Did the early Christian war against "heresy" help trigger the Dark Ages? Might a little bit of Christian tolerance have even kept ancient Roman culture alive?

These questions are still much on my mind, and while I can't provide answers or lay things to rest, my wildest fantasy is that maybe one or more people who know more than I do will be stimulated intellectually to do some serious, original historical research.

Please, anyone, if you like any of this, take the ball and run with it!

In the early days of this blog, I discussed the Emperor Justinian and Christendom's first sodomy laws, and I pointed out that they did little more than accompany the beginning of the Dark Ages. While I never argued that the sodomy laws themselves led to the Dark Ages, I had not fully explored the role of Justinian.

By getting me started on Ostrogoth history, this marvelous post by Michael McNeil provided the catalyst for another attempt to revisit the Fall of Rome, and the birth of the Dark Ages.

I am delighted to quote Michael McNeil as a starting point:

The Ostrogoths, after first being settled by the East Roman Empire in what used to be called Yugoslavia, towards the end of the 5th century were induced by the East Roman Emperor to invade Italy, ruled by the barbarian king Odoacer, who had lately put an end to the remains of the Roman Empire in the West. The Ostrogoths, under their king Theodoric the Great, defeated Odoacer, and in 493 Theodoric became king of the Ostrogothic kingdom of Italy. For most of the next half century Ostrogothic Italy remained relatively prosperous and enlightened amid the darkness taking hold elsewhere. Roman civilization had not yet winked out in Italy; literary works continued to be written in Latin, and Theodoric maintained a benevolent rule over both Italians and Ostrogoths.

This state of affairs, after the death of Theodoric, was brought to an end by the Eastern Emperor Justinian, who in 535 launched an invasion of Ostrogothic Italy in order to retrieve it for the Roman Empire, commanded by the brilliant general Belisarius, who had just lately reconquered Vandal Africa for the Byzantine domain. Justinian, however, was paranoid and suspicious of Belisarius, and failed to provide him with enough troops, whereupon the war dragged on literally for decades, devastating most of Italy and doing much to propel it into the Dark Ages.

Hardly the sort of people who might attempt to preserve Roman culture.

Yet that was precisely what they did. (Or rather, what they attempted to do.)

The Ostrogoths (Eastern Goths) originally migrated from southern Scandinavia and had settled the Ukraine, eventually being pushed out by the Huns. They came to Italy and, through a series of events (which you can read about in detail here), ended up establishing their capitol in Ravenna, where -- thanks to the efforts of the Goths -- there was a remarkable period which has been called the "first Renaissance" in which original Roman culture was revived, kept alive, and even flourished.

Until Justinian, the Eastern Emperor, deposed the enlightened Ostrogoths over a theological dispute. Instead of reuniting the Roman Empire, this created a power vacuum, leading directly to the invasion of the Lombards -- and total destruction of Western Roman culture.

Tragedy. Real tragedy.

It was an eye-opener for me to realize that what I was taught -- that the "good" Justinian overthrew the "bad" Ostrogoths -- was, simply, wrong.

I can't set history straight. But I think it bears close examination, possibly reappraisal. A task of this sort is really beyond the scope of my blog.

But I'll do what I can in this. (Pathetically insufficient though that may be.)

What sort of people were the Ostrogoths?

To get a feel for Ostrogoth culture, let's start with a brief glimpse at their language. Here's the Lord's Prayer

Atta unsar thu in himinam,
weihnai namo thein,
quimai thiudinassus theins,
wairthai wilja theins,
swe in himina jah ana airthai.
hlaif unsarana thana sinteinan gib uns himma daga,
jah aflet uns thatei skulans sijaima,
swaswe jah weis afletam thaim skulam unsaraim,
jah ni briggais uns in fraistubnjai,
ak lausei uns af thamma ubilin;
unte theina ist thiudangardi
jah mahts jah wulthus in aiwins.
Amen.

Theodoric, the greatest leader the Ostrogoths produced, was as enlightened a man as it was possible to be given his times.

Here's the only picture I could find of him -- on the face of a coin.

Here's his tomb, which he designed. (That's real Gothic architecture, folks!) (Another view and description.)

And here's his widow Amalaswintha, a valiant woman who struggled on

against the restive aristocracy. It finally had its way and she was stabbed in her bathtub.

Here is an Ostrogoth mosaic picture of the palace of Theodoric in Ravenna -- from the basilica of St Apollinare Nuovo (c. AD 500-520). After Justinian's overthrow of the Ostrogoths, the mosaic was defaced -- and figures of Theoderic and his court removed.

Here are some post-capture mosaics of Justinian and his wife Theodora, shown with their entourages.

For those interested in more Ravenna stuff, here are some beautiful web sites.

For reasons which I suspect involve religion, Justinian seems to have been largely given a pass by historians:

Justinian the First, whose murderous and determined onslaught on the West destroyed the two strongest Germanic successor states, Vandals and Ostrogoths, and, more worryingly for the British authorities, seized the gateway to the Atlantic from the Visigoths.

There has been, and there still is, a tendency to whitewash Justinian, the emperor responsible for these wars: one of history's monsters, the Hitler, the Stalin, the Pol Pot of his time.

Justinian's legislation dealt with almost every aspect of the Christian life: entrance into it by conversion and Baptism; administration of the sacraments that marked its several stages; proper conduct of the laity to avoid the wrath God would surely visit upon a sinful people; finally, the standards to be followed by those who lived the particularly holy life of the secular or monastic clergy. Pagans were ordered to attend church and accept Baptism, while a purge thinned their ranks in Constantinople, and masses of them were converted by missionaries in Asia Minor. Only the orthodox wife might enjoy the privileges of her dowry; Jews and Samaritans were denied, in addition to other civil disabilities, the privilege of testamentary inheritance unless they converted. A woman who worked as an actress might better serve God were she to forswear any oath she had taken, even though before God, to remain in that immoral profession. Blasphemy and sacrilege were forbidden, lest famine, earthquake, and pestilence punish the Christian society. Surely God would take vengeance upon Constantinople, as he had upon Sodom and Gomorrah, should the homosexual persist in his "unnatural" ways.

For a time after the year 404, Ravenna and not Rome was the capital of the Roman Empire in the West. After the extinction of the western empire, Ravenna was the seat of government of Theodoric the Ostrogoth, the court visited by Boethius. Later Ravenna was the capital of a part of Italy ruled by the Byzantines.

The islands of the lagoons provided an invulnerable refuge, comparable to Switzerland during World War II, for Roman aristocrats and others fleeing the paths of Goth, Hun, and Langobard armies. Already between 300 and 400 A.D. there are traces of families whose names will later become infamous: Candiano, Faliero, Dandolo. Legend has it that the big influx of refugees came during the raids of Attila the Hun in 452 A.D. Various areas of the lagoons were colonized, including the present site of Torcello, before the seat of administration was fixed at a group of islands known as Rivus Altus ("the highest bank"), later the Rialto, the present location of the city of Venice. The official Ab Urbe Condita is March 25, 721 A.D. Paoluccio Anafesto, the first ruler of the lagoon communities, called the doge (the Venetian equivalent of Latin dux or Florentine duca/duce, meaning leader or duke), is said to have been elected in the year 697.

The most significant fact of this entire period is that the whelp of what was later to become Venice survived and grew thanks to its close alliance with the evil Emperor Justinian in Constantinople, an alliance that was underlined in later years by intermarriage of doge and other leading Venetian oligarchs with the nobility of Byzantium, where a faction embodying the sinister traditions of the Roman Senate lived on for a thousand years after the fall of Rome in 476.

And now it strikes me as supremely ironic that they had more to fear from a religious argument than from barbarians. The trouble came from the more dogmatic Eastern Empire.

"Civilized" does not mean tolerant.

While it is undeniable that early Christians in Italy had sown the seeds of anti-sexual intolerance, it was under Justinian that the true medieval attitudes were forged. Ultimately they took the form of rigid laws persisting in the West right up until the early 21st Century.

I hope readers will forgive my apparent focus on homosexuality, but for whatever reason, this has become a central, driving, highly contentious issue among Christians -- right here in modern America -- and it has by no means been laid to rest. In view of its apparently grave importance, whether I like dealing with it or not I must deal with it.

And whether I like it or not, this stuff is a central focus of my blog. If I ignore it, I might as well stop blogging.

The first laws in the West dealing with male homosexuality (lesbianism being largely ignored) focused on male prostitution, and were promulgated in 390 AD by the Emperor Theodosius when he was under order of excommunication and under the equivalent of house arrest.

390 AD:

DURING THIS PERIOD, THE FIRST PUBLIC BURNING OF MALE PROSTITUTES HAPPENED. UNDER THE EMPEROR THEODOSIUS MALE PROSTITUTES WERE DRAGGED FROM THE BROTHELS AND BURNED ALIVE. This date might provide a good starting point for the history of state persecution of heresy - while not at all formed as such, it might provide a good root source for the beginnings of this trend.

Like paganism, prostitution had been a Roman tradition for many years:

Since the Roman Republic, according to Tacitus (Ann. II.85.1-2), male and female prostitutes had been recorded nominally in registers which were kept under the guardianship of the aediles. From the reign of Caligula, prostitutes were taxed (Suet. Cal. 40).

Christianity's condemnation of any type of non-procreative sexual intercourse brought about the outlawing of homosexuality in the Western Empire in the third century and consequently of male prostitution. In 390, an edict of Emperor Theodosius I threatened with the death penalty the forcing or selling of males into prostitution (C.Th. 9.7.6). Behind this edict lay not a disgust of prostitution, but the fact that the body of a man would be used in homosexual intercourse in the same way as that of a woman. And that was unacceptable, for had St Augustine not stated that 'the body of a man is as superior to that of a woman, as the soul is to the body' (De Mend. 7.10)?

In application of Theodosius' edict in Rome, the prostitutes were dragged out of the male brothels and burnt alive under the eyes of a cheering mob. Nevertheless, male prostitution remained legal in the pars orientalis of the empire. From the reign of Constantine I, an imperial tax was levied on homosexual prostitution, this constituting a legal safeguard for those who could therefore engage in it 'with impunity'. Evagrius emphasises in his Ecclesiastical History (3.39-41) that no emperor ever omitted to collect this tax. Its suppression at the beginning of the sixth century removed imperial protection from homosexual prostitution. In 533, Justinian placed all homosexual relations under the same category as adultery and subjected both to death (Inst. 4.18.4).

Justinian's intolerance, though, extended much further than homosexuals or pagans. The invasion of Italy by Justinian was at its core motivated by a religious disagreement: the Ostrogoths were Arians. That is, they worshiped Jesus as the son of God, but did not believe he had existed forever before he was born. They rejected the Trinity.

I have blogged about this before, but I believe the doctrine of the Trinity is an anachronistic vestige of anti-pagan paranoia.

Such paranoia included rewriting Ostrogoth history -- and censorship:

This effacing done by the Catholics with the aim of cancelling every reference to the period of Gothic domination, was part of a general concern to reinforce the concepts of catholic orthodoxy: at the head of the line of saints, in fact, St. Martin stands out as the proud antagonist of Arianism, whilst the procession of the Virgins is led by Saint Euphemia, the strenuous upholder of the ideas of the Council of Chalcedonia (451), in which the duplex nature of Christ was re-affirmed. The trinitarian dogma, understood in its anti-Arian significance, is also made evident in the figures of the Magi adoring Christ as God.

In previous essays, I have pointed out the basic logical contradiction between the Trinity and Judaism (for the Messiah is a normally-born man, and if Jesus was the Messiah then he was a man). For examples, see these two sites -- which believe passionately that Jesus is the Messiah and condemn the virgin birth as another artifice manufactured to win over pagans and further enshrine the Trinity. In the process, ordinary logic was lost. Crazy as it sounds, in order to make sure that no one could call them pagan, the early Christian theologians laid down the doctrine that there was no period before Jesus Christ -- that he had always existed! (Otherwise, of course, pagans might have said that a deity had been "added" and that Christianity was not monotheist!)

Isaac Newton did not believe in the Trinity.

Nor did Thomas Jefferson.

Muslims, of course, have no such worries. To them Jesus and Muhammad are simply prophets. No lurking "pagan threat" there.

But once again, I must ask, what is the problem with polytheism? In light of the silly Trinity (itself denounced as "Pagan"), hasn't it ever occurred to anyone that the conflict between monotheism and polytheism is itself silly? That maybe God (if you want God to be one) could appear in as many forms, in as many places, to as many people, as he might desire?

Why the need to control?

Ironically, the warfare between "East" and "West" occurred almost a thousand years before the formal schism separated Catholicism from Orthodoxy. There was no "Orthodox" versus "Catholic" church in the time of Justinian and Theodoric. Instead, there was an unending campaign to stamp out "heresy." Christian against Christian. Yet under the enlightened rule of the Ostrogoths, Arian heretics and conventional Catholics had gotten along. Obviously, Justinian found such religious pluralism intolerable, so he had to destroy the Ostrogoths.

The "East" ended up conquering the "West."

At this point some readers might be asking, "Where the hell was the Pope?" Bear in mind that the papacy had little power when Justinian's war against "heresy" was going on. Both Theodoric and Justinian treated the popes (in truth, the Bishop of Rome) as little more than political pawns, replaceable almost at will:

John I who was born in Populania, Italy and elected on August 13, 523. He would die three years later. During this time he crowned the Emperor Justinian in Constantinople. The latter could not help the Pope when the barbaric King Theodoric invaded Italy and imprisoned John where he died in a cell in Ravenna on May 18, 526.

Pope Saint Felix IV followed John on July 12, 526 for four years. Felix was arbitrarily nominated Pope by Theodoric for the kings own devious ends and to win the people over. Felix showed so much loyalty to the good of Holy Mother Church that it incensed Theodoric and the Goth king eventually repudiated Felix, exiling him. Upon his death on September 22, 530 the Liberty of cult was restored to the Christians.

On the day of Felix' death Pope Saint Boniface II became the 55th successor of Peter. His papacy would last only two years. Unlike his predecessors, Boniface was of Gothic origin and many refered to him as the "barbarian pope" though he was in no way barbaric and permitted Benedict to build the monastery of Monte Cassino on the old temple of Apollo. Because of his ethnic origins a rival faction caused problems by electing an antipope in Dioscoros but any struggle or major problems ceased when the antipope died before Boniface did on October 17, 532.

Sandwiching Felix was the other John, Pope Saint John II who was elected on January 2, 533 after a three month hiatus due to squabbles over which faction was to hold court. Felix' followers won out and a man named Mercurius was elected. He became the first to change his name because his name represented a pagan god, therefore he began a tradition of choosing a papal name that exists to this day. Through an edict of Atalaric, the Sovereign Pontiff was recognized as the head of all bishops world wide.

Following him was Pope Saint Agapitus who ruled just under a year. This Roman-born priest was elected on May 13, 535 and died on April 22, 536. He was enticed by Theodoric to travel to Constantinople to basically spy on Justinian in discovering the latter's plans for Italy. But Agapitus went there for the people and to try to convert Justinian's wife Theodora back to Catholicism from the eutichian faith. Sadly she rebelled and poisoned Agapitus in Constantinople.

This, we find, was condoned by Justinian and prompted his sending his Byzantine armies, under the command of Belisarius to capture Rome with the Pope dead. "

Justinian's actions resulted in the destruction what was left of the Romans and their culture, and did much to construct a monolith of Christian intolerance -- despite the fact that this should have seemed oxymoronic. In my opinion, Justinian did more than any single man to plunge Europe into the Dark Ages.

Hardly something to be nostalgic about.

UPDATE: A brief conversation with Justin Case made it apparent that the virgin birth raised as many questions as it might have appeared to "settle." Was the immaculately conceived embryo of Mary's genetic material, or God's? Or both? If the genetic material was Mary's, was the conception what scientists today call parthenogenesis? If so, then that would have to mean that Mary was not an XX woman, but one of the one in 5 million XY women. Did the embryo consist entirely of God's DNA? Are these questions considered "heretical"? If so, why?

UPDATE: Donald Sensing, a leading Christian blogger of impeccable credentials, does not consider this question heretical, nor essential to salvation in the Christian sense. Calling the virgin birth "a vexing topic" and "one of the tenets of Christian fundamentalism," Reverend Sensing concluded that:

Affirming the virgin birth does not get us into heaven and denying it does not keep us out.