Nietzsche compared the early Christians to the anarchists of his time: “both are decadents; both are incapable of any act that is not disintegrating, poisonous, degenerating, blood-sucking; both have an instinct of mortal hatred of everything that stands up, and is great, and has durability, and promises life a future.
“It also faces the objection that the eastern half of the Empire outlasted the western half by one millennium, despite being more thoroughly Christianized.”
I have little experience of Orthodox, but from what little I do know they seem to value the martial far more. Their sainting Olga shows a reverence for action and even in group orientation. They are far more balanced in that manner and less universal.
That's right. I wrote in The Papal Curse: The saints of Western folklore are almost exclusively celibate (those who had wives and children, like Augustine, abandoned them). By contrast, Byzantine saints include laymen who are honored not only for their faith, but also for their life of service to the empire as military leaders, scholars or administrators. Such figures combine worldly authority and otherworldly sainthood. (source: Sophie Métivier, Aristocratie et sainteté à Byzance (VIIIe-XIe siècle), Société des Bollandistes, 2019).
The legacy of learning under the church was nonexistent. Copernicus was marginalized, Galileo arrested. If it had not been for the Muslims, most of the scientific literature of previous civilizations would have been torched as completely as the Mayan codices and the Rongo-Rongo board on Easter Island.
I have even heard that the Church frowned on the mass production of Bibles as they would lose the iron grip they had on interpreting such to the masses. As such appeared to be one of the primary engines of the protestant movements, maybe the Papacy had good cause to fear it.
“It also faces the objection that the eastern half of the Empire outlasted the western half by one millennium, despite being more thoroughly Christianized.”
I have little experience of Orthodox, but from what little I do know they seem to value the martial far more. Their sainting Olga shows a reverence for action and even in group orientation. They are far more balanced in that manner and less universal.
That's right. I wrote in The Papal Curse: The saints of Western folklore are almost exclusively celibate (those who had wives and children, like Augustine, abandoned them). By contrast, Byzantine saints include laymen who are honored not only for their faith, but also for their life of service to the empire as military leaders, scholars or administrators. Such figures combine worldly authority and otherworldly sainthood. (source: Sophie Métivier, Aristocratie et sainteté à Byzance (VIIIe-XIe siècle), Société des Bollandistes, 2019).
Zoros and Orthodox are the only monotheistic religions that I like.
Well put! I’ll have to read it soon!
The legacy of learning under the church was nonexistent. Copernicus was marginalized, Galileo arrested. If it had not been for the Muslims, most of the scientific literature of previous civilizations would have been torched as completely as the Mayan codices and the Rongo-Rongo board on Easter Island.
I have even heard that the Church frowned on the mass production of Bibles as they would lose the iron grip they had on interpreting such to the masses. As such appeared to be one of the primary engines of the protestant movements, maybe the Papacy had good cause to fear it.