Christian ideology does not only rely upon the Bible. Christian understanding of Western Civilization is a mythical history, a sort of myth-story of how things happened that coincides with the Christian ideals.
When we learn of the fall of Rome, if we learn about it at all (who has time when it’s so important to learn what Manifest Destiny is...), we are told of roving bands of pagan barbarians destroying and defiling the most advanced empire of its day.
Today is the 1600th anniversary of the sack of Rome. On August 24th, 410 CE, the Visigoth king Alaric led his troops through a gate used for salt trading. Alaric and his men pillaged Rome for 3 days, burning buildings and carrying off the best the empire had to offer. They boarded ships for Africa which sank in a storm. Untold treatures sank to the bottom of the sea, and Alaric died of a fever not long after.
Though Rome was not the true capital at this time, this raid essentially crippled the Western Roman Empire, all because of a pagan barbarian…
Except… Alaric and the Visigoths were Christian.
Very interesting. You've really given me something to think about.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Ginx!
It's weird, really, how history has been so willfully retold in order to paint a politicized and religiously biased picture. My favorite example is the fact that the surviving works from ancient Greece mostly come to us through the Arabs, who kept a many of them intact (poor Epicurus was not spared... I wonder why...).
ReplyDeleteMost of the writings we have from Plato and Aristotle were completely eradicated from mainland Europe, but remained in the Eastern Empire's libraries. Conquering Muslims recopied them throughout the centuries to ensure their preservation.
It was contact with the Arabs that rekindled the spark of science and thirst for knowledge outside of the Bible centuries later, culminating in the "Englightenment" (or as it really should be called, the Re-enlightenment).