#Greek and even Latin Christendom

[theoutcastrogue]

This is the FUNNIEST scene in Umberto Eco's Baudolino. Previously: In 1204, the adventurer (let's call him that) Baudolino finds himself in Constantinople during the sack of the city by the Crusaders. He sees a man captured and about to be tortured by "two enormous invaders", recognises him as Niketas Choniates, "minister of the basileus" (that's the historian who would later recount the sack in great detail, since he lived it), saves him from their clutches by claiming he's the prisoner of Count Baldwin of Flanders, and sets him free.

Eugène Delacroix, The Entry of the Crusaders into Constantinople (1840)

Niketas did not bend to kiss the feet of his savior. He was already on the ground, and too distraught to behave with the dignity his rank required. “O my good lord, thank you for your aid. This means that not all Latins are wild beasts with faces distorted by hatred! Not even the Saracens acted this way when they reconquered Jerusalem, when Saladin was content with a handful of coins to guarantee the safety of the inhabitants. How shameful for all Christendom, brothers against armed brothers, pilgrims who were to recover the Holy Sepulcher but have allowed themselves to be halted by greed and envy, and are destroying the Roman empire! O Constantinople, Constantinople! Mother of churches, princess of religion, guide of perfect opinions, nurse of all learning, now you have drunk from the hand of God the cup of fury, and burned in a fire far greater than that which burned the Pentapolis! What envious and implacable demons have poured down on you the intemperance of their intoxication, what mad and odious Suitors have lighted your nuptial torch? O mother, once clad in gold and imperial purple, now befouled and haggard. And robbed of your children, like birds imprisoned in a cage, we cannot find the way to leave this city that was ours, nor the strength to remain here, but instead, sealed within many errors, we roam like vagrant stars!”

“Master Niketas,” Baudolino said, “I have been told that you Greeks talk too much and about everything, but I didn’t believe it went this far. At the moment, the question is how to move our ass out of here.”

— Umberto Eco, Baudolino (2000)

[zerogate]

Byzantium doesn’t fit well in our picture of Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, because those categories were created to marginalize Byzantium. We have been taught that Byzantium was the left-over of the fallen Roman empire, slowly declining into insignificance. A decline lasting 1,123 years! Think about it! The reality is that Byzantium was the Roman Empire until the West, having seceded from it, erased it from history. “Byzantium in the tenth century resembled the Roman empire of the fourth century more than it resembled any contemporary western medieval state.” Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages are therefore provincial constructs that are irrelevant from a Byzantine perspective — as they are, of course, from a Eurasian perspective (what does “China in the Middle Ages”, or “India in the Middle Ages” mean?).

Even our Western notion of “medieval Christianity” is seriously biased, Kaldellis argues: “‘medieval Christianity’ is understood to be of western and central Europe, even though the majority of Christians during the medieval period lived in the east, in the Slavic, Byzantine, and Muslim-ruled lands, and farther east than that too.” Not to mention that, until the 8th century, the bishop of Rome was appointed by Constantinople.

Byzantine revisionism also means getting the Byzantine side of the story of its long struggle with the West, acknowledging that the victor’s narrative is deceptive, as it always is. We have been told that the crusades were the generous response of the West to the Byzantines’ plea for help. And if, by some historian’s indiscretion, we hear about the crusaders’ sack of Constantinople in 1204, he at least explains that “the Venetians made them do it”, or that it was a regrettable case of friendly fire caused by the fog of war. Byzantine revisionism clears that fog away. “There was never a greater crime against humanity than the Fourth Crusade,” wrote Steven Runciman.

It is hard to exaggerate the harm done to European civilisation by the sack of Constantinople. The treasures of the City, the books and works of art preserved from distant centuries, were all dispersed and most destroyed. The Empire, the great Eastern bulwark of Christendom, was broken as a power. Its highly centralised organisation was ruined. Provinces, to save themselves, were forced into devolution. The conquests of the Ottoman were made possible by the Crusaders’ crime.

Anthony Kaldellis puts it in the correct perspective:

It was in fact an act of aggression by one civilization against another, in the sense that both the aggressor and the victim were acutely aware of their ethnic, religious, political, and cultural differences, and the extreme violence that accompanied the destruction of Constantinople was driven by the self-awareness on the part of many crusaders of those differences.

It is good that John-Paul II publicly apologized for the fourth crusade 800 years later, but it doesn’t change the fact that his predecessor Innocent III had responded to the news of the conquest of the city with joy and thanksgiving, and immediately tried to mobilize a fresh round of soldiers, clerics and settlers to secure the new Latin empire. In a sermon given in Rome and repackaged as a letter to the clergy accompanying the crusaders, “Innocent describes the capture of Constantinople as an act of God, who humbles the proud, renders obedient the disobedient, and makes Catholic the schismatic. Innocent argues that the Greek failure to affirm the filioque (a Trinitarian error), is akin to the Jewish error of not recognizing Christ’s divinity. And, as such, the pontiff suggests that both Greek error and their downfall were predicted in Revelation.”

[...]

Byzantine revisionism is controversial because it challenges not only the image that Westerners have of Byzantium, but also the image that Westerners have of the West. We are the civilization of the crusades, that have destroyed Byzantium, and have since tried to destroy all civilizations that stood in the way of our hegemony. We should know, at least, that this is the way Russia and much of the world is seeing us. As I have argued in “A Byzantine view of Russia and Europe,” we cannot understand Russia without doing some Byzantine revisionism, because Russia is Byzantium redivivus in many ways.

[...]

The best contribution of Anthony Kaldellis to Byzantine studies is the new light he shines on the true nature of Byzantine civilization, by first pealing off layers of Western prejudice, polemic, and deceit, but also by reading through Byzantium’s own imperial propaganda.

For example, Kaldellis argues that Christianity, although essential to Byzantine identity, was not as central and exclusive in everyday life as we have been led to believe, by reading too many ecclesiastical authors. Even during the reigns of Justin and Justinian, reputed to be an era of intolerant Christian orthodoxy, many officials and intellectuals showed not even nominal Christian faith: such is the case of the historian Procopius, who speaks of “Christians” as if excluding himself from that group, and regards as “insanely stupid to investigate the nature of God and ask what sort it is.” As I have argued elsewhere, the very name given by Justinian to his architectural masterpiece—the world’s greatest building for one thousand years—testifies to his high regard for Hellenism: Hagia Sophia, or Holy Wisdom, is the goddess of philosophers, not theologians.

-- Laurent Guyénot, Byzantine Revisionism Unlocks World History

[roseslaces]

No, no, they are right! Everyone knows that the official language of Christianity is English just like the American evangelicals and the Church of England insists. I mean, could you imagine if the universal language of Christendom was something completely different, like idk, say Latin or something, and maybe Greek too especially in the first age? yikes! That would mean that the real name could be something completely random like, oh idk, maybe even Pasquale. Could you imagine lol? I mean that would mean that there could be parts of the world, like maybe Scandinavia, where it is called something completely different because it would be derived from that word and translated into something like, idk, maybe Påsk or something. Lmao could you imagine! I mean, what would that mean for the universally accepted and irrefutably proven doctrine that the central theological and historical Truth, on which all of Christianity is based and around which all other teachings and practices are centred, of the Redeeming Death and Resurrection of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, God made man to save us from sin and death by His suffering and death, actually had nothing at all to do with Christianity but was really all about some obscure Babylonian goddess all along! Yikes! Could you imagine how cringe that would be lmao? Who would ever think of something like that hahahahahahahahahahahahah

I know this is probably an irritating question but, could you give me a few of those sources about Easter not being a pagan holiday? I wish to give them to a friend off tumblr, a Christian, because I was telling her about how the old "the holidays are all pagan" is false, and I got her very curious. I attempted to look for them on your tumblr but am failing miserably. Sorry if this is aggravating.

apologies for getting to this so late! here’s a compilation of potential arguments that may arise and can be combated with Abrahamic knowledge and information:

 ”Easter is based on Ishtar! The names are pronounced the same!”: here’s a pronunciation of the word “Ishtar”. they do not sound the same, they are not based off one another.

“Ishtar’s symbols are eggs and bunnies, which means they’re based on fertility!” According to Gods, Demons, and Symbols of Ancient Mesopotamia: An Illustrated Dictionary by Jeremy Black and Anthony Green, her symbols are lions and the eight pointed star. while she is associated with fertility, she is not associated with eggs or bunnies.

“Where do the eggs come from, then? what do they have to do with Christ?” a lot, actually. eggs have multiple meanings. Here is information on the boiled egg on the Passover Seder Plate. Here is the story of Mary and the Red Egg, which gives us information on why those eggs may be painted. Here is another collection of stories that involve eggs regarding the resurrection.

“Where do the bunnies come from, then? what do they have to do with Christ?” the symbol of the Three Hares shows up frequently within Abrahamic religion. each religion has a different interpretation, but Christianity in particular associates the hares with the Virgin Mary, as it was believed hares could produce young without losing their virginity. (click through to “What does this symbol mean?”)

“Easter and Ostara are the same thing!” Easter and Ostara will never be on the same time. Ostara is always on the Spring Equinox, while Easter is always the Sunday after the first full moon after the Spring Equinox.

“Why would Easter be based on a Lunar Calendar? That’s not how Christianity works!” However, that is how Judaism works, and the holiday is invariably tied with the timing of Passover.

“Easter HAS to be pagan though! what other holiday could it be based on?” Passover. The time of Jesus’ resurrection took place during the end of Passover. this is shown by virtually all other places in the world having Easter referred to by some variation of the word Pesach, which is Passover. Packsha, Pacshal, Pasqua, and Pasden are all examples of other names of Easter in other countries.

“But here, it’s called Easter, like the Goddess Eostre!” Is is referred to as some variation of Easter in two countries, Germany and America. Eostre was originally the name of the entire month of April in Germany, and the only citation we have of Eostre existing is a monk in the eighth century who wrote that a festival happened during this month in its name. and that is literally all of the information on said “goddess”. it is actually contested whether or not she even existed.

Let me know if there’s anything else you need me to cover!

[cyberbenb]

Richard Cashman: Understanding Russia’s imperial conceits

Understanding Russia’s February 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine as part of an imperial war begun in 2014 has become increasingly commonplace in Euro-Atlantic foreign policy-making circles and amongst a wider group of countries concerned with ending the war. Yet the full range of imperial conceits which underpin the Kremlin’s vision for Russia and the narratives justifying its violence in Ukraine and elsewhere are rarely touched upon even in that context.

A distant but important starting point is the notion of Moscow as the “Third Rome.” Following the schism in 1054 between the eastern and western branches of Christendom, Byzantine Constantinople in the east claimed to be the seat of the true (Orthodox) Christian faith and referred to itself as the “Second Rome.”

In 1453, Constantinople fell to the invading Ottomans. Muscovy, the principality based on Moscow to which Christianity had spread from Kyiv, adopted much of the imperial insignia of Byzantium, the title Tsar (Caesar), and began referring to itself as the “Third Rome.”

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To most people hearing this for the first time it sounds, frankly, bizarre, not least because Muscovy did not exist at the time of, and had no practical connection to, the Roman Empire. Nor did it enjoy much experience of the Latinate Renaissance, spurred by Greeks fleeing conquered Constantinople in far larger numbers to western and central European states than to Muscovy.

Moreover, there was no general recognition amongst other Orthodox states that Muscovy had assumed the place of Constantinople. Moscow as the “Third Rome” therefore seems to have been as much a reference to imperial power as to church doctrine. Either way, it became the messianic foundation of Russia’s conceit of exceptionalism.

Conceits of exceptionalism have been integral to all empires; a compulsion to explain their evident successes, their dominance over less-dynamic peoples, and their elegant distinction from competitors.

One manifestation of this has been the idea amongst some 19th-century Russian historians that the Russian Empire developed in a way fundamentally different from that of the other European empires, whether land-based or maritime; that it “colonized itself,” whereby the peoples and traditions of the conquered peripheries actually came to define the Moscow metropole and imperial whole.

Russia’s centuries-long quest to conquer Ukraine

Editor’s Note: This is episode 2 of “Ukraine’s True History,” a video and story series by the Kyiv Independent. The series is funded by the Institute for War and Peace Reporting within the program “Ukraine Forward: Amplifying Analysis.” The program is financed by the MATRA Programme of the Embassy o…

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Influence of the peripheries on the metropole has, in fact, been common to all empires and was not unique to the Russian. The Russian Empire exhibited the classic structural traits of all empires, namely the enrichment of the metropole from the resources of the peripheries and the imposition of political control and cultural norms in return.

In relation to Ukraine, in particular, there is the concept of the tripartite nation, consisting of “Great Russians” (modern Russia), “Little Russians” (Ukraine), and “White Russians” (Belarus). This has been portrayed by successive governments in Russia as an ancient arrangement.

Actually, the formulation also arose amongst 19th-century historians and obfuscated a far more complex history, which included centuries of often independent development, in the Ukrainian case both as part of Poland-Lithuania and independently as the Cossack Hetmanate. Yet it is this imperial conceit that has been used by the Kremlin, especially domestically, to garner support for its war against Ukraine.

The “Russian soul” appears as another obvious conceit of exceptionalism. Mykola Gogol – a Ukrainian who chose to write in the language of the St. Petersburg metropole – popularized  the term in reference to Tsarist tax laws referring to serfs as souls.

It was another writer, Fyodor Dostoevsky, who developed the concept to distinguish Russia from other European empires, and consciously shrouded it in a mystery; a mystery which western writers and even academics continue heavily to trade on.

Again there is a 19th-century origin for a concept supposedly of great antiquity. That Dostoevsky also wrote of Russians being slaves and hangers-on in Europe, but going to Asia as masters should leave little doubt about his susceptibility to imperial conceit. The innocence which Dostoevsky claimed had been lost by western Europeans, but still characterized the Russian soul, would not be readily apparent to anyone visiting Bucha, Mariupol, or Nova Kakhovka today.

This Week in Ukraine Ep. 15 – Why culture matters during war

Episode #15 of our weekly video podcast “This Week in Ukraine” is dedicated to Ukrainian culture, the important role it plays in war, and why it has been a target of Russian dictators for decades. Host Anastasiia Lapatina is joined by the Kyiv Independent’s culture reporter Kate Tsurkan. Listen to

The Kyiv IndependentAnastasiia Lapatina

“Eurasianism” also arose during the 19th century and sought to extol a distinct Russian civilization of mixed European-Asiatic heritage and Byzantine autocracy. Eurasianism was defined against Peter I’s attempts to convert Russia to western European thought and practice and provided inspiration to Dostoevsky and other Russian nationalists. Eurasianism declined during the later 19th century, but enjoyed a revival after 1917 amongst White Russian emigres fleeing the Russian Revolution to Europe, where many felt an acute sense of political and cultural otherness.

Revolutionary Russia was supposed to be defined against empire, yet the Bolsheviks rapidly set about recovering all imperial territory lost during World War I. Under Stalin, the USSR developed even more highly centralized political and economic forms of control over the multitude of nationalities and peoples of the reconstituted empire, of which ethnic Russians were a minority.

Following World War II, Moscow positioned itself as a champion of European decolonization. It sponsored multiple anti-colonial wars against the European maritime empires, all the while consolidating control over the peripheries of its outer empire, mostly notably by crushing the Hungarian Uprising of 1956 and the Czechoslovak equivalent of 1968.

Come the Brezhnev era, when the western European maritime empires were becoming increasingly aware of their own imperial conceits, the development of “Homo Sovieticus” – “Soviet man” – to replace national identities within the USSR had quite successfully obscured most evidence of Moscow’s inner empire in the eyes of both western and non-aligned countries.

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In the post-Soviet Russian Federation, nationalist writers like Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Alexander Dugin revived autocratic Eurasianist sentiments in opposition to the westernizing of the Russian government. Certainly, one reason for this was the worrisome implications of democratization and liberalization in the context of the centrifugal forces pulling parts of the federation’s peripheries away from the metropole.

Post-Soviet Eurasianist pronouncements about Moscow’s rightful control of various peoples across Asia often read like the pluricontinentalism espoused by Portugal’s fascist Estado Novo about its own decaying empire. The very idea of “Eurasia” in its most common iteration - the ubiquitous Russian and Eurasian studies programs that mushroomed in western academia following the Soviet dissolution – represents an unwitting endorsement of Russia’s imperial conceits.

In his first terms as president, Vladimir Putin’s attempts at close relations with George W. Bush rested squarely on the naïve expectation that Washington would accept Moscow’s residual imperial vision for itself, even though that was anathema to the aspirations of dozens of states in its former periphery.

Rebuffed, Putin increasingly made reference to the “historical Russian state,” a conceit that he based on maps of the Russian Empire at the time of its apogee. He also endorsed the idea of the “Russian World,” similar to Eurasianism, but with a focus on language, thereby expanding Moscow’s claims to include the loyalty of all Russian speakers.

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The vast majority of Putin’s geopolitical ideas, which he condensed into an essay in 2021 about Russia and Ukraine, are rooted firmly in the 19th century, which is indeed the favorite century of most European imperialists. The Kremlin needs its imperial conceits because Putin’s clan lacks alternative overarching ideas with which to bind and enthuse citizens of the Russian Federation. Conflating the narrative of NATO being a threat to Russia with the reality of NATO being a threat to Moscow’s imperialism has also been essential to that endeavor.

The disaster of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has completed another conversion-reversion cycle, from partnership with democratic states back to Eurasianist autocracy. That cycle is only likely to be broken by the unsustainable costs of attempting to maintain empire and, ultimately, by Russians’ greater awareness of their own imperial conceits.

It is not clear if the violence and bile emanating from the Kremlin today represent the final stages of imperial decline and if that will precipitate such awareness, but at least those making policy in relation to Russia can better understand the depth of the conceits they are dealing with, and those writing about Russia stop trading in them.

Editor’s Note: The opinions expressed in the op-ed section are those of the authors and do not purport to reflect the views of the Kyiv Independent.

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[foggynightdonut]

The Seven Pillars of Western Civilization

By Joseph Pearce|December 10th, 2022|Categories: Books, Joseph Pearce, Senior Contributors, Western Civilization

Here are the books I consider to be the seven pillars of wisdom on which Western civilization is built.

This past week I gave a lecture on “Why Shakespeare Matters” at Colorado Christian University. In the dinner prior to the talk, the president of the university asked me to name what I considered to be the six foundational texts of Western civilization. Scurrying and scrambling to pull from the top of my head six titles that could plausibly fit the bill, I thought that such an exercise might provide inspiration for a thought-provoking essay.

Permitting myself a little poetic license or literary leeway, I’ve allowed myself seven texts, not six. With an appropriate deferential nod to T. E. Lawrence, here are what I consider to be the seven pillars of wisdom on which Western civilization is built.

Beginning in ancient Greece, the first two texts are those twin towers of antiquity, The Iliad and The Odyssey. Homer’s epic narratives deserve preeminence on their own literary merit but also for the influence that they’ve exerted in the three millennia since they were written.

Moving from Athens to Jerusalem, the inclusion of the Holy Bible needs no justification and no explanation. Its absence would remove the very heart from Western civilization.

We now move to Rome, the third of the foundational cities on which Western civilization is built, and to Virgil’s epic about the foundation of Rome itself. Although The Aeneid, as a work of literature, does not attain the literary heights of Homer’s epics, its influence outreached that of Homer during the early centuries of Christendom due to its being written in accessible Latin and not in the relatively inaccessible Greek. Latin was the language of civilization and Virgil was the Latin poet par excellence. It is needless to say, however, that Virgil’s debt to Homer is so great that his own epic would have been literally unimaginable without the presence in his imagination of The Iliad and The Odyssey. The Virgilian Muse stands on Homeric shoulders.

We now move to a giant of civilization in whom the thought of Athens, Jerusalem and Rome meet and meld. This is the great Saint Augustine and his magnum opus, The City of God, which is the fifth of our textual pillars. Apart from its brilliant exposition of Christian theology, Augustine grapples with the philosophy of the Greeks, illustrating the limitations of Platonism but also acknowledging the wisdom and truth of aspects of Platonic thought. It could be said, in fact, that Augustine baptizes Plato, bringing Plato into the great conversation which would animate Christian thought. The City of God and other works by Augustine consummated the marriage of faith and reason, bringing theology and philosophy together in an indissoluble union.

The penultimate pillar is that other edifice of Christian theology and philosophy, the Summa Theologica of Thomas Aquinas. It is no wonder that this great saint has been given the title of the Angelic Doctor. He is the preeminent philosopher and theologian in the entire history of Christendom, whose influence is immeasurable. One of his many seminal achievements was the integration of the thought of Aristotle into Christian philosophy, thereby baptizing Aristotle as Augustine had baptized Plato.

This brings us to the final pillar, Dante’s Divine Comedy, a work which brings together the Homeric and Virgilian Muses and baptizes them in the living waters of Thomistic theology and philosophy. In Dante’s journey from the Dark Wood to the Beatific Vision we see the fusion of classical epic and scholastic reason and the infusion of the most sublime Christian wisdom into the art of narrative.

Perhaps, at this juncture, we should offer a deferential nod to other great books, the exclusion of which from the magnificent seven might raise eyebrows or even be considered sins of omission. The exclusion of the works of Plato and Aristotle might seem a little odd, even though they have been incorporated vicariously in their baptized form in the works of Augustine, Aquinas and Dante. The absence of The Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius might raise eyebrows, especially as it was one of the most influential texts on the culture of Christendom for many centuries. The Rule of Saint Benedict has had a seminal impact on Western civilization, its precepts governing the lives of those countless monastic communities which have carried the flame of faith and culture across the centuries.

Finally, we must mention Shakespeare. Many of his individual works merit inclusion among the illustrissimi of Great Books and his corpus, taken as a whole and published as The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, is the equal of any of the seminal titles in the list which constitutes the seven pillars of civilization. His exclusion from the list does not constitute a sin of omission, however, because the whole of modernity, including Shakespeare, stands on the solid pre-modern pillars of civilization we have listed. All that is civilized in modernity, and all that is civilized in the works of Shakespeare, is dependent on Western civilization itself and the seven pillars of wisdom which support it. These seven pillars of Western civilization are also the seven textual wonders of civilized culture. With them, we can plumb the depths of the human psyche and can reach for the heights of heaven; without them, we are lost in the cosmos with nothing but nothing to comfort us. For the priceless inheritance of these good, true and beautiful gifts we should give thanks to the Good, True and Beautiful Himself. Deo gratias!

The Imaginative Conservative applies the principle of appreciation to the discussion of culture and politics—we approach dialogue with magnanimity rather than with mere civility. Will you help us remain a refreshing oasis in the increasingly contentious arena of modern discourse? Please consider donating now.

[bgtraveldays]

Greek and even Latin Christendom

Left to their own devices, these leaders of the Academy would have been an interesting and important center of speculation and analysis in later ages for Greek and even Latin Christendom to hear and refute or hear and heed. They were not to be left to their own devices. The religion of Justinian not only expected and promoted conformity but demanded it, and set out to uproot all rivals. Justinian’s hostility against surviving pockets of what he interpreted as paganism exceeded even the hostility he showed toward Christians whose thought differed from his own. With other Christians he at least attempted diplomacy before preferring suppression.

Anti-paganism had reached Athens in the fifth century; the old shrine of Asclepius on the southern slope of the Acropolis was destroyed and replaced by a church by the year 500. The replacement was strategic, for the church was built so as to take over and efface completely the traces not only of the temple itself but of the sacred spring, the porch where the sick had lain to wait for divine healing, and the shelter where visitors stayed. At the same time, the cult statues were removed from the temples of the Acropolis, and we must imagine how that striking outcrop of rock loomed over the city, dramatic then as now because of the astonishing Parthenon—but then with the hilltop dark and silent, vaguely threatening (at least to some) as the ancient home of demons.

Officially sanctioned Christian

Damascius didn’t think highly of these officially sanctioned Christian vandals who were cleaning up the town. He described them in his Life of Isidorus: “A race dissolved by every passion, destroyed by uncontrolled self-indulgence, cringing and womanish in its thinking, close to cowardice, wallowing in all swinishness, debased, content with servitude in security, such is the life of those who belong to the present generation.”15

What exactly happened next at Athens is disputed to this day. In the year 529, shortly after taking the throne in his own name, Justinian went on the warpath against paganism. In Constantinople, his purge amounted to what one scholar has called a “reign of terror” against traditionalists in many walks of life:16 not just professors and sophists, but lawyers, bureaucrats, and noblemen, of whom many were jailed and many others tortured. The same steps taken in the provinces had the effect of forcing the teachers of Athens to abandon their school and their ways. “Closing the university at Athens” is the melodramatic description that moderns use for this event, and it makes a milestone for those plotting the fall of an ancient pre-Christian culture. Nothing quite so simple happened, for Justinian’s actions did not directly attack the schools but rather attacked the religious practices of traditionalists who continued the old ways. Here is one version of his decree from a historian of the time:

During the consulship of Decius, the emperor issued a decree and sent it to Athens ordering that no one should teach philosophy nor interpret astronomy nor in any city should there be lots cast using dice; for some who cast dice had been discovered in Byzantium indulging themselves in dreadful blasphemies. Their hands were cut off and they were paraded around on camels private tour bulgaria.

Archaeologists

If the schools at Athens were well populated with such people, whose astronomy was astrological and whose dice playing was fortune-telling, then the schools were affected. Archaeologists have excavated the largest house on the Areopagus, between the ancient agora and the towering symbol of the Acropolis. During the 530 s, the house underwent renovation with religious overtones. The decoration was Christianized by removing old statues and putting a cross in the handsome mosaic floor. Outside the house, archaeologists discovered a well containing seven unambiguously traditional religious statues, all carefully preserved—and probably hidden in fear of Justinian’s enforcers.

Whatever the sequence of events, the teachers of the school, many of them having come from homes in Syria and Palestine, left Athens and moved east. In such a scattering, people landed in many places, but the group whose fate we hear about went all the way to the Persian border, there to seek refuge. The story has it that Khusro at Ctesiphon welcomed them and made them feel at home. The Christian storyteller suggests with amusement that they thought they would find the ideal Platonic state there. Disillusioned or homesick, they retreated soon afterward to more familiar territory, and in particular to the long-resistant religious traditionalism of Carrhae (or Harran), on the Roman side of the border. Damascius, their most sophisticated thinker, was still in his native Syria a few years later, writing poetry.

[biserarose]

Greek and even Latin Christendom

Left to their own devices, these leaders of the Academy would have been an interesting and important center of speculation and analysis in later ages for Greek and even Latin Christendom to hear and refute or hear and heed. They were not to be left to their own devices. The religion of Justinian not only expected and promoted conformity but demanded it, and set out to uproot all rivals. Justinian’s hostility against surviving pockets of what he interpreted as paganism exceeded even the hostility he showed toward Christians whose thought differed from his own. With other Christians he at least attempted diplomacy before preferring suppression.

Anti-paganism had reached Athens in the fifth century; the old shrine of Asclepius on the southern slope of the Acropolis was destroyed and replaced by a church by the year 500. The replacement was strategic, for the church was built so as to take over and efface completely the traces not only of the temple itself but of the sacred spring, the porch where the sick had lain to wait for divine healing, and the shelter where visitors stayed. At the same time, the cult statues were removed from the temples of the Acropolis, and we must imagine how that striking outcrop of rock loomed over the city, dramatic then as now because of the astonishing Parthenon—but then with the hilltop dark and silent, vaguely threatening (at least to some) as the ancient home of demons.

Officially sanctioned Christian

Damascius didn’t think highly of these officially sanctioned Christian vandals who were cleaning up the town. He described them in his Life of Isidorus: “A race dissolved by every passion, destroyed by uncontrolled self-indulgence, cringing and womanish in its thinking, close to cowardice, wallowing in all swinishness, debased, content with servitude in security, such is the life of those who belong to the present generation.”15

What exactly happened next at Athens is disputed to this day. In the year 529, shortly after taking the throne in his own name, Justinian went on the warpath against paganism. In Constantinople, his purge amounted to what one scholar has called a “reign of terror” against traditionalists in many walks of life:16 not just professors and sophists, but lawyers, bureaucrats, and noblemen, of whom many were jailed and many others tortured. The same steps taken in the provinces had the effect of forcing the teachers of Athens to abandon their school and their ways. “Closing the university at Athens” is the melodramatic description that moderns use for this event, and it makes a milestone for those plotting the fall of an ancient pre-Christian culture. Nothing quite so simple happened, for Justinian’s actions did not directly attack the schools but rather attacked the religious practices of traditionalists who continued the old ways. Here is one version of his decree from a historian of the time:

During the consulship of Decius, the emperor issued a decree and sent it to Athens ordering that no one should teach philosophy nor interpret astronomy nor in any city should there be lots cast using dice; for some who cast dice had been discovered in Byzantium indulging themselves in dreadful blasphemies. Their hands were cut off and they were paraded around on camels private tour bulgaria.

Archaeologists

If the schools at Athens were well populated with such people, whose astronomy was astrological and whose dice playing was fortune-telling, then the schools were affected. Archaeologists have excavated the largest house on the Areopagus, between the ancient agora and the towering symbol of the Acropolis. During the 530 s, the house underwent renovation with religious overtones. The decoration was Christianized by removing old statues and putting a cross in the handsome mosaic floor. Outside the house, archaeologists discovered a well containing seven unambiguously traditional religious statues, all carefully preserved—and probably hidden in fear of Justinian’s enforcers.

Whatever the sequence of events, the teachers of the school, many of them having come from homes in Syria and Palestine, left Athens and moved east. In such a scattering, people landed in many places, but the group whose fate we hear about went all the way to the Persian border, there to seek refuge. The story has it that Khusro at Ctesiphon welcomed them and made them feel at home. The Christian storyteller suggests with amusement that they thought they would find the ideal Platonic state there. Disillusioned or homesick, they retreated soon afterward to more familiar territory, and in particular to the long-resistant religious traditionalism of Carrhae (or Harran), on the Roman side of the border. Damascius, their most sophisticated thinker, was still in his native Syria a few years later, writing poetry.

[mahsed]

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Greek and even Latin Christendom

Left to their own devices, these leaders of the Academy would have been an interesting and important center of speculation and analysis in later ages for Greek and even Latin Christendom to hear and refute or hear and heed. They were not to be left to their own devices. The religion of Justinian not only expected and promoted conformity but demanded it, and set out to uproot all rivals. Justinian’s hostility against surviving pockets of what he interpreted as paganism exceeded even the hostility he showed toward Christians whose thought differed from his own. With other Christians he at least attempted diplomacy before preferring suppression.

Anti-paganism had reached Athens in the fifth century; the old shrine of Asclepius on the southern slope of the Acropolis was destroyed and replaced by a church by the year 500. The replacement was strategic, for the church was built so as to take over and efface completely the traces not only of the temple itself but of the sacred spring, the porch where the sick had lain to wait for divine healing, and the shelter where visitors stayed. At the same time, the cult statues were removed from the temples of the Acropolis, and we must imagine how that striking outcrop of rock loomed over the city, dramatic then as now because of the astonishing Parthenon—but then with the hilltop dark and silent, vaguely threatening (at least to some) as the ancient home of demons.

Officially sanctioned Christian

Damascius didn’t think highly of these officially sanctioned Christian vandals who were cleaning up the town. He described them in his Life of Isidorus: “A race dissolved by every passion, destroyed by uncontrolled self-indulgence, cringing and womanish in its thinking, close to cowardice, wallowing in all swinishness, debased, content with servitude in security, such is the life of those who belong to the present generation.”15

What exactly happened next at Athens is disputed to this day. In the year 529, shortly after taking the throne in his own name, Justinian went on the warpath against paganism. In Constantinople, his purge amounted to what one scholar has called a “reign of terror” against traditionalists in many walks of life:16 not just professors and sophists, but lawyers, bureaucrats, and noblemen, of whom many were jailed and many others tortured. The same steps taken in the provinces had the effect of forcing the teachers of Athens to abandon their school and their ways. “Closing the university at Athens” is the melodramatic description that moderns use for this event, and it makes a milestone for those plotting the fall of an ancient pre-Christian culture. Nothing quite so simple happened, for Justinian’s actions did not directly attack the schools but rather attacked the religious practices of traditionalists who continued the old ways. Here is one version of his decree from a historian of the time:

During the consulship of Decius, the emperor issued a decree and sent it to Athens ordering that no one should teach philosophy nor interpret astronomy nor in any city should there be lots cast using dice; for some who cast dice had been discovered in Byzantium indulging themselves in dreadful blasphemies. Their hands were cut off and they were paraded around on camels private tour bulgaria.

Archaeologists

If the schools at Athens were well populated with such people, whose astronomy was astrological and whose dice playing was fortune-telling, then the schools were affected. Archaeologists have excavated the largest house on the Areopagus, between the ancient agora and the towering symbol of the Acropolis. During the 530 s, the house underwent renovation with religious overtones. The decoration was Christianized by removing old statues and putting a cross in the handsome mosaic floor. Outside the house, archaeologists discovered a well containing seven unambiguously traditional religious statues, all carefully preserved—and probably hidden in fear of Justinian’s enforcers.

Whatever the sequence of events, the teachers of the school, many of them having come from homes in Syria and Palestine, left Athens and moved east. In such a scattering, people landed in many places, but the group whose fate we hear about went all the way to the Persian border, there to seek refuge. The story has it that Khusro at Ctesiphon welcomed them and made them feel at home. The Christian storyteller suggests with amusement that they thought they would find the ideal Platonic state there. Disillusioned or homesick, they retreated soon afterward to more familiar territory, and in particular to the long-resistant religious traditionalism of Carrhae (or Harran), on the Roman side of the border. Damascius, their most sophisticated thinker, was still in his native Syria a few years later, writing poetry.

[socialmgame]

Greek and even Latin Christendom

Left to their own devices, these leaders of the Academy would have been an interesting and important center of speculation and analysis in later ages for Greek and even Latin Christendom to hear and refute or hear and heed. They were not to be left to their own devices. The religion of Justinian not only expected and promoted conformity but demanded it, and set out to uproot all rivals. Justinian’s hostility against surviving pockets of what he interpreted as paganism exceeded even the hostility he showed toward Christians whose thought differed from his own. With other Christians he at least attempted diplomacy before preferring suppression.

Anti-paganism had reached Athens in the fifth century; the old shrine of Asclepius on the southern slope of the Acropolis was destroyed and replaced by a church by the year 500. The replacement was strategic, for the church was built so as to take over and efface completely the traces not only of the temple itself but of the sacred spring, the porch where the sick had lain to wait for divine healing, and the shelter where visitors stayed. At the same time, the cult statues were removed from the temples of the Acropolis, and we must imagine how that striking outcrop of rock loomed over the city, dramatic then as now because of the astonishing Parthenon—but then with the hilltop dark and silent, vaguely threatening (at least to some) as the ancient home of demons.

Officially sanctioned Christian

Damascius didn’t think highly of these officially sanctioned Christian vandals who were cleaning up the town. He described them in his Life of Isidorus: “A race dissolved by every passion, destroyed by uncontrolled self-indulgence, cringing and womanish in its thinking, close to cowardice, wallowing in all swinishness, debased, content with servitude in security, such is the life of those who belong to the present generation.”15

What exactly happened next at Athens is disputed to this day. In the year 529, shortly after taking the throne in his own name, Justinian went on the warpath against paganism. In Constantinople, his purge amounted to what one scholar has called a “reign of terror” against traditionalists in many walks of life:16 not just professors and sophists, but lawyers, bureaucrats, and noblemen, of whom many were jailed and many others tortured. The same steps taken in the provinces had the effect of forcing the teachers of Athens to abandon their school and their ways. “Closing the university at Athens” is the melodramatic description that moderns use for this event, and it makes a milestone for those plotting the fall of an ancient pre-Christian culture. Nothing quite so simple happened, for Justinian’s actions did not directly attack the schools but rather attacked the religious practices of traditionalists who continued the old ways. Here is one version of his decree from a historian of the time:

During the consulship of Decius, the emperor issued a decree and sent it to Athens ordering that no one should teach philosophy nor interpret astronomy nor in any city should there be lots cast using dice; for some who cast dice had been discovered in Byzantium indulging themselves in dreadful blasphemies. Their hands were cut off and they were paraded around on camels private tour bulgaria.

Archaeologists

If the schools at Athens were well populated with such people, whose astronomy was astrological and whose dice playing was fortune-telling, then the schools were affected. Archaeologists have excavated the largest house on the Areopagus, between the ancient agora and the towering symbol of the Acropolis. During the 530 s, the house underwent renovation with religious overtones. The decoration was Christianized by removing old statues and putting a cross in the handsome mosaic floor. Outside the house, archaeologists discovered a well containing seven unambiguously traditional religious statues, all carefully preserved—and probably hidden in fear of Justinian’s enforcers.

Whatever the sequence of events, the teachers of the school, many of them having come from homes in Syria and Palestine, left Athens and moved east. In such a scattering, people landed in many places, but the group whose fate we hear about went all the way to the Persian border, there to seek refuge. The story has it that Khusro at Ctesiphon welcomed them and made them feel at home. The Christian storyteller suggests with amusement that they thought they would find the ideal Platonic state there. Disillusioned or homesick, they retreated soon afterward to more familiar territory, and in particular to the long-resistant religious traditionalism of Carrhae (or Harran), on the Roman side of the border. Damascius, their most sophisticated thinker, was still in his native Syria a few years later, writing poetry.

[livelifesofia]

Greek and even Latin Christendom

Left to their own devices, these leaders of the Academy would have been an interesting and important center of speculation and analysis in later ages for Greek and even Latin Christendom to hear and refute or hear and heed. They were not to be left to their own devices. The religion of Justinian not only expected and promoted conformity but demanded it, and set out to uproot all rivals. Justinian’s hostility against surviving pockets of what he interpreted as paganism exceeded even the hostility he showed toward Christians whose thought differed from his own. With other Christians he at least attempted diplomacy before preferring suppression.

Anti-paganism had reached Athens in the fifth century; the old shrine of Asclepius on the southern slope of the Acropolis was destroyed and replaced by a church by the year 500. The replacement was strategic, for the church was built so as to take over and efface completely the traces not only of the temple itself but of the sacred spring, the porch where the sick had lain to wait for divine healing, and the shelter where visitors stayed. At the same time, the cult statues were removed from the temples of the Acropolis, and we must imagine how that striking outcrop of rock loomed over the city, dramatic then as now because of the astonishing Parthenon—but then with the hilltop dark and silent, vaguely threatening (at least to some) as the ancient home of demons.

Officially sanctioned Christian

Damascius didn’t think highly of these officially sanctioned Christian vandals who were cleaning up the town. He described them in his Life of Isidorus: “A race dissolved by every passion, destroyed by uncontrolled self-indulgence, cringing and womanish in its thinking, close to cowardice, wallowing in all swinishness, debased, content with servitude in security, such is the life of those who belong to the present generation.”15

What exactly happened next at Athens is disputed to this day. In the year 529, shortly after taking the throne in his own name, Justinian went on the warpath against paganism. In Constantinople, his purge amounted to what one scholar has called a “reign of terror” against traditionalists in many walks of life:16 not just professors and sophists, but lawyers, bureaucrats, and noblemen, of whom many were jailed and many others tortured. The same steps taken in the provinces had the effect of forcing the teachers of Athens to abandon their school and their ways. “Closing the university at Athens” is the melodramatic description that moderns use for this event, and it makes a milestone for those plotting the fall of an ancient pre-Christian culture. Nothing quite so simple happened, for Justinian’s actions did not directly attack the schools but rather attacked the religious practices of traditionalists who continued the old ways. Here is one version of his decree from a historian of the time:

During the consulship of Decius, the emperor issued a decree and sent it to Athens ordering that no one should teach philosophy nor interpret astronomy nor in any city should there be lots cast using dice; for some who cast dice had been discovered in Byzantium indulging themselves in dreadful blasphemies. Their hands were cut off and they were paraded around on camels private tour bulgaria.

Archaeologists

If the schools at Athens were well populated with such people, whose astronomy was astrological and whose dice playing was fortune-telling, then the schools were affected. Archaeologists have excavated the largest house on the Areopagus, between the ancient agora and the towering symbol of the Acropolis. During the 530 s, the house underwent renovation with religious overtones. The decoration was Christianized by removing old statues and putting a cross in the handsome mosaic floor. Outside the house, archaeologists discovered a well containing seven unambiguously traditional religious statues, all carefully preserved—and probably hidden in fear of Justinian’s enforcers.

Whatever the sequence of events, the teachers of the school, many of them having come from homes in Syria and Palestine, left Athens and moved east. In such a scattering, people landed in many places, but the group whose fate we hear about went all the way to the Persian border, there to seek refuge. The story has it that Khusro at Ctesiphon welcomed them and made them feel at home. The Christian storyteller suggests with amusement that they thought they would find the ideal Platonic state there. Disillusioned or homesick, they retreated soon afterward to more familiar territory, and in particular to the long-resistant religious traditionalism of Carrhae (or Harran), on the Roman side of the border. Damascius, their most sophisticated thinker, was still in his native Syria a few years later, writing poetry.

[worldtravell]

Greek and even Latin Christendom

Left to their own devices, these leaders of the Academy would have been an interesting and important center of speculation and analysis in later ages for Greek and even Latin Christendom to hear and refute or hear and heed. They were not to be left to their own devices. The religion of Justinian not only expected and promoted conformity but demanded it, and set out to uproot all rivals. Justinian’s hostility against surviving pockets of what he interpreted as paganism exceeded even the hostility he showed toward Christians whose thought differed from his own. With other Christians he at least attempted diplomacy before preferring suppression.

Anti-paganism had reached Athens in the fifth century; the old shrine of Asclepius on the southern slope of the Acropolis was destroyed and replaced by a church by the year 500. The replacement was strategic, for the church was built so as to take over and efface completely the traces not only of the temple itself but of the sacred spring, the porch where the sick had lain to wait for divine healing, and the shelter where visitors stayed. At the same time, the cult statues were removed from the temples of the Acropolis, and we must imagine how that striking outcrop of rock loomed over the city, dramatic then as now because of the astonishing Parthenon—but then with the hilltop dark and silent, vaguely threatening (at least to some) as the ancient home of demons.

Officially sanctioned Christian

Damascius didn’t think highly of these officially sanctioned Christian vandals who were cleaning up the town. He described them in his Life of Isidorus: “A race dissolved by every passion, destroyed by uncontrolled self-indulgence, cringing and womanish in its thinking, close to cowardice, wallowing in all swinishness, debased, content with servitude in security, such is the life of those who belong to the present generation.”15

What exactly happened next at Athens is disputed to this day. In the year 529, shortly after taking the throne in his own name, Justinian went on the warpath against paganism. In Constantinople, his purge amounted to what one scholar has called a “reign of terror” against traditionalists in many walks of life:16 not just professors and sophists, but lawyers, bureaucrats, and noblemen, of whom many were jailed and many others tortured. The same steps taken in the provinces had the effect of forcing the teachers of Athens to abandon their school and their ways. “Closing the university at Athens” is the melodramatic description that moderns use for this event, and it makes a milestone for those plotting the fall of an ancient pre-Christian culture. Nothing quite so simple happened, for Justinian’s actions did not directly attack the schools but rather attacked the religious practices of traditionalists who continued the old ways. Here is one version of his decree from a historian of the time:

During the consulship of Decius, the emperor issued a decree and sent it to Athens ordering that no one should teach philosophy nor interpret astronomy nor in any city should there be lots cast using dice; for some who cast dice had been discovered in Byzantium indulging themselves in dreadful blasphemies. Their hands were cut off and they were paraded around on camels private tour bulgaria.

Archaeologists

If the schools at Athens were well populated with such people, whose astronomy was astrological and whose dice playing was fortune-telling, then the schools were affected. Archaeologists have excavated the largest house on the Areopagus, between the ancient agora and the towering symbol of the Acropolis. During the 530 s, the house underwent renovation with religious overtones. The decoration was Christianized by removing old statues and putting a cross in the handsome mosaic floor. Outside the house, archaeologists discovered a well containing seven unambiguously traditional religious statues, all carefully preserved—and probably hidden in fear of Justinian’s enforcers.

Whatever the sequence of events, the teachers of the school, many of them having come from homes in Syria and Palestine, left Athens and moved east. In such a scattering, people landed in many places, but the group whose fate we hear about went all the way to the Persian border, there to seek refuge. The story has it that Khusro at Ctesiphon welcomed them and made them feel at home. The Christian storyteller suggests with amusement that they thought they would find the ideal Platonic state there. Disillusioned or homesick, they retreated soon afterward to more familiar territory, and in particular to the long-resistant religious traditionalism of Carrhae (or Harran), on the Roman side of the border. Damascius, their most sophisticated thinker, was still in his native Syria a few years later, writing poetry.

[everyworlds]

Greek and even Latin Christendom

Left to their own devices, these leaders of the Academy would have been an interesting and important center of speculation and analysis in later ages for Greek and even Latin Christendom to hear and refute or hear and heed. They were not to be left to their own devices. The religion of Justinian not only expected and promoted conformity but demanded it, and set out to uproot all rivals. Justinian’s hostility against surviving pockets of what he interpreted as paganism exceeded even the hostility he showed toward Christians whose thought differed from his own. With other Christians he at least attempted diplomacy before preferring suppression.

Anti-paganism had reached Athens in the fifth century; the old shrine of Asclepius on the southern slope of the Acropolis was destroyed and replaced by a church by the year 500. The replacement was strategic, for the church was built so as to take over and efface completely the traces not only of the temple itself but of the sacred spring, the porch where the sick had lain to wait for divine healing, and the shelter where visitors stayed. At the same time, the cult statues were removed from the temples of the Acropolis, and we must imagine how that striking outcrop of rock loomed over the city, dramatic then as now because of the astonishing Parthenon—but then with the hilltop dark and silent, vaguely threatening (at least to some) as the ancient home of demons.

Officially sanctioned Christian

Damascius didn’t think highly of these officially sanctioned Christian vandals who were cleaning up the town. He described them in his Life of Isidorus: “A race dissolved by every passion, destroyed by uncontrolled self-indulgence, cringing and womanish in its thinking, close to cowardice, wallowing in all swinishness, debased, content with servitude in security, such is the life of those who belong to the present generation.”15

What exactly happened next at Athens is disputed to this day. In the year 529, shortly after taking the throne in his own name, Justinian went on the warpath against paganism. In Constantinople, his purge amounted to what one scholar has called a “reign of terror” against traditionalists in many walks of life:16 not just professors and sophists, but lawyers, bureaucrats, and noblemen, of whom many were jailed and many others tortured. The same steps taken in the provinces had the effect of forcing the teachers of Athens to abandon their school and their ways. “Closing the university at Athens” is the melodramatic description that moderns use for this event, and it makes a milestone for those plotting the fall of an ancient pre-Christian culture. Nothing quite so simple happened, for Justinian’s actions did not directly attack the schools but rather attacked the religious practices of traditionalists who continued the old ways. Here is one version of his decree from a historian of the time:

During the consulship of Decius, the emperor issued a decree and sent it to Athens ordering that no one should teach philosophy nor interpret astronomy nor in any city should there be lots cast using dice; for some who cast dice had been discovered in Byzantium indulging themselves in dreadful blasphemies. Their hands were cut off and they were paraded around on camels private tour bulgaria.

Archaeologists

If the schools at Athens were well populated with such people, whose astronomy was astrological and whose dice playing was fortune-telling, then the schools were affected. Archaeologists have excavated the largest house on the Areopagus, between the ancient agora and the towering symbol of the Acropolis. During the 530 s, the house underwent renovation with religious overtones. The decoration was Christianized by removing old statues and putting a cross in the handsome mosaic floor. Outside the house, archaeologists discovered a well containing seven unambiguously traditional religious statues, all carefully preserved—and probably hidden in fear of Justinian’s enforcers.

Whatever the sequence of events, the teachers of the school, many of them having come from homes in Syria and Palestine, left Athens and moved east. In such a scattering, people landed in many places, but the group whose fate we hear about went all the way to the Persian border, there to seek refuge. The story has it that Khusro at Ctesiphon welcomed them and made them feel at home. The Christian storyteller suggests with amusement that they thought they would find the ideal Platonic state there. Disillusioned or homesick, they retreated soon afterward to more familiar territory, and in particular to the long-resistant religious traditionalism of Carrhae (or Harran), on the Roman side of the border. Damascius, their most sophisticated thinker, was still in his native Syria a few years later, writing poetry.

[delicioutravel]

Greek and even Latin Christendom

Left to their own devices, these leaders of the Academy would have been an interesting and important center of speculation and analysis in later ages for Greek and even Latin Christendom to hear and refute or hear and heed. They were not to be left to their own devices. The religion of Justinian not only expected and promoted conformity but demanded it, and set out to uproot all rivals. Justinian’s hostility against surviving pockets of what he interpreted as paganism exceeded even the hostility he showed toward Christians whose thought differed from his own. With other Christians he at least attempted diplomacy before preferring suppression.

Anti-paganism had reached Athens in the fifth century; the old shrine of Asclepius on the southern slope of the Acropolis was destroyed and replaced by a church by the year 500. The replacement was strategic, for the church was built so as to take over and efface completely the traces not only of the temple itself but of the sacred spring, the porch where the sick had lain to wait for divine healing, and the shelter where visitors stayed. At the same time, the cult statues were removed from the temples of the Acropolis, and we must imagine how that striking outcrop of rock loomed over the city, dramatic then as now because of the astonishing Parthenon—but then with the hilltop dark and silent, vaguely threatening (at least to some) as the ancient home of demons.

Officially sanctioned Christian

Damascius didn’t think highly of these officially sanctioned Christian vandals who were cleaning up the town. He described them in his Life of Isidorus: “A race dissolved by every passion, destroyed by uncontrolled self-indulgence, cringing and womanish in its thinking, close to cowardice, wallowing in all swinishness, debased, content with servitude in security, such is the life of those who belong to the present generation.”15

What exactly happened next at Athens is disputed to this day. In the year 529, shortly after taking the throne in his own name, Justinian went on the warpath against paganism. In Constantinople, his purge amounted to what one scholar has called a “reign of terror” against traditionalists in many walks of life:16 not just professors and sophists, but lawyers, bureaucrats, and noblemen, of whom many were jailed and many others tortured. The same steps taken in the provinces had the effect of forcing the teachers of Athens to abandon their school and their ways. “Closing the university at Athens” is the melodramatic description that moderns use for this event, and it makes a milestone for those plotting the fall of an ancient pre-Christian culture. Nothing quite so simple happened, for Justinian’s actions did not directly attack the schools but rather attacked the religious practices of traditionalists who continued the old ways. Here is one version of his decree from a historian of the time:

During the consulship of Decius, the emperor issued a decree and sent it to Athens ordering that no one should teach philosophy nor interpret astronomy nor in any city should there be lots cast using dice; for some who cast dice had been discovered in Byzantium indulging themselves in dreadful blasphemies. Their hands were cut off and they were paraded around on camels private tour bulgaria.

Archaeologists

If the schools at Athens were well populated with such people, whose astronomy was astrological and whose dice playing was fortune-telling, then the schools were affected. Archaeologists have excavated the largest house on the Areopagus, between the ancient agora and the towering symbol of the Acropolis. During the 530 s, the house underwent renovation with religious overtones. The decoration was Christianized by removing old statues and putting a cross in the handsome mosaic floor. Outside the house, archaeologists discovered a well containing seven unambiguously traditional religious statues, all carefully preserved—and probably hidden in fear of Justinian’s enforcers.

Whatever the sequence of events, the teachers of the school, many of them having come from homes in Syria and Palestine, left Athens and moved east. In such a scattering, people landed in many places, but the group whose fate we hear about went all the way to the Persian border, there to seek refuge. The story has it that Khusro at Ctesiphon welcomed them and made them feel at home. The Christian storyteller suggests with amusement that they thought they would find the ideal Platonic state there. Disillusioned or homesick, they retreated soon afterward to more familiar territory, and in particular to the long-resistant religious traditionalism of Carrhae (or Harran), on the Roman side of the border. Damascius, their most sophisticated thinker, was still in his native Syria a few years later, writing poetry.

[pinkemilya]

Greek and even Latin Christendom

Left to their own devices, these leaders of the Academy would have been an interesting and important center of speculation and analysis in later ages for Greek and even Latin Christendom to hear and refute or hear and heed. They were not to be left to their own devices. The religion of Justinian not only expected and promoted conformity but demanded it, and set out to uproot all rivals. Justinian’s hostility against surviving pockets of what he interpreted as paganism exceeded even the hostility he showed toward Christians whose thought differed from his own. With other Christians he at least attempted diplomacy before preferring suppression.

Anti-paganism had reached Athens in the fifth century; the old shrine of Asclepius on the southern slope of the Acropolis was destroyed and replaced by a church by the year 500. The replacement was strategic, for the church was built so as to take over and efface completely the traces not only of the temple itself but of the sacred spring, the porch where the sick had lain to wait for divine healing, and the shelter where visitors stayed. At the same time, the cult statues were removed from the temples of the Acropolis, and we must imagine how that striking outcrop of rock loomed over the city, dramatic then as now because of the astonishing Parthenon—but then with the hilltop dark and silent, vaguely threatening (at least to some) as the ancient home of demons.

Officially sanctioned Christian

Damascius didn’t think highly of these officially sanctioned Christian vandals who were cleaning up the town. He described them in his Life of Isidorus: “A race dissolved by every passion, destroyed by uncontrolled self-indulgence, cringing and womanish in its thinking, close to cowardice, wallowing in all swinishness, debased, content with servitude in security, such is the life of those who belong to the present generation.”15

What exactly happened next at Athens is disputed to this day. In the year 529, shortly after taking the throne in his own name, Justinian went on the warpath against paganism. In Constantinople, his purge amounted to what one scholar has called a “reign of terror” against traditionalists in many walks of life:16 not just professors and sophists, but lawyers, bureaucrats, and noblemen, of whom many were jailed and many others tortured. The same steps taken in the provinces had the effect of forcing the teachers of Athens to abandon their school and their ways. “Closing the university at Athens” is the melodramatic description that moderns use for this event, and it makes a milestone for those plotting the fall of an ancient pre-Christian culture. Nothing quite so simple happened, for Justinian’s actions did not directly attack the schools but rather attacked the religious practices of traditionalists who continued the old ways. Here is one version of his decree from a historian of the time:

During the consulship of Decius, the emperor issued a decree and sent it to Athens ordering that no one should teach philosophy nor interpret astronomy nor in any city should there be lots cast using dice; for some who cast dice had been discovered in Byzantium indulging themselves in dreadful blasphemies. Their hands were cut off and they were paraded around on camels private tour bulgaria.

Archaeologists

If the schools at Athens were well populated with such people, whose astronomy was astrological and whose dice playing was fortune-telling, then the schools were affected. Archaeologists have excavated the largest house on the Areopagus, between the ancient agora and the towering symbol of the Acropolis. During the 530 s, the house underwent renovation with religious overtones. The decoration was Christianized by removing old statues and putting a cross in the handsome mosaic floor. Outside the house, archaeologists discovered a well containing seven unambiguously traditional religious statues, all carefully preserved—and probably hidden in fear of Justinian’s enforcers.

Whatever the sequence of events, the teachers of the school, many of them having come from homes in Syria and Palestine, left Athens and moved east. In such a scattering, people landed in many places, but the group whose fate we hear about went all the way to the Persian border, there to seek refuge. The story has it that Khusro at Ctesiphon welcomed them and made them feel at home. The Christian storyteller suggests with amusement that they thought they would find the ideal Platonic state there. Disillusioned or homesick, they retreated soon afterward to more familiar territory, and in particular to the long-resistant religious traditionalism of Carrhae (or Harran), on the Roman side of the border. Damascius, their most sophisticated thinker, was still in his native Syria a few years later, writing poetry.

[mirelapink]

Greek and even Latin Christendom

Left to their own devices, these leaders of the Academy would have been an interesting and important center of speculation and analysis in later ages for Greek and even Latin Christendom to hear and refute or hear and heed. They were not to be left to their own devices. The religion of Justinian not only expected and promoted conformity but demanded it, and set out to uproot all rivals. Justinian’s hostility against surviving pockets of what he interpreted as paganism exceeded even the hostility he showed toward Christians whose thought differed from his own. With other Christians he at least attempted diplomacy before preferring suppression.

Anti-paganism had reached Athens in the fifth century; the old shrine of Asclepius on the southern slope of the Acropolis was destroyed and replaced by a church by the year 500. The replacement was strategic, for the church was built so as to take over and efface completely the traces not only of the temple itself but of the sacred spring, the porch where the sick had lain to wait for divine healing, and the shelter where visitors stayed. At the same time, the cult statues were removed from the temples of the Acropolis, and we must imagine how that striking outcrop of rock loomed over the city, dramatic then as now because of the astonishing Parthenon—but then with the hilltop dark and silent, vaguely threatening (at least to some) as the ancient home of demons.

Officially sanctioned Christian

Damascius didn’t think highly of these officially sanctioned Christian vandals who were cleaning up the town. He described them in his Life of Isidorus: “A race dissolved by every passion, destroyed by uncontrolled self-indulgence, cringing and womanish in its thinking, close to cowardice, wallowing in all swinishness, debased, content with servitude in security, such is the life of those who belong to the present generation.”15

What exactly happened next at Athens is disputed to this day. In the year 529, shortly after taking the throne in his own name, Justinian went on the warpath against paganism. In Constantinople, his purge amounted to what one scholar has called a “reign of terror” against traditionalists in many walks of life:16 not just professors and sophists, but lawyers, bureaucrats, and noblemen, of whom many were jailed and many others tortured. The same steps taken in the provinces had the effect of forcing the teachers of Athens to abandon their school and their ways. “Closing the university at Athens” is the melodramatic description that moderns use for this event, and it makes a milestone for those plotting the fall of an ancient pre-Christian culture. Nothing quite so simple happened, for Justinian’s actions did not directly attack the schools but rather attacked the religious practices of traditionalists who continued the old ways. Here is one version of his decree from a historian of the time:

During the consulship of Decius, the emperor issued a decree and sent it to Athens ordering that no one should teach philosophy nor interpret astronomy nor in any city should there be lots cast using dice; for some who cast dice had been discovered in Byzantium indulging themselves in dreadful blasphemies. Their hands were cut off and they were paraded around on camels private tour bulgaria.

Archaeologists

If the schools at Athens were well populated with such people, whose astronomy was astrological and whose dice playing was fortune-telling, then the schools were affected. Archaeologists have excavated the largest house on the Areopagus, between the ancient agora and the towering symbol of the Acropolis. During the 530 s, the house underwent renovation with religious overtones. The decoration was Christianized by removing old statues and putting a cross in the handsome mosaic floor. Outside the house, archaeologists discovered a well containing seven unambiguously traditional religious statues, all carefully preserved—and probably hidden in fear of Justinian’s enforcers.

Whatever the sequence of events, the teachers of the school, many of them having come from homes in Syria and Palestine, left Athens and moved east. In such a scattering, people landed in many places, but the group whose fate we hear about went all the way to the Persian border, there to seek refuge. The story has it that Khusro at Ctesiphon welcomed them and made them feel at home. The Christian storyteller suggests with amusement that they thought they would find the ideal Platonic state there. Disillusioned or homesick, they retreated soon afterward to more familiar territory, and in particular to the long-resistant religious traditionalism of Carrhae (or Harran), on the Roman side of the border. Damascius, their most sophisticated thinker, was still in his native Syria a few years later, writing poetry.

[mirelasite]

Greek and even Latin Christendom

Left to their own devices, these leaders of the Academy would have been an interesting and important center of speculation and analysis in later ages for Greek and even Latin Christendom to hear and refute or hear and heed. They were not to be left to their own devices. The religion of Justinian not only expected and promoted conformity but demanded it, and set out to uproot all rivals. Justinian’s hostility against surviving pockets of what he interpreted as paganism exceeded even the hostility he showed toward Christians whose thought differed from his own. With other Christians he at least attempted diplomacy before preferring suppression.

Anti-paganism had reached Athens in the fifth century; the old shrine of Asclepius on the southern slope of the Acropolis was destroyed and replaced by a church by the year 500. The replacement was strategic, for the church was built so as to take over and efface completely the traces not only of the temple itself but of the sacred spring, the porch where the sick had lain to wait for divine healing, and the shelter where visitors stayed. At the same time, the cult statues were removed from the temples of the Acropolis, and we must imagine how that striking outcrop of rock loomed over the city, dramatic then as now because of the astonishing Parthenon—but then with the hilltop dark and silent, vaguely threatening (at least to some) as the ancient home of demons.

Officially sanctioned Christian

Damascius didn’t think highly of these officially sanctioned Christian vandals who were cleaning up the town. He described them in his Life of Isidorus: “A race dissolved by every passion, destroyed by uncontrolled self-indulgence, cringing and womanish in its thinking, close to cowardice, wallowing in all swinishness, debased, content with servitude in security, such is the life of those who belong to the present generation.”15

What exactly happened next at Athens is disputed to this day. In the year 529, shortly after taking the throne in his own name, Justinian went on the warpath against paganism. In Constantinople, his purge amounted to what one scholar has called a “reign of terror” against traditionalists in many walks of life:16 not just professors and sophists, but lawyers, bureaucrats, and noblemen, of whom many were jailed and many others tortured. The same steps taken in the provinces had the effect of forcing the teachers of Athens to abandon their school and their ways. “Closing the university at Athens” is the melodramatic description that moderns use for this event, and it makes a milestone for those plotting the fall of an ancient pre-Christian culture. Nothing quite so simple happened, for Justinian’s actions did not directly attack the schools but rather attacked the religious practices of traditionalists who continued the old ways. Here is one version of his decree from a historian of the time:

During the consulship of Decius, the emperor issued a decree and sent it to Athens ordering that no one should teach philosophy nor interpret astronomy nor in any city should there be lots cast using dice; for some who cast dice had been discovered in Byzantium indulging themselves in dreadful blasphemies. Their hands were cut off and they were paraded around on camels private tour bulgaria.

Archaeologists

If the schools at Athens were well populated with such people, whose astronomy was astrological and whose dice playing was fortune-telling, then the schools were affected. Archaeologists have excavated the largest house on the Areopagus, between the ancient agora and the towering symbol of the Acropolis. During the 530 s, the house underwent renovation with religious overtones. The decoration was Christianized by removing old statues and putting a cross in the handsome mosaic floor. Outside the house, archaeologists discovered a well containing seven unambiguously traditional religious statues, all carefully preserved—and probably hidden in fear of Justinian’s enforcers.

Whatever the sequence of events, the teachers of the school, many of them having come from homes in Syria and Palestine, left Athens and moved east. In such a scattering, people landed in many places, but the group whose fate we hear about went all the way to the Persian border, there to seek refuge. The story has it that Khusro at Ctesiphon welcomed them and made them feel at home. The Christian storyteller suggests with amusement that they thought they would find the ideal Platonic state there. Disillusioned or homesick, they retreated soon afterward to more familiar territory, and in particular to the long-resistant religious traditionalism of Carrhae (or Harran), on the Roman side of the border. Damascius, their most sophisticated thinker, was still in his native Syria a few years later, writing poetry.