"The Christian Theory of Persecution"

The phrase "Christian theory of persecution" is the title of the second chapter of the book How the Idea of Religious Toleration Came to the West by Perez Zagorin (an academic historian who has published books on Classical and Early Modern History). In that chapter Zagorin tells the story of how "Saint" Augustine came to embrace the idea that coercion, including violence, was a valid method for dealing with heresy.

In a letter from sometime before the year 400 AD Augustine wrote concerning heretical Christians, "I do not intend that anyone should be forced into the Catholic communion against his will. On the contrary, it is my aim that the truth may be revealed to all who are in error and that ... with the help of God, it may be made manifest so as to induce all to follow and embrace it of their own accord." [emphasis added] Reasonably enough, Augustine believed that if someone were forced to renounce a heretical belief, that this would not result in a sincere change of heart - but only whatever was necessary to escape punishment.

But according to Zagorin, "Augustine eventually reversed his position and decided to endorse coercion." Apparently, many of his fellow Christians had gone ahead and used fines, beatings, imprisonment and execution against various heretical groups. Augustine was impressed by the results they had obtained from these methods - although he personally continued to oppose execution of fellow Christians, even heretics.

It is important to emphasize that Augustine at first seemed to have taken exactly the position that one would expect any decent human being to hold. It's not as if people just "looked at things differently" back then. Religious persecution had been rare in the Roman Empire prior to Constantine. Christians, Jews, philosophers and devotees of the God Dionysus had all experienced periodic persecutions. Also, the practice of "magic" was officially illegal and at least one noted Platonic philosopher, Apuleius (the same Apuleius who authored The Metamorphoses) had to defend his life against the charge of practicing "sorcery." But in general the Roman Empire was "completely tolerant" in the words of the historian Ramsay MacMullen.

So when Augustine and other Christians embraced the wholesale persecution of every religion other than their own, and even went so far as to persecute all Christian sects except the one officially approved by the State - they were doing something completely new - and something that at least Augustine felt some moral qualms about - at first.

After his "conversion to coercion", Augustine became a leading proponent and even a theoretician of persecution. According to Zagorin "Augusting insisted that the emperors and political authorities had the God-given right to crush the sacriledge and schism of the Donatists, since they were as obligated to repress fals and evil religion as to prevent the crime of pagan idolatry."

Augustine made use of the so-called "parable of the tares" from the Gospel of Matthew to provide scriptural justification for the use of force against heretics. The most obvious interpretation of this parable, however, is that it actually encourages tolerance - leaving it up to God at the Last Judgment to separate the "wheat" from the "tares". But Augustine said that the parable instead meant the exact opposite - that the "tares" (heretics) needed to be uprooted - so long as this can be done without damaging the "wheat".

Again according to Zagorin "Augustine elaborated his position in favor of coercion in religion in a number of letters. In a lengthy epistle to the Donatist Vincent, he argued for the utility of coercion in inducing fear that can bring those who are subject to it to the right way of thinking."

In the year 417 Augustine wrote a letter to Boniface, a Roman governor in Africa, in which he summed up the Christian theory of persecution: "There is the unjust persecution which the wicked inflict on the Church of Christ, and the just persecution which the Church of Christ inflicts on the wicked."

Pagan History 102

(also see: Pagan History 101)

0. In the ancient world religious persecution was rare prior to the rise of Christianity - and when persecutions occurred they were limited in their scope and duration. When Christians attained state power, during the reign of Constantine, persecution became the rule, rather than the exception. Persecution of all religions other than Christianity, as well as intense persecution within Christianity itself, became a permanent feature everywhere that Christians were in power.

1. The word Pagan was first used to refer to the followers of all the hundreds of non-Christian religions of the Roman Empire during the historical period known as Late Antiquity - approximately 200 AD to 600 AD.

2. The origins of the word Pagan are uncertain. It is also not certain whether the people designated as "Pagans" actually used the term to refer to themselves - or if it was used only by Christians. During Late Antiquity the term "Hellene" was widely used by non-Christians to refer to all those who followed the the spiritual traditions that long predated Christianity. This use of the term Hellene is synonymous with the more widely used and understood term Pagan.

3. There is no doubt as to who the "historical Pagans" were (let alone whether or not they or their religions "existed"). According to the eminent historian Ramsay MacMullen, author of the book Paganism in the Roman Empire, Pagans were all of the followers of "the many hundreds of the Empire's religions, save one." The American Historical Society called MacMullen "the greatest historian of the Roman Empire alive today" at their annual meeting in 2001, at which MacMullen received the Award for Scholarly Distinction.

4. Pagans became the target of intense and sustained religious persecution beginning with the reign of Constantine in the fourth century (see suggestion reading list here as well as links on the right side of this page.) This is not a wild accusation cooked up by the enemies of Christianity - it is a well documented uncontroversial historical fact.

5. These persecuted Pagans included the non-Christians of North Africa, the Middle East, and Europe - the area often called the "oikoumene" or the "known world". Pagan religion and culture were thriving in the fourth century, and continued a vibrant existence for centuries after the beginning of the persecutions. Even by the mid sixth century there were still first hand reports of whole networks of Pagan temples continuing to operate openly in Analolia - the heart of the Eastern Roman Empire. And when the new religion of Islam arose in seventh century the inhabitants of the Arabian penninsula were still practicing some kind of Pagan polytheistic religion. And the ancient faith of Zoroastrianism continued to be the religion of Persia up until the Islamic conquest of Persia in the mid seventh century. Even further east lay modern-day Afghanistan, where Buddhism, Hinduism, Zoroastrianism and even Hellenic Paganism had all been practiced prior to the imposition of Islam at the beginning of the 8th century. And throughout Western, Northern and Eastern Europe many peoples continued to be Pagan for centuries to come. There were still Christian "missions" targetting the Saami people in Scandinavia in the 18th century!

6. But let's not get ahead of ourselves. The brief reign of the Pagan Emperor Julian, who ruled from 361-363, provides clear evidence of the reality of clandestine Paganism. Julian was born into a Christian household - and he was under constant guard on orders of his Christian cousin, the Emperor Constantius. No one can say for sure when and where Julian converted to Paganism. Julian himself states in his letters that he had been a Pagan in secret for many years prior to becoming Emperor. Before his ascension to the Imperial throne Julian could not openly declare his Paganism without taking his life in his hands. Libanius, a famous Pagan scholar who lived during Julian's reign, reported in his essay "For the Temples" that by the late fourth century (after Julian's death) some Pagans were not only pretending to be Christians, but were actually continuing to pray to their Old Gods while attending Christian religious services.

7. So it is indisputable that Pagans had already begun to practice their religions in secret in the mid and late fourth century. This is no surprise for anyone familiar with other well known cases of mass forced conversions (for example, the forced conversion of Jews in Spain in the late 15th century, or the persecution of Christians in Japan in the 16th century). The Christians themselves were never in any doubt as to the reality of clandestine Paganism in their midst.

8. When they had no other choice Pagans continued to practice their religions in secrecy, but whenever and wherever possible Paganism continued to be practiced openly. As alluded to in point 5 above, in the sixth century, hundreds of years after Julian's reign, a Christian missionary in a region of Anatolia (in the very heart of the Roman East) reported on the existence of over 1500 Pagan places of worship that formed a well organized network with one centrally located head Temple.

9. The historical period immediately following Late Antiquity is commonly known as the Dark Ages - it lasted from about 600 AD to about 1000 AD. The Dark Ages are also now called the "Early Middle Ages". The traditional dating of European history has the Middle Ages continuing until the Renaissance, which began sometime in the 14th or 15th centuries.

10. You might ask - "well, what happened to North Africa and the Middle East"? Good question. These regions were central to the classical civilizations now commonly referred to vaguely as "Greece and Rome". "Greece" - in this historical context - actually refers to a vast swath of land that lies mostly in Africa and Asia - stretching as far East as the banks of the Indus River. The cultural and economic center of gravity of this "Greece" was in fact the great city of Alexandria in Egypt. And "Rome" came to include most of "Greece" (although it never extended as far East) and all of what is now thought of as North Africa - as well as most of Europe. All of Rome, including North Africa and the Middle East, became forcibly Christianized during Late Antiquity, but most of the "non-European" parts of Rome eventually fell to Islam. If anything, Islam was even more harsh in its repression of Paganism than Christianity. While much of the "Roman East" persisted as the Byzantine Empire - it, too, fell to the (Islamic) Ottoman Empire by the 15th century.

11. Just how long could Pagans have possibly held out under such circumstances? There is no question that they did hold out at least for a while - but did they eventually succumb to the brutal, relentless repression of their religions? Amazingly, the Byzantine cleric Gemisthos Plethon left behind proof that he was a member (probably the leader) of a group of clandestine followers of Paganism. His secret writings (discovered after his death) begin with the declaration "The Gods really do exist." Plethon was born in 1355 and died in 1452!

12. In the Latin West Vergil's Aeneid was the most read and quoted literary work throughout the entire millennium of the Middle Ages. It is still today probably the single most influential work of Western Literature. Throughout the Middle Ages Vergil was never seen as merely a "writer" - but rather as a Pagan Saint, a mystical visionary, and also as a "magician" whose powers derived from his profound knowledge of the natural world, the human soul, and the nature of the Divine. Vergil was the "culture hero" of the Latin West from before the rise of Christianity, up until the Renaissance.

13. Before he died, Gemistos Plethon traveled to Italy where he had an enormous impact on many of the central figures of the Renaissance, including Marsilio Ficino - who dubbed Plethon "the second Plato."

14. Marsilio Ficino lived from 1433 - 1499. He translated the works of Plato and Plotinus into Latin - as well as the Orphic Hymns, the works of Proclus and other essential texts of classical Paganism. But perhaps his most important work was the translation of the Corpus Hermeticum into Latin. Almost no one in western Europe at this time could read Greek - but every educated person could read Latin.

15. The Renaissance was characterized by the rise of Hermes Trismegistos as the cultural, spiritual and intellectual exemplar of western Europe's scholarly elites. The Corpus Hermeticum has been described as a popularized form of the Theurgic variety of Neoplatonism that flourished in Late Antiquity. Theurgy seamlessly combined the writings of Plato and Plotinus with more overtly devotional religious and "oracular" writings, Astrology, magical incantations, and a fascination with the religious, magical and even shamanic practices of a variety of cultures in Asia and Africa. This "magical Platonism" became the guiding philosophy of the Renaissance.

16. "Ceremonial Magic" as it is known today, comes into being during the Renaissance as a spiritual practice with clearly non-Christian (both Jewish and Pagan) roots. The definitive Renaissance work on ceremonial magic was Cornelius Agrippa's "Three Books of Occult Philosophy."

17. The religious identity of Agrippa, who lived from 1486 to 1535, is, at the very least, ambiguous. It is meaningless to simply insist that he publicly claimed to be a Christian - because to have done otherwise would have been suicidal. As it was, Agrippa faced persecution throughout his life. Giordano Bruno, who also professed to be a Christian, but who went much further than Agrippa in revealing the Pagan leanings of his magico-philosophical system, was burned at the stake in Rome in the year 1600. Many modern day Pagans claim Plethon, Ficino, Agrippa and Bruno as among our "ancestors" - while very few if any modern day Christians would claim them as co-religionists. Anyone who believes in the reality of the Gods - that They "really do exist" as Plethon said - can easily and reasonably claim that Plethon, Ficino, Agrippa and Bruno were among the many clandestine Pagans who worked under Divine guidance over the centuries of repression and darkness to keep Paganism alive.

18. This last is not a "historical claim" - but it is consistent with historical facts, and it is a reasonable conclusion based on those facts. Moreover, this claim is more reasonable than the claims of any and all of the modern sects of so-called "Christianity" - who all claim to be the followers of the teachings of Jesus. There is absolutely no direct evidence that the historical Jesus ever intended to start a new religion of his own. Rather, all evidence points to the conlusion that Jesus was simply a reformer of the Jewish religion - and not a particularly original one at that.

19. The Paganism of classical antiquity continued to be the single most important influence on European intellectual culture throughout the so-called Age of Enlightenment. Among the French "philosophes" of the Enlightenment it was fashionable to adopt nom de plumes taken from Pagan philosophers, especially Stoics.

20. Nevertheless, European intellectuals became increasingly subservient to the needs of the new colonialist expansionism of the European "great powers" - an expansionism that had already tentatively begun prior to 1492. With the flood of wealth that came to Europe as a result of the murderous exploitation of the "New World", Europe began it's rise/descent to become the supreme economic and military power on the planet. The philosophical tenets of Hermeticism, much to Hermes' credit, were deemed unsuitable as a guiding philosophy for a culture increasingly based on the accumulation of wealth through the brutality of colonialism and slavery. A Christianity denuded of all Hermetic taints, on the other hand, served nicely.

21. With the demise of Hermeticism, European intellectuals set out to spiritually emasculate the cultural legacy of classical antiquity. Somehow they believed that it was possible to proclaim themselves as the cultural inheritors of "Greece and Rome" - while in the same breath insisting that the central beliefs of those civilizations had been nothing more than superstitious nonsense. Anyone who continued to study or, worse yet, admire the spiritual beliefs and practices of classical antiquity became relegated to the cultural ghetto of "occultism." In the Renaissance, the word "occult" had a prestigious connotation in the cultural mainstream - by the time of the Enlightenment it was becoming increasingly synonymous with "crackpot."

22. Christianity served the interests of Colonialism admirably. Everywhere that the Europeans conquered they did so in the name of Christendom. The military officer and the Christian missionary worked hand in hand to crush all opposition by the Pagans of Africa, Asia and the New World to their colonial Christian masters.

23. It is logically and historically justified to use the word Pagan today just as it was used in the days of the Christian Emperors of Rome during their bloody persecutions of Paganism. Today the world is ruled by a Christian Empire in all but name. The "unipolar world" of the 21st century is a direct continuation of the nearly total world conquest already achieved by the European Christians by the end of the 19th century. Pagans today are simply all those who follow "the many hundreds" of the world's surviving religions "save one." (Although today we might say "save two" - see point #10 above.)

24. It is also logically and historically justified to use the word Pagan today to refer to those who still worship the Gods that were worshipped by the Pagans of Greece and Rome (and Egypt and Gaul and Persia, etc). Those Pagans followed a great many different religions - all of which are subsumed under the heading of Paganism. And those who today strive to follow the spiritual path of philosophy - as it was taught by the great philosophers of antiquity from the pre-Socratics to the Neoplatonists - can also rightly be called Pagans. This includes especially those who follow the "magical Platonism" found in the Late Antique writings attributed to Hermes Trismegistos. Obviously, anyone who follows the same path as Sappho, Socrates, Diotima, Plato, Aristotle, Zeno, Epicurus, Chryssipus, Vercingetorix, Boudica, Cleopatra, Lucretius, Ovid, Vergil, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Apuleius, Plotinus, Porphyry, Iamblichus, Zenobia, Hermes Trismegistus, Hypatia, Macrobius, Proclus, and Damascius - will likely worship the Gods that they worshiped (and quite likely other Gods as well).

25. I hope that anyone who reads this finds it thought provoking and perhaps also entertaining. I strongly encourage anyone who disagrees with any or all of this to .... put up your own website and leave me alone! "The world is vast and wide", is an old Buddhist saying - and, I would add, web pages proclaiming the truth are a dime a dozen. Anyone who is interested should also explore the rest of this website - and especially the many sources that are cited throughout.

 
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