#the christians in pre-constantine Rome

[kyliaquilor]

I will never respect self-martyrdom in history.

At some point, you basically forced the state to kill you when you rejected numerous opportunities to avoid death that didn’t even remotely require significant sacrifice.

[rabbits-of-negative-euphoria]

Christians are not allowed to use the suffering and evil around us as an excuse not to have kids. God promises us we will suffer for the faith, and so will our children. And still He calls us to be fruitful and multiply. Still the ordinary means of building His Kingdom is through the family.

If the Christians in pre-Constantine Rome were having children despite the lions in the Colosseum, you can have children despite the drag story hour at the library.

If the Christians in China can have children despite their pastors' imprisonment, you can have children despite the fentanyl crisis.

If the Israelites could have children despite 40 years in the wilderness or 430 years enslaved in Egypt, you can have children despite predictions of WWIII, nuclear winter, or climate disaster.

[qqueenofhades]

Hi Hilary! I could use some help with something. Do you know some topics for historical tangents a history professor (Hob) could go on while talking to some students? Like some interesting discussion ideas? I was not a history major and I’m now drawing a blank 😅 I’d appreciate it greatly!

"Right, morning everyone... MORNING... yes, we all do know it is morning and I would like to remind everyone that it's not my fault we were scheduled at eight bloody AM. Consider it building character. Great. Let's get started. Can we put the phones down, please. In my day we didn't even have phones. No really. We didn't. Really didn't.

Anyway, so where were we? Ah, yes. End of the Western Roman Empire circa 476 CE, which stands for the secular Common Era, which historians now generally use instead of the Christian A.D. Anno Domini, which trust me, they used when I was born, because I am very old. Ah, you're laughing again, because you think I'm joking. Which, er, I definitely am. Anyway, the so-called collapse of the Roman Empire is one of the most mythologized events in the Western historical canon, and there are accordingly a lot of misperceptions about what happened and how. As we covered in the last class -- well, can anyone tell me what we covered last class?

Anyone?

Anyone?

Come on, one of you, just raise your hands. I don't bite.

Fine, all right, I'll do it myself. Again. Last class, we covered the eventful fourth century in Roman history, where the empire split into western and eastern halves, eastern Emperor Constantine converted to Christianity, and established his capital in Constantinople, which would later get the works from the Turks and become Istanbul. The western capital moved to Ravenna in 402, and it had been in Milan before that, not Rome. No longer the center of power as it had been for many centuries beforehand under both the empire and the republic, Rome was infamously sacked in 410 by the Visigoths under King Alaric I. The Supergoths. The Ubergoths. The Verygoths. The Turbogoths. All right, I'll stop. The Visigoths had formerly been a Roman client kingdom in the south of Gaul, which is the modern country of -- anyone?

Anyone? Anyone? Oh come on.

Yes, thank you Sarah, it was in fact France. See everyone? Not that hard. Now that we're up to speed, right, the so-called End of Rome in 476, when the last Western emperor, Romulus Augustulus, was deposed by Odoacer, general of the Ostrogoths. Not the Visigoths. Definitely different thing here. The Alsogoths. The Othergoths. The Ohgodthosegoths. I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I swear I will actually stop. But the common narrative from then is that Rome just bloody disappeared altogether, the Dark Ages started, it was grim and miserable and murdery all the time, everyone forgot how to do scholarship or art or religion or anything else, and then miraculously a thousand years later, woo, the Renaissance! Everyone sorted their heads from their arses and could do maths again! I'm sorry about saying arses. Please don't report me to HR, they've had enough of me already. Anyway, this argument, despite its long-time supremacy in the Western historiographical canon and Western popular culture, doesn't make sense on any number of levels. And that is because? Can anyone give me just one reason to start with?

Anyone?

Anyone?

Sarah again, yes, thank you. I appreciate you greatly, Sarah. Yes, for one thing, the Eastern Roman Empire still bloody existed! It was literally that meme where we're announcing that Rome is dead, Constantinople wants us to stop telling everyone that they're dead, and we sigh that sometimes we can still hear their voice. Yes, I know what a meme is, don't look so surprised. The city of Constantinople became the center of Roman culture and power, though we call it the Byzantine empire to distinguish it from the pre-476 Roman empire. It used Greek instead of Latin as its primary culture and language, it was Orthodox Christian instead of Catholic Christian, and while it was no longer the multinational power player that its predecessor had been, it still produced some heavy hitters. Such as Emperor Justinian in the sixth century, who actually, albeit briefly, reconquered the territories of former Rome in the west, and was married to the very fascinating Empress Theodora. We'll have to get back to her, but anyway, in the territories of Former Rome, such as modern-day Spain, France, and Germany, there were still client kingdoms who were directly descended from Rome and who premised their new independence on their Roman inheritance. The Visigoths -- yes, them again -- in Spain, the Merovingians and the Franks in France, the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes in Germany, and other. So tell me, can we really say that Rome collapsed, exactly, and/or disappeared, instead of just dissipated and re-formed? We still had Latin as the language of state administration, the Roman Catholic Church as the supreme religious and cultural arbiter, and other major innovations that would last through the Middle Ages. Where does this whole Dark Ages thing come from?

Anyone?

Anyone aside from Sarah?

Oh, God's wounds. All right then. The idea that Rome disappeared overnight and took everything good with it is a projection, a fiction, popularized by proto-Renaissance and Renaissance writers who wanted to legitimize their look back into the past. We're getting ahead of ourselves, but the idea of the Dark Ages as this backward slovenly time of idiocy and misery -- it just gets me very worked up, all right?! Yes, written texts and certain other traditional markers of historic narrative became much scarcer than before, and we don't know as much about it as we do the more meticulously documented societies on either side, but it's only dark because we've decided that Rome, the brutal excessively slave-owning militaristic expansionist violent empire par excellence, was the marker of all culture and the peak of Western civilization for all time and nobody else could ever come close! This is how we get bloody Game of Thrones insisting that the medieval era was always filthy and dark and full of rape and violence and morally awful people -- so tell me, George, which part of your fantasy novel, the dragons or the ice zombies, were we expected to read as actual literal truth? It's just because we want to protect the idea of ourselves as so much better than people in the past, and the past itself as full of terrible violence that is somehow worse and more primitive than our violence, and that surely we could never do that because we're so much better! Which is total bullshit! Bullshit!

...yes. Thank you. Right. I'm fine. I'm absolutely fine, I apologize for that. Just a bit of a trigger for me. We'll get back to the lesson now, yes. I'm warning you, though. If you use Dark Ages uncritically in your essay, I am knocking you down a full grade. No matter what."

[sailorspica]

are there... any... parallels between St Sebastian and Reiner

WELL WELL

this is the fun of the early christian/pre-constantine martyrs: wacky death-defying myths. which is simply reiner

there are two parts to sebastian's martyrdom: first he was executed under Diocletian by firing squad (archers), and much like the first witnesses to jesus' resurrection were women, a widowed christian woman St Irene (her husband was also martyred by Rome) went to retrieve his body and found him miraculously alive. she nursed him back to health and he went right back out in the world screaming his christian thoughts, so Diocletian him beaten to death (for real this time)

irene tending to sebastian's wounds is another big subject of art which, to me, is From Shiganshina With Love

and i just think early christian martyrs are for body horror in general. teehee

[pyramidmedia369]

The Unknown Origins of Christmas & Christianity

Original post: The Unknown Origins of Christmas & Christianity (pyramidmedia369.com)

There is a wide variety of artifacts below that detail the origins of the Christmas ritual. The information below will be quite alarming, because it can cause deep confusion depending on where you stand in your spiritual journey. There's a lot to uncover here. I'm only here to make you think. Lets get to it. 

We will address the following:

Christ-Mass

Saturnalia

Saturn Worship

ACTS 14:12 + GENESIS 11:5-9 in the Bible

Who is Nimrod? 

How does Nimrod tie to the story of Christ?

The original Virgin Mary story

The Winter Solstice

Christ-Mass & the start of Christianity

The word "Christmas" is a derivative of "Christ-Mass". With Mass being a common practice in Roman Catholicism, having a nature specific to certain dates for more than just astrological reasons. The roots of Christmas were first planted in ancient Rome with Saturnalia: the original ritual of Christmas. In 336 AD, Pope Julius I decided to call December 25th "Christ-Mass", in an effort to adopt and absorb the traditions of the pagan Saturnalia festival. This is just 11 years after the beginning of Christianity, which started in 325 AD by Constantine The Great at the Council of Nicea. At the CON, Constantine stated that religious peace could only occur if a single religion is imposed throughout the empire, therefore no one could leave the empire until they agreed on a Universal interpretation for Christianity. There were only 5 priests who disagreed with him. Therefore, the bible doctrine we read today was subjugated by votes. Meaning, the stories/scriptures they would or would not include in the bible had to be voted for by the Council of Nicea. Which is why 75 books were removed from the bible as Christianity was created. 

I wonder, why didn't Christianity evolve as its own semitic denomination? Yeshua (Jesus) was a Jew from the tribe of Judah by lineage, and the New Testament states his crucifixion was ordered by the Roman Catholic church. Why is Christianity a denomination of Catholicism, and not Hebrew customs? Weird. 

Saturnalia

Saturnalia was originally a celebration of the god 'Saturn', which would last from December 17th through December 25th. I do recommend that you research the nature of these festivals on your own. Before it was Jesus Christ's birthday, it was Nimrod's birthday and was widely celebrated similar to the way we celebrate Christmas. To the Romans, Nimrod was called Saturn; the Greeks called him Kronos; the Egyptians called him Osiris; the Phoenicians and Canaanites called him Baal. Interesting, isn't it? 

Saturn Worship

It's not just ancient Romania; Saturn does play an important role in our spiritual evolution for many different reasons. For starters, Saturn is associated as the Lord of Karma and Time. Honoring Saturn is not merely just a pagan practice, hence why the Hebrew Sabbath day is on Saturday, the day of Saturn. If you look up any Pre-Copernicus astrological facts, you will find that Saturn is revered as the highest heaven of all the planetary bodies. Yes, each planet is considered not just a god/goddess, but also a heaven and dimension. The energetic nature of these planets are described through the personification of said deities.

You can learn more about how the roles the planets played in the ancient pantheons of spirituality and astrology here: "How The Days Got Their Names?"

Saturnalia is an ancient Greco-Roman festival, which also explains why the Bible stories include characters/gods from Greek-Roman pantheon. For example..

'Acts 14:12' in the Bible

King James Version:

"And they called Barnabas, Jupiter; and Paul, Mercurius, because he was the chief speaker." 

New International Version:

"Barabas, they called Zeus, and Paul they called Hermes because he was the chief speaker."

Mercury is the planet of communication, while Jupiter is the planet of rulership.  Barnabus and Paul were appointed these names because of the social role they were playing among their tribe and society. This means that at a point in time, astrology was highly implemented by the progenitors of these said religions.

Who is Nimrod? 

Nimrod is a son of Cush, grandson of Ham and great grandson of Noah. "He was a mighty hunter before (against) the Lord" - Genisis 10:9. He was rebellious to the God of the bible, YHWH/ENLIL. Nimrod was the architect and main builder of the Tower of Babel. In Sumerian language, this tower is called Etemenanki, "the stairway between heaven and earth". The purpose of this tower was initially built in dedication to Enlil's brother, ENKI, to go high enough to see the gods. It was built in a spot the Babylonians believed was the very center of our Universe. Rome, which is just Babylon in a different time, was the original city of Saturn. 

During the construction of the Tower of Babylon, the peoples of the earth remained undivided, with one language and culture. But this was against God's orders. Read Genesis 11:5-9, where it describes how God made the builders scatter and divided their languages and kept them from being able to understand one another. This led to the final destruction of the tower. 

How does Nimrod tie to the story of Christ?

After Nimrod's death (c. 2167 BC), his wife Semiramis promoted the belief that he was a god. She claimed that she saw a full-grown evergreen tree spring out of the roots of a dead tree stump, symbolizing the springing forth of new life for Nimrod. On the anniversary of his birth, she said, Nimrod would visit the evergreen tree and leave gifts under it. His birthday fell on the winter solstice at the end of December. This is how the Christmas Tree tradition originated. 

Traditionally, a yule log was burned in the fireplace on Christmas Eve and during the night as the log’s embers died, there appeared in the room, as if by magic, a Christmas tree surrounded by gifts. The yule log represented the sun-god Nimrod and the Christmas tree represented himself resurrected as his own son, Tammuz who is Horus/Heru. Remember, the names are different because of the languages used throughout different kingdoms.

This story can also be found in the Sumerian story, The Epic of Gilgamesh, who is also Nimrod, who is Horus, who is Heru, who is Hercules. This is where the word "HERO" comes from! Let's get back on topic now...

The original Virgin Mary story

Osiris's story is almost exactly the same, just a few details make it more of a different story in other cultures. Nimrod's story is only missing the details of how his wife Semiramis, who is Isis, was able to conceive this miracle child. This is how the concept of the Holy Trinity began.

Nimrod-Semiramis-Tammuz version:

"Nimrod's uncle Shem killed Nimrod and scattered his remains across the land. When his wife became pregnant five month's later, she proclaimed that she was made pregnant by the rays of the Sun, which was supposedly her husband Nimrod."

 Osiris-Isis-Horus version:

"But one night Set, hunting by the light of the moon, found the chest, and, recognizing the body, tore it into fourteen pieces, which he scattered up and down throughout the land. When Isis heard of this, she took a boat and gathered the fragments of Osiris's body. Wherever she found one, there she built a tomb and pieced Osiris back together, who was then brought back to life. At this moment, Isis conceived Horus who later avenged Osiris's death."

The Winter Solstice

Ironically, the Sun cycle dies for 3 days. Its cycle is renewed, and the Sun begins to rise again on the 3rd day. Sound familiar? Throughout these 3 days, the Sun is at its lowest point out of a complete 365-day year. On December 25th, the Sun moves one degree northward and is symbolically born again! 

"The New Testament stories are based on the initiation ceremonies and esoteric secrets including astrology and Sun worship that were performed and communicated in the Mystery schools of Sumer, Babylon, and Egypt. In modern times, they are performed in Freemasonry, Order of the Eastern Star, Rosicrucianism, Order of the Golden Dawn, Thule Society, etc. But they are presented as a literal story to fool the people; especially Christianity, Judaism and Islam." - David Icke

Conclusion:

So Nimrod's story is Osiris's story. Considering that Horus is an incarnation of Osiris, the Horus legend also belongs to Nimrod as well. I can see how the confusion begins for many of us. Because Nimrod was killed by his own uncle - and Horus sought revenge on his uncle Seth who killed his father, Osiris. I know you're like, "How did he kill the person that killed him?" LOL there's so many empty blanks to fill in!

The ancient story says Isis used the pyramid of Giza to draw Osiris's spirit down into his body once she put him back together, after being killed and dismembered by his brother Set. It is also said that the Egyptians used Orion's belt as a gateway aka portal to travel to Earth's dimension with the use of the Pyramid. These are the missing details in the other stories. I shall return!

Thank you for reading!

If you do not truly understand how the planets, ancient Gods, and humanity are all connected, please feel free to reach out to me and ask any questions you may have at questions@pyramidmedia369.com. I try to leave clues in my previous articles, but I understand information has to be organized based upon your questions and needs. - Phoenix Son

[thepastisalreadywritten]

SAINT OF THE DAY (May 2)

Catholics honor St. Athanasius on May 2.

The fourth century bishop is known as the “Father of Orthodoxy” for his absolute dedication to the doctrine of Christ's divinity.

St. Athanasius was born to Christian parents living in the Egyptian city of Alexandria in 296.

His parents took great care to have their son educated. His talents came to the attention of a local priest who was later canonized as St. Alexander of Alexandria.

The priest and future saint tutored Athanasius in theology and eventually appointed him as an assistant.

Around the age of 19, Athanasius spent a formative period in the Egyptian desert as a disciple of St. Anthony in his monastic community.

Returning to Alexandria, he was ordained a deacon in 319 and resumed his assistance to Alexander who had become a bishop.

The Catholic Church, newly recognized by the Roman Empire, was already encountering a new series of dangers from within.

The most serious threat to the fourth-century Church came from a priest named Arius, who taught that Jesus could not have existed eternally as God prior to his historical incarnation as a man.

According to Arius, Jesus was the highest of created beings and could be considered “divine” only by analogy.

Arians professed a belief in Jesus' “divinity” but meant only that he was God's greatest creature.

Opponents of Arianism brought forth numerous scriptures, which taught Christ's eternal pre-existence and his identity as God.

Nonetheless, many Greek-speaking Christians found it intellectually easier to believe in Jesus as a created demi-god than to accept the mystery of a  Father-Son relationship within the Godhead.

By 325, the controversy was dividing the Church and unsettling the Roman Empire.

In that year, Athanasius attended the First Ecumenical Council held at Nicea to examine and judge Arius' doctrine in light of apostolic tradition.

It reaffirmed the Church's perennial teaching on Christ's full deity and established the Nicene Creed as an authoritative statement of faith.

The remainder of Athanasius' life was a constant struggle to uphold the council's teaching about Christ.

Near the end of St. Alexander's life, he insisted that Athanasius succeed him as the Bishop of Alexandria.

Athanasius took on the position just as the Emperor Constantine, despite having convoked the Council of Nicea, decided to relax its condemnation of Arius and his supporters.

Athanasius continually refused to admit Arius to communion, however, despite the urgings of the emperor.

A number of Arians spent the next several decades attempting to manipulate bishops, emperors and Popes to move against Athanasius, particularly through the use of false accusations.

Athanasius was accused of theft, murder, assault, and even of causing a famine by interfering with food shipments.

Arius became ill and died gruesomely in 336, but his heresy continued to live.

Under the rule of the three emperors that followed Constantine, and particularly under the rule of the strongly Arian Constantius, Athanasius was driven into exile at least five times for insisting on the Nicene Creed as the Church's authoritative rule of faith. 

Athanasius received the support of several Popes and spent a portion of his exile in Rome.

However, the Emperor Constantius did succeed in coercing one Pope, Liberius, into condemning Athanasius by having him kidnapped, threatened with death, and sent away from Rome for two years.

The Pope eventually managed to return to Rome, where he again proclaimed Athanasius' orthodoxy.

Constantius went so far as to send troops to attack his clergy and congregations.

Neither these measures, nor direct attempts to assassinate the bishop, succeeded in silencing him.

However, they frequently made it difficult for him to remain in his diocese.

He enjoyed some respite after Constantius' death in 361 but was later persecuted by Emperor Julian the Apostate, who sought to revive paganism.

In 369, Athanasius managed to convene an assembly of 90 bishops in Alexandria, for the sake of warning the Church in Africa against the continuing threat of Arianism.

He died in 373 and was vindicated by a more comprehensive rejection of Arianism at the Second Ecumenical Council, held in 381 at Constantinople.

St. Gregory Nazianzen, who presided over part of that council, described St. Athanasius as “the true pillar of the church, whose life and conduct were the rule of bishops, and his doctrine the rule of the orthodox faith.”

[thepete77]

The early Hebrews during and after the abrahamic era became in bondage to the Egyptians and thus had antagonizing views toward polytheistic and early pagan pre civilization cultures such as the Babylonians, Egyptians, Canaanites, Assyrians, Mesopotamians, Greeks, and Romans.

During the beginning of Christianity they gained favor among the non-aristocracy and were mainly sects separate and even against Roman practices and views like sacrifices and views of the rulership being deity. They refused to participate as members to the army as well as government, and the leaders continued to investigate the Christian people to find out more , even penalizing them and imprisoning them for their beliefs. It was not until Justinian I that their was sway within the aristocracy to believe Christianity, and it was not until Constantine that Christianity became the officialized religion of Rome.

The Hebrews were developing and writing their faith during the beginning, more traditionally starting with Ezekiel and the minor prophets in practicality during their second captivity in Babylon. The Hebrews during their experiences were well aware of the surrounding culture that they were against, either justly or not.

A passage written in Isaiah is a common passage in regards to Lucifer, as written to the king of Babylon at that time. In Greco-Roman writings and practices, the seven planets were major themes of spiritual practices and were even given names of major deities such as Mars and Saturn. One planet amongst these names was Venus, which was considered the Morning Star. Lucifer is a deity anthropomorphised from the planet Venus, and was said to have been born from the goddess Aurora who was identified as well as Eos, and related to the goddess of love Aphrodite, and hence related to the Greek word Eros. This was all a positive regard for the name Lucifer, and not connotated as evil in any way whatsoever. It was only the Hebrews who wrote of Lucifer to the king of Babylon that declared Lucifer fallen from Heaven in denial of the polytheistic pagan beliefs, the main cry of the Hebrews that the Lord is one, and created their name Satan, meaning adversary or opposer or accuser.

Along side the Hebrews and their early captivity in Egypt and later captivity in Babylon, was not only the spiritual practices of Egypt and Babylon but also the Gnostic traditions.

Gnostics were some of the first in spiritual practice and philosophy in codification as to specific beliefs of a creator and deity beings in the style and manner to Christian thinking. They had an advanced belief system and construct of creator deities and leading hierarchies such as Saboath and Sophia, and their classic creator views of the demiurge.

Hebrews and Israelites at that time took these teachings and others and mutilated them to the terms that they are now in even the original Hebrew Greek and Latin texts, which have been further mutilated and written essentially wrong in the more modern biblical translations that all modern Christianity further applies wrongly.

Hence the objective of who the Al Jilwah declares as “those without” is as well to remove spiritual knowledge from earth.

One might argue the case against this statement by promoting the original context of the King James Bible translation, promoting the introduction of the 1611 version as a spiritual comforting purpose with true and honorable intentions to witness the word of god to others in peace and goodwill. Yet let us not forget ever at all the darksome turmoil going on in England during that time of the Witchcraft Inquisitions and all of those that were put to death as the commandments of the Old Testament declare to do.

Even in the classic and traditional Christian myth in the book of genesis about the temptation of Eve to eat of the tree of knowledge by the serpent, one can see in general studies and references such as history.com that the serpent symbolizes renewal, rebirth, and even immortality.

The Hebrews invented their definition of Satan as the opposer, adversary, and accuser, but in their practices they practice everything they accuse Satan of practicing and define their most high god as absolved from wrong doing with permission to act however he wants. For example one of the Ten Commandments is thou shalt not kill, yet god has the power to kill all the first born of Egypt, and commands that homosexuals, drunken children, witches, and false prophets should be stoned to death.

The title god seems vacant of authority in use by Christian minded folk, though they try their arguments to allude and to and promote the word as if it had authority somehow, and in some events, Christians of all type turn out foolish in their motivations and actions thinking that by petitioning their god or using the name of Jesus they can perform miracles of some sort.

Sanskrit has been defined heavily as the second most oldest language in history. The three letters S, A, and T when composed together to make the word SAT is defined as truth or essence and is the root word of common words like Satya and Satva. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satya?wprov=sfti1#) When you compose the three letters T, A, and N into the word TAN, the definition in Sanskrit is to trust or confide or to be harmless.(https://www.wisdomlib.org/definition/tan#:~:text=a.,%2C%20Ta%E1%B8%8D%E1%B8%8Dava%2C%20Ta%E1%B9%87a%2C%20Viralla.) Thus when you combine the two into the full name SATAN you get the definition true essence trust. To write the definition in more plain English the name Satan from Sanskrit is defined as Trusting in or confiding in the true essence.

In the book the Ater Votum, Satan is defined as the aether that binds the all together. The All is varied in esoteric practices for the specific meanings. Some times people specifically define deities as their all, or other times they simply refer to the All as the All. A major source used in definition is the Kybalion (https://sacred-texts.com/eso/kyb/kyb03.htm) which defines the basic views of the hermetic principles.

The Ater Votum is found at https://www.edocr.com/v/y8gdx4n3/globaldocuments/ater-votuma-book-of-daemonolatry-prayerpdf and can be viewed and downloaded here. In esoteric metaphysics and natural philosophy the doctrine of Spirit ranges at different levels, but typically when viewed in classic interpretation Spirit is Aether, sometimes it is referred to as the Quintessence.

The monotheism of Christianity is a core element of what separates Hebrews/Israelites/Jews/Christians from the pagan world of heathenry and polytheism. Within their Monotheistic views they promote and advocate the doctrine of the Trinity as an authorized Christian view. That there is God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit functioning as one God, and condemning idolatry in terms of polytheism and witchcraft in the worship of more than one God, and being under the sway of the deceiver, Satan who is supposedly a liar and a murderer from the beginning.

Yet when people nitpick at the scriptures and point out specific singular statements, and as well defining the different names of God and their cultural sources, many different views are taken and argued that one god is not the case and that the original writings were written and translated wrongly.

Getting into this argument is essentially pointless and a waste of time. When you dig into historical factors and groups like the gnostics and the textual processes of those, as well as groups like the essenes, and the practices of the title Magus of those within the book of acts, and compare cultures and teachings of Greece, Rome, and Egypt without as much bias as possible, then it is very obvious that there is more beneath the Christian scriptures than what the Christians promote and advocate, and their character is revealed more in discussion of witchcraft that they have definite hostilities about.

Whether one preaches about some type of deity called God or not, or whether someone decides to practice Devil Worship or not, the case is for myself that there is a God beyond the average typical definitions and views, and that Satan is this god.

[majokko120]

European Identity

Christianity, Roman Empire, and Hellenism form the core of European identity. Everything outside of it does not belong to Europe, the Europe that we once called Christendom: the center and light of the world. Primitive and self-destructive Paganism does not belong, neither do foreign competing elements.

Europe means Church, Roman Empire, Alexander the Great, Constantine and his City, Aristotle, Plato, all our Christian heroes, Saints, and Church fathers, all the great artists from ancient Greece, medieval Italy, and up until pre-modern France.

Christianity here means Catholicism and Orthodoxy, preferably the latter. Not a coincidence that Germans initiated Protestantism, the beginning of the end of Christendom. Protestantism, pagan and heretical by nature, produced Puritan anti-intellectualism that reverted its Germanic adherents back to pre-Roman times.

Germanic tribes before Rome means before German civilization. The first German civilization appeared after Germanic tribes usurped Roman control over Western territories, organizing their kingdoms after the Roman model (Charlemagne, Karl the Great). The first German civilization shadow copied the Roman Empire.

Christianity, Rome, and Hellenism forming the core of European identity does not mean there exist no national and local identities. From Portugal, to Sweden, France, Germany and all over Europe, distinct national and regional identities litter the map, but the three pillars form the foundation of European identity, separating the inside from the outside.

[forgeofideas]

Byzantium provides a classic instance. Here, the ideology of universal empire, inherited from Rome, underpinned and gave material expression to the universalism of Christian faith. Yet, within that faith as it sought to convert the civilized world, as within the empire itself, pre-existing cultural and ethnic differences soon made themselves felt, exerting an influence in relation both to theological schism and to political policy

On the other hand, the primacy of Greek as the sacred language of the New Testament and the liturgy, reinforced by the Byzantine Empire’s progressive loss of the non-Greek-speaking provinces in the west and east, and a Greek cultural and literary revival at the Byzantine court and in the bureaucracy from the ninth century, encouraged a growing identification of the Empire, if not the Church, with its dominant Greek-speaking cultural core. Even in the early Empire, Orthodox opposition to Arianism was often intertwined with pronounced Byzantine hatred of German-speakers.

In: The Concept of the Elect Nation in ByzantiumAuthor: Shay Eshel Type: ChapterPages: 1–25DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004363830_002

Even if they didn’t affirm this directly, the Byzantine chroniclers, and especially Malalas, who offered the model for an entire tradition which came after him, considered that the Romans became a new chosen people when they accepted the Christianity. Beginning with Constantine the Great a strong bond developed between the Roman Empire and Christianity. But even if Christianity became the core of the Byzantine identity, the classical system still coexistswith the Christian one. In this classical system an important role is played by pagan values, used by our historians together with the Christian belief to put peoples on a scale of civilization

Leo VI and the Transformation of Byzantine Christian Identity

[cheezybiscuits]

I have a completely ameteur opinion coming from youtube video essays and some basic college stuff so my input is dubious but imma bite anyway.

Greek culture and the Roman empire were a big influence.

Pre-constantine christianity was different and more divided than what came after. More importantly it definitely acted more egalitarian and accepting of women and probably the disabled. There were also others that were not, and some that thought Jesus was never human and always a spirit.

Then the legend of Constantine’s vision happened and christianity was legalized.

At the time it became a quirky religion rich folks adopted (before it was like the stories in the new testament, a religion of the poor, persecuted, and revolutionary). As many cultural leaders adopted a new god, and no access or fucks to give about the jewish cultural aspect because fewer jews in the important cities, Roman Imperialist culture sort of re-interpreted the now circulating bible that was getting more distinct from the greek-aramaic jewish texts.

No more ancient feminism with women spiritual leaders, less emphasis on the pacifist teachings of jesus, no more humanizing your enemy, so that way Roman elites would be more accepting of these ideas.

The greeks heard about apocalyptic preachings of the end of the world that never happened, and compared the eternal torment thing to Tartarus, a thing they know about. And then the christian idea of hell happened.  

They heard of the disciples preaching to spread the good news and thought of how their empire must spread and free outsiders from their own barbaric beliefs and gods. Great justification for holy war and in a couple centuries the crusades.

I find it intresting that the most important aspect of christianity that needed to become more palateable to Romans was the fact that they crucified jesus which is a bad look. So the new testament has this weird narrative of the mean Isrealites pressuring Ponteas Pilate into crucifying their annoying gadfly who was hated almost like a modern Roman Socrates. In reality Pilate had two apocalypse prophet cult leaders (there were a lot at the time, even ones who claimed to be the son of god) to crucify. Allegedly he pointed to one and called him by name, and then pointed to Jesus and was like “and then there’s this guy who claims to be king of the Jews”

A bit of anti-semitism fuel that could have consequences for millenia to come but in the moment that’s just two birds with one stone to a citizen of The Empire.

Soooooooooo yeah. In my opinion the average westerner has no idea just how much ancient Rome still lives on in their culture.

The more I learn about judaism the more I wonder where tf christianity got all its bad shit. Why is divorce a sin in christianity when judaism has recognized the right to divorce for nearly a millennia and has codified religious laws for it. Why does christianity consider sex to be dirty (to the point where puritans considered it a sin to enjoy having sex with your own spouse) when in judaism it's considered holy and it's a literal mitzvah to have sex with your spouse on the sabbath. Why does christianity consider it a sign that you're faithless if you question your religion when in judaism that's considered an essential part to developing your faith. I'm probably stating the obvious here but I still can't get over the fact that there's no historical basis to any of this shit before christianity started, it's like christians just said "hey guys what if we took the torah and built a new religion around it but this time it was actively hostile to human life"

[ramrodd]

Bible Prophecy # 22 Twenty-First Century Expectations--Putting it ALL ...

COMMENTARY:

Jimmy, for a guy with 43 years in the academics of the Bible, you really don't know shit about your subject.  As I say, you are pursuing an academic thread that justifies avoiding military service as an Air Force brat became you were scared shitless of going to Vietnam.  Bart Ehrman  has popularity issues going back to High School and being Born Again, but he has basically found that apostasy is more fun an profitable in the otherwise commercial dead end of textual analysis and John Dominic  Crossan , a charming Irish Marxist determine to cast the social conditions in Judea as identical as the conditions during the Irish, Potato famine, while the fact is that everybody in the region was living large within Pax Romana.

There is no such thing a a "pre-Christian" Revelation. It's like pre-White Rice: it is entirely a product of your agenda. "Cristian: was the slang the Roman soldiers employed to identify the coalition of Jesus Followers to distinguish them from the Herodians, Pharisees, Sadducees and other players  of Judea. They began to identify the followers of John the Baptist as Christians as early as Mars 3:8, the first conclave of  John the Baptists ministry of the first sermon from a boat. I mean, this passage is cleary a census of the Jesus movement by the Roman intelligence services as a routine element of their force protection.

We now from Tertullian that Tiberius received an intelligence report for Pilate regarding the Resurrection as fast as a communication with the Euangelion priority could move at the time from Judea to Rome that included the designation "Christian", which was 33 Ce, and it took another  9 years, at around 48 CE or Accts 11:26, when it migrated naturally by trade and tourism from Rome.

The important thing that everyone seems to miss is that the hostility to all things Christian began at the moment Tiberius proposed  to elevate Jesus to divine status. "Christiaan" were associated from that moment with Tiberius and inherited the general fear and hatred for Tiberius because of the execution of Sejanus and what ever purges Tiberius conducted to eradicate that threat.

Cornelius wrote the Gospel of Mark and, as the representative of the Italian Cohort, which was secret Christian fellowship within the Praetorian Guard, which was the administrative state of the Roman Republic and Empire,  it was dangerous to be a Christian. Which is to say, from the get-go. Paul's theology is based on the triangulation of Abraham, Moses and Jesus, which the theology of Hebrews, which is the Christian manifesto which conveyed to Constantine, is based on the triangulation of Melchizedek, Jesus and the Justification by faith of Cornelius in Matthew 8.:10, which is the analogue  of the justification of Abram in Genesis 15:6

Now, in terms of 600 years you refer to, Enoch's 7000 yearr Epoch (and Hegel),  The Epoch is a grid that is set out in ten 700 yers "Weeks'  that began with the Book of Job 5784 years ago, according to the Jewish calendar, which is to say BCE ended 3761 years abo and CE began 2023 years ago from r Rosh Hashanah.  The grid incudes the entire Mediterranean basin and the Step Pyramid of Egypt appear at about 195 BCE and Abraham and Homer emerged from the oral tradition at about the same time, 1950 BCE or so. The fact is that there are at least 5 national narratives that come together at the Cross at 3803,L the Book of Job to Jesus, Melchizedek to the Cross, the Etruscan literature subsumed in the Roman literature, Virgil and Homer by way of Socrates. The Book of Job is the only book in the Bible laterally was  written by The One as opposed to being dictated like the Koran and Revelation.

. Just for the record, the ride of Mohammad on Buraq to the 7th Heaven is an analogue to Jacob's Ladder in Genesis 28:12 It is what sparked the Muslim interest in Aristotle.  

As I say, Revelation 13 is a literary cubist portrait of the centurion in Mark 15:39. the Beast of the See is an allusion to Rome a sea power. The Beast of the Land are the Legions, which had all the authority of Rome and controlled Gaul by the Rhine and Danube rivers. The centurion was a warrant officer at the bottom of the trickle down from those authorities and he executed the death warrant of Jesus, prisoner MDLXVI. Now, according to Dan Wallace, the earliest manuscript we have  says that the Mark of the Beast was MCXVI, which I tend to believe was, in fact the earliest version of Revelation 13, going back to Genesis 41, but I like the decision to change it to MDLXVI, because, as you mention , the Gematria can be interpretated as Nero and it dates the composition as occurring at the moment the Jewish wars begin in 66. As I say, Revelation is a lurid portrait of the spiritual  realm that began to hovr over Jerusalem with the weather system described in Mark 15:33 that began to collect over Jesus's head as all the unclean spirits Jesus had contained became invested in the Spirit of God in the same manner as the two storms in Mark 4 and Mark 6 which Jesus would no longer dispatch. That's what falls on Jerusalem in Revelation after Revelation 4:2, and the narrative moves explicitly through the looking glass and into the realm of high literary concept that concludes the Apocalyptic trajectory of the Whore of Babylon, the 2nd Temple of Herod.

Here's the thing: there is a numerological connection between Revelation 13 and Mark 13. 13 is number of Yaweh, Queen of Battle and the Finger of God. In addition, the verse structure of Revelation 13 and Matthew 13 is identical, with basically the same words at verse 9 and the same sentiments at verse 18.

Numerologically, 4 is the base number of 13 and the first 16 lines of Mark 4 are identical to Matthew and Revelation and reveals the Messianic secret of the New Testament that the report of the Talking Cros in the Gospel of Peter went straight through the 2000 soldiers who had participated in the torment of Jesus like  Legion, the unclean spirit went into the 2000 swine and, by the time Tiberius received Pilate's euangelion, every soldier in all the 30 legions throughout the Empire had learned of the covenant cutting ceremony between GOD and the Italian Cohort, like covenant cutting ceremony in Genesis 15.

Now, the thing Islam brings to the table are the symbols 666. The original  number of MDXVI would translate as 616 and, as I say, that is a gestalt that occurs in Genesis 41 with the Pharaoh's dream.   The thing i Like about the Arabic symbols of 666 as ideograms, they are like the bent nails they used to crucify My Lord.

Just for the record, Jesus was going to Jerusalem for the same reason Jonah was sent to Nineveh: to prevent an Apocalypse. By the Bar Kokhba revolt, the rabbis had given up on Apocalyptic literature. Eschatology was always a theological dead end and the Christian covenant is for a world without end. and God the Father of the Prodigal Son.  

In terms of the current Israeli-Palestinian situation centered on Gaza and Biblical Prophets. King Adullah II of Jordan has been the voice of God warning of the price Israel would have to pay for the bad faith of Netanyahu in regards to the Oslo Accords. The singular question for Israel is, when are they going to de-radicalize the Likud, the party that killed Rabi?

[cruger2984]

THE DESCRIPTION OF THE DEDICATION OF THE ARCHBASILICA OF ST. JOHN LATERAN Feast Day: November 9

The Basilica of St. John Lateran is the oldest and first in rank of the four great basilicas of Rome, namely St. Peter, St. Paul and St. Mary Major.

It was built on a piece of land donated by Emperor Constantine the Great in 313 A.D., called the Lateran Mansion. Originally known as the Church of the Savior, it was later dedicated to St. John the Baptist and St. John the Evangelist.

Pope Sylvester I presided over the official dedication of the archbasilica and the adjacent Lateran Palace in 324, changing the name from Domus Fausta to Domus Dei ('House of God'), with a dedication to Christ the Savior (Christo Salvatori).

When a cathedra became a symbol of episcopal authority, the papal cathedra was placed in its interior, rendering it the cathedral of the Pope as Bishop of Rome.

When St. Gregory the Great sent the Gregorian mission to England under Augustine of Canterbury, some original churches in Canterbury took the Roman plan as a model, dedicating a church both to Christ as well as one to Saint Paul, outside the walls of the city. The church name 'Christ Church', so common for churches around the world today in Anglophone Anglican contexts, originally came from this Roman church, central to pre-medieval Christian identity.

The high altar contains the relic of the original wooden altar used by the apostle Peter. In the ciborium over the are enshrined by the heads of the apostles Peter and Paul.

Being the Cathedral of Rome and the official residence of the Pope, The Basilica carries on its façade the title: 'Sacros Lateran Eccles Omnium Urbis et Orbis Ecclesiarum Mater et Caput (Most Holy Lateran Church, mother and head of all the churches in the city and the world)'.

This celebration is a sign of devotion and of unity with the Pope who, as St. Ignatius of Antioch said: 'Presides over the assembly of charity.'

The basilica is designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1980.

[blueiscoool]

Very Rare Gold Medallion by Roman Emperor Maxentius 

The gold quaternio struck by the emperor Maxentius around 308 A.D. to celebrate himself for rebuilding the Temple of Venus and Roma in Rome sold at auction on November 2nd for $312,000, well above its pre-sale estimate of $100,000 – $200,000.

The Templum Veneris et Romae was a double temple dedicated to the goddess Venus Felix, mother of Aeneas and through him of the Roman people, and to Roma Aeterna, the deity who was the personification of the city and larger state. The temple was constructed by Emperor Hadrian in 135 A.D., but he didn’t just order it built. He fancied himself something of a draftsman/architect and he personally designed the plans for this temple. They were not universally acclaimed, to put it mildly, and when Trajan’s revered architect Apollodorus of Damascus voiced his objections to Hadrian’s plan, the emperor had him executed and built it the way he wanted.

The temple was huge, built on a platform 475 feet long and 330 feet wide along the Sacred Way on the slopes of the Velia hill next to the Colosseum. More than 100 feet high, it was the largest temple in the city and for centuries one of the most important shrines in the empire. Construction of the temple is what spurred the removal of the colossal statue of Nero, which gave the Flavian Amphitheater its nickname. (The machinery Apollodorus talks about being stored in the temple were the apparatuses used in the spectacles at the amphitheater.) Hadrian took a non-standard approach to temple design, placing the cellae (the rooms where the images of the goddesses dwelled) back-to-back instead of side-by-side. This was a bit of an anagram pun on Hadrian’s part. AMOR (love) is ROMA spelled backwards.

When the temple was heavily damaged in a fire in 307 A.D., Maxentius rebuilt it. He did not follow in Hadrian’s architectural footprints, but instead had it reconstructed in the apdsidal form with vaulted ceilings that was typical of early 4th century Rome. He replaced the burned wooden ceiling with a stone coffered vault and doubled the thickness of the walls to support it. He also redid the cellae so they conformed to the classical design that Hadrian had eschewed. Most of the temple was destroyed in an earthquake in the 9th century and the church built in the ruins, but the remains of the cella and vaulted apse still stand today.

Maxentius made this project the cornerstone of his imperial identity. For four years, the rest of his reign until his death in battle against Constantine in 312 A.D., Maxentius would be the last emperor to live in Rome, but his dedication to the physical fabric of the city was forgotten, largely by design of his successor. Constantine issued a damnatio memoriae decree against Maxentius, destroying all public references to him, including the inscriptions on the buildings he had restored or constructed. Constantine took all the credit for them instead, propped up by Christian writers villainizing his former rival as a tyrannical brute and lionizing Constantine, who built a new capital a thousand miles away and named it after himself, as Rome’s reviver.

Another Roman gold medallion minted for a less virtue-signaling purpose also sold at the same coin auction. It is an eight aurei medallion, so a single gold coin weighing eight times the amount of a circulation aureus, but it sold for $63,000, a fifth of the price of the quaternio. It was minted in Milan in 268 A.D. by a brand-new emperor, Claudius II. His predecessor Gallienus had been assassinated by one of his officers while besieging Milan to quash yet another attempted usurpation. The troops then acclaimed Claudius emperor.

Claudius II

There were rumors that Claudius was in on the assassination, but if so, he was unusually kind to the allies and family of the man he killed to snatch his throne. He spared Gallenius’ supporters from reprisals and focused instead on fighting the Gothic invasion of Rome’s Balkan provinces. To accomplish his military goals, Claudius had to ensure the loyalty of the army. The best way to accomplish that, established by centuries of tradition at this pont, was to buy it. The price to buy off the officers was 10 gold aurei each, an enormous sum. The highest-ranking and most influential officers received their bribes in the form of these gigantic gold medallions.

The eight-aurei medallion of Claudius II features the laureate cuirassed bust of the emperor on the obverse and the goddess Concordia holding the standards of the legions on the reverse. The inscription on the reverse reads CORCORDIA EXERCITVS, ie, “harmony in the army,” because that was exactly what he was buying. Claudius was famous for his strength as a wrestler and in hand-to-hand combat. He once reputedly punched a horse in the face and knocked out its teeth. He was a direct man, to put it mildly, and called them as he saw them even on his giant bribe coins.

It worked, though. In 270, Claudius led the army to a massive victory over the Goths at the Battle of Naissus in modern-day Serbia. He was granted a triumph and the cognomen Gothicus. He didn’t get to enjoy either, but not because of treachery among the officer staff. Plague took his life before the bloom was off the rose. He was immediately deified and heavily mourned in spite of (or perhaps because of) his all-too-brief reign.

[beatrice-otter]

Christianity became the religion of the Roman Empire because Emperor Constantine wanted a monotheistic religion to unite them and support his imperial dreams of glory. Christianity was not the only monotheistic religion he considered slotting into his programs; it's just the one he chose. He also seriously considered Mithraism (an ancient mystery cult with a LOT of similarities to Christianity that we don't know much about). No Christianity, Constantine goes with Mithraism instead, very little changes.

Kill Constantine, and you end up with Roman polytheism staying as the main force of imperialism in the ancient world and possibly continuing on as such to the modern world. I'm not convinced this would be much different, on a practical level, than what we ended up with; a huge percentage of Christian theological understanding is not based on the Bible, but on Greek and Roman philosophy. But it's more likely to make a major change than simply killing Jesus before the start of his ministry.

Julius Caesar did not turn Rome into an imperialistic power; it had been one for centuries as a Republic before it became a monarchy. Killing Caesar would not change that.

Which is why my vote is for Columbus. If he hadn't sailed the ocean blue, it might have been CENTURIES before Europe and the Americas discovered each other, and things would have been very different for the entire world. People teach Columbus wrong: his crazy theory nobody believed wasn't that the world was round (everyone knew it was, and had for thousands of years at that point). His crazy theory was that the world was much smaller than it actually was. The ancient Greeks had done a pretty bang-up job of calculating the size of the planet, and everybody since had done the same math and confirmed their calculations; then comes Christopher Columbus saying it's like half that size and you could totally sail across the Atlantic and hit China or India without running out of food or water. If the Americas hadn't been there, Columbus and all his men would have died of hunger and thirst because ships of that time could not carry enough provisions to sail as long as you would need to sail to reach China from Spain (if the Americas weren't in the way).

Nobody else was stupid enough to think Columbus's math was right; it would have been a long time before Europeans figured out there was something out there. What difference would that make? Well, something like 90% of the pre-Columbus population of the Americas died of diseases brought by European colonists. If the Europeans had been even slightly less disease-ridden by the time contact was made--and especially if they'd had vaccinations--things would have been very different.

FINE, you get another go at the time machine and the ability to prevent one birth (or commit a murder up to you), don't worry about the butterfly effect, we want the butterfly effect that's part of the point. Your actions will prevent them from ever rising to prominence. Original poll here There may be a face off poll at the end. Hitler still isn't an option because we'd all chose to kill him.

Am gonna go Pontius Pilate and say my hands are cleaned of this one. All of the below are nominees.

[qqueenofhades]

Having just sent you a message the other day about how much I love your historical asks, I realized I have a question myself that you might know the answer to. I’m a Christian and I have never been able to figure out why Christianity has historically viewed non-procreative sex for pleasure as bad. (And none of my family, including my clergy father, have figured it out either. I think my dad has a bone to pick with Augustine? And I feel like Aquinas also has something to do with this.) But given that Jesus had a body and gives a speech about “the Son of Man came eating and drinking” as though he enjoyed it, how did this whole “the body is sinful especially the sex part” thing happen? I have been thinking about this a lot recently for Old Guard reasons, which should surprise no one.

Oof. So, a short and simple question, then. (Sidenote: did they expand ask limits? Because I’ve definitely gotten a couple asks today, including this one, that are longer than usual, rather than forced to space out and hope that Tumblr doesn’t eat them.)

The entire history of sexuality in the West and its relationship with Christianity throughout the centuries is obviously a topic that far, far exceeds anything I could possibly cram into this ask, but let’s see if I can hit on some of the highlights. First off, one could remark that some aspects of Jesus’s teaching managed to disappear from the official doctrine of Christianity almost immediately, and for a variety of theological, cultural, and social reasons. As anyone who has a passing knowledge of the late Roman Empire is aware, they were known for being sexually liberate (at least if you were a nobleman, as the freedom certainly did NOT apply to women), and the notorious run of emperors who were having orgies and sleeping with boys and their sisters and hosting nonstop sex parties did a lot to sour early Christianity’s relationship with it. Because pre-Constantine/Theodosian Code Rome was Christianity’s enemy (since Christians refused to perform the traditional civic sacrifices to the Roman gods, which was all that Rome required alongside permitting its citizens to practice whatever other religion they wanted), and because the emperors were such a high-profile example of sexual excess, that became an easy point of critique. Obviously, the Roman polemicists, like every other historian, should not be trusted on EVERYTHING they say about the emperors, but the general pattern is there and well-established. So Christianity, trying to establish its religious and moral bona fides, can easily go, “Well, Caligula/Nero obviously sucks, come join us and live a purer and more moral life!”

Constantine converted in the early fourth century and the Theodosian Code was issued at the end of the fourth century, which made Rome officially Catholic and represented a huge reversal of fortune for fledgling Christianity, helping it expand like crazy now that it was officially sanctioned. However, the Roman Empire was splitting into two halves, west and east, and the development of Greek Christianity in the eastern empire was strongly influenced by ascetic and austere traditions (if you’ve heard of the Stylites, i.e. the guys who liked to sit atop poles out in the Syrian desert to prove how holy they were, those are them). The cultural context of denial of the flesh and the renouncing of bodily pleasures also played intensely into the third/fourth/fifth century debates over heresy and orthodoxy. Some of the most vicious arguments came over whether Jesus Christ could have actually had an embodied (and therefore possibly inherently sinful) human body, or it was just a complicated illusion, the “shell” of a body that his entirely divine nature then inhabited without actually being part of. This involved huge theological arguments over the redemptive nature of the Eucharist and even Christ’s sacrifice: was it real/effective/genuine if he didn’t REALLY die and suffer the pain of being crucified, and was just assured that he’d be fine ahead of time? So yeah, the question of whether Christ had a real body (because then that might be sinful) was the knock-down, drag-out theological disagreement of the early centuries C.E., and left a lot of hard feelings and entrenched positions in its wake.

Likewise, your dad is correct in having a bone to pick with Augustine, at least in terms of his impact on views of sexuality in the late antique and early medieval Christian church. Augustine is obviously famous for agonizing endlessly over his sexuality/sexual urges in Confessions, his time as a Manichaean, his relationship with a woman and the birth of his son out of wedlock (and if you want a lot of repressed homoeroticism: well, Augustine’s got that too) and how his conversion to Christianity was intensely tied with his renunciation of himself as a sexual being. Augustine also pioneered the nature of the inheritance of Original Sin: therefore, every human who was born was sinful by virtue of sharing in humanity’s legacy from Eve’s transgression in the Garden of Eden. (And yes, obviously, this led to the beginnings of the embedding of clerical and social misogyny. Oh Augustine, I kind of hate you anyway because I had to read the entire goddamn 1000-page City of God during my master’s degree, but bro, you got a lot to answer for.) This involved EVEN MORE obscure speculations about whether original sin was passed down in male semen, and therefore Jesus was free of it because he was supposedly born divinely to a woman without a male father, but yeah, the idea that sexuality itself was already a suspect thing was fairly well correlated and then cemented by Augustine’s HUGE influence over the early church. Everything post-Augustine incorporated his ideas somehow, and so the idea of bodily pleasures as separating you from divine purpose got even more established.

Then we had the Carolingians in the eighth and ninth centuries, who were the first “empire” per se in Western Europe post-Rome, and who were also intensely concerned with legislating moral purity, policing the sexual behavior especially of its queens, and correlating moments of political or military defeat with insufficiently virtuous private behavior. The Carolingians likewise passed these ideas onto their successor kingdoms, especially the medieval kingdom of France (which would eventually become the pre-eminent secular power in Western Europe). Then the eleventh century arrived with the Cluniac and Gregorian Reforms (which were interrelated). One of their big goals was for a celibate and unmarried clergy on all levels of holy orders, from humble village priests to bishops and archbishops. Prior to this, clergymen had often been married, and there wasn’t a definite sense that it was bad. But because of this, and the idea that a married clergyman wasn’t pure enough to provide the Eucharist and would be distracted from his commitment to the church by a wife and family, the Cluniac and papal reformers intensely attacked sex and sexuality as evil. Priests didn’t (or rather, were not supposed to) do it, and if you weren’t in a heterosexual church-performed marriage and didn’t want children, you shouldn’t be doing it either. (Did this stop people, and priests, from doing it? Absolutely not, but that was the rhetoric.) This was about when celibacy began to be constructed as the top of the heap in terms of holy lifestyles, for men and women alike and laypeople as well as those in holy orders. NOT having sex was the most virtuous choice for anyone, even if sex was a necessary evil for having heirs and the next generation and so on. (Which is interesting considering that our hypersexualized present attaches so much value to having sex of one sort or another, and the asexual-exclusion types, but yeah, that’s a different topic for now.)

Of course, when the Cathars (a schismatic Catholic heresy in France and Italy) in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries began attacking ALL materiality and sexuality as irredeemably evil, the Catholic church went a bit like “whoa whoa that’s a little too far, hold on now, SOME sex is good, sex can be nice, we’re not actually like those guys” (even though they had been about a hundred years before). Because Cathar spirituality taught that any kind of attention or indulgence to the body was sinful, that included any kind of sex at all, even married heterosexual intercourse. (Of course, the Cathars themselves didn’t always live up to it either; see Beatrice de Planissoles and her Cathar priest lover.) The Catholic church obviously didn’t want to go THAT far, so they began rowing back some of their earlier blanket statements about the evilness of sexuality and taught that husband and wife both had a responsibility to offer each other sexual pleasure and fulfillment. I’ve answered many asks about sexual behavior and unions in the medieval era, the arguments over the definition of marriage, and how that changed over time in response to social needs and pressures, so yes. We know what the IDEALS were, and what people were legally supposed to do, but the fact that church writers were complaining about bad behavior, sexual and otherwise, literally the whole time means that, obviously, this did not always match up with reality.

The theories of the Roman physician Galen, which prescribed that female orgasm was necessary to conceive, were also well known and prevalent in the medieval world, which meant that ordinary married couples trying to have children would have had some awareness that female pleasure was supposedly necessary to do it. (This ties into my “it wasn’t an unrestrained extravaganza of violent painful rape for women all the time YOU GODDAMN MORONS JESUS CHRIST” rant, but we will recognize that I have Many Rants. So yes.) Obviously, we can’t know what the sex life of individual married couples behind closed doors was actually like, but there were a variety of teachings and official stances on sex and how it was supposed to be done, and as noted in other posts, just because the church thought it is zero guarantee that ordinary people thought that way too. People are people. They (usually) like having sex. They had sex, both gay and straight, married and unmarried, so on and so forth, even if the church had Opinions. Circle of life, etcetera.

Anyway, then the Renaissance arrived (and we just had the “why the Renaissance sucked for women” ask the other day), which prescribed a reversal of all the comparative sexual and political and social latitude that women had gradually acquired over the medieval era. It very much wanted to see women returned to their silent, domestic, maternal, objet d’arte roles that they had occupied in antiquity, and attacked the actions of women in their public and private lives as one of the major causes of the crises of the late medieval era. (Because you know, misogyny is always a useful scapegoat rather than blaming the powerful men who have fucked everything up, as we’re seeing again right now.) Because the Renaissance is regarded, fairly or unfairly, as the start of the early modern Western world, it’s where a lot of modern gender attitudes and views of sexuality became more explicitly codified and distributed faster than at any point in history before, to a more extensive audience, thanks to the invention of the printing press. We’ve obviously had moves toward sexual liberation and agency in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and the emergence of the modern feminist and gay rights movements, but now in some ways, we’re back in oddly Puritan attitudes in the twenty-first century. And since America was founded by Puritans, their social attitudes are still embedded in the culture, fanned today by hyper-conservative Protestant evangelicalism. Even though Puritans themselves ALSO, shock surprise, didn’t always live up to the stringent standards they preached.

...whoof. I’m sure I’m forgetting something, but hopefully that gives you the broad-strokes development.

[thepastisalreadywritten]

SAINT OF THE DAY (May 2)

Catholics honor St. Athanasius on May 2.

The fourth-century bishop is known as the “Father of Orthodoxy” for his absolute dedication to the doctrine of Christ's divinity.

St. Athanasius was born to Christian parents living in the Egyptian city of Alexandria in 296.

His parents took great care to have their son educated. His talents came to the attention of a local priest, who was later canonized as St. Alexander of Alexandria.

The priest and future saint tutored Athanasius in theology and eventually appointed him as an assistant.

Around the age of 19, Athanasius spent a formative period in the Egyptian desert as a disciple of St. Anthony in his monastic community.

Returning to Alexandria, he was ordained a deacon in 319 and resumed his assistance to Alexander who had become a bishop.

The Catholic Church, newly recognized by the Roman Empire, was already encountering a new series of dangers from within.

The most serious threat to the fourth-century Church came from a priest named Arius, who taught that Jesus could not have existed eternally as God prior to his historical incarnation as a man.

According to Arius, Jesus was the highest of created beings and could be considered “divine” only by analogy.

Arians professed a belief in Jesus' “divinity” but meant only that he was God's greatest creature.

Opponents of Arianism brought forth numerous scriptures, which taught Christ's eternal pre-existence and his identity as God.

Nonetheless, many Greek-speaking Christians found it intellectually easier to believe in Jesus as a created demi-god than to accept the mystery of a  Father-Son relationship within the Godhead.

By 325, the controversy was dividing the Church and unsettling the Roman Empire.

In that year, Athanasius attended the First Ecumenical Council held at Nicea to examine and judge Arius' doctrine in light of apostolic tradition.

It reaffirmed the Church's perennial teaching on Christ's full deity and established the Nicene Creed as an authoritative statement of faith.

The remainder of Athanasius' life was a constant struggle to uphold the council's teaching about Christ.

Near the end of St. Alexander's life, he insisted that Athanasius succeed him as the Bishop of Alexandria.

Athanasius took on the position just as Emperor Constantine, despite having convoked the Council of Nicea, decided to relax its condemnation of Arius and his supporters.

Athanasius continually refused to admit Arius to communion, however, despite the urgings of the emperor.

A number of Arians spent the next several decades attempting to manipulate bishops, emperors and Popes to move against Athanasius, particularly through the use of false accusations.

Athanasius was accused of theft, murder, assault, and even of causing famine by interfering with food shipments.

Arius became ill and died gruesomely in 336, but his heresy continued to live.

Under the rule of the three emperors that followed Constantine, and particularly under the rule of the strongly Arian Constantius, Athanasius was driven into exile at least five times for insisting on the Nicene Creed as the Church's authoritative rule of faith. 

Athanasius received the support of several popes and spent a portion of his exile in Rome.

However, Emperor Constantius did succeed in coercing one pope, Liberius, into condemning Athanasius by having him kidnapped, threatened with death, and sent away from Rome for two years.

The Pope eventually managed to return to Rome, where he again proclaimed Athanasius' orthodoxy.

Constantius went so far as to send troops to attack his clergy and congregations.

Neither these measures, nor direct attempts to assassinate the bishop, succeeded in silencing him.

However, they frequently made it difficult for him to remain in his diocese.

He enjoyed some respite after Constantius' death in 361 but was later persecuted by Emperor Julian the Apostate, who sought to revive paganism.

In 369, Athanasius managed to convene an assembly of 90 bishops in Alexandria, for the sake of warning the Church in Africa against the continuing threat of Arianism.

He died in 373 and was vindicated by a more comprehensive rejection of Arianism at the Second Ecumenical Council held in 381 at Constantinople.

St. Gregory Nazianzen, who presided over part of that council, described St. Athanasius as “the true pillar of the church whose life and conduct were the rule of bishops, and his doctrine the rule of the orthodox faith.”