August 29, 2010
- Will Durant on “The Empire Never Ended” -
As Judea had given Christianity ethics, and Greece had given it theology, so now Rome gave it organization; all these, with a dozen absorbed and rival faiths, entered into the Christian synthesis. It was not merely that the Church took over some religious customs and forms common in pre-Christian Rome — the stole and other vestments of pagan priests, the use of incense and holy water in purifications, the burning of candles and an everlasting light before the altar, the worship of the saints, the architecture of the basilica, the law of Rome as a basis for canon law, the title of _Pontifex Maximus_ for the Supreme Pontiff, and in the fourth century, the Latin language as the noble and enduring vehicle of Catholic ritual. The Roman gift was above all a vast framework of government, which, as secular authority failed, became the structure of ecclesiastical rule. Soon the bishops, rather than the Roman prefects, would be the source of order and the seat of power in the cities; the metropolitans, or archbishops, would support, if succeed the provincial assembly. The Roman Church followed in the footsteps of the Roman state; it conquered the provinces, beautified the capital, and established discipline and unity from frontier to frontier. Rome died in giving birth to the Church; the church matured by inheriting and accepting the responsibilities of Rome.
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Well that makes sense. (And I really like historians who make bold sweeping statements like that, though I’m not sure other historians always do ;D)
Comment by speedbird — August 29, 2010 @ 1:22 pm
Oh, I’m sure they fight it out amongst themselves quite often. That seems to be the role of the academic.
I like this grand sweeping statement though, it makes a single pattern out of western history, when “Rome” and “The Church” are often taught of as two separate patterns (at least, here in the US they’re taught that way. Separation of church and state, I suppose, another way our writing words dictate how our reality is seen).
Comment by Ian — August 29, 2010 @ 1:45 pm
yeah, I have thought for a while that this was the case.
Comment by Ted — August 29, 2010 @ 3:59 pm
I wonder how the empire would have collapsed (or would it even HAVE collapsed?) if Christianity hadn’t come around. Just for the record, I think it would have, and possibly have collapsed a lot worse, if not for the support system Christianity created…
Comment by Ian — August 29, 2010 @ 6:44 pm
I think its some type of memetic thing. There is this big network and it just gets bigger and bigger and more entrenched.
There is the whole Phillip K Dick take on it also that influences my thinking. The idea that its AD 50, still. The power structure is pretty much the same. Even today the Roman Catholic Church has massive power and wealth.
I think it exists in the realm of the Noosphere or something like that. Its a Big mental power structure, that requires assent to it by massive numbers of people.
I think Global Capitalism has piggy backed on this structure.
I think its like a big ego, this network. If you think of the Earth as a big anthropomorphic holon, this network is like the ego.
Comment by Ted — August 30, 2010 @ 8:59 pm
That’s one way of looking at it.
One thing I’ve heard from someone I highly respect is that there some sort of massive social guilt at the death of Christ, that the west killed a genuine healer and has been trying to find a way to deal with that fact ever since. I don’t think that covers the whole picture, but I like the idea of that memetic structure thing you’re talking about being a giant unresolved guilt complex. Makes more sense to me that way, as it would be one way to explain why people don’t seem to want to see it.
Just a thought FWIW, I don’t know if any useful conclusions can be drawn from it.
Comment by Ian — August 31, 2010 @ 10:59 am
Well, I don’t know if that makes any sense in terms of forcibly converting all of the newly discovered indigenous people in the New World to Christianity. But maybe it does.
But there seems to be a desire to quantify everyone at the base of it. The idea of the Census, the social security number etc.
Its the idea of exploration, of conquest. It seems to me to be about self awareness. A collective self awareness. The whole of Humanity being aware of itself.
Without Jesuits and Conquerors and Pirates, how would this have ever gotten started?
Hunter Gatherers wouldn’t have started such a thing. They would only be concerned with their tribe and their immediate neighbors, which would have been their enemies. Conquering the World would not occur to them. The world may not even be a solid quantifiable thing to such Magically thinking people.
Comment by Ted — August 31, 2010 @ 3:44 pm
yeah, catholic does mean “universal”.
However, its not like we went from hunter gatherers to conquistadors. There were great settled civilizations in the America before they came, definitely not hunter gatherers. I think there’s something at the source that remains unresolved, on a vast racial issue, contradictory biological drives that we are attempting, unconsciously, to reconcile. After all, quantifying is a good thing to be able to do, but not to the extreme that it was done during the times you’re talking about here. It was a pretty serious case of going overboard… But who’s to say where it’ll all lead?
Comment by Ian — August 31, 2010 @ 4:10 pm
It all leads to everyone being more or less on the same page. You can’t have that if you live on an Island or way up in the Arctic or some isolated place and the name of your tribe is “the People” or something like that revealing that you aren’t aware of the rest of the People sharing the planet with you.
Anyway as far as going to extremes, no time in history has been more extreme as things are now in terms of people having to be quantified.
You used to be able to wander off and be a hermit for example.
Comment by Ted — August 31, 2010 @ 4:27 pm
I don’t Know if you can really compare the Roman Empire to the Aztecs etc.
I don’t Think they were quite so Universal. First of all they didn’t come across the Atlantic seeking to conquer Europe, for example.
Comment by Ted — August 31, 2010 @ 4:29 pm
No no, sorry. I just meant that the Aztecs and whatnot weren’t exactly hunter gatherers. Not that they were empires on the scope of the Roman empire.
Comment by Ian — September 1, 2010 @ 9:27 am
And yeah, we are at an extreme point right now. Its pretty scary.
Comment by Ian — September 1, 2010 @ 9:31 am
> desire to quantify everyone
Well that’s a very interesting observation. The NT actually makes a big thing of this, doesn’t it?… explaining in some detail how, at the time of the birth of Christ, everyone had to go to a city to be counted… Never mind the bit in Revelation about having the number of the beast on your head or hand in order to buy or sell.
Comment by speedbird — September 1, 2010 @ 1:45 pm
Nice one speedbird. Hadn’t connected the census and Jesus’s birth as a sort of quantifying. And not only that, but when Christ was born, there was no room for him among those going to be counted, hence being born elsewhere (in the barn). Awesome! The Christ ain’t going to arrive if you’re trying to be counted. :)
Comment by Ian — September 1, 2010 @ 2:36 pm