kriminalgeschichte, 47

Editor’s note: This image of the ethnic group of the first Christians in a province of the Roman Empire is really worth a thousand words. Deschner tells us below that St. Athanasius ‘was short and weak; Julian calls him homunculus’.
We can imagine the envy that these mudblood Christians felt for the pagan Aryans! It is a pity that white nationalists are unaware of the role that ethnic struggles played in the Christian takeover of the Roman Empire.
 

______ 卐 ______

 

Below, abridged translation from the first
volume of Karlheinz Deschner’s Kriminalgeschichte
des Christentums (Criminal History of Christianity)

 
Character and tactics of a Father of the Church
Probably like Paul and like Gregory VII, Athanasius—one of the most discussed personalities in history (even today some of the facts about his life remain controversial)—was short and weak; Julian calls him homunculus. However, like Paul and Gregory, each one of them was a genius of hatred. This cleric, the most obstinate of his century, compensated his scarce physical presence with enormous activity.
He was one of the ecclesiastical personages that with great tenacity and lack of scruples induced errors. However, the Catholics declared him Father of the Church, which is one of the highest honours for which the facts are adjusted: ‘Brutal violence against his near adversaries: mistreatment, beatings, burning of churches, murder’ (Dannenbauer).
We may add bribery and counterfeiting; ‘imposing’ if we want to use the term used by Erich Caspar, but ‘totally devoid of attractive human traits’. In an analogous way Eduard Schwartz expresses himself about this ‘humanly repulsive nature, but superb from the historical point of view’, and records ‘the inability to distinguish between politics and morality, the absence of any doubt about his own self-legitimacy’.
The theologian Schneemelcher, on the other hand, splits hairs distinguishing the ‘pamphlets of ecclesiastical policy of Athanasius with his abhorrent polemics and lack of veracity’ of his ‘dogmatic writings which brighten the heart of orthodoxy’, and considers Athanasius a man ‘who wants to be a theologian and a Christian and who nevertheless remains always in his human nature’, which means that the theologian and Christian, and many of his actions, combine the rewarding orthodoxy with hatred and lies. Schneemelcher himself cites the ‘intrigues’ and ‘the violent impulses of the hierarchs’.
St. Epiphanius (whose religious fervour contrasted, as is well known, strongly with his intelligence), revered as ‘patriarch of orthodoxy’, testifies about Athanasius: ‘If he was opposed, he resorted to violence’.
When violence affected him, as in the years 357-358 fleeing from the officials of Constantius, he pathetically preaches tolerance and condemns force as a sign of heresy. But this always was the policy of a Church that, when defeated, preached tolerance and freedom in the face of oppression, but when accessing the majority and power, it did not retreat before coercion and infamy. For the Christian Church, especially the Catholic Church, never aspires to essential freedoms but only to its own freedom.
When the Catholic Church was the State, St. Optatus of Milevis approved in 366-367 to fight against the ‘heretics’, even passing them by the arms. ‘Why’, the saint asks, ‘should it be forbidden to avenge God [!] with the death of the guilty? Do you want tests? There are thousands in the Old Testament. It is not possible to stop thinking about terrible examples’. And indeed: there is no lacking of texts in the Sacred Scriptures!
However, when the Arians were in power, the Catholics presented themselves as defenders of religious freedom. ‘The Church threatens exile and jail’, lamented St. Hilary, ‘it wants to take faith by force… exile and prison. It persecutes the clerics. The comparison between the Church of yesteryear, now lost, and what we have before our eyes, cries out to heaven’.
Athanasius similarly appeals to the emperor, who was on the side of the Catholics. However, when the emperor supported the Arians, Athanasius advocated the libertas ecclesiae and the emperor’s politics suddenly became ‘unheard of’ and the emperor became the ‘patron of atheism and heresy’, a forerunner of the Antichrist, comparable to the demon on earth. Athanasius did not hesitate a moment to insult him gravely in a personal way, treating him as a man without reason and intelligence, a friend of the criminals and of the Jews. ‘The truth is not announced with swords, spears and soldiers’, he says. ‘The Lord has not used violence against anyone’.
Even the Jesuit Sieben admits ‘that Athanasius was forced to make such claims because of the difficulties caused by the persecution. As soon as the Nicaea faction reached supremacy and enjoyed the emperor’s attention, those tones did not rise again’. However, the same Athanasius could dedicate to that same emperor, when he hoped to recover through him his episcopal see, numerous panegyrics praising him with new attributes for his humanity and his clemency, even treating him as a Christian who had always been full of divine love. In his Apology to Constantius, published in 357, he courts the sovereign in a disgusting way.
However, in the year 358, in his History of the Arians he fills Constantius with contempt and hatred. Athanasius constantly changes his mind about the emperor and the Empire, adapting or opposing him, according to the situation, according to the needs. During his third exile he even dared to rebel openly against his (Christian) lord. However, the emperor’s early death prevented him from having to draw conclusions about those considerations.

Categories
Ancient Rome Catholic Church Christendom Constantine Kriminalgeschichte des Christentums (books)

Kriminalgeschichte, 28

Below, abridged translation from the first
volume of Karlheinz Deschner’s Kriminalgeschichte
des Christentums (Criminal History of Christianity)

 
The Catholic clergy, increasingly favoured
Obviously, an earthly paradise was inaugurated at least for the Constantinian ‘court bishops’, and for the Catholic hierarchy whose servility before the emperor assumed, like Eusebius in his writings, ‘the psalmist’s tone when he speaks of the Lord’ (Kühner). Others sang in chorus, like the Fathers of the Church: Ambrose, Chrysostom, Jerome, Cyril of Alexandria. And they did not lack motives. The Christian religion, once persecuted, became recognized and official. Moreover, the Catholic Church and its prelates enjoyed growing privileges that were worthy of power and wealth.

The emperor made donations to the clergy of large estates in Syria, in Egypt, as well as in Tarsus, Antioch, Alexandria and other great cities. We must bear in mind that Oriental donations meant, in addition to income, import operations especially in the market of spices and essences of the East, much appreciated by the Romans. In a word, the famous Patrimonium Petri began to accumulate, of which we will have occasion to occupy ourselves very often later on.
In Constantine’s time begins the metonymy (both in Latin and in Greek) of the word ‘church’ to mean both the community of believers and the building, formerly also called templum, aedes and other names. Constantine continued to erect churches in Ostia, Alba, Naples, and also in Asia Minor and Palestine. As he himself wrote to Eusebius, ‘all of them must be worthy of our love for the splendour’ and monuments to their victories.
Now, all these churches—the Basilica of St. Peter in Rome, the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, inaugurated by the emperor in person (335), whose pomp should be superior to that of all others, that of the Nativity in Bethlehem, that of the Apostles and that of Peace (Irene) in Constantinople, the great basilica of Antioch, those of Tire and Nicomedia, endowed with ‘truly imperial’ splendour, ‘decorated with many and rich votive offerings of gold, silver and precious stones’—they consumed immense sums. All the more so because the construction mania of the emperor was emulated by other members of the imperial family, and especially by his mother, Helena. Eusebius, as chronicler of the court, never tires of praising ‘the inexhaustible generosity of imperial donations’.
The clergy, in particular, received from Constantine ‘the greatest honours and distinctions, as men consecrated to the service of the Lord’. Again and again Eusebius reiterates that ‘they were honoured and envied in the eyes of all’, ‘he increased their prestige through laws and decrees’, ‘the imperial generosity opened wide the coffers of the treasure and distributed its riches with a generous hand’. And there were many bishops who were able to emulate the grandeur and splendour of the imperial court itself. They received special titles and incense cleansings; honours were given to them on their knees, they were seated on thrones conceived in the image and likeness of the throne of God.
Others recommend humility in their sermons!
So many and such were the signs of Constantine’s favours that the influence and economic power of the bishops increased rapidly. They participated in the free distribution of wheat. In their favour only for them, the emperor annulled the laws that disadvantaged the single people or without children. He equated them with the highest officials, those who were not obliged to genuflect in the presence of the sovereign.
In 321, the churches were authorized to receive inheritances, a right that pagan temples had never enjoyed, except in very special cases. On the other hand, for the Church this privilege was so lucrative that only two generations later the State was forced to issue a decree ‘against the plundering of the most gullible devotees, especially women’ (Caspar). This was not an obstacle to the fact that, only a century later, the ecclesiastical patrimony had reached gigantic proportions, as there were more and more Christians who ‘for the salvation of their souls’ made donations to the Church, or left whole fortunes. That custom became a kind of epidemic during the Middle Ages, seizing the Church a third of the extension of all Europe.
Constantine trusted so much the prelates that he even delegated to them part of the powers of the State.
In the trials, the testimony of a bishop had more strength than that of the ‘distinguished citizens’ (honoratiores) and was unassailable. But there was more, the bishoprics acquired their own jurisdiction in civil cases (audientia episcopalis). That is, anyone who had litigation could go to the bishopric, whose sentence would be ‘holy and venerable’, as decreed by Constantine. The bishop was authorized to sentence even against the express wish of one of the parties, and in addition the ruling was unappealable; the State being limited to the execution of the sentence with the power of the secular arm.
‘Soon the Church became a State within the State’ (Kornemann).