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Category: Destruction of Greco-Roman world

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Ancient Greece Ancient Rome Cicero Destruction of Greco-Roman world Eduardo Velasco Indo-European heritage Israel / Palestine Judea v. Rome

Apocalypse for whites • I

by Evropa Soberana

 
Below, abridged translation from the first chapter of Roma contra Judea, Judea contra Roma, authored by the Spanish blogger Evropa Soberana:
 

______ 卐 ______

 
‘The Jews have long been in rebellion not only against Rome, but against all humanity’.

—Euphrates the Stoic

‘The Jews belong to a dark and repulsive force. I know how numerous this clique is, how they remain united and what power they exert through their unions. They are a nation of liars and deceivers’.

— Cicero

I

Foreword
The purpose of this book is to give an idea of what happened to the Ancient World, of how Europe fell into the Middle Ages and, especially, to what extent what happened in Rome 1,600 years ago is exactly what is happening in our days throughout the West, but magnified a thousand times by globalization, technology and, above all, the deputation of psycho-sociological and propagandistic knowledge by the System.
What is dealt with in this book is the story of a tragedy, of an apocalypse. It is the end not only of the Roman Empire and all its achievements, but also of the survival of the Egyptian, Persian and Greek teachings in Europe in a bloodthirsty process: premonition of the future destruction of Celtic, Germanic, Baltic and Slavic heritages, always accompanied by their respective genocides.
This process had a markedly ethnic character: it was the rebellion of Christianized slaves (from Asia Minor and North Africa) against Indo-European paganism, which represented the ancestral customs and traditions of the Roman and Hellenic aristocracies—decadent, minoritarian and softened in comparison with an overwhelmingly numerous, brutalized people who cordially detested the distant pride of their lords.
In the third chapter, ‘Christianity and the fall of the Roman Empire’, we will see processes that marked the first development of Christianity: that strange synthesis between Jewish and Greco-decadent mentality that, from the East, devoured the classical world to the bone, undermining Roman institutions and the Roman mentality to the point of propitiating its total collapse.
However, we will begin by focusing on the Eastern Roman provinces, especially Judea, which was snatched by Rome to the heirs of Alexander the Great. How were the relations between Greeks and Jews? What role did the Romans play in Asia Minor and in the management of the Jewish problem? What are the true roots of Israel and the current instability in the Near East?
It will be worthwhile to expand on the subject to familiarise oneself with the foundations of what is today the greatest geopolitical conflict on the planet: the State of Israel. We will also see the impossibility, in the long term, of the coexistence between two radically different cultures—in this case, the Greco-Roman and the Jewish.
For now, the Romans will meet a people who take the tradition with the same seriousness as them, but replacing that Olympic, artistic, athletic and aristocratic touch with a spark of fanaticism and dogmatism, and changing the Roman patriotism for a kind of pact sealed behind the backs of the rest of humanity. A people, above all, with a fiercely rooted sense of identity—in fact, much more than any other people—and who also considered themselves to be no less than the ‘chosen people’…
 

Index

First part
Geopolitical, anthropological and ethnic context
Rome
Judea
Roman anti-Semitism: a spiritual conflict
The Hellenistic legacy
Greek anti-Semitism
The conquest of Pompey
Herod the Great
About Jesus Christ and the birth of Christianity
Caligula
Claudius and Nero
Second part
First Jewish-Roman War: the Great Jewish Revolt of 66-73 CE
Ethnic disturbances in Egypt
Siege and fall of Jerusalem: the destruction of the Second Temple
Fall of Masada
Consequences of the Great Jewish Revolt
Second Jewish-Roman War: the revolt of Kitos of 115-117 CE
Third Jewish-Roman War: the revolt of Bar Kokhba of 132-135 CE
Consequences of the Palestine revolt
Some conclusions
Nietzsche on the conflict Rome vs. Judea
Third part
Let’s have a look at the situation
‘The Jewish sect’ appears
The Nero case as an example of historical distortion
Destruction of Jerusalem: Christianity takes hold outside Judea
Christians stops being persecuted
At the top of the pyramid there are only slaves: Anti-pagan genocide
The Emperor Julian as the last Roman breath
The Anti-pagan genocide continues with more virulence
The martyrdom of Hypatia as an example of Christian terrorism
In conclusion
Nietzsche on Christianity
Nietzschean version of the Sermon on the Mount

Categories
Ancient Rome Christendom Destruction of Greco-Roman world Emperor Julian Kriminalgeschichte des Christentums (books) Libanius

Kriminalgeschichte, 39

 

Emperor Julian

(Flavius Claudius Iulianus Augustus)
Caesar: 6 November 355 – February 360
Augustus: February 360 – 3 November 361
Sole Augustus: 3 November 361 – 26 June 363


 
The pagan reaction under Julian
Like his brother Gallus, Julian was also spared from the killing of relatives, although as a member of the imperial dynasty he was kept closely guarded: first in a magnificent estate of Nicomedia, which had been owned by his mother (Basilina, deceased shortly after the birth of Julian), and then in the lonely fortress of Macellum, located in the heart of Anatolia, where his older brother was also imprisoned. The distrustful emperor wove a dense network of spies around both princes, to transmit him each and every one of their words.
They lived ‘like prisoners in that Persian castle’ (Julian), practically arrested and surely threatened with death. In Nicomedia, Julian was given a preceptor, Bishop Eusebius, a relative of Basilina, ecclesiastic and man of the world already known at the time, who, following the custom of Oriental prelates, used to dye his nails with cinnabar and his hair with henna. He was instructed to educate the child severely in the Christian religion; to prevent him from contacting the population, and to ‘never talk about the tragic end of his family’, although at seven Julian was very aware of it and this caused frequent crying spells and terrible nightmares.
In Macellum, where he was confined for seven years with scarcely any other company than that of his slaves, he had as his educator the Arian Jorge of Cappadocia, who was in charge of training him for the priesthood. But then Julian was able to leave the place and settled in Constantinople, where he lived the disputes between Arians and Orthodox and knew the real life of that world of violent riots and fiery mutual excommunications. Towards the end of 351, when Julian was twenty years old, Constantius ordered him to continue his studies in Nicomedia. Julian visited Pergamum, Ephesus and Athens, where he had notable teachers who won him for paganism.
Appointed caesar in 355 by Constantius, and proclaimed augustus by the army in Paris in 360, the same sovereign, who had no offspring, at the time of death appointed Julian as successor… when the two opposing armies marched to the encounter of the other. An ephemeral restoration of polytheistic traditions took place, with the establishment of a Hellenistic ‘state religion’, whose organization followed in many respects the pattern of Christian canons.
Julian tried to replace the cross and the nefarious dualism of Christians by a formula composed of certain streams of Hellenistic philosophy and a ‘solar pantheism’. Without neglecting the other gods of the pagan pantheon, he had a temple built for the Sun god—probably identified with Mithra—in the imperial palace; on numerous occasions he proclaimed his veneration for the basileus Helios, the Sun king, which was already a bi-millennial tradition:

Since my childhood, I was inspired by an invincible longing for the rays of the God, who have always captivated my soul, in such a way that I constantly wanted to contemplate it and even at night, when I was in the country, I forgot everything to admire the beauty of starry heaven…

Today we have become accustomed to interpreting Julian’s reaction as a nostalgic movement, a romantic anachronism or the absurd attempt to turn the hands of the clock backwards. But why do we interpret it that way? Was he refuted, or could he be, instead of being drowned in blood? What is certain and undeniable is that Emperor Julian (from 361 to 363), called ‘the Apostate’ by the Christians, was far superior to his Christian predecessors in character, morality and spirituality.
Trained in philosophy and literature, not only was he ‘the first truly cultured emperor for more than a century’ (Brown), but also deserved ‘a prominent place among writers of the time in the Greek language’ (Stein), and he knew to surround himself with the best thinkers of his time. Julian was zealous in the fulfilment of his duty and enemy of all gentleness, since he never had mistresses or ephebes, never got drunk; the emperor went to work since dawn. He tried to rationalise the bureaucracy and place intellectuals in top government and administrative positions.
Julian abolished the splendours of the court, the possession of eunuchs and jesters, and the whole system of flatterers, parasites, spies and whistleblowers who were fired by the thousands. He reduced the service, reduced the taxes by a fifth, acted with severity against the unfaithful collectors and sanitized the state mail. He also abolished the labarum, that is, the banner of the army with the anagram of Christ, and tried to resurrect ancient cults, festivals and the Paideia: classical education. He ordered the return of the old temples or the reconstruction of those that had been destroyed, and even the return of the statues and other sacred ornaments that adorned the gardens of the individuals who had appropriated them.
But he did not ban Christianity; on the contrary, he allowed the return of the exiled clerics, which only served to foment new conspiracies and tumults.
The Donatists of Africa, while praising the emperor as a paragon of justice, disinfected their newly recovered churches by scrubbing them up and down with sea water, sanded the wood of the altars and the plaster of the walls, regained the influence lost under Constans and Constantius II, and prepared to enjoy their revenge. The Catholics were converted by force, their churches expropriated, their books burned, their chalices and monstrances thrown by the windows and the hosts thrown to the dogs; some abused clerics died. Up to 391, the Donatists continued to have high status, at least in Numidia and Mauritania.
It is true that Julian, as a supporter of polytheism, criticized the Old Testament and its monotheistic rigours, as well as the arrogance of the supposed chosen people, but he granted Yahweh a rank equal to that of the other gods and even admitted that the God worshiped by the Jews was ‘the best and most powerful of all’. A Jewish delegation that visited him in Antioch in July 362, obtained the authorization to rebuild the Temple of Jerusalem and the promise of new territories, in a kind of anticipation of the current ‘Zionism’, which motivated the jubilation of the diaspora. The reconstruction of the temple was initiated with great eagerness the following spring, while Julian undertook his campaign in Persia, but towards the end of May a fire, judged ‘providential’ by the Christians, as well as the death of Julian, meant the end of the works forever.
Julian was always in favour of tolerance, even towards Christians. If his dispositions regarding the ‘Galileans’, he said on one occasion, were benign and humanitarian, they should reciprocate by not bothering anyone, nor trying to impose assistance on their churches. In a letter to the citizens of Bosra, he wrote:

To convince and to teach men, it is necessary to use reason and not blows, threats or corporal punishment. I will not tire of repeating it: if you are sincere supporters of the true religion, you will refrain from bothering, attacking or offending the community of the Galileans, who are more worthy of pity than hatred, since they are wrong in matters of such power and transcendence.

Now, and although Julian was a supporter of tolerance… he could not avoid the use of violence against the violent, the Christians who were dedicated to desecrating and even destroying the newly rebuilt temples in Syria and Asia Minor, as well as statues. His legislation in the matter of education provoked many hatreds, inasmuch as he forbade Christians to study Greek literature (saying ‘let them stay in their churches interpreting their Matthew and Luke’). He also demanded the return of the columns and capital stolen from the temples by the Christians to adorn their ‘houses of God’.

If the Galileans want to have decoration in their temples, congratulations, but not with the materials belonging to other places of worship.

Libanius tells how the ships and chariots that returned their columns to the sacked gods could be seen everywhere. On October 22, 362, the Christians set fire to the temple of Apollo in Daphne, which had been restored by the sovereign, and destroyed the famous statue. In retaliation, Julian had the Basilica of Antioch and other churches consecrated to various martyrs razed. (Incidentally, Christians said that the temple had been struck by lightning but according to Libanius, there were no storm clouds on the night of the fire.)
In Damascus, Gaza, Ashkelon, Alexandria and other places the Christian basilicas burned, sometimes with the collaboration of the Jews; some believers were tortured or killed, including Bishop Marcus de Arethusa, so he entered the payroll of the martyrs. But, in general lines, ‘more offended had been the rights of the pagans’ (Schuitze), and in any case said pogrom was no more than a reaction to the excesses of the Christians, their abuses and their diatribes against paganism.
Throughout the empire, from Arabia and Syria, through Numidia, and even the Italian Alps, Julian was celebrated as a ‘benefactor of the state’, ‘undoing past wrongs’, ‘restorer of temples and the empire of freedom’, ‘magnanimous inspirer of the edicts of tolerance’. Even one of Julian’s main intellectual detractors, Gregory of Nazianzus, confessed that his ears ached from hearing so much praise from his liberal regime, according to Ernst Stein, ‘one of the healthiest the Roman Empire ever had’.
During the campaign in Persia, initiated by the emperor from Antioch (which was the main base of operations of the Romans against the Persians), on March 5, 363, a favourable occasion was presented. Julian, who was not wearing a breastplate, fell north of Ctesiphon, on the banks of the Tigris. Why was he unarmed? Was he wounded by an enemy spear or, as some claim, from his own ranks? Nobody knew.
Libanius, who was friend of Julian, assures that the author was a man ‘who refused to render cult to the Gods’. And even a Christian historian claims that Julian died at midnight on June 26, 363, when he was thirty-two years old and had governed for twenty months, victim of an assassin in the pay of the Christians…, a hero without blemish, naturally, who ‘perpetrated this audacious action in defence of God and religion’.
The Persians argued that he could not be one of their own, because they were out of range when the emperor was wounded in the midst of his troops. ‘Only one thing is certain’, Benoist-Méchin wrote, ‘and it is that he was not a Persian’, although he does not provide any definitive proof. ‘Be that as it may’, wrote Theodoret, father of the Church, ‘was he man or angel who wielded the sword, the truth is that he acted as the servant of the divine will’.

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Alexandria Christendom Destruction of Greco-Roman world Emperor Julian Kriminalgeschichte des Christentums (books) Libanius

Kriminalgeschichte, 38

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

 
First assaults on the temples
Paganism still had many followers among the peasants, the many rectors and philosophers; it was also preserved among the cultivated aristocracy, especially the most rancid senatorial families, even among those of the Eastern empire.
In the year 341, a decree attributed to Constans began not with the classic exposition of motives, but with a propagandistic cry: ‘Let the superstition cease! May the delirium of sacrifices be abolished!’ (caesat superstitio sacrificiorum aboleatur insania). Consequently, the sovereign ordered in 346 the closing, with immediate effects, of the temples located in the cities; in 356, the closing of all the temples was ordered.
The question was to prevent the wicked (perditi) from doing their bad things, which triggered a wave of assaults on the temples. The confiscation of property and death by stepping on a temple, or by participating in the ‘aberration’ of sacrifices or worshiping an image, was one of the points of the laws of Constantius: ‘Whoever such things do, be struck down by the avenger sword’.
Libanius, a pagan Hellene rector of Antioch, wrote that Constantius inherited from his father ‘the spark of the inclination to evil deeds, converted by him into a great fire, because he plunders the treasures of the gods, demolishes the temples, annuls the sacred canons’. Libanius comments that Constantius ‘generalized to the rhetoric (logoi) the contempt of pagan worship, and it is not surprising, because both, worship and rhetoric are related and go together’. The contemporary reader will understand that with this he accused the emperor of going against religion and against classical culture at the same time.
The most fanatical Christians already attacked altars and temples. The deacon Cyril of Heliopolis, for example, became famous with his actions. In Arethusa of Syria, the priest Marcus made to demolish an old sanctuary (what later, being bishop and during the reaction of Julian, it was worth a serious beating). In Caesarea of Cappadocia, the Christian community razed a temple of Zeus, patron of the city, and another of Apollo. In Alexandria, the Arian Georgios destroyed a whole series of sacred places of paganism.
 
Hecatombs under the pious Gallus
(Constantius Gallus in a late copy of 354.) In Palestine, the scene of the process of Scythopolis, occurred the outrages of Gallus, a cousin of Constantius who was saved from the dynastic slaughter of the year 337. We find here another good Christian, assiduous to the church since childhood, great reader of the Bible and supposedly faithful husband of the old Constantina, sister of the emperor and married in second nuptials: a notorious harpy, ‘an unleashed fury’, Amianus wrote, ‘as bloodthirsty as his own husband’.
Gallus sent his brother Julian several letters of reprimand, inviting him to return to Christianity. In 351, the year of his proclamation as Caesar, Gallus scandalized the pagans by carrying the bones of Saint Babylas—incidentally, the first well-documented relocation we know—to the famous Apollo sanctuary in Daphne, which was thus rendered denaturalized.
The Christian Gallus, a great fan of boxing (at that time boxing was very bloody, with frequent breaking of bones), was revealed as a little tyrant in his residence of Antioch, through arbitrariness of all kinds and trials for high treason and witchcraft in which he made fun of all the legal norms and that brought a wake of confiscations, exile, horrible tortures and executions.
The fight against the pagans was tinged with true fanaticism, and he used a network of spies that covered the entire city. The Caesar Gallus, of whom Theodoret says with emphasis that ‘he was orthodox to death until the day of his death’, even induced some lynching by the plebs to get rid of certain uncomfortable fellow citizens. In 352, when the Jews suffered another of their periodic attacks of messianic excitement and rebelled against the prohibition of having slaves who were not Jews, assaulting a Roman garrison to procure weapons and naming someone of name Patrician, the pious Gallus burned entire cities and cut the throats even of the children.
Nor were the high imperial officials saved from this regime of terror; thus it fell the prefect of the East, Thalasius, directly responsible to the emperor. He was succeeded by Domitian, who shortly after his arrival in Antioch was captured by the soldiers, dragged through the streets, hung by his legs and thrown into the river Orontes; the same end suffered his quaestor.
There were several other murders, and towards the beginning of the summer of 354 the population rose ‘for varied and complicated reasons’, as Ammianus writes, but above all because of famine and general misery. Governor Theophilus was killed and dismembered.
Constantius was in need of calling his cousin, despite having promised him full immunity, and asked him to be accompanied by his wife, ‘the lovely Constantina’, since he had not seen her for a long time. Gallus understood that there was something fishy, but he trusted the support of Constantina, the emperor’s sister.
But this supporter died in those days as a result of a fever and the emperor beheaded his man of confidence one autumn morning in 354, in Istria. After the execution he proceeded with the rack, the axe of the executioner or exile against all the friends of Gallus, his officers and officials, and even against some religious people.
Only the death of the sovereign, at forty-four years of age on November 3, 361, avoided Constantius a confrontation with his cousin Julian.

Categories
Christendom Destruction of Greco-Roman world Kriminalgeschichte des Christentums (books)

Kriminalgeschichte, 37

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

 
A father of the Church who preaches looting and killing
And it was time for Firmicus Maternus, who expressed with joy that ‘although in some regions the dying members of idolatry still revolt, the complete eradication of such a pernicious aberration in all the Christian provinces’ seems near, which served to launch this proclamation to the Christian emperors: ‘Out with all the pagan ornaments of the temples! To the mint and the crucible with the metal of the idolatrous statues, so that they melt in the heat of the flames!’
In the diatribe De errore profanarum religionum (“On the error of profane religions”), written about the year 347, Firmicus incites emperors Constans and Constantius, called ‘sacratissimi imperatores’ and ‘sacrosancti’ to the extermination, above all, of mystery cults: the most dangerous for Christianity. These were the cults of Isis, Osiris, Serapis, Cybele and Attis, Dionysus-Bacchus and Aphrodite, and the solar cult of Mithraism, the most powerful of the time, characterized by numerous and surprising parallels with the Christian religion.
Many Catholic authors still deny (despite having proved incontestably in 1897) that Firmicus was the author of those bloodthirsty diatribes, which are discredited by their fanatical style full of pleonasms, prototype of future Catholic rhetoric and pamphlets.
Christ, the father of the Church congratulates himself, ‘he has knocked down the column where the devil had his image’, which appears thus ‘almost defeated, turned into fire and ashes’. ‘Little is left now for the devil, totally overwhelmed by your laws, to be totally destroyed, putting an end to the disastrous contagion, once the worship of idols, that poison has been exterminated. Celebrate with jubilation the annihilation of paganism, sing in full voice the hallelujah, for you have won as soldiers of Christ’.
Not yet, however. The religiones profanae still existed, almost all the temples still stood and the pagans still came to their sanctuaries. For this reason, the agitator demands the confiscation of their property, the destruction of the centres of worship. ‘Melt the figures of the gods and mint your coins with them; incorporate the votive offerings into the imperial treasury. The Lord has called you to higher undertakings, when you have crowned the task of annihilating all the temples’.
The spread of Christianity was the highest enterprise, along with the eradication of the pernicious pagan doctrines. Of course, adepts of the Greco-Roman world did not think so, but the other way around. ‘The opinion that, with the irruption of Christianity in the world, it had begun a general decline of the human species’ (Friedlander) was gaining strength.
Always invoking the Yahweh of the Old Testament, as is logical, until then no Christian had claimed with so much emphasis heir to the biblical hecatombs, nor had he used the precedent so systematically to justify resorting to brutality and terror. God threatens even the family and children of the children, ‘lest the cursed seed survive, and there be no trace of the heathen generations’.
As soon as the Church found itself in a position of strength, it stopped rejecting violence in order to exercise it ‘by all means’, as the theologian Carl Schneider says. The old apologetics that spoke of freedom of cults is displaced by libel and diatribe; the ideology of martyrdom and the exemplary lives of the martyrs no longer matters, it is the hour of persecuting fanaticism, of ‘the powerful calls to the crusade’ by a Firmicus ‘denigrating non-Christian religions like no other before him’ (Hoheisel).
The emperors, certainly, were the ones who had the means to apply coercion and violence. But they were also Christians and many proofs will not be necessary to suppose that the book of Firmicus Maternus, dedicated to the emperors Constantius and Constans, would not fail to influence in some measure the anti-pagan policy of them; their prohibitions and their threats. And these, in turn, would determine the position of the author of that Christian pamphlet.

Categories
Christendom Destruction of Greco-Roman world Kriminalgeschichte des Christentums (books)

Kriminalgeschichte, 33

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

 

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Chapter 6: Persia, Armenia and Christianity

‘The origin and founding of that Church are typically Armenian. Gregory [the apostle of Armenia] violently crosses the country, surrounded by troops, destroys the temples and goes Christianizing the population. It was something never seen before in the Hellenic world’.

— G. Klinge

‘The Armenians put to the knife all the Persian army, without sparing a single life’, ‘they did not leave man or woman alive’. ‘They saw the bloodbath perpetrated among the defeated troops. The whole region reeked of the stench of corpses… That is how Saint Gregory was avenged’.

—Faustus of Byzantium

‘Console yourselves in Christ, because those who died did so first of all by the country, by the church and by the grace of the divine religion’.

—Wrthanes, Patriarch of Armenia

 

Mosaic icon of St. Gregory the Illuminator
(Pammakaristos Church, Istanbul)

 
Saint Gregory destroys Armenian paganism and founds a hereditary patriarchy
The conversion of Armenia was the work of Gregory the Illuminator, the apostle of the Armenians. Converso to the Christianity of Caesarea, he began to preach the new religion towards the year 280, when Tiridates re-conquered Armenia. He had great ascendancy over Khosrovidukht, a sister of the king, thanks to which he ended up enjoying the favouritism of the sovereign: a very characteristic process, since we know that the clergy have always used women, sisters, wives or beloved of the princes to dominate them. By this procedure the ‘Christianization’ of entire nations was achieved.
Persuaded by his sister, King Tiridates finally sent a delegation headed by Gregory to Caesarea. Once there, the ordinary Leontius made him bishop and spiritual head of the Armenian Church. Shortly after Tiridates and his wife Ashkhen were converted, they promulgated an edict by which all the subjects (as Sozomen, historian of the Church, recounts) were forced to embrace the religion of the monarch. It is the first proclamation of Christianity as the official religion, although from the 4th century the exact date of the disposition is subject to controversy, mainly because almost all the ecclesiastical chroniclers of the period silenced the case systematically.
As strange as that may seem, and while the date is still being discussed, the fact remains that the proclamation of Christianity as the official religion of Armenia initiates a period of tremendous persecutions against paganism.
Backed and protected by the king, Gregory devoted himself to thoroughly destroying the temples to replace them with Christian churches, which were also endowed with generosity. In Artaxata, which had been a prominent centre of polytheism, ‘the wonderful Gregory’ (as Faustus of Byzantium called him) razed the temple of Vahagn (Hercules), that of Astiik (Venus) and that of Anahit; then he built a splendid Christian church destined to be the new ‘national sanctuary’ of Armenia.
At the same time, Gregory had a palace built for his own use. He was named archbishop, first dignitary of the kingdom after the king and katholikos. This title, also adopted by the archbishops of Persia, Ethiopia, Iberia and Albania, was very significant, since formerly it was the one that corresponded to a high official of the public treasury. Gregory the illuminator, revered as a saint by the Armenian Church and also included in the Roman martyrology by Pope Gregory XVI (his dedication is celebrated on September 30), did not fail to attend to his own needs and those of his own, using the properties of the Church for personal benefit and of their relatives.
The Byzantine writer Faustus, author of the grandiloquent history of Armenia in the year 400, devotes dozens of chapters to the successive slaughters that totalled 29 victories over thirty-four years, if we are to believe what this Christian author says (of quite debatable veracity)…
Although the Christians fought in numerical inferiority from one to ten, or even from one to a hundred, they always exterminated their enemies, women and children included. In 1978, a remarkable dignitary of the Armenian Apostolic Church, Mesrob Krikorian, echoes those dithyrambs: ‘In any case, the Christian religion assumed paramount importance for Armenia and for all Armenians of the time’. Faustus emphasizes again and again that ‘all the Persian soldiers were put to the sword by the Christian troops, not sparing one of them’, ‘not even the women of the entourage’, ‘not one escaped alive’,’ they did a general bloodbath’.
A new and beautiful face!
The reading of these chronicles vividly recalls the Old Testament and the massacres and raids of the Israelites. ‘The Armenians made an incursion through the Persian provinces’, ‘they returned loaded with treasures, weapons, jewels and great booty, covering themselves with imperishable glory and enriching themselves inappropriately’, ‘the country was passed over fire and iron’. On occasion, they also fought against Christian Rome, allied or not with the pagan Persians (and with no less success, as is already understood).
Thus, for example, according to Faustus, ‘for six years in a row they devastated the Greek provinces’,’ they put all the Greeks to the sword in such a way that not a single one was spared’, and ‘there is no measure or account of the treasures they brought with them…’ Always, naturally, fighting under the banners of God, trusting in God, overcoming in the name of God; it is God who grants ‘the fate of great victories’.
The clergy and war… united in the first Christian state in the world. Heroic actions ‘by Christ Our Lord’. Undoubtedly, the Armenians did not need the ecclesiastical blessing to start fighting and killing. But the fact is that the blessing was not lacking.

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Ancient Rome Art Christendom Constantine Constantinople Destruction of Greco-Roman world Emperor Julian Evil Indo-European heritage Intelligence quotient (IQ) Kriminalgeschichte des Christentums (books) Oracle of Delphi Porphyry of Tyre

Kriminalgeschichte, 32

Editor’s note: The author states below: ‘This provision [by Constantine] had serious consequences, as it was one of the first to deprive Jews, in practice, of owning farms’. This is how the first seeds were planted for the Jews to do what today is called ‘white collar’ jobs.
In the days of Ancient Rome the Jews still did not have an IQ superior to Whites. This policy of cornering Jews to work outside of what is now called ‘blue collar’ jobs continued until the French Revolution. Although the anti-Semitic seed of Constantine described below could be applauded by white nationalists, seeing it in perspective was a shot that backfired.
Parallel to allowing Jews in banking and usury, throughout the Middle Ages the best genes of White intellectuals ended, excuse me the crude expression, in the asses of the novices of the monasteries instead of in the fair sex. Unlike the Christians, medieval Jews never practised vows of celibacy. The artificial selection of genes that raised the IQ of the Jews at the expense of the lack of descendants of intelligent Whites (Aryan monks) was a courtesy of Christendom.
In previous chapters the author constantly used quotation marks around the word ‘pagans’. In this chapter he removed the quotation marks. Since ‘pagan’ was Christian newspeak of the 4th century, in some instances of this entry I’ll take the liberty to substitute the textual ‘pagan’ for something like ‘adepts of Greco-Roman culture’.
Below, abridged translation from the first volume of Karlheinz Deschner’s Kriminalgeschichte des Christentums (Criminal History of Christianity):
 

______ 卐 ______

 
Constantine against Jews, ‘heretics’ and pagans
The emperor was not very friendly with the Jews, surely he was greatly influenced by the permanent anti-Semitic attacks of the doctors of the Church, which we have seen in chapter 2, and the recent Synod of Elvira, which had sanctioned with very strong penances the relations between Christians and Jews, in particular the attendance to blessings of fields and banquets celebrated by Jews.
The Roman emperors were quite tolerant of Judaism; not even Diocletian tried to force them to comply with the pagan rites. But after the Council of Nicaea Constantine comes to the conclusion, reflected in an epistle to all the communities, that the Jews ‘tainted by delirium’, ‘wounded by the blindness of the spirit’, ‘deprived of the right judgment’, are ‘an odious nation’ and except for one day a year forbids them to set foot on the city of Jerusalem that he and his mother had filled with churches.
In addition, he forbade them to have slaves like Christians. This provision had serious consequences, as it was one of the first to deprive Jews, in practice, of owning farms. The Christian who Judaized was sentenced to death. In addition, Constantine renewed a law of Trajan, promulgated two hundred years before, according to which the pagan who was converted to Judaism was condemned to the stake.
Even harder was the policy against the ‘heretics’, and this already from the time of the regency, from the year 311, on the grounds that many of those who had abjured Christianity wanted to receive baptism again. This resulted in a schism with bloody repercussions that lasted for several centuries. It is at that time when the definition of ‘catholic’ as opposed to the figure of the ‘heretic’ appears for the first time in an imperial document.
The Donatists rejected the association with the State, the Constantinian alliance between the throne and the altar. They judged that they were the true Ecclesia sanctorum and that the Roman Church was the civitas diaboli. They appealed to the Christian’s beliefs by demanding greater austerity for the clergy. Constantine’s campaign against Licinius turned against the Donatists at the instigation of Bishop Caecilianus in a campaign that lasted several years, presided over by the decision to ‘not tolerate even the slightest hint of division or disunity, wherever it may be’. Moreover, in a letter from early 316 to Celsus, vicar of Africa, Constantine threatened: ‘I intend to destroy the errors and repress all the nonsense, in order and effect to offer to all the human race the only true religion, the only justice and unanimity in the worship of the almighty Lord’.
To the Donatists he took away their churches and their fortunes, exiled their chiefs and commanded troops who slaughtered men and women. The hecatomb of the adepts of Hellenism had not yet begun and Christians were already making martyrs of other Christians.
Constantine also fought against the Church of Marcion, an older church and at some point probably also more followed than the Catholic Church. Constantine prohibited the offices of the Church of Marcion even when they were held in private homes; had their images and properties confiscated, and ordered the destruction of their temples. His successors, most likely instigated by the bishops, stepped up the persecution of this Christian sect after having defamed it and by all means, including through falsifications during the 2nd and 3rd centuries. In 326, shortly after the Council of Nicaea, Constantine issued a scathing edict ‘against heretics of every kind’, in case it was authentic of course and not a figment of Eusebius.
Constantine’s actions against the ‘heretics’ set an example, but at least he respected life most of the time. After all, he did not care about religion as much as the unity of the Church on the basis of the Nicaea Council, and hence the unity of the empire. Undoubtedly, he had an exclusively political concept of religion, although religious problems always, and from the first moment, were presented in relation to social and political conflicts. In the interest of state power he promoted the unity of the Church. This, and not another, was the cause of his hatred of all kinds of discord. ‘I was sure that, if I could complete my purpose of uniting all the servants of God, I would reap abundant fruits in the public interest’, he wrote in a letter to Arius and Bishop Alexander.
In the year 330, Constantine sends a sentence against the Neo-Platonic school and even orders the execution of Sopater, who had been presiding over this school since the death of Iamblichus. The adepts of Hellenism become ‘fools’, ‘people without morals’ and their religion a ‘hotbed of discord’. Constantine’s true intention was that all humans ‘revered the one true God’ and that they forsake ‘the temples of the lie’.
While the adepts of Hellenism of the western provinces still enjoyed relative tranquillity, in the East the persecutions began after the definitive defeat of Licinius (324). Constantine forbade the erection of new statues to the gods, the worship of existing ones, and the consultation of oracles and all other forms of Greco-Roman worship.

In 326 Constantine came to order the destruction of all the images, while in the East he began the confiscation of temple properties and the plundering of valuable works of art. In his new capital, blessed on May 11, 330 after six years of work funded in part through the treasures confiscated from the temples, Constantine banned the worship and the festivals of the adepts of Hellenism and rents were no longer paid to the temples of Helios, Artemis Selene and Aphrodite.
Constantine, described as a ‘renegade’ and ‘innovator and destroyer of ancient and venerable constitutions’ by Emperor Julian, but praised by many modern historians, soon prohibited the repair of Greco-Roman temples and ordered numerous closures and destructions ‘directed precisely against those who had been most revered by the idolaters’ (Eusebius). He arranged the closing of the Serapis of Alexandria, the temple to the Sun-God in Heliopolis, the demolition of the altar of Mamre (because the Lord himself had appeared there to Father Abraham, in the company of two angels), and that of the temple of Aesculapius in Aegae, the latter being fulfilled with such diligence ‘that not even the foundations of the ancient ravings remained’ (Eusebius).
Constantine also ordered the destruction of the temple of Aphrodite on Golgotha, for the ‘great scandal’ that it represented for the believers; it was also the turn of Aphaea in Lebanon from whose sanctuary came ‘a dangerous web to hunt souls’ and which, according to the emperor, ‘does not deserve the sun to shine’. There was no stone left upon a stone; and the very famous Heliopolis was burned down and reduced to rubble by a military command.
Constantine burned Porphyry’s controversial writings. From the year 330, when Neo-Platonism was forbidden, Christians abounded in looting of temples and breaking images, as all Christian chroniclers celebrated and despite such activities having been implicitly prohibited by the Council of Elvira.
Contrary to what Christian historians would like us to believe, the emperor, naturally, was not interested in fighting face to face with the Greco-Roman culture that still held the majority in much of the empire and retained part of its strength, which of course does not mean that there were not well received ‘the small material expropriations’ (Voelkl): the stones, the doors, the bronze figures, the vessels of gold and silver, the reliefs, ‘the valuable and artistic ivory votive offerings confiscated in all the provinces’, as Eusebius highlights.
‘Everywhere they went stealing, looting and confiscating the images of gold and silver and the bronze statues’ (Tinnefeid). Constantine did not even respect the famous tripods of the fortune-teller of the sanctuary of Apollo at Delphi. The historian Kornemann notes ‘a theft of works of art as has never been seen in all of Greece’.
Even St. Jerome criticized that the city of Constantinople had been built with the booty of almost all other cities. ‘In the blink of an eye, whole temples would disappear’, rejoices Eusebius. The entire Olympus was gathered in the ‘new Rome’, where the emperor, even without daring to tear down the temples, had all the statues removed from them. The most venerated gods were installed in bath-houses, basilicas and public squares. The deified Apollo, which had been the most venerable monument in the Hellenic world, was converted into a Constantine the Great. ‘Immense riches disappeared from the coins or went to fill the empty coffers of the Church’, Voelkl reminds us.
Eusebius tells us that… the temples and sanctuaries, once so proud, were destroyed without anyone ordering it, and churches were built in their place and the old delirium was forgotten.
However, at the Easter of 337 the sovereign fell ill. First he sought remedy in the hot baths of Constantinople, and then in the relics of Lucian, protective patron of Arianism and disciple of Arius himself. Finally he received on his farm, Achyronas of Nicomedia, the waters of baptism despite his desire to take them on the banks of the Jordan in imitation of Our Lord. At that time (and until about 400) it was customary to postpone baptism until the last minute, especially among princes responsible for a thousand battles and death sentences. As Voltaire suggests, ‘they believed they had found the formula to live as criminals and die as saints’. After the baptism, which was administered by another colleague of Lucian named Eusebius, Constantine died on May 22 of the year 337.
While the Christians have almost dispensed with their common sense for praising Constantine, obviously there are very few testimonies of his critics that have reached us, among them those of the Emperor Julian and the historian Zosimus.

Categories
Ancient Rome Christendom Constantine Destruction of Greco-Roman world Evil Kriminalgeschichte des Christentums (books) Slavery

Kriminalgeschichte, 31

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

 
Christian family life and rigours of criminal practices
The first Christian emperor, in addition to revealing himself as a great military leader, was consistent in the application of capital punishment, also emulated in this by Catholic theologians of all times, not excepting ours. In the year 310, the son of St. Helena [Constantine], is still assured by Christian historians of the second half of the 20th century that ‘few of his successors reached his political and human greatness’ (Baus) and that ‘in his private life he did no secret of his Christian convictions, leading an exemplary Christian family life’ (Franzen).
He had his father-in-law, Emperor Maximian, hanged in Massilia (Marseille) after which all the statues and images that represented him were destroyed.
He ordered to strangle his brothers-in-law Licinius and Basian, husbands of his sisters Constantia and Anastasia; in 336, he enslaved Prince Licianus, son of Licinius, who was then flogged and murdered at Carthage in 326.
He made Crispus, his son (from his spouse Minervina shortly before marrying Fausta) be poisoned along with ‘numerous friends of his’ (Eutropius); incidentally, a few months after the Council of Nicaea in which the symbol of faith was promulgated.
And finally, this paragon of human greatness accused of adultery with Crispus his own wife Fausta, mother of three children and two daughters, who was shortly before recognised on coins as ‘spes reipublicae’ (hope of the State); although nothing was demonstrated. She was drowned in a bath and all her properties of the old Lateran district adjudged definitively to the Pope.
‘Exemplary Christian life’, indeed (Franzen above)!
The Byzantine historian Zosimus, a diehard pagan whose well-documented history of the emperors is, together with Rerum gestarum libri XXXI of Ammianus, our main source of information on the events of the 4th century, claims that after the liquidation of his son and his wife the unpopularity of Constantine in Rome had become so great, that he preferred to change residence.
The decline of the Law became more acute during these 4th and 5th centuries of our era. The classical mentality of the pagan era was displaced by the vulgar right of the late Roman era and the legislation fell ‘to a level of unscientific primitivism’ (Kaser), which justifies the assertion of Jerome, doctor of the Church, ‘aliae sunt leges Caesaru Christi…’
During the republican period, the death penalty, although not formally abolished, was severely limited in its application. Under the Caesars, the tolerance was even greater. The emperor sanctioned, with the death penalty instead of the traditional exile, the publication of anonymous libels, and ordered that the tongue be ripped off from the slanderers, ‘the greatest plague of human life’ before executing them.
Constantine criminalised the kidnapping, until then a private crime. So that he not only condemned to death the abductor, and in a horrible way, but also the bride if she had consented; and also those who had acted as mediators, casting molten lead in the mouths of the slave owners and burning the slaves alive.

A modern depiction of Constantine

Shelley wrote: ‘The punishments promulgated by that monster, the first Christian emperor, against the pleasures of forbidden love were so unutterably grave that no modern legislator would even consider them against the worst crimes’. Constantine also authorised the interrogation through torture during the trials, ‘the methods envisaged were of extraordinary cruelty’ (Grant).
And if Diocletian forbade parents to sell their children as slaves, Constantine allowed it in cases of grave necessity and provided that it was made under a repurchase agreement. If a slave took liberty on his own and took refuge among the barbarians, once captured, they cut off his foot and sent him to forced labour in the mines, which almost always amounted to a death penalty.

Categories
Ancient Greece Ancient Rome Christendom Darkening Age (book) Destruction of Greco-Roman world Kriminalgeschichte des Christentums (books)

Warm from the press

The late Karlheinz Deschner was the mature scholar. He spent decades of his life preparing his ambitious Criminal History of Christianity, published in ten volumes beginning in 1986, with the final volume appearing in 2013. He started to write Criminal History at 62 and finished it at 89.
He who doesn’t want to approach the subject in German can order a copy of The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction of the Classical World, a book by Catherine Nixey recently released by Macmillan.
In his book review of The Darkening Age Peter Thonemann writes: ‘Statues were smashed, temples toppled and manuscripts burnt, as the early Christians tried to wipe out all traces of classical civilisation…’

What happened in the century we were born—the perpetration of the Hellstorm Holocaust on Germans and then the (((chutzpah))) of blaming the victims for the perpetration of an holocaust!—has a long history. A new constellation of authors are providing a powerful corrective to our view of early Christians persecuted by evil pagans, showing that in fact it triumphed through wholesale barbarity.

Categories
Destruction of Greco-Roman world Vlassis Rassias

Criminal Christianity

White nationalists know very little about the history of the religion of our parents. This summary of Demolish Them, a book by Vlassis Rassias (pic below) published in Greek and posted on Thulean Perspective, is just a taste of the flavour of what I plan to translate from Karlheinz Deschner’s Kriminalgeschichte des Christentums. Pay special attention how evil Christians, many of Semitic background, used the word ‘gentiles’ to refer to white advocates of Greco-Roman civilisation:
 

______ 卐 ______

 
314
Immediately after its full legalisation, the Christian Church attacks the Gentiles: The Council of Ancyra denounces the worship of Goddess Artemis.

324
Emperor Constantine declares Christianity as the only official religion of the Roman Empire. At Dydima, Asia Minor, he sacks the Oracle of God Apollo and tortures its Pagan priests to death. He also evicts the Gentiles from Mt. Athos and destroys all local Hellenic Temples.

326
Emperor Constantine, following the instructions of his mother Helen, destroys the Temple of God Asclepius in Aigeai of Cilicia and many Temples of Goddess Aphrodite in Jerusalem, Aphaca, Mambre, Phoenice, Baalbek, etc.

330
Constantine steals the treasures and statues of the Pagan Temples in Greece to decorate Nova Roma (Constantinople), the new capital of his Empire.

335
Constantine sacks many Pagan Temples of Asia Minor and Palestine and orders the execution by crucifixion of ‘all magicians and soothsayers’. Martyrdom of the neoplatonist philosopher Sopatros.

341
Emperor Constas, son of Constantinus, persecutes ‘all the soothsayers and the Hellenists’. Many Gentile Hellenes are either imprisoned or executed.

346
New large-scale persecutions against the Gentiles in Constantinople. Banishment of the famous orator Libanius accused as… ‘magician’.

353
An edict of Constantius orders the death penalty for all kind of worship through sacrifices and ‘idols’.

354
A new edict of Constantius orders the closing of all Pagan Temples. Some of them are profaned and turned into brothels or gambling rooms. Executions of Pagan priests. First burning of libraries in various cities of the Empire. The first lime factories are built next to closed Pagan Temples. A large part of Sacred Gentile architecture is turned into lime.

356
A new edict of Constantius orders the destruction of the Pagan Temples and the execution of all ‘idolaters’.

357
Constantius outlaws all methods of Divination (Astrology not excluded).

359
In Skythopolis, Syria, Christians organise the first death camps for the torture and execution of arrested Gentiles from all around the Empire.

361 to 363
Religious tolerance and restoration of Pagan cults declared in Constantinople (11th December 361) by the Pagan Emperor Julian.

363
Assassination of Emperor Julian (26th June).

364
Emperor Flavius Jovianus orders the burning of the Library of Antioch. An Imperial edict (11th September) orders the death penalty for all Gentiles that worship their ancestral Gods or practice Divination (‘sileat omnibus perpetuo divinandi uriositas’). Three different edicts (4th February, 9th September, 23rd December) order the confiscation of all properties of Pagan Temples and the death penalty for participation in Pagan rituals, even private ones.

365
An Imperial edict (17th November) forbids Gentile officers of the army to command christian soldiers.

370
Emperor Valens orders a tremendous persecution of Gentiles throughout the Eastern Empire. In Antioch, among many other Pagans, the ex-governor Fidustius and the priests Hilarius and Patricius are executed. Tons of books are burnt in the squares of cities of the Eastern Empire. All friends of Julian are persecuted (Orebasius, Sallustius, Pegasius etc.), the philosopher Simonides is burned alive and the philosopher Maximus is decapitated.

372
Emperor Valens orders the governor of Asia Minor to exterminate the Hellenes and all documents of their wisdom.

373
New prohibition of all methods of Divination. The Newspeak term ‘Pagan’ (pagani, villagers) is introduced by the christians to lessen the Gentiles.

375
The Temple of God Asclepius in Epidaurus, Greece, is closed down.

380
On 27th February, Christianity becomes the exclusive religion of the Roman Empire by an edict of Emperor Flavius Theodosius, requiring that

‘all the various nations, which are subject to our clemency and moderation should continue in the profession of that religion, which was delivered to the Romans by the divine Apostle Peter’.

Non-christians are called ‘loathsome, heretics, stupid and blind’. In another edict Theodosius calls ‘insane’ those that do not believe in the christian god and outlaws all disagreements with the Church dogmas. Ambrosius, bishop of Milan, starts destroying all the Pagan Temples of his area. Christian priests lead the mob against the Temple of Goddess Demeter in Eleusis and try to lynch the hierophants Nestorius and Priskus. The 95 year-old hierophant Nestorius, ends the Eleusinian Mysteries and announces the predominance of mental darkness over the human race.

381
On 2nd May, Theodosius deprives all rights of christians that return to the Pagan Religion. Throughout the Eastern Empire, Pagan Temples and Libraries are looted or burned down. On 21st December, Theodosius outlaws even simple visits to the Temples of the Hellenes. In Constantinople, the Temple of Goddess Aphrodite is turned into a brothel and the Temples of Sun and Artemis into stables.

382
‘Hellelu-jah’ (Glory to Yahweh) is imposed in the christian mass.

384
Emperor Theodosius orders the Praetorian Prefect, Maternus Cynegius, a dedicated christian, to cooperate with the local bishops and destroy the Temples of the Gentiles in Northern Greece and Asia Minor.

385 to 388
Maternus Cynegius, encouraged by his fanatic wife, and bishop, ‘Saint’ Marcellus with his gangs scour the countryside, sack and destroy hundreds of Hellenic Temples, shrines and altars. Amongst others they destroy the Temple of Edessa, the Cabeireion of Imbros, the Temple of Zeus in Apamea, the Temple of Apollo in Dydima and all the Temples of Palmyra. Thousands of innocent Gentiles from all sides of the Empire suffer martyrdom in the notorious death camps of Skythopolis.

386
Emperor Theodosius outlaws (16th June) the care of sacked Pagan Temples.

388
Public talks on religious subjects are also outlawed by Theodosius. The old orator Libanius sends his famous Epistle Pro Templis to Theodosius, with a hope that the few remaining Hellenic Temples will be respected and spared.

389 to 390
All non-christian calenders are outlawed. Hordes of fanatic hermits from the desert flood into Middle Eastern and Egyptian cities, destroying statues, altars, libraries and Pagan temples, whilst Gentiles are lynched. Theophilus, Patriarch of Alexandria, starts heavy persecutions against the Gentiles, turns the Temple of Dionysos into a church, burns down the Mithraeum of the city, destroys the Temple of Zeus and burlesques the Pagan priests before they are killed by stoning. The christian mob profanes the cult images.

391
On 24th February, a new edict of Theodosius prohibits not only visits to Pagan Temples but also looking at vandalised statues. New heavy persecutions all around the Empire. In Alexandria, Egypt, the Gentiles, led by the philosopher Olympius, revolt and after some street fights, finally lock themselves inside the fortified Temple of God Serapis (The Serapeion). After a violent siege, the christians occupy the building, demolish it, burn its famous Library and profane the cult images.

392
On 8th November, the Emperor Theodosius outlaws all non-christian rituals and names them ‘superstitions of the Gentiles’ (gentilicia superstitio). New full scale persecutions against the Gentiles. The Mysteries of Samothrace are ended and priests slaughtered. In Cyprus the local bishop, ‘Saints’ Epiphanius and Tychon destroy almost all the Temples of the island and exterminate thousands of Gentiles. The local Mysteries of Goddess Aphrodite are ended. Theodosius’ edict declares: ‘the ones that won’t obey pater Epiphanius have no right to keep living on the island’. The Gentiles revolt against the Emperor and the Church in Petra, Aeropolis, Rafia, Gaza, Baalbek and other cities of the Middle East.

393
The Pythian, Aktia and Olympic Games are outlawed as part of the Hellenic ‘idolatry’. Christians sack the Temples of Olympia.

395
Two new edicts (22nd July and 7th August) lead to new persecutions against the Gentiles. Rufinus, the eunuch Prime Minister of Emperor Flavius Arcadius directs the hordes of the baptised Goths (led by Alaric) to the country of the Hellenes. Encouraged by christian monks, the barbarians sack and burn many cities (Dion, Delphi, Megara, Corinth, Pheneos, Argos, Nemea, Lycosoura, Sparta, Messene, Phigaleia, Olympia, etc.), slaughter or enslave innumerable Hellenes and burn the Temples. Among others, they burn down the Eleusinian Sanctuary and burn alive all of its priests (including the hierophant of Mithras Hilarius).

396
On 7th December, a new edict by Emperor Arcadius orders that Paganism be treated as high treason. Imprisonment of the few remaining Pagan priests and hierophants.

397
‘Demolish them!’ Emperor Flavius Arcadius orders all the still erect Pagan Temples demolished.

398
The Fourth Church Council of Carthage prohibits to all, including its bishops, the study of Gentile books. Porphyrius, bishop of Gaza, demolishes almost all the Pagan Temples of his city (except nine of them that remain active).

399
With a new edict (13th July) Emperor Flavius Arcadius orders all remaining Temples, mainly in the countryside, to be immediately demolished: Si qua in agris templa sunt, sine turba ac tumultu diruantur. His enim deiectis atque sublatis omnis superstitioni materia consumetur.

400
Bishop Nicetas destroys the Oracle of God Dionysus in Vesai and baptises all the Gentiles of this area.

401
The christian mob of Carthage lynches Gentiles and destroys Temples and ‘idols’. In Gaza too, the local bishop, also a ‘Saint’, Porphyrius sends his followers to lynch Gentiles and demolish the remaining nine still active Temples of the city. The 15th Council of Chalkedon orders all christians that still keep good relations with their gentile relatives to be excommunicated (even after their death).

405
John Chrysostom sends his hordes of gray-clad monks armed with clubs and iron bars to destroy the ‘idols’ in all the cities of Palestine.

406
John Chrysostom collects funds from rich christian women to financially support the demolition of the Hellenic Temples. In Ephessus, he orders the destruction of the famous Temple of Goddess Artemis. In Salamis, Cyprus, ‘Saints’ Epiphanius and Eutychius continue persecutions of the Gentiles and the total destruction of their Temples and sanctuaries.

407
A new edict outlaws once more all non-christian acts of worship.

408
The Emperor of the Western Empire Honorius and the Emperor of the Eastern Empire Arcadius, order together that all sculptures of the Pagan Temples be either destroyed or confiscated. Private ownership of Pagan sculpture is also outlawed. The local bishops lead new heavy persecutions against Gentiles and new book burning. Judges showing pity for Gentiles are also persecuted.

409
Once again, an edict orders Astrology and all methods of Divination to be punished by death.

415
In Alexandria, Egypt, the mob urged by the bishop Cyrillus, attacks a few days before the judaeo-christian Pascha (Pesach-Easter) and hacks to pieces the famous and beautiful philosopher Hypatia. Pieces of her body are paraded by the christian mob through the streets of Alexandria, and are finally burned together with her books in a place called Cynaron. On 30th August, new persecutions start against all the Pagan priests of North Africa, who end their lives either crucified or burned alive.

416
The inquisitor Hypatius, alias ‘The Sword of God’, exterminates the last Gentiles of Bithynia. In Constantinople (7th December), all non-christian army officers, public employees and judges are dismissed.

423
Emperor Theodosius II, declares (8th June) that the Religion of the Gentiles is nothing more than ‘demon worship’ and orders all those who persist in practicing it to be punished by imprisonment and tortured.

429
The Temple of Goddess Athena (Parthenon) on the Acropolis of Athens is sacked. Athenian Pagans are persecuted.

435
On 14th November, a new edict by Theodosius II orders the death penalty for all ‘heretics’ and ‘pagans’ of the Empire. Only Judaism is considered a legal non-christian Religion.

438
Theodosius II issues an new edict (31st January) against the Gentiles, incriminating their ‘idolatry’ as the reason for a recent
plague!

440 to 450
The christians demolish all the monuments, altars and Temples of Athens, Olympia, and other Greek cities.

448
Theodosius II orders all non-christian books burned.

450
All the Temples of Aphrodisias (City of Goddess Aphrodite) are demolished and its Libraries burned down. The city is renamed Stauroupolis (City of the Cross).

451
A new edict by Theodosius II (4th November) emphasises that ‘idolatry’ is to be punished by death.

457 to 491
Sporadic persecutions against Gentiles of the Eastern Empire. Among others, the physician Jacobus and the philosopher Gessius are executed. Severianus, Herestios, Zosimus, Isidorus and others are tortured and imprisoned. The proselytiser Conon and his followers exterminate the last Gentiles of the island of Imbros, in the northeast Aegean. The last worshippers of Lavranius Zeus are exterminated in Cyprus.

482 to 488
The majority of the Gentiles of Asia Minor are exterminated, after a desperate revolt against the Emperor and the Church.

486
More ‘underground’ Pagan priests are discovered, arrested, burlesqued, tortured and executed in Alexandria, Egypt.

515
Baptism becomes obligatory, even for those that already say they are christian. The Emperor of Constantinople, Anastasius orders the massacre of the Gentiles in the Arabian city Zoara and the demolition of the Temple of local God Theandrites.

528
Emperor Jutprada (Justinianus) outlaws the ‘alternative’ Olympian Games of Antioch. He also orders the execution (by fire, crucifixion, tearing to pieces by wild beasts, or cutting by iron nails) of all who practice ‘sorcery, divination, magic or idolatry’ and prohibits all teachings by the Gentiles (‘..the ones suffering from the blasphemous insanity of the Hellenes’).

529
Emperor Justinianus outlaws the Athenian Philosophical Academy, which has its property confiscated.

532
The inquisitor Ioannis Asiacus, a fanatical monk, leads a crusade against the Gentiles of Asia Minor.

542
Emperor Justinianus allows the inquisitor Ioannis Asiacus to convert the Gentiles of Phrygia, Caria and Lydia in Asia Minor. Within 35 years of this crusade, 99 churches and 12 monasteries are built on the sites of demolished Pagan Temples.

546
Hundreds of Gentiles are put to death in Constantinople by the inquisitor Ioannis Asiacus.

556
Justinianus orders the notorious inquisitor Amantius to go to Antioch, to find, arrest, torture and exterminate the last Gentiles of the city and burn all the private libraries down.

562
Mass arrests, burlesquing, tortures, imprisonments and executions of Gentile Hellenes in Athens, Antioch, Palmyra and Constantinople.

578 to 582
Christians torture and crucify Gentile Hellenes all around the Eastern Empire, and exterminate the last Gentiles of Heliopolis (Baalbek).

580
Christian inquisitors attack a secret Temple of Zeus in Antioch. The priest commits suicide, but the other Gentiles are arrested. All the prisoners, the Vice Governor Anatolius included, are tortured and sent to Constantinople to face trial. Sentenced to death they are thrown to the lions. The wild animals are unwilling to tear them to pieces and they end up crucified. Their corpses are dragged through the streets by the christian mob and afterwards thrown unburied in the city dump.

583
New persecutions against the Gentile Hellenes by the Emperor Mauricius.

590
Throughout the Eastern Empire, christian accusers ‘discover’ Pagan conspiracies. A new wave of torture and executions erupts.

692
The ‘Penthekte’ Council of Constantinople prohibits the remains of Calends, Brumalia, Anthesteria, and other Pagan / Dionysian festivals.

804
The Gentile Hellenes of Laconia, Greece, resist successfully the attempt of Tarasius, Patriarch of Constantinople, to convert them to Christianity.

950 to 988
Violent conversion of the last Gentile Hellenes of Laconia by the Armenian ‘Saint’ Nikon.

Categories
Adversus Christianos (book) Constantine Destruction of Greco-Roman world Free speech / association Porphyry of Tyre

Ancient book burning

Excerpts from Roger Pearse’s review of Joseph Hoffmann’s Porphyry’s Against the Christians: The Literary Remains:
 

The sixteen-book work by the Neoplatonist Porphyry Against the Christians is lost. Constantine ordered that all copies should be destroyed; a century later Theodosius tacitly acknowledged that this had not occurred by issuing a similar edict.

Constantine_burning_Arian_books
Constantine burning Arian books

Porphyry adopted an “idiot-boy” literalism as his tool to debunk. Anything that could be made to sound discreditable, anything that did not fit with the tenor of contemporary prejudice, any statement that could be made to sound contradictory, could be presented as a reason to deride the Christians. However, such a approach is unimpressive to anyone except a believer. Such people could have their faith in anti-Christianism bolstered, and be encouraged to sneer and have gibes ready to throw. But the unconvinced reader would see easily that such statements can be made about anything, however worthy.

Instead, the essential argument is an appeal to the irrational herd-instinct of mankind and its need to conform. Many of Porphyry’s arguments consist simply of assertion that something is shameful or embarrassing, rather than rational discussion. This can only work if the flavour of the times is such that the subject is unfashionable. To look for a modern analogy, modern readers will be aware that “anti-racism” has not acquired the power it has in our society by rational argument. Instead it relies on repeated assertion and intimidation, to create a climate in which only certain ideas can be said. In the ancient world, likewise, certain ideas went without saying. The Christian ethos was not part of this; and indeed, as a novelty, was embarrassing. The idea that the poor might be important was disgusting. Porphyry simply harps on the subconscious need to the reader to conform to what he knows society expects, rather than reasoning objectively what is right.

But once the times changed, the approach worked in reverse. It was Porphyry’s ideas that went against the tenor of the times.