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Tag: Christian problem (CP)

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Axiology Constantinople Miscegenation Portugal Universalism

Parrott’s article: a clarification

I don’t claim to have studied carefully Matt Parrott’s, “The Causes of Causes, a Subterranean Perspective,” published yesterday at Youth Network. But after posting this reply here at WDH, which only deals with a few paragraphs where Matt mentions me, I’ll do it. Parrott said:

I believe that Chechar’s mistaken in identifying Christianity as the root cause, and I believe the examples from Byzantium and Medieval Europe, examples where the church’s true interests and influences could actually be observed, confirm that Nietzschean models of suicidal ressentiment and exegeses of multicultural humanist globalism are fundamentally flawed.

Two different places: Constantinople and Europe.

Byzantium cannot be fairly compared to Medieval Europe insofar as, by the time it fell in the 15th century, the city had already suffered a great deal of mongrelization—a mongrelization that undoubtedly contributed to its decline and eventual fall. (That Parrott puts the two together corroborates my view that white nationalists should read the two histories, by William Pierce and Arthur Kemp, that have been written about the white race.)

Medieval Europe is a more complex subject because, unlike Constantinople, it was not a mongrel empire. But even here Kevin MacDonald’s Separation and Its Discontents shows that the broadly positive role that the Church played by elaborating a collectivist defense mechanism to counter Jewish influence was not exactly the best way to do it. In that book MacDonald also says that National Socialism (a movement which left Christianity behind) was the most dangerous enemy that Judaism has confronted in its entire existence. In other words, from the point of view of ethno-preservation the German movement was an improvement over the defense mechanism elaborated by the Roman Catholic Church against Jewry. (See my review of MacDonald’s book here.)

I mention MacDonald’s second book of his trilogy because, even though I agree with him that Christendom more or less protected Europe from alien influence, the protection was not enough, not nearly enough, as shown in the fate of post-Christendom Europe and precisely because of the universalist ideals proclaimed by the Church.

Chechar’s also unconvinced by the Jews as Primary Cause model. Being a White Mexican, he perceives the problem from the vantage point of a White civilization which choked and died on introgression and decadence, largely devoid of Jewish influence. He’s settled on a Christianity as Primary Cause model, answering the question of suicide affirmatively.

I don’t say “Christianity as Primary Cause,” and my analysis goes beyond Mexico. Let’s talk about Europe and remind my readers that, during my previous debates with Pat Hannagan, he conceded that while the Iberian whites committed suicidal mestization in the Americas they remained genetically pure in the Iberian Peninsula itself. But my friend Pat was misinformed. The peninsular Portuguese violated the “One-drop Rule” to the point that contemporary genetic studies reveal a Negro gene in their blood absent in other Europeans (see e.g., the first comment after this post). In other words, even leaving Mexico and Latin America aside, many Iberian whites committed racial suicide within their homelands, and both Christianity and the “One Ring” (see below) are the culprits.

The Catholic Church that Chechar envisions destroying Latin America and the Protestant Yankees Hunter Wallace envisions destroying Dixie are merely the zombie carcasses of Christianity, spearheads of the capitalist impulse to expand into their respective societies and steamroll over all the institutional and ideological obstacles to the profit which feeds the power structure.

I agree with Parrot that the “economics over race policies” are a gigantic factor of white decline, perhaps as big as the axiological meme that’s killing both Mediterraneans and Nordics. Therefore, I am not an anti-Christian reductionist so to speak. Yes: I blame the egalitarian software that we may call the Christian / Secular Christian problem (liberalism run amok after the French Revolution) and, as I just said, the One Ring of greed and power (economics over race—again, see both Pierce’s and Kemp’s magnificent histories of the white race for an explanation of the “Ring”). These factors constitute part of the ingredients of the formula that’s killing us—plus the Jewish ingredient.

brew

From this point of view the Jewish problem would be a very strong catalyst that has accelerated the process in the last centuries since the emancipation of Jewry, but certainly not the “active ingredient” of the brew (what monocausalists believe).

So you can see that my position goes far beyond both Christian reductionism and Jewish reductionism. I believe that individualism, universalism, weak ethnocentrism (“hardwired” characteristics in the White psyche since prehistoric times) + egalitarianism, liberalism, capitalism (cultural “software” after the Revolution which ironically strengthened Christian axiology) + the Jewish culture of critique in the 20th century = a truly lethal brew for the White peoples.

By the way, Hunter Wallace has also responded to Parrott’s article, but he naturally focuses on other issues.

Categories
Christendom Julian (novel)

JVLIAN excerpts – VI

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

—Julian, addressing the Christians

Julian

The Memoir of Julian Augustus

Suddenly the door to the charnel house was flung open and two old men ran out into the street, closely pursued by a dozen monks, armed with sticks. The old men got as far as the arcade where we were standing. Then the monks caught them, threw them to the ground, and beat them, shouting all the while, “Heretic! Heretic!”

I turned with amazement to Mardonius. “Why are they hurting those men?”

Mardonius sighed. “Because they are heretics.”

“Dirty Athanasians?” Gallus, older than I, was already acquainted with most of our new world’s superstitions.

“I am afraid so. We’d better go.”

But I was curious. I wanted to know what an Athanasian was.

“Misguided fools who believe that Jesus and God are exactly the same…”

“When everybody knows they are only similar,” said Gallus.

“Exactly. As Presbyter Arius—who was so much admired by your cousin the divine Emperor—taught us.”

“They poisoned Presbyter Arius,” said Gallus, already fiercely partisan. He picked up a rock. “Murdering heretics!” he yelled and hurled the stone with unfortunate accuracy at one of the old men. The monks paused in their congenial work to praise Gallus’s marksmanship. Mardonius was furious, but only on grounds of rectitude.

“Gallus!” He gave my brother a good shake. “You are a prince, not a street brawler!” Grabbing us each firmly by an arm, Mardonius hurried us away. Needless to say, I was fascinated by all this.

“But surely those old men are harmless.”

“Harmless? They murdered Presbyter Arius.” Gallus’s eyes shone with righteousness.

“Those two? They actually murdered him?”

“No,” said Mardonius. “But they are followers of Bishop Athanasius…”

“The worst heretic that ever lived!” Gallus was always ecstatic when his own need for violence coincided with what others believed to be right action.

“And it is thought that Athanasius ordered Arius poisoned at a church council, some seven years ago. As a result, Athanasius was sent into exile by our divine uncle. And now, Julian, I must remind you for what is the hundredth—or is it the thousandth?—time, not to bite your nails.”

I stopped biting my nails, a habit which I have not entirely broken myself of even today. “But aren’t they all Christians?” I asked. “Don’t they believe in Jesus and the gospels?”

“No!” said Gallus.

“Yes,” said Mardonius. “They are Christians too. But they are in error.”

Even as a child I had a reasonable logical mind. “But if they are Christians, like us, then we must not fight them but turn the other cheek, and certainly nobody must kill anybody, because Jesus tells us that…”

“I’m afraid it is not as simple as all that,” said Mardonius. But of course it was. Even a child could see the division between what the Galileans say they believe and what, in fact, they do believe, as demonstrated by their actions. A religion of brotherhood and mildness which daily murders those who disagree with its doctrines can only be thought as hypocrite, or worse. Now for the purposes of my memoir it would be convenient to say that at this moment I ceased to be a Galilean. But unfortunately that would not be true. Though I was puzzled by what I had seen, I still believed, and my liberation from the Nazarene was a long time coming.

But looking back, I suspect that the first chain was struck from my mind that day on the street when I saw two harmless old men set upon by monks.

Categories
Julian (novel) Literature

JVLIAN excerpts – V

Julian the Apostate was the nephew of the Emperor Constantine the Great. Julian ascended the throne in A.D. 361, at the age of twenty-nine, and was murdered four years later after an unsuccessful attempt to rebuke Christianity and restore the worship to the old gods.

Julian

The Memoir of Julian Augustus

From the example of my uncle the Emperor Constantine, called the Great, who died when I was six years old, I learned that it is dangerous to side with any party of the Galileans, for they mean to overthrow and veil those things that are truly holy. I can hardly remember Constantine, though I was once presented to him at the Sacred Palace. I dimly recall a giant, heavily scented, wearing a stiff jeweled robe. My older brother Gallus always said that I tried to pull his wig off. But Gallus had a cruel humor, and I doubt that this story was true. If I had tugged at the Emperor’s wig, I would surely not have endeared myself to him, for he was as vain as a woman about his appearance; even his Galilean admirers admit to that.

From my mother Basilina I inherited my love of learning. I never knew her. She died shortly after my birth, 7 April 331. She was the daughter of the praetorian prefect Julius Julianus. From portraits I resemble her more than I do my father; I share with her a straight nose and rather full lips, unlike the imperial Flavians, who tend to have thin hooked noses and tight pursed mouths. The Emperor Constantius, my cousin and predecessor, was a typical Flavian, resembling his father Constantine, except that he was much shorter. But I did inherit the Flavian thick chest and neck, legacy of our Illyrian ancestors, who were men of the mountains. My mother, though Galilean, was devoted to literature. She was taught by the eunuch Mardonius, who was also my tutor.

From my cousin and predecessor, the Emperor Constantius, I learned to dissemble and disguise my true thoughts. A dreadful lesson, but had I not learned it I would not have lived past my twentieth year.

In the year 337 Constantius murdered my father. His crime? Consanguinity. I was spared because I was six years old; my half-brother Gallus—who was eleven years old—was spared because he was sickly and not expected to live.

Yes, I was trying to imitate the style of Marcus Aurelius to Himself, and I have failed. Not only because I lack his purity and goodness but because while he was able to write of the good things he learned from a good family and good friends, I must write of those bitter things I learned from a family of murderers in an age diseased by the quarrels and intolerance of a sect whose purpose is to overthrow that civilization whose first note was stuck upon blind Homer’s lyre.

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

JVLIAN excerpts – III

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

—Julian, addressing the Christians

Julian


Libanius to Priscus
Antioch, April 380

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Categories
Final solution Kali Yuga Psychoanalysis Universalism Vikings

Aryan thoughts, white thoughts (1)

by Manu Rodríguez

Translated from Spanish

The Messianic Jewish universalism, the democratic, socialist or social and political ideals, have ended up by reducing to a minimum our identity and our bio-symbolic pride and ethnicity. The Aryan nation (Aryans aware of themselves) is now a minimum percentage of its potential population (all white peoples).

The trans-national, trans-racial, trans-cultural ideal that these ideologies preach us (beyond peoples, races, cultures), and that are the staple food in our schools, our media, our mass culture, our universities, our streets, have managed to finally affect us. There are hundreds of years of the same. Please note that the Jewish Messianism has been spreading its venomous message for almost two thousand years. The communist and democratic universalism are a thing of recent times, but have only come to reinforce the old narrative. These two are the same ideals.

Such ideals (such teachings, such ubiquitous messages), after hundreds of years have achieved their purposes: transforming wolves and bears into kids and lambs. We, our peoples, have become weak, insecure, and timid creatures.

All this comes to mind after some news from Norway, outlined in Gates of Vienna and reviewed by Kevin MacDonald at The Occidental Observer in recent days. It is about a situation where the Norwegians are trapped in neighborhoods or areas with a high number of Asian and African-Muslim population. The starting point is a report on the schools. Apparently Norwegian pupils (boys and girls) are in the minority and are constantly insulted or assaulted by the allochthonous young Muslims. This outrageous state of affairs has generated, apparently, more than individual survival strategies.

It must be noted that this is not happening only in Norway but in France, Germany, England… Clearly these foreigners do not esteem us, nor respect us or fear us. In any of our nations they find nothing but isolated and helpless individuals who can be insulted and attacked with impunity. No one will come to their defense. There will be no response, no retaliation.

Why this lack of response, this silence and resignation? We cannot find, at the individual level (in the cited cases), any valor or pride or self-respect. There is no one to confront them. All seek to escape. That this has happened to the descendants of the fierce and proud Vikings makes one wonder.

Helplessness, weakness, cowardice. This is the result of our upbringing and instruction in the last hundreds of years in the hands of priests of foreign divinities and their universalist and altruistic creeds: a hideous transformation.

MacDonald is right in alluding that individualism and the atomization of white societies and lack of support, is where whites find themselves when they are beaten, intimidated, or violated by foreign groups (Asian Muslims, Africans and others). But such individualism and atomization are just symptoms. Symptoms of a people destroyed, annihilated; of a multitude of uprooted, scattered, isolated, weakened, and lost individuals.

The group conscience among us whites in Europe must be strengthened, yes, and in the Magna Europe. But from where, from which basis or fundamentals? What words, what concepts, what symbolic space will keep us together into a one? On which field will we make roots? What is the best soil?

Group conscience has to include race and culture, which is to say, body and soul. We have been so long away from home (since the Christianization), and with so contrary winds, that we have lost the path, the way, the memory. We’ll have to start from the beginning. We have to ask ourselves who we are, where we come from, and where we are going. We need to reclaim the memory, our memory: a collective self-gnosis of the Aryan peoples.

We must start from the multitude of ethnicities and cultures, from the tree of the peoples and cultures of the world, which is also the tree of life, the purer tree. Recognize, affirm this genuine, pure, natural, genuine multiplicity; watch over her, even protect her. Let us have it as sacred. In this tree we find ourselves, we recognize ourselves.

Gjuhet_indo-evropiane

We are the Aryan or Indo-European branch (a term that refers to our languages and related cultures) of that eternal tree.

The first is the self-consciousness of a people: that individuals and members feel they belong to a people. First of all we have to regain the Aryan consciousness, Aryan memory, the voice, the word, the ancestral and indigenous being, the symbolic and collective identities. This will give us back the pride, dignity, and honor; the moral courage, in short: collective self-legitimation.

When someone insults, attacks, or damages a Norwegian (or a German, or a Frenchman, or an Englishman) the Aryan people are insulted. It is something that overwhelms the entire Aryan community. They humiliate their values, their existence, their being. Those are defeats for our people.

It is all, therefore, about our people, our land, and our cultures. We won’t condone grievances, threats or aggressions directed at our peoples or our pre-Christian or contemporary traditions. They’ll not go unpunished, unanswered. And it will be the same peoples who will respond. We will have a multitude of Aryan voices that will respond with white pride, Aryan pride.

♣

We find no value in these universalistic discourses in which we disappear as peoples and cultures. In this area, on these grounds, it is only possible to speak in the name of “humanity” or “universal man.” In these narratives our existence is not even recognized. The peoples, races, and nations are to be transcended, overcome, denied and become extinct to achieve the new and universal man. This is the eternal universal slogan, the old and the new, that our enemy offers to us, their Trojan horse, their poisoned apple: their insidiousness, their fallacy, their trap, their lie.

Should we expect anything else from the enemy—the old witch, the Jewish community—than “poisoned apples”? We should be wary of all that these misérables have been offering to us for thousands of years: Christianity, Marxism, psychoanalysis… These “productions” have no other function than to destroy: destroy our cultures, our status, our confidence in ourselves; to make us disappear, to eliminate us ethnically and culturally.

It is a very ancient war and so far we know only losses and defeats. With the Christianization of our people we lost our native and ancestral cultures. The modern movements (Marxism, psychoanalysis, the Frankfurt School, post-structuralism) will culminate the termination process initiated by those apostles of European gentility. Nothing differentiates the “Peters” and “Pauls” of the past from Marx, Freud, Boas, Adorno, Marcuse, Derrida of our time. The same purpose, the same intention.

♣

The Aryan peoples ought to be against religious, economic and political ideologies of Semitic origin (Judaism, Jewish Messianism, Islam, Communism); against the major disseminators of these universal creeds whose invention had no other purpose than disseminating discord and dissension within a people, and to divide and confront them.

Against the intricate Semitic network! Against the universal spider! Against universalism, totalitarianism, the homogenization (Messianic Jewish, Muslim, Democrat or Communist) of the planet! Against the destroyers of peoples and cultures! This is the mission. This is our struggle, unser Kampf.

Behold the dragon, the hydra, the eternal enemies of our people and light: Vritra, Typhon, Surt. They are the dark, the gloomy, the sinister. We will make war wherever they are located. Until their extinction. We will get the entire planet rid of this serious pest. In honor of the first Aryan nation, the birth of our nation. In honor of its creator.

Ad maiorem Hitleri gloriam (AMHG).

Categories
Axiology Deranged altruism Jesus Liberalism New Testament

New Testament altruism

The “white race” has no one to blame, but themselves.

—Johan Hoeff

jesus

Throughout the latest two millennia most whites have believed in the message of the gospel, and its moral grammar, right? Contrast Hoeff’s quote with the popular mantra in some nationalist circles, “There is nothing inherently wrong with Whites.”

Before jumping angrily to this thread, please take a look at the discussion in the previous thread, preferably by becoming familiar with some of my linked articles there, including my interpretation of the deranged altruism in Wuthering Heights.

Alternatively, see Ben Klassen’s views on Christianity in general and the Sermon on the Mount in particular. Like Hoeff, Klassen maintained that, ultimately, whites are to blame for our current predicaments.

Categories
Ancient Rome Axiology Constantine Deranged altruism Egalitarianism Islam St Paul

“White people are insane”

Extracted from a thread of yesterday’s article at American Renaissance:

Commenter 1:

Even if, as Jared Taylor says, evidence for race differences in IQ becomes obvious in the future it still probably won’t change anything. It won’t necessarily make whites change their minds about immigration. There is something wrong with white people. You can’t reason with them on certain topics. They believe it is immoral to act in white group interests, and IQ tests won’t change their minds.

How come Japan and Israel can preserve their racial majorities? Because they are not insane. White people are insane. Their moral views on race are fixed and these people cannot be reasoned with on moral or intellectual grounds. That’s why I think whites, at least in America, are destined for continued perpetual decline in terms of demographics. Sorry to sound so defeatist.

Commenter 2:

I blame this suicidal mental sickness on “Christianity”. That religion is equivalent to a gulp of deadly poison, which I believe was deliberately poured into our drinking cup by our most deadly enemy.

Commenter 3:

Frankly this view shouldn’t be tolerated amongst Western traditionalists. Remember: Christianity is what conquered pagan Europe and drove back the Muslim barbaric.

Commenter 4:

This race-denying, universalist, “everybody must be equal” cult can corrupt any church, any religion, any political party, any economic system, any think tank. It’s not just Christianity. It is true that the founder of Judeo-Christianity, St. Paul, the former ethno-centric Pharisee Saul of Tarsus, preached race-denying nonsense “that there weren’t any Greeks or Jews”, just those who have accepted Jesus Christ. I look at St. Paul as the first “Neo Conservative” who supposedly “saw the light” on the Road to Damascus.

My 2 cents:

Commenter 3 misses the whole point: No Saul, no Mohamed. No decline of Rome, a decline caused partially by the fact that Constantine delivered Greco-Roman culture to the bishops, no genocidal Mongol conquests over a very weakened West.

Notice also how Commenter 3 uses “pagan” while referring to our pre-Christian, Indo-European world. He has not read the articles by the Spanish writer I have been advertising here (see e.g., this one).

Categories
Julian (novel)

JVLIAN excerpts – II

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

—Julian, addressing the Christians

Julian

Priscus to Libanius
Athens, March 380

Yes, the edict is well known here. I am not in the least convinced that there is a Divine Oneness at the center of the universe, nor am I susceptible to magic, unlike Julian, who was hopelessly gullible.

As to your publishing project, I am not at all certain that a sympathetic biography of Julian would have the slightest effect at this time. Theodosius is a military politician, impressed by bishops. He might of course sanction a biography of his predecessor simply because Julian is much admired to this day, though not for his philosophy. Julian is admired because he was young and handsome and the most successful general of our century.

But if Theodosius did permit a biography, it would have to avoid the religious issue. The bishops would see to that. And for ferocity there is nothing on earth equal to a Christian bishop hunting “heresy,” as they call any opinion contrary to their own.

Though I am, as you so comfortably suggest, old and near the end of my life, I enjoy amazingly good health. But I have no intention of writing a single sentence about Julian, fond as I was of him and alarmed as I am at the strange course our world has taken since the adventurer Constantine sold us to the bishops.

Julian’s memoir was written during the last four months of his life. It was begun in March 363, at Hierapolis. Nearly every night during our invasion of Persia he would dictate recollections of his early life.

The resulting memoir is something of a hybrid; even so, Julian was often an engaging writer, and if he was not better it is because it is hard to be emperor, philosopher and general all at once.

I have never quite known what to do with his work. When Julian died, I took all his personal papers, suspecting that his Christian successors would destroy them. I had no right to these papers, of course, but I don’t regret my theft. I told no one about the memoir until I was back safe in Antioch, where I must have mentioned it to you the day you read your famous eulogy.

I am now having a fair copy made of the manuscript. You are misinformed if you think that copying is cheaper here than an Antioch. Quite the contrary. The estimated cost will run to eighty gold solidi, which I suggest you send by return post. On receipt of the full amount, I will send you the book to use as you see fit. Only do not mention to anyone that I had any connection with the matter.

Hippia joins me in wishing you good health.

Categories
Ancient Rome Carthage

Edward Gibbon on Julian – 1

Edward-Gibbon

The History of the Decline and Fall
of the Roman Empire

Chapter XVI




If we seriously consider the purity of the Christian religion, the sanctity of its moral precepts, and the innocent as well as austere lives of the greater number of those who during the first ages embraced the faith of the gospel, we should naturally suppose, that so benevolent a doctrine would have been received with due reverence, even by the unbelieving world; that the learned and the polite, however they may deride the miracles, would have esteemed the virtues, of the new sect; and that the magistrates, instead of persecuting, would have protected an order of men who yielded the most passive obedience to the laws, though they declined the active cares of war and government.

If, on the other hand, we recollect the universal toleration of Polytheism, as it was invariably maintained by the faith of the people, the incredulity of philosophers, and the policy of the Roman senate and emperors, we are at a loss to discover what new offence the Christians had committed, what new provocation could exasperate the mild indifference of antiquity, and what new motives could urge the Roman princes, who beheld without concern a thousand forms of religion subsisting in peace under their gentle sway, to inflict a severe punishment on any part of their subjects, who had chosen for themselves a singular but an inoffensive mode of faith and worship.

The religious policy of the ancient world seems to have assumed a more stern and intolerant character, to oppose the progress of Christianity. About four score years after the death of Christ, his innocent disciples were punished with death by the sentence of a proconsul of the most amiable and philosophic character, and according to the laws of an emperor distinguished by the wisdom and justice of his general administration. The apologies which were repeatedly addressed to the successors of Trajan are filled with the most pathetic complaints, that the Christians, who obeyed the dictates, and solicited the liberty, of conscience, were alone, among all the subjects of the Roman empire, excluded from the common benefits of their auspicious government. The deaths of a few eminent martyrs have been recorded with care; and from the time that Christianity was invested with the supreme power, the governors of the church have been no less diligently employed in displaying the cruelty, than in imitating the conduct, of their Pagan adversaries.

To separate (if it be possible) a few authentic as well as interesting facts from an undigested mass of fiction and error, and to relate, in a clear and rational manner, the causes, the extent, the duration, and the most important circumstances of the persecutions to which the first Christians were exposed, is the design of the present chapter.

The sectaries of a persecuted religion, depressed by fear animated with resentment, and perhaps heated by enthusiasm, are seldom in a proper temper of mind calmly to investigate, or candidly to appreciate, the motives of their enemies, which often escape the impartial and discerning view even of those who are placed at a secure distance from the flames of persecution. A reason has been assigned for the conduct of the emperors towards the primitive Christians, which may appear the more specious and probable as it is drawn from the acknowledged genius of Polytheism. It has already been observed, that the religious concord of the world was principally supported by the implicit assent and reverence which the nations of antiquity expressed for their respective traditions and ceremonies. It might therefore be expected, that they would unite with indignation against any sect or people which should separate itself from the communion of mankind, and claiming the exclusive possession of divine knowledge, should disdain every form of worship, except its own, as impious and idolatrous.

The rights of toleration were held by mutual indulgence: they were justly forfeited by a refusal of the accustomed tribute. As the payment of this tribute was inflexibly refused by the Jews, and by them alone, the consideration of the treatment which they experienced from the Roman magistrates, will serve to explain how far these speculations are justified by facts, and will lead us to discover the true causes of the persecution of Christianity.

Without repeating what has already been mentioned of the reverence of the Roman princes and governors for the temple of Jerusalem, we shall only observe, that the destruction of the temple and city was accompanied and followed by every circumstance that could exasperate the minds of the conquerors, and authorize religious persecution by the most specious arguments of political justice and the public safety.

From the reign of Nero to that of Antoninus Pius, the Jews discovered a fierce impatience of the dominion of Rome, which repeatedly broke out in the most furious massacres and insurrections. Humanity is shocked at the recital of the horrid cruelties which they committed in the cities of Egypt, of Cyprus, and of Cyrene, where they dwelt in treacherous friendship with the unsuspecting natives; and we are tempted to applaud the severe retaliation which was exercised by the arms of the legions against a race of fanatics, whose dire and credulous superstition seemed to render them the implacable enemies not only of the Roman government, but of human kind.

The enthusiasm of the Jews was supported by the opinion, that it was unlawful for them to pay taxes to an idolatrous master; and by the flattering promise which they derived from their ancient oracles, that a conquering Messiah would soon arise, destined to break their fetters, and to invest the favorites of heaven with the empire of the earth. It was by announcing himself as their long-expected deliverer, and by calling on all the descendants of Abraham to assert the hope of Isræl, that the famous Barchochebas collected a formidable army, with which he resisted during two years the power of the emperor Hadrian.

Notwithstanding these repeated provocations, the resentment of the Roman princes expired after the victory; nor were their apprehensions continued beyond the period of war and danger. By the general indulgence of polytheism, and by the mild temper of Antoninus Pius, the Jews were restored to their ancient privileges, and once more obtained the permission of circumcising their children, with the easy restraint, that they should never confer on any foreign proselyte that distinguishing mark of the Hebrew race.

The numerous remains of that people, though they were still excluded from the precincts of Jerusalem, were permitted to form and to maintain considerable establishments both in Italy and in the provinces, to acquire the freedom of Rome, to enjoy municipal honors, and to obtain at the same time an exemption from the burdensome and expensive offices of society.

The moderation or the contempt of the Romans gave a legal sanction to the form of ecclesiastical police which was instituted by the vanquished sect. The patriarch, who had fixed his residence at Tiberias, was empowered to appoint his subordinate ministers and apostles, to exercise a domestic jurisdiction, and to receive from his dispersed brethren an annual contribution. New synagogues were frequently erected in the principal cities of the empire; and the sabbaths, the fasts, and the festivals, which were either commanded by the Mosaic law, or enjoined by the traditions of the Rabbis, were celebrated in the most solemn and public manner.

Such gentle treatment insensibly assuaged the stern temper of the Jews. Awakened from their dream of prophecy and conquest, they assumed the behavior of peaceable and industrious subjects. Their irreconcilable hatred of mankind, instead of flaming out in acts of blood and violence, evaporated in less dangerous gratifications. They embraced every opportunity of overreaching the idolaters in trade; and they pronounced secret and ambiguous imprecations against the haughty kingdom of Edom.

Since the Jews, who rejected with abhorrence the deities adored by their sovereign and by their fellow-subjects, enjoyed, however, the free exercise of their unsocial religion, there must have existed some other cause, which exposed the disciples of Christ to those severities from which the posterity of Abraham was exempt. The difference between them is simple and obvious; but, according to the sentiments of antiquity, it was of the highest importance. The Jews were a nation; the Christians were a sect: and if it was natural for every community to respect the sacred institutions of their neighbors, it was incumbent on them to persevere in those of their ancestors. The voice of oracles, the precepts of philosophers, and the authority of the laws, unanimously enforced this national obligation.

By their lofty claim of superior sanctity the Jews might provoke the Polytheists to consider them as an odious and impure race. By disdaining the intercourse of other nations, they might deserve their contempt.

The laws of Moses might be for the most part frivolous or absurd; yet, since they had been received during many ages by a large society, his followers were justified by the example of mankind; and it was universally acknowledged, that they had a right to practise what it would have been criminal in them to neglect. But this principle, which protected the Jewish synagogue, afforded not any favor or security to the primitive church. By embracing the faith of the gospel, the Christians incurred the supposed guilt of an unnatural and unpardonable offence.

They dissolved the sacred ties of custom and education, violated the religious institutions of their country, and presumptuously despised whatever their fathers had believed as true, or had reverenced as sacred. Nor was this apostasy (if we may use the expression) merely of a partial or local kind; since the pious deserter who withdrew himself from the temples of Egypt or Syria, would equally disdain to seek an asylum in those of Athens or Carthage.

Every Christian rejected with contempt the superstitions of his family, his city, and his province. The whole body of Christians unanimously refused to hold any communion with the gods of Rome, of the empire, and of mankind. It was in vain that the oppressed believer asserted the inalienable rights of conscience and private judgment. Though his situation might excite the pity, his arguments could never reach the understanding, either of the philosophic or of the believing part of the Pagan world. To their apprehensions, it was no less a matter of surprise, that any individuals should entertain scruples against complying with the established mode of worship, than if they had conceived a sudden abhorrence to the manners, the dress, or the language of their native country.

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Julian (novel)

JVLIAN excerpts – I

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

—Julian, addressing the Christians

Julian

Libanius to Priscus
Antioch, March [A.D.] 380

Yesterday morning as I was about to enter the lecture hall, I was stopped by a Christian student who asked me in a voice of eager with malice, “Have you heard about the Emperor Theodosius?”

I cleared my throat ready to investigate the nature of this question, but he was too quick for me. “He has been baptized a Christian.”

I was noncommittal. Nowadays, one never knows who is a secret agent. Also, I was not particularly surprised at the news. When Theodosius fell ill last winter and the bishops arrived like vultures to pray for him, I knew that should he recover they would take full credit for having saved him. He survived. Now we have a Christian emperor in the East, to match Gratian, our Christian emperor in the West. It was inevitable.

I turned to go inside but the young man was hardly finished with his pleasant task. “Theodosius has also issued an edict. It was just read in front of the senate house. I heard it. Did you?”

“No. But I always enjoy imperial prose,” I said politely.

“You may not enjoy this. The Emperor has declared heretic all those who do not follow the Nicene Creed.”

“I’m afraid Christian theology is not really my subject. The edict hardly applies to those of us who are still faithful to philosophy.”

“It applies to everyone in the East.” He said this slowly, watching me all the while. “The Emperor has even appointed an Inquisitor to determine one’s faith. The days of tolerance are over.”

I was speechless; the sun flared in my eyes; all things grew confused and I wondered if I was about to faint, or even die. But the voices of two colleagues recalled me. I could tell by the way they greeted me that they, too, had heard about the edict and were curious to know my reaction. I gave them no pleasure.

“Of course I expected it,” I said, “The Empress Postuma wrote me only this week to say that…” I invented freely. I have not of course heard from the Empress in some months, but I thought that the enemy should be reminded to what extent I enjoy the favor of Gratian and Postuma. It is humiliating to be forced to protect oneself in this way, but these are dangerous times.

Now, my old friend, as I sit here in my study surrounded by our proscribed friends (I mean those books of Greece which made the mind of man), let me tell you what thoughts I had last night—a sleepless night not only because of the edict but because two cats saw fit to enliven my despair with their noise of lust (only an Egyptian would worship a cat). I am weary today but determined. We must fight back. What happens to us personally is not important, but what happens to civilization is a matter of desperate concern. During my sleepless night, I thought of various appeals that might be made to our new Emperor. I have a copy of the edict before me as I write. It is composed in bad bureaucratic Greek, the official style of the bishops, whose crudity of language is equaled only by the confusion of their thought. Not unlike those celebrated minutes of the council—where was it? Chalcedon?—which we used to read to one another with such delight! Carefree days, never to come again. Unless we act now.

Priscus, I am sixty-six years old and you are, as I recall, a dozen years older than I. We have reached an age when death is a commonplace not to be feared, especially by us, for is not all philosophy but preparation for a serene dying? And are we not true philosophers who have nothing to lose but that which in the natural course we shall surrender in any case, more soon than late? I have already had several seizures in recent years which left me unconscious and weakened, and of course my chronic cough, aggravated by an unseasonable wet winter, threatens to choke me to death at any time. I am also losing my sight; and I suffer from a most painful form of gout. Therefore let us, fearing nothing, join forces and strike back at the Christians before they entirely destroy the world we love.

My plan is this. Seventeen years ago when you returned from Persia, you told me that our beloved friend and pupil, the Emperor Julian, had written a fragment of memoir which you had got hold of at the time of his death. I have often thought to write you for a copy, simply for my own edification. I realized then, as did you, that publication was out of the question, popular though Julian was and still is, even though his work to restore the true gods has been undone. Under Emperors Valentinian and Valens we had to be politic and cautious if we were to be allowed to go on teaching. But now in the light of this new edict, I say: and end to caution! We have nothing but two old bodies to lose, while there is eternal glory to be gained by publishing Julian’s memoir, with an appropriate biography to be written by either or both of us. I knew his quality best, of course, but you were with him in Persia and saw him die.

So between the two of us, I his teacher and you his philosopher-companion, we can rehabilitate his memory and with close reasoning show the justice of his contest with the Christians. I have written about him in the past, and boldly. I refer particularly to the eulogy I composed just after his death when, if I may say so, I was able to bring tears even the hard Christian eyes. Shortly afterwards, I published my correspondence with Julian. Incidentally, I sent you a copy and though you never acknowledge this gift, I do hope you found it interesting. If by any chance you did not receive it, I shall be happy to send you another one. I kept all of Julian’s letters to me over the years, as well as copies of my own letters to him. One can never rely on the great keeping one’s letters; and should those letters vanish, one is apt to be remembered only as the mysterious half of a dialogue to be reconstructed in the vaguest way from the surviving (and sometimes lesser!) half of the exchange. Finally, I am at work on an oration to be called “On Avenging the Emperor Julian.” I mean to dedicate this work to Theodosius.

I hope after so many years of silence between us that this letter finds you and your admirable wife, Hippia, in good health. I envy you your life at Athens, the natural center of our universe. Do I need to add that I will of course defray any expenses you might incur in having Julian’s memoir copied? The price of copying, luckily, is less at Athens than here in Antioch. Books always cost more in those cities where they are least read.

Let us make Julian live again, and for all time!