Henri Pirenne was one of the first to tackle an interesting problem in the history of the Dark Ages and Late Antiquity, one that bears relevance to the proliferation of Anti-Christian hate today, to the rise of militant Islam and the creation of the Social Justice Movement.
His book Mohammed & Charlemagne posits something that those who aren’t familiar with my writings will find shocking: Islam is responsible for the Dark Ages. Emmet Scott follows up on this theory in a modern archaeological context, and goes one step further: Islam is responsible for the intolerance of Medieval Christianity. And I go a step beyond even that: Islam is responsible for the rise of intolerance in Western Civilization as a whole.
To understand this, we must go way back to the turn of the seventh century, on the eve of the Persian and Arab wars. We find ourselves a healthy, if somewhat reduced Roman Empire and a few relatively powerful Germanic successor states, all partially Romanized themselves to varying degrees. The economy was beginning to recover from the nadir of the 6th century, populations were beginning to expand again, and urbanization was increasing for the first time since the crisis of the third century. Archaeological evidence confirms this.
Then the Arabs come. They devastate Byzantium, conquer two-thirds of it, and wreck the Visigothic kingdom. The Frankish kingdom is cutoff from the sea, now a nest of Arab pirates, and the Byzantines are left to fend for themselves. Literacy drops precipitously as supplies of papyrus dry up. Economies languish as trade stops. Building stops, and the surviving states of Francia and Byzantium are forced onto a permanent war footing.
For three hundred years, the archaeological record is empty.
Very few writings date from this period. Even less exists in terms of building activity. Coinage is predominantly silver, and not much of that remains, either.
It is important to note that, prior to this activity, Christianity knew nothing of Holy War, or Inquisitions, or Heresy as we understand the term. Oh, sectarian violence was common enough that it was seen as something of a sport in Justinian’s Empire, especially in Egypt. But even the worst of heretics were generally suffered to live. Even when they were not, the Church condemned such killings, it certainly didn’t order them. Arian Christians ruled over Catholics in the West, and there was surprisingly little acrimony. Even the Jews, whom Europe would later try to exterminate, were tolerated without pogroms and inquisitorial activity.
Rome had always been a syncretic state, tolerant of many religions and Gods. It persecuted Christianity at first, it is true, but even as it did so, Christianity spread rapidly. Indeed, the primary reason for this was that Christians were seen as a danger to the state, not, as it so happens, because they were seen as a danger to Roman religion, which most Romans were lukewarm about anyway. High Paganism was a remarkably blase affair. In any event, something of this syncretic spirit was passed on to Christianity which was, due to Christ’s pacifistic nature, rather tolerant to begin with.
Conflicts within Christianity, and with paganism in the Roman Empire were, after Constantine’s day, exceptionally minor when compared to the Medieval times to follow.
Then Islam came, and history just stops for three hundred years. When the historical record resurfaces, you see heretics burned at the stake, Holy Crusades launched across the sea, and the Inquisition formed. It is worth noting that the Inquisition was strongest where Muslim influence was strongest (i.e. in Spain), and the prototype for the Crusades was also found in the Spanish Reconquista and in the border wars of Byzantium.
Christians learned of Holy War from the Islamic notions of Jihad. They learned of what would become the Inquisition from the ruthless ferreting out of Jews and Christians in Muslim lands, either for extermination, forced conversion, enslavement or the payment of the Jizya. In essence, the Christian world had to embrace these things to compete with Islam, and to retake the lands that had been lost to them, else the Muslim fifth column would give the enemy too great an advantage. Jews, who had before been tolerated to great degree, were now seen with the same suspicion and hatred that Muslims saw in them.
From the terrors of the Inquisition, we were to see the same activity in the secular world, from the French Revolution on up to the Gestapo and the KGB. Nothing, and I mean nothing like this existed in the Classical world. It wasn’t even a vague concept. Then Islam came and introduced the Christian world to the practice, and from the Christians, the Atheist Communists learned of it, and improved upon it.
Communism, like Islam, is a totalitarian ideology with which there can never be peace. You can never rest. Its eyes are everywhere. It will use every weapon at its disposal, no matter how evil or sinister, because the end justifies the means. And the end is the conquest of all of humanity. It will tolerate no less. Any peace with it is temporary, and only accepted if it is greatly to their advantage, so peace is generally a poor idea in the first place. Capitalism is like Islam’s House of War, with which war is always justified.
It is no wonder that the Progressives and the Muslims make common cause with one another. They come from the same place. Their goal is the same: complete domination of the world. Hitler once lamented that he found Christianity to be weak, and would have preferred if Nazi Germany had practiced a religion like Islam. He was unintentionally referencing a key point in Western history: Islam exterminated Classical civilization and greatly damaged the Christian civilization to follow.
What grew out of the remains of Classical civilization was contaminated with a great evil, one with which Western civilization has contended with ever since. It is as if the West has multiple personalities. Buried underneath is Greek philosophy, Roman notions of civilization and engineering spirit, and Christian religion. But interlaced with all of that is an intolerance, a hatred for man, a worship of death and a ruthless certainty of rightness. These are the gifts of Islam to the West. Leftists often bemoan the Imperialism and ruthless conquest of the Spanish conquistadors, yet where did they learn of this? They had just completed the Reconquista, 700 years of brutal warfare with Islam.
The kingdoms of the New World didn’t stand a chance.
Francis has commented on how the surety of rightness is a great evil. But where did it come from? Christianity expressly tells us that we are flawed, that we are sinners, and that the end does not justify the means. These things are anathema to Christianity. And, indeed, Christianity’s response to Jihad, the Crusades, simply could not be sustained, because it was so hard to justify death in the name of the Prince of Peace. Islam contains no such quibbles.
Three centuries of a thin historical record were spent fighting a life-or-death battle to the end with Islam. The West grew hard, abandoned much of its history, culture, tolerance and advanced civilization in order to survive. It had no choice.
What would things look like today if the burgeoning renaissance of the early seventh century were allowed to continue? Even the Germans were settling down, integrating into the old Latin world. Ireland was converted, thence to become a beacon of the Latin world. The Anglo-Saxons were coming around, places that Roman legions had never conquered were coming into the civilized fold. And Byzantium was the light of the Eastern world, the center of Christianity. It knew not of Holy Wars, or Inquisitions, or the burnings of witches.
But Islam did. And now so does the Progressive Left. Underneath it all, Christianity still tries to find the light of Christ’s words, his tolerance, his love. And even our enemies must couch their intolerant language in the same terms, lest they expose their totalitarian evil. But a virus still lurks in Western culture, one that has reared its ugly head time and time again.
And it must be expunged. Or else the terrors of the seventh century, as Islam wiped out the Classical world, will happen again. Whether it is the Muslims who do it, or the Socialists, it doesn’t matter. Because, in the end, both are the same.
My turn to make a bit of a language quibble… Christ DID say “Blessed are the peacemakers”, and “Prince of Peace” is indeed one of His titles, and later in the NT there IS the phrase “as much as depends upon you, live peaceably with all men”.
Yet He also used a WHIP to DRIVE the animals out of the temple and He did flip over the tables of the money changers… TWICE.
There are some things that just aren’t possible to tolerate. Or at least should not be. Blatant hypocrites, for one (which was exactly what the Pharisees were then and SJWs are now).
Christians ARE enjoined to be “wise as serpents, yet harmless as doves”. Yet calling Him “pacifistic” isn’t really accurate by many contemporary uses of the word. Because today that often implies supine surrender regardless of the cost. It means go along with anything just to avoid a fight. It means Chamberlain-style negotiations with “Mr. Hitler” promising “peace in our time”. And none of that is an accurate description of Him.
Agreed. And the Roman world before Islam can hardly be called pacifist either. When I speak of tolerance and peace here, it is by comparison to the Islamic wave that followed.
Perhaps I should edit this some to make that more clear. But it was already getting pretty long winded. The fact is, one could easily write a book on this subject.
The central thesis is that the West did not incorporate religion into war, except in the manner we might recognize as the role of the chaplain, to motivate the troops and give them hope. Holy War did not exist. The concept was foreign to the Late Classical world.
Then comes Islam, introducing these concepts to the West.
Christ said to love others. He did not say to accept and tolerate their behavior.
The goal was to change their behavior.
Thanks. Well-said.
Is it accurate to say that the Inquisition was a reaction to Muslim “ruthless ferreting out of Jews and Christians”?
Those two groups were highly visible at all times during the years of Muslim Spain and the Muslims wouldn’t have had to do much by way of ferreting out to find them.
The Inquisition had a lot to do with finding and punishing Jews who converted to Christianity falsely to avoid expulsion after 1478. My memory may be faulty here but didn’t the Jews cooperate with the Muslims, thereby earning the enmity of the Christian Spaniards and the order of expulsion. I think Jews were tolerated in the Ottoman Empire for the same reason, that they provided able assistance in administration (and tax collection?). Maybe even banking? Contrary to this, Wikipedia says the justification was the “great harm suffered by Christians (i.e. conversos) from the contact, intercourse and communication which they have with the Jews, who always attempt in various ways to seduce faithful Christians from our Holy Catholic Faith”.
Wikipedia also indicates it went after false converts from Islam. The reasons for that are obvious.
The Inquisition and the Crusades are favorite themes of the left in our time (not implying that you are a leftist). IIRC, the Spanish Inquisition allowed for people to bail out of the “proceedings” by some kind of oath of fidelity to the Christian religion and, even if that is incorrect, it affected very few people. It only killed some 15-29 people a year in its 350 year history. Instead of 5-10,000, Wikipedia cites sources who say only 2-5,000 were executed with some 150,000 charged. Clearly, 145,000 were able to dodge that bullet.
“Only” is an appropriate word when compared to the toll of communists in the last century of about 1.5 million deaths per year over, say, a 70-year period. Heck, garden-variety Muslims have killed three times the 350-year total of the Inquisition just since 9/11. But I digress.
I like your thesis that Christianity or Christian lands woke up to the realities of Islam in a major way. I don’t see the connection between that an harsh practices internally that don’t on their face seem to be related to anything having to do with maintaining effective resistance to Muslim obscenities.
Maybe harsh measures came to be the province of more depraved beings in the West who just abused their power because that is what people with power do. I do hate to use the word “intolerance” as I rarely see that liberals strive to make clear what it was that was not being tolerated. Still, the Pope is routinely portrayed as a fool in the Galileo fender bender. He was quite tolerant of Galileo’s views and just asked him to tone it down a little. Instead, G. wrote a book that portrayed the Pope as a moron. He brought his punishment on himself though even then it was quite mild.
I think I’ve wandered over the landscape enough.
Interesting post, especially about the 300-year period where everything went dark.
A few points.
Emmet Scott makes the case in Mohammed & Charlemagne Revisited that Jews and Christians were periodically tolerated, to limited degree, and periodically persecuted and subject to forced conversions, but rarely at the same time.
I.e. The Muslim rulers would favor Jews for a time, and persecute Christians, then do the opposite and favor Christians while persecuting Jews. The idea was to keep the subject populations resenting one another, and keep them from uniting against the Muslims. It was one of the tools that allowed a minority Muslim ruling class (at least for awhile) maintain control. He suggests that the notion of the Jews helping the invading Muslims was partly Muslim propaganda *designed* to incite Christian-Jew animosity. In this, it succeeded.
This was particularly strong in Spain, and as the Islamic rule receded, driven back by the Reconquista, the Christians partly inherited this philosophy. Remember that they didn’t immediately displace the remaining Islamic administration, but often assumed control of this apparatus. The ruthless efficiency of the Inquisition was, in part, inspired by the same behavior on the part of Islam. Muslims were still resident in Spain (some as Morisco converts, some as still openly practicing) into the 16th century. The Inquisition, regarding both these and Jews as a threat, targeted both. In the case of Muslims acting as a potential Fifth Column, they were undoubtedly right to do so. Eventually, of course, Spain simply expelled all they could find.
Now, in the Ottoman Empire, the same behavior was prominent. For a time, Christians were favored, and at other times, Jews. In fact, Byzantine Greek officials, dubbed Phanariotes, were often promoted to high office at various times during the Ottoman Empire, at least before 1821. But then, equally often, they would have estates confiscated, children taken from them to be forced into Janissary service, etc… The same was true for the Jews. In fact, the Ottomans regularized the practice, playing one ethno-religious Millet against another, all the while ruling over still mostly-Christian Balkan provinces. The Armenian genocide was an extension of this periodic reversal of favor: blame the Armenians for whatever, then kill them. This, despite favoring the Armenians somewhat earlier in Ottoman history. Islamic capriciousness is very common.
Now, as to the direct connection with Christianity, it is this: In the 7th century you have largely secular Kings and Emperors. In Constantinople, the rulers appointed Patriarchs, not vice-versa. In the West, kings did as they pleased.
By the 10th century, Papal rule was ascendant in the West. Charlemagne was crowned by the Pope, as were his Holy Roman Imperial successors. Popes could break Kings. This is a mirror of the Caliphate which, even as the Islamic empire broke apart, still maintained a certain deference to the Caliphs and the notions of Jihad. For Christianity, this measure was largely defensive. Only religion remained to unite the broken nations, baronies and duchies of Europe against Islam, the survivors of the 300 year period I mention. By the 11th century, Byzantium was in terminal decline. Secular authority was broken. Alexius I had to appeal to the Pope for help — a pattern that was repeated thereafter in the Byzantine world.
In later Medieval history, we see the same pattern. The tyrannies and methods appear first in Islam, then later in the Christian world.
Even in the 15th century, what we regard as the Renaissance, the threat of Islam was grave. Columbus was funded because Spain wished to break the monopoly of the Ottomans and other Muslim states of Eastern trade. They couldn’t do it through military force. Spain still feared the Muslims across the straights, always agitating to reverse the Reconquista (they still are, today).
In 1480 Mehmet II prepared to conquer Italy, Old Rome, as he had done with the New Rome already. Only his timely death put a stop to the effort. Islam continued to expand until finally halted at the walls of Vienna in 1683.
In any event, I don’t directly compare the Crusades and the Inquisition, in terms of body counts, or anything else. As far as I’m concerned, the Crusades were more or less defensive in nature, and the Inquisition, while a blot on the human rights record, is so much smaller in scale than similar activities in the Muslim and Communist worlds, that to compare them is a gross category error.
Rather, my thesis is that these things, for whatever evil they may have contained, were largely inspired and even driven by Islamic activity, and that the Muslims were their conceptual inventors. They appear first in Islam, THEN in Christianity (and usually in smaller scale, there).
In other words, us Christians already understand that something is terribly wrong with the idea that our belief system is oppressive, Imperialistic, etc… You and I already understand that the Crusades are a smaller event than the continuous Jihad. But the Left does NOT understand these things.
They wish to hold Christians accountable for the Crusades, Inquisition, intolerance, witch burnings, etc… The bulk of Anti-Christian rhetoric stems from this notion. So the idea here to point such people to where these practices *actually* originated from and where, today, they are *still* practiced.
And to ask the question: imagine if the 300 years of relative darkness, created by the rise of Islam, had never happened? Where would we be today? How much of the lunacy that the extreme Left inherited, through harsh survival measures on the part of Christians, and ultimately from Islam, would never have happened in the first place?
Thanks for your lengthy reply. That’s interesting about the studied caprice of the Muslims. I read that the Ottomans made it a practice in the Balkans to balkanize those countries by mixing up the ethnic balance. I guess divide and conquer isn’t exactly that hard to conceive of and practice as a way of controlling subject populations.
I still have some skepticism about how Christian countries might have been transformed in ways by their experience with the Muslims. I recall Bruce Catton making in the point that the Civil War started out with informal, relaxed, democratic discipline but as the horror of the war sunk in it came to tying offenders to wagon wheels and administering the lash. Harsh methods can be seized on according to logic entirely on one side. This practice wasn’t necessarily copied from the Confederates.
The Muslims certainly never had a lock on harsh, aggressive behavior though for sustained killing and outrage they have no historical peer.
If secular authority was broken in the frightful 300-year period it reinforces the debt that the West owes to the Church. If it was guilty of secular excess it should surprise no one who studies how political power is exercised and by whom. The Church was a pretty corrupt and un-spiritual entity at times with its own armies, even, at least, one female pope, and the split papacy of the Avignon popes.
I agree that the left is committed to their views on racism, “right-wing” National Socialism, lynching, slavery, patriarch, colonialism, Christian hypocrisy and bloodthirstyness, and the benign, just and attainable ideal of socialism (or “un-capitalism”). The lie is the keystone of the leftist view so just focusing on the Crusades, the Inquisition, and that terrible dark period may help to break it loose. Though it appears to be armor plated, I confess.
The communist slaughter you’d think would do the trick in a heartbeat but it hasn’t. For every movie about the Gulag or the Cheka there are 5,000 about the Nazis. Probably why.
PS – I did read of a cardinal who was called upon to crown an English king. He kicked the crown around on the floor to emphasize to the king who was boss.