All preceding ages, without knowing it or aiming at it, have striven to bring about our human century. Ours are all the treasures which diligence and genius, reason and experience, have finally brought home in the long age of the world. Only from history will you learn to set a value on the goods from which habit and unchallenged possession so easily deprive our gratitude; priceless, precious goods, upon which the blood of the best and the most noble clings, goods which had to be won by the hard work of so many generations!
- What Is, and to What End Do We Study, Universal History? Friedrich Schiller Lecture at Jena University, 26-27th May 1789
Introduction
To counter the spiritual miasma mentioned above and its attendant, dangerously alluring and increasingly self fulfilling superstitions, I have chosen for the topic of my first essay of the year, the theme of “universal history”. As indicated in the leading quote, universal history is not some vague, amorphous concept, but an entirely consistent intellectual framework from which we can objectively analyse and interpret history, with reference to the discovery and efficient realisation of profound ideas that have shaped societies and nations, or contrarily, societies which have failed to progress and discover new universal principles, and thus have declined or collapsed into inevitable self destruction.
As such, the topic of our investigation is not Christianity per se, but the role of this and the other monotheistic religions, as the transmitters and shapers of the core ideas that have founded and sustained western civilisation since the days of Plato and Socrates, up to the present time. Our journey will take some surprising and perhaps – to some - controversial turns, but ultimately, we hope, reveal the deeper insights to which enquiring minds must turn their attention if we are to arrest, and ultimately reverse the decline into which our nation, and European civilisation generally, has plunged in the recent decades of existentialist “Frankfurt School” degeneration.
It should come as no surprise to discover that our spiritual and social decline offers a stunning autobiography to the rise of barbarian, neo-pagan ideologies, masquerading as “new age mysticism”, a virulent form of cultural menticide which, along with the rise of radical fundamentalism, has accelerated the systematic destruction of true Christianity both from within, and without, the very institutions upon which the Church was itself established. For as we will discover through our investigation of universal history, there is nothing new about the epistemological plagues to which our civilisation is now falling victim, in this, the altogether false dawning of the “Age of Aquarius”.
Rome: The mythical “Civilisation”
The death of Archimedes by the hands of a Roman soldier is symbolical of a world-change of the first magnitude: the Greeks, with their love of abstract science, were superseded in the leadership of the European world by the practical Romans. Lord Beaconsfield, in one of his novels, has defined a practical man as a man who practises the errors of his forefathers. The Romans were a great race, but they were cursed with the sterility which waits upon practicality. They did not improve upon the knowledge of their forefathers, and all their advances were confined to the minor technical details of engineering. They were not dreamers enough to arrive at new points of view, which could give a more fundamental control over the forces of nature. No Roman lost his life because he was absorbed in the contemplation of a mathematical diagram.
An Introduction to Mathematics, Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947), Williams & Norgate, London, 1911
In 1776, Edward Gibbon published the first volume of his “The history of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire”. For those who have thus far been spared the teeth grinding boredom of a full reading of Gibbons great historical opus, the most notable thing about it is the astonishing fact that in 1500 endless pages of facts and detail covering every aspect of Roman history and society, there isno mention whatsoever about emperors Tiberius, Caligula and Nero! Whatever one might say about the book otherwise, by ignoring the utter degeneracy and evil that Rome later revealed itself to be, it is patently inadmissible as an honest and impartial analysis of Roman civilisation.
Now, the reason for the omission only becomes apparent when it is revealed that the work had itself been commissioned by none other than Lord Shelburne, in the hope that by learning from the mistakes of Rome, an eternal British Empire could be established. It is therefore entirely justifiable to state that Gibbon’s error was no honest mistake, but purely a case of deliberate deception, a whitewash of the true nature of the subject he was paid to study and to evangelise, in the service of base economic and political motives.
Lest we forget the utter degeneracy which Gibbon was at such pains to sweep under the historical rug, a quick summary of the life of Emperor Nero will be instructive. At the age of three, Nero’s father passed away and his mother Agrippina was banished, leaving the young boy in the care of his aunt, who assigned two tutors to his education: a dancing master and a barber. In the course of time, his uncle, the Emperor Claudius, rescinded the banishment of his mother, who returned to Rome and was reunited with her Son. At the age of 11, his step father passed away and Nero was adopted by his uncle, who placed him under the tutelage of Seneca. At 17, Nero was himself elected Emperor.
At first, there were no obvious signs of his extreme narcissism, until a spat between his mother and Seneca led her to imply that his younger brother Brittanicus could replace him as Emperor if he continued to rebuff her attempts at control. In response, Nero had Brittanicus publicly poisoned, telling guests as he convulsed on the floor that he was merely suffering the effects of periodic epilepsy and would soon recover command of his senses. This was the opening act of Nero’s narcissistic rage against his perceived enemies.
In 59 AD, after three years of rule, Nero decided to divorce his current wife, and step sister, Octavia, in favour of his concubine, Poppea, who was more domineering. Reacting to this, Agrippina raged against Poppea, incurring Nero’s wrath. As the feud raged on, Agrippina, in desperation to displace Poppea as the primary influence on Nero, successfully wooed her son into bed. Despite, or perhaps because of this, Nero’s rage against his mother inflamed to such an extent that he determined to have her killed. A plot was hatched to have her drown in a boating accident, but she survives, and swims ashore. Hearing the news of the failed attempt on his mothers’ life, Nero, in a fit of rage and paranoia about what she might do in revenge, dispatches assassins to finish her off.
His mother dead by his own hand, Nero faced a backlash amongst the people. He fled Rome to the country and set to writing letters to the Senate attempting to justify his actions. Meanwhile, his advisors convinced him that the name Agrippina was hated amongst the people, and that he should re-enter Rome, which he duly did, to the adulation of the mob.
The years that followed saw Nero increase his tyrannical and destructive rule, which finally culminated in the burning of the city in 64AD, by means of a fire reputed to have been started by agents of Nero himself, with the intention of building a new palace. As the flames engulfed the city, Nero went to his theatre, and sung the “Sack of Ilium”, as an allusion to the events occurring outside. Meanwhile, as the rumours of his culpability spread throughout the city, and the population became enraged against him, Nero resolved to deflect the blame for his vandalism elsewhere. A group of wandering vagabonds were found, and tortured into confessing, on the evidence of which thousands of Christians were put to agonising death, being torn to shreds by wild animals in the coliseum, or burned alive to light the city at night.
Between 65AD and his eventual death in 68AD, Rome witnessed a great orgy of political murder, conspiracy and counter-conspiracy, as one by one, Nero’s real and imagined enemies were eliminated from the scene. It were as if the entire society were at war with itself, as each faction rose to challenge his rule, betrayed itself to enemies, and suffered the penalty of death or banishment. It is from this period more than any other that the base practice of mob rule, and divide and conquer, otherwise known as “democracy”, took root in the governing councils of the west.
To reinforce the point, for those who would still argue that Roman civilisation was in some way an advance, or otherwise superior in terms of administrative prowess, to that of the Greeks, consider the following interesting fact. At the rise of Roman civilisation in 400 BC the best estimate of the population living around the Mediterranean region was 49 million, but by 400 AD, as Rome begins to collapse, there are estimated to have been only 29 million people left! Therefore, when measured in terms of population density, at the apex of its power, Roman “civilisation” achieved very little apart from a 40% collapse in population from the Greek culture which preceded it. As the story of Archimedes attests, no fundamental advances in science or philosophy can be ascribed to Roman culture. Theirs is a legacy of genocide.
To conclude by returning to Gibbon and his work, the thing which stands out as the most egregious and portentous argument in his voluminous testament to dubious scholarship, is that he directly attacks and blames Christianity, for sapping the “pagan vitality” of Roman society to the extent that collapse was inevitable. This is significant, not only because it reaffirms, and indeed essentially justifies the behaviour of the ruling families of Rome in their persecution and murder of Christians by their thousands, but more importantly in that it it sets the stage for the corruption of Christianity from within the established structures of the Church of England.
Much can and should be written on the topic of the Anglican Church as an official “state backed religion”, but the essence of the matter is that rather than promoting the revolutionary principles of the patristic fathers, it will instead serve primarily as a pacifying, cultural warfare operation within the extended British “East India Company” Empire, the slave and opium trading monstrosity that Shelburne himself set sail onto the seas of the world under the guiding lights of the works of Gibbon and others of the infamous Haileybury school. This corruption exists to the present day, and is rendered tangible in the overtly Fabian/marxist political agenda and abject failure of the ecclesiastical mission of the Anglican communion amongst the people of England and other nations.
But what exactly was it about Christianity that Edward Gibbon was objecting to? The answer lies in a series of books written approximately one thousand miles away, which will pave the way for the rescue of western civilisation from the “dark age” that was to follow the collapse of Rome. But to tell the story of St Augustine, the author of those books, we must first turn to the man who recruited him to the Church.
St Ambrose Battles Byzantium
St Ambrose was a member of a prominent Roman family, a career diplomat who was elected governor, and later in 374 AD, converted to Christianity and became Bishop of Milan. The news that an Imperial Senator of Rome had become a Christian created a stir throughout the known world, as it was totally unprecedented. To comprehend the reasons for this, it is necessary to understand the political conditions at the time.
The Roman Empire was in terminal decline, and could no longer withstand the successive waves of barbarian invasions. The world was constantly at war, with massacre following massacre. Ambrose himself recounts how pestilence was decimating the livestock and population, and how the “end of the world” was feared. Although Ambrose was an Imperial official, he had received a rigorous Christian education, and knew that the only hope of stopping the barbarians was to supersede the Roman Empire with a new kind of society, a Christian state.
When Ambrose became Bishop of Milan, the Christian community was well established in every part of Europe, but it was divided in a bitter struggle between the “Nicene” Christians, and the Arian heretics. Whereas the Nicene Creed indisputably affirmed the divinity of Christ the followers of Arius denied this, and thereby refuted the claim that man is made in God’s image. This remains the fundamental ecumenical and epistemological fault line within the western intellectual tradition, encompassing all the monotheistic religions, to the present day.
The Arians had begun their assault on the west from Constantinople, which had been founded on the site of the city of Byzantium, by the Emperor Constantine, in 330 AD. The Roman black nobility, which deemed the west to be lost to Christianity, had steadily migrated to the city and from there begun to form found a vast array of pseudo-Christian sects, which sought to corrupt the new church from within.
Following his election as Bishop, Ambrose launched a strident polemical attack on these Arian sects, the Marcionites, Sabellians, Valentinians, Manicheans, Eunomians, Macedonians and Photinians. Each of these had attacked one aspect or other of Christian doctrine, but their unifying theme was denial of the concept of the holy trinity, which states that through the light of the holy spirit, humanity is able to comprehend the word, and come to know God. Within two years, Ambrose does public battle and defeats the Arians in the city of Sirmium, persuading the local Christians of his thesis, and causing a Nicene to be elected as their Bishop. The debate is fierce and at one point almost comes violence when a fanatical Arian bursts into a meeting and attempts to throw Ambrose to the ground, from the podium where he is speaking. This was not uncommon, indeed many of the battles between the Arians and Christians ended up in massacres.
It is important to note that the majority of the leaders of the barbarian hordes were Arians, having been recruited and manipulated by the Roman oligarchy, from their base of operations in Constantinople. Ambrose fought back, openly denouncing the fact that the barbarians were led by Arians, and began a mass recruitment drive in an attempt to convince the western emperors to adopt his grand strategy, and transform the Empire into a Christian society. This strategy was successful when a young Roman named Gratian, only 21 years of age, ascended the western throne, and became his most faithful disciple. Ambrose writes two critical books, Faith and The Holy Spirit, dedicated to his new student, who accepts his hypothesis on how to halt the barbarian invasions.
In 378, Gratian carries out the recommendation of Ambrose from the Bishops’ synod in Rome, on the total separation of the Church and State, renouncing the title of Supreme Pontiff by the Emperor. By this act, Ambrose reported “The Emperor was in the Church, but not above the Church”. Finally, on Ambrose’s advice, Gratian ordered that the Altar of Victory, symbol of the pagan cults of the Empire, be removed from the Senate, all subsidies and tax exemptions of the pagan priests suppressed, and the funds of the temples confiscated.
The reaction of the oligarchy was violent, as can be found in the letters of the Roman prefect Quintus Aurelius Symmachus, who was chosen by the Senate on account of his eloquence, to convey their displeasure to the Emperor. But in 383, the efforts of Ambrose to Christianise the western Empire take a tragic turn for the worse when Gratian is assassinated. In the same year, Prefect Symmachus sends a young Carthaginian professor, a leader of the Manichean sect, sworn enemy of the Christians, to Milan to counter the growing influence of Ambrose. That man was Augustine of Hippo.
The Conversion of Augustine the Manichean
I had my back to the light and my face towards the things which are illuminated. So my face, by which I was enabled to see the things lit up, was not itself illuminated
St Augustine, Confessions
Aurelius Augustinus was born on November 13, 354AD at Tagaste, a small town in the Roman province of Numidia, near what is now the eastern borders of Algeria. His father was a minor official in the Imperial administration, and was a pagan, but his mother Monica was already known as a fervent Christian. While young, his mother enrolled him as a catechumen in the Catholic Church, but he was never baptised, and was soon sent away to Madura to study law. In the course of his studies, he reads Cicero’s Hortensius, and is convinced to follow a life of philosophy, as a result of which he comes under the influence of the Manicheans, and becomes an auditor, or beginner, in their sect. In the Manichean system, evil is an ontological necessity in the universe, and that God is not of the spirit, as Christianity teaches, but rather a corporeal being
On completing his studies in 373AD, Augustine chooses to follow letters rather than the law, and after a year of teaching grammar at Tagaste, he established himself as a rhetorician at Carthage, where he remains for 9 years, until in 383, motivated by his ambition as a rhetorician, he takes the journey to Rome. He is disappointed however with the apathy of the Roman schools, and is introduced to Symmarchus, who has been asked to fill the position of professor of rhetoric for the Imperial court at Milan. Symmarchus is impressed with his genius and duly offers him the position, in the hope that his dialectical skills will serve well in debate against his arch enemy, Ambrose.
Taking up the position in 384AD, Augustine encounters Ambrose, and is so impressed with his revolutionary advances in antiphonal singing, that he begins to write De Musica, on the science of musical theory. Gradually, under the influence of Ambrose and his evangelical movement, Augustine abandons his heretical Manichean beliefs and is converted to Christianity, being baptised by Ambrose himself in Milan, on Easter Vigil, 387AD.
Following his triumphant conversion, Augustine returns to Africa and begins to pen his major works, starting with Confessions, a brilliant and profound expose of his earlier life of sin and immorality, and his path to Christian faith. Written in 397 AD, it is recognised as perhaps one of the most important treatises on religious conversion and revelation in western civilisation, and serves to place a decisive line in the sand from which Augustine is later able to defend and prosecute his spiritual and intellectual war against the numerous Arian heresies which he faced.
The City of God
I saw the vandals and the barbarians destroy our cities, because the cities were built on our sins and our weaknesses ... Let us build together our cities on faith and love ... and they will be invincible.
St Augustine, The City of God
Following the sack of Rome by Visigoths led by Alaric in 410 AD, Augustine becomes embroiled in the raging controversy over how the “Eternal City” could fall to barbarian hordes. In the course of the debate that follows amongst the scholars, Augustine finds himself inspired to write a defence of Christianity which, as the official religion of the Empire, now stood accused of causing the downfall. And so, our story comes full circle, to the source of Gibbons attack, which as we will find is nothing more than a restatement of the pagan arguments of the Roman oligarchy and their pet cults, who opposed Ambrose and Augustine in their ministry.
Essentially a treatise on the eternal war between a heavenly city of spirit, and that of the earthly world, the City of God presents a manifesto for the realisation of a true Christian nation state, based on the natural laws of the universe, and dedicated to the development of science, justice and truth, in opposition to the bestial and self interested notions of the world of sin and vice. It is a devastating critique of the moral and intellectual failures that rotted Roman society, leading to its downfall. Theologically, for the first time in history, the book clearly articulates the concept of the Filioque (from the Christ also), which establishes the key ecumenical principle on which the Augustinian monastic movement will build its mission throughout the western hemisphere.
Augustine completed his magnum opus in 426, four years before the marauding barbarian Vandals invade Africa and besiege Hippo, trapping its inhabitants inside the city. Four months into the siege, Augustine passes away, having reportedly performed one of the few miracles attributed to him as he lay on his death bed, in healing a man by the laying on of hands. In death, Augustine witnessed the dramatic collapse of the Roman Empire with his own eyes, and only his unshakable faith that the eternal City of God would ultimately triumph over the death and destruction that was to come, remained as his legacy.