| Religions and Civilizations The basic thesis of this book is that two factors alone, basic biological constraints and environmental conditions determined human history on the civilizational level. On the other hand, common wisdom claims that religions have greater influence on civilizations than any other factor, and this claim seems to contradict our thesis. Indeed, history books are full of expressions of wars of religion etc., meaning that the wars were caused by the religions and without them there would have been perfect peace.. This chapter attempts to refute that popular wisdom and prove that history was determined by biological and environmental factors and by them alone. In plain words, religion does not shape civilizations, it is always the opposite.. The subject of this book is the conflict between the civilization of the Middle East and that of the West. This conflict is often named as Fundamentalist Islam against Western Civilization. This book claims that there is a conflict, it is a conflict between the Middle East and Europe, and it is not a new conflict. It existed in the same area with the same intensity and bitterness, before Islam and before Christianity. In the matter of religions, there is a certain amount of fragmentation on both sides of the dividing line. The cohesiveness of the civilization of the Middle East is much greater than that of Christianity, it is near monolithic. Whatever fragmentation is there, is based upon deep historical causes, which will be detailed. Christianity, which is a religion much more fragmented than Islam, as Europe itself is more fragmented than the Middle East. The fragmentation of Christianity is analyzed in detail, and it is demonstrated that it is based upon civilizational causes, and not on theology. There are three types of schisms in the history of Christianity. The first series of schisms were formed on the basis of East and West, e.g. between the Nicene creed and strict monotheism. This was when the Monophysite sects, Nestorianism and Arianism left the mainstream Catholic church. The second schism occurred when the Christian church was separated along the same dividing line which separated the realms of Arcadius and Honorius, at the end of the 4th Century AD That was the time when the Roman Empire was divided into the Western and Eastern Roman Empires. It was done so they could be more easily defended against the onslaught of the barbarians. In reality, the division was made along an existing dividing line. The third schism was in Europe, between Christianity which was based upon classical traditions, e.g. on a synthesis between the religion of the Mother and the religion of the Father, and that Christianity which was based on the religion of the Father alone. Undoubtedly, the schisms had their theological motives as well, but analysis can show that the theological differences were only a cover for civilizational incompatibles. These analyses are presented in detail. It was shown that with its emergence, Islam collected the accumulated traditions, beliefs, customs and habits prevalent in the Middle East under one ideological roof. It was also shown that Christians in the Middle East felt much closer to Muslims of the Middle East than to the Christians of Europe. They had the same traditions and customs as their Muslim neighbors. They dressed the same and behaved the same. They believed in the same God, they differed only in the doctrine regarding the Prophet. There was an ideological unity in the Middle East that transcended religion. Despite the civilizational unity, even Islam had its schism; in the deep chasm between the majority Sunnis and the minority Shiites. The reason given for the schism is one of legitimacy. The followers of the Shia claim that the murder of the fourth Caliph in the succession after the death of Muhammed, and the subsequent murders of his sons, Hassan and Hussein, two grandsons of the Prophet, invalidated the succession and all Caliphs after Ali are impostors.1 There are some dogmatic differences too. The Shia believes that there is a hidden Imam, who will eventually reappear to lead his people to victory and happiness.2 Similar to the concept of the Jewish Messiah. So far the dogma, and now the reality behind it. The Arabs defeated the Persians at the Battle of Kadishiyah in May 637. Within some 15 years after the battle, Persia was occupied and incorporated into the Islamic Empire. It was not an easy rule. Memories of those years are found in the 'Thousand and One Nights' whose stories are full of complaints against the fire worshippers, e.g. the Zoroastrians. Although the Muslims accepted the Zoroastrians as one of the Peoples of the Book, they were treated as second-rate citizens, even after nearly 700 years, as Ibn Khaldun's remarks show.3 The Persians were Indo-Europeans and not Semites. Their banner was a huge leather apron of a legendary smith who led the Iranians in a revolt against their Semitic overlord. The leather apron was called Diraish-i-Kaviyan, 4 its size was fifteen by twenty-two feet, encrusted with precious stones and decorations. The Persians in all their battles carried the banner. After Kadishiyah, it was taken to Medina and there destroyed. The Iranians saw in the Semites their traditional enemies. Since Cyrus the Great, the Iranians ruled in Mesopotamia and in other Semitic territories. In Yemen there was a Persian garrison most of the time, to prevent the Romans and the Byzantines exiting out of the Red Sea toward India. At Kadishiyah the wheel turned and the despised Arabs became their overlords. The Iranians had nothing against Islam, indeed they embraced it with eagerness, it fitted well with their beliefs, but they had everything against the Arabs. They had a national existence going back for 1,200 years, they had military power which stood up with honor against the formidable Roman army. To say the least, the Iranians did not appreciate the Arabs. They knew that they had no experience in statehood, laws and communal life. They were well aware that if not for the long war with Byzantium, they would not have suffered the defeat at Kadishiyah. As they had nothing against Islam, and everything against the Arabs, they were looking for causes, or excuses, to break away from Arab rule. This they found in the case of Ali and his two sons. Eventually, during the time of the Abbasid Caliphate, the Persians took over the Caliphate and managed it until the Turkish takeover. Accordingly, Islam has two major branches today, the Sunni - the 'traditionalists' and the Shia, - the 'party'. The distribution is geographical. The Shia has majorities in Iran and in those countries that were under historic Persian rule, like Iraq, Bahrain and Afghanistan. As the Persians in pre-Islamic times kept a permanent garrison in Yemen, there is a large percentage of Shiites in Yemen. The rest of the Islamic world is Sunni. In the Christian world the first period of schism was in the first 500 years of its existence. This was the time when its present theological order was resolved. The immediate cause of the strife within the church was the nature of Christ, but basically it revolved around the very nature of the Church. It had to decide whether Christianity was a Jewish reform movement or was it a new Church separated from its origin and ultimately evolving into a purely Western religion, divorced from its origin and propagated by Western expansionism. The beginning of this period was stormy; there were tens of heretical sects, all of them intending to give their answers to the basic theological questions of Christianity. The Jewish religion, and the Middle East, from which it came, was monotheistic. It could accept that there are prophets, even prophets with special standing, like Moses, but it could not relate to more than one God. The Greek theological thought that took over the Jewish reform movement was shaped by the synthesis of the religions of the Mother and of the Father. Both religions used the symbols of the Trinity.5 The Fathers of the Church, who were mainly Greek or Greek-educated, shaped the new religion to conform to that concept. To the Jews and to the whole of non-Greek Middle East it was an abomination. Arab historians, who wrote during the Crusades, referred to the Crusaders either by nationality, as Franks, or by religion, as Trinitarians. Never as Christians.6 There were a great number of sects at the beginning of the Christian era. In the first three centuries, these were only small and ephemeral sects, they disappeared after a short time, a few centuries at the most. They did not establish churches, and had no hierarchies and temples. The most known of these sects were 7 Ebionites Palestine They taught that Jesus was the Messiah, foretold in the Old Testament. They scrupulously followed the Mosaic Law, as was commanded by Jesus Elcharasaites Syria/Jordan According to them Jesus was a prophet, who taught the strict observance of the Mosaic Law. Docetism Africa Christ existed as a spirit and not as a human. He entered Jesus' body at the baptism and left just before crucifixion. Sabellianism Libya Christ was a different nature of God, not a different person Paul of Samosate Antioch He stressed that Jesus was an ordinary human, in body and soul. According to him Jesus was a prophet. There were many others, but all remained short-lived and ephemeral. In their time, Christianity was not yet the state religion of Rome, so that their effort was at the most local. One can only marvel at the inventiveness and the mental contortions they all made to bring the nature of God under to one formula, to be one, as demanded by the spirit of the Middle East, and the Trinity, as demanded by the Greeks. It did not succeed. After the Council of Nicea, which defined the official creed of the Church, a number of other councils followed which further defined the nature of the Son of God, according to the wishes of the ruling Greeks. They defined the GodHead, which had three parts, co-existent and from one being. The three parts of the GodHead were the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. In addition, in the councils after Nicea, the role of Mary, the Mother of Jesus appeared too. At the Council of Calcedon, Mary was named Theotokos, the bearer of God. This decision defined Jesus as a God, and his mother raised to a quasi-divine status. After the Nicean Council, the Middle East was in turmoil. After each victory of the Greek position there were bloody riots, with hundreds and thousands of victims. The last decision actually split the Church. The schism was in three parts. The schismatics were the Arians, the Nestorians and the Monophysites. All three schisms had long-term historical consequences. The actual wording of the conflict was different in each case, but the principle was the same: Monotheism versus Trinity. As the temporal authority, which was Greek, always sided with the Greek version of the creed, the split caused a political division too within the Byzantine Empire, because those who opposed the Trinity and the worship of Mary, preferred to live under Muslim, rather than under Greek rule. There was a great difference between the new religions, the Arians, the Nestorians and the Monophysites, and the previous heretical sects. The heretical sects were in existence before Christianity became the state religion of the Roman Empire. Now the whole of the Empire, both the Western and the Eastern parts, was Christian. So the new religions set up organizations, hierarchies, churches, bishops, etc. If they could, they persecuted the Catholic believers, just as the Catholic Church persecuted them. One of the new religions, the Arian Church, disappeared after about 3 centuries, with the conversion of the northern barbarians to the main Catholic religion. The basis of the three new sets of religions was geographical. They were based in the southern part of Christianity, but for some reason they turned in different directions. Arianism was the first of the new religions. It turned north and converted the German barbarians. When the barbarian Germans overran the Western Empire, all the German tribes, except the Franks, were Arians. So were the Ostrogoths, the Visigoths, the Vandals, the Suebi and the Lombards. Still, after the end of the 7th Century AD there were no more Arians.8 The decision of the German tribes to abandon Arianism and join the Catholics was a political and not theological decision. The Nestorians turned to the East. They were active in Persia, but continued with missionary activities in India, China and Tibet. They got used to Zoroastrian habits and when reaching China, the Chinese thought that the Nestorians and the Manicheans were part of the Zoroastrian religion. The activities of the Nestorian Churches in the east gave rise to the Prester John legends in Medieval Europe, according to which there was in Asia a huge Christian Empire coming to the help of Christendom against the Mongols and Islam. When Vasco da Gama reached India in the 15th Century, he met Nestorian missionaries, but they were faithful to their beliefs, and refused to acknowledge the Portuguese as Christians.9 The third of the heretical churches, the Monophysites, also exist today. It was also the most forceful in its opposition to the official dogma. It had powerful supporters among believers who helped it. Theodora, the wife of Justinian, was one of them. Today, there are a number of churches of the Monophysite denomination: The Copts in Egypt, the Jacobite Church in Syria, the Armenian and the Abyssinian churches, although there are also Abyssinian Nestorian temples.10 It can be seen, therefore, that there were three major schisms in the Christian Church, all of them based upon the same factors. The eastern and southern littoral of the Mediterranean was studded by Romanized cities, with huge orthodox basilicas and ecclesiastical conformity. This Romanized world was maintained and supported by the decisions of the frequent Councils, the higher authorities of the Church and the temporal authority of Constantinople. The alternative lay inland and very often in the proletariat of the cities themselves. These were opposed to the Councils, ecclesiastical conformity and the latest mental acrobatics regarding the nature of Christ, which was intended to satisfy both the Greeks and the native population. It did not work, it could not ever work. The stark reality was that no mental acrobatics could make three equal one. The same people of the Middle East who cheered on Cyrus the Great against Greece, opposed Alexander the Great, fought against Rome and Constantinople in countless revolts, and eventually received Islam with open arms, decided on the schism. The same people were later to receive the Turks in Anatolia with open arms. The people of the Middle East were not the only ones, who preferred schism to receiving dogmas that went against their basic beliefs. In addition to the objections of the people of the Middle East proper, there were two similar developments. One in the far West of Christendom, and the second in the Far East. The far western outpost of Christendom in Africa was Carthage, the home town of St. Augustine. This was the town that was destroyed by the Romans, and its Punic danger supposedly eradicated. It certainly was not. Already, at the end of the 2nd Century AD., when Septimius Severus seized power, it was found that Punic traditions were very much alive. In fact, the new Emperor's mother was scarcely able to speak Latin. Her language was Punic. It is probably correct to say that without Septimius Severus and the Syrian Emperors, Christianity would not have come to power in Rome. The heretical sect in Carthage was that of the Donatists. It was really Carthaginian nationalism in another guise. The origin of the sect was in the times of the last persecutions, and it involved the behavior of the Church elite during those times. The story of the sect is not really important. It was a Carthaginian nationalistic movement, in a typically extreme Semitic way displaying severity, lack of compromise, intolerance, courage, profound faith in its own belief and implacable enmity to its opponents.11 The excesses of the Donatists, who in their enthusiasm were actively seeking martyrdom, made them similar to another heretical sect, which came from the far East of Christendom, the Manichaeans. This sect had a special distinction, which no other could match, it was heretical both to Christianity and to Zoroastrianism. A prophet called Mani, who combined Zoroastrianism, Hellenism and Judaism, founded Manichaeanism in Persia. He used the Zoroastrian conception of absolute Good and Evil to create a new religion, which was heretical to each of them.12 The Mazdean priesthood in 276 AD executed Mani. Manichaeanism was a gnostic heresy, based on the dualistic philosophy of good and evil. Of all the heresies, it had probably the longest and most varied existence. In a sense, it exists even today. It started in Persia, from there it spread to North Africa, where it influenced the Donatists and St. Augustine, who at one time was one of the 'elect' of the sect, and to Europe, where it had the most extraordinary existence. First it entered the Balkans, from there it spread to northern Italy and finally to the Pyrenees. Looking at the map, one can see, that the sect established itself in the most remote, inaccessible places. There the members felt secure from persecution. In their long European existence they were known under different names. The three European centers of the sect all had a long existence. In some respect they are still with us, and not only in memory. In the Balkans they were called Bulgarians or Bogumils. The heresy grew to alarming proportions in medieval times, so much so that the popes contemplated organizing a crusade against them, as they did against their Manichean co-religionists in southwestern France. The Turkish conquest of Bosnia in 1463 put an end to the preparations for the crusade against the Bogumils. However, the Bogumils who before the Turkish conquest were said to lead a policy of extermination against their neighbors, converted to Islam and continued the same policy of extermination under Turkish protection.13 Today, it would be defined as ethnic cleansing. In northern Italy the Bogumils were called Publicani or Paterines. They were vehemently persecuted by the official Catholic establishment, but also by some voluntary, unofficial organizations, like the Waldensians and the Poor of Lyon. Naturally, these organizations also came under suspicion from the authorities. At that time already every unofficial organization was suspect. The longest and most extraordinary history of the Manichaeans was in France. Mani was crucified by the Mazdean official priesthood in 276 AD. Less than fifty years after that a peasant insurrection broke out in the southwestern area of Gaul. The participants of the insurrection were called the Bagaudae. They were similar to the peasants of the Jacquerie in Medieval France. The leaders of the insurrection were Aelianus and Amandus, believed to have been Christians affected by the Manichaean heresy. Maximianus Augustus put down the revolt, but it smoldered on for a long time.14 In the 11th - 12th Century the Bagaudae started up again under the name of Cathars, or Albigensiens after one of their centers in the southwestern region of France, in the region of Toulouse. The Catholic establishment organized a crusade against them that erased the heresy from the area. The crusade was officially against the Cathars, who had a full-scale organized religion in the area, but also against Raymond, Count of Toulouse in order to reduce the independence of the Languedoc. The crusade was successful, Languedoc was full of burning pyres, and the Cathar heresy eradicated.15 Yet, three hundred years after, the area became the center of the French Protestants, the Huguenots. Their leader was Henri Bourbon, King of Navarre, in exactly the area where the Cathar heresy was most active. Henri of Navarre, was to become Henri IV, King of France. After the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, which promised religious freedom to the Huguenots, most of them left France for Germany, England or South Africa. Despite that, the same ideas resurfaced in the form of Jansenism, which was probably closest to Calvinism within the Catholic religion. Blaise Pascal was one of the advocates of Jansenism. Proscribed as Jansenism, it reappeared in the same region as Deism, Rationalism, Agnosticism and finally Atheism. Whatever the name, the region was always involved in quasi-heretical, quasi-oppositional policies against the official orthodoxy. This is probably the most eloquent example of the influence of a spirit of a territory upon spiritual matters.16 In the middle of the 11th Century A.D. the churches of Western and Eastern Christendom were officially separated. Officially, it meant that the Patriarch of Byzantium, who was the head of the Eastern Church, did not recognize the superiority of the Patriarch of Rome, the Pope. This was the time when Catholic dogma placed the Pope at the head of the Christian Church, as a replacement for the Roman Emperor. Refusal to accept this superiority was tantamount to schism. The actual separation was much earlier, when the Roman Empire was separated into two parts, one Latin-speaking in the West and one Greek-speaking in the East. The separation only confirmed the facts on the ground. The developments of the Churches followed the political separation. There was a growing distance between the West and the East. Until 800 AD, the coronation of Charlemagne as the Holy Roman Emperor, the West has acknowldeged the Emperor in the East as its titular head. After 800 AD this polite fiction was dissolved. The western Church was still independent, although by then it seemed certain that all of its efforts to achieve primacy over the secular authority would remain futile. In the 11th Century the Byzantine Church was part of a solid and a still existing Empire. However, it was an instrument of the state. It was said that in the West there was God and Caesar, side by side. In the East God was Caesar's junior partner. The separation was inevitable. It is only surprising that it did not happen earlier.17 The last of the schisms in Christendom was in the 16th Century AD This schism, not less than the others, was along clear geographical lines. When the Roman Empire settled its boundaries in the 1st Century AD it was done along the Rhine-Danube rivers. A line of rivers, it was defensible with a minimum of manpower. The line was set not so much by choice, but by necessity. Varus's lost legions in the forest of Teutonburg had at least as big a part in its setting as the commonsense of Augustus and Tiberius. The plain fact was that the Roman legions were admirably suited to fight on open plains, but were next to useless in dense forests. Their advantage was in formation fighting and not in individual capabilities. Since the fixing of Rome's European frontiers, there were a few changes. Claudius,and Trajan added Dacia ,Mesopotamia and Britain to the Empire. All the additions were evacuated before the final breakdown of the Western Roman Empire. At the beginning of the 16th Century a German monk, who was also a professor of theology at Wittenberg University, challenged the Pope on 95 points. Most of the challenges were theological, but some were concerned with the sale of indulgences, i.e. the utter corruption of the Church at that time. That the Church was corrupt was not news to anyone. Luther was not the first to come out against it. So did Wycliffe, Huss and Erasmus before him. There was a common factor that connected Luther to his predecessors. All of them came from regions that were outside the geographical confines of the Roman Empire. Only Wycliffe came from a country which for a while only had been a part of the Empire. It was shown that the classical religion that Rome introduced into the Empire was a synthesis of the religion of the Mother and the religion of the Father. The Catholic Church, which inherited the Roman Empire, accepted the Trinity, and losing the south and east in the process, venerated the Virgin Mary, the last representative of the Great Goddess. Those outside the borders of the original Empire were Christians like the rest of Europe, but their traditions went back only to the male Trinity of gods. They never participated in the rites of the Great Goddess. One can see in Luther a reformer who wanted to correct the excesses of the Roman Church, or a German nationalist who rebelled against Rome, like a latter-day Arminius, but when one looks at the map of Europe and superimposes the distribution of religions, one can see that the religious boundaries nearly always fit the extent of the Roman limes.18 West and South of the limes, is the old Catholic Church, North and East is the new reformed Church. Britain, which was part of the Empire for a short time, has the Anglican Church, which is a halfway station between Catholicism and Protestantism. The religious separation followed the political demarcation. The decision of 1555 that 'cuius regio, eius religio' - whoever rules the ground, sets the religion - did not really change the overall picture. There might have been conflicts in border areas, but they were few and far between. The religious picture of Europe is defined today according to the extent of the Roman Empire and those parts that remained independent. A number of religious developments, which happened on both sides of the conflict, were evaluated. It was found that all the changes had civilizational backgrounds, or even direct causes. In none of those schisms, could it be found that religions changed civilizations, e.g. the rules of behavior of the people. It was always the opposite. Notes: |
