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This book is dedicated to
freedom and human dignity.
Contents
Preface i
Introduction 1
ONE Seeds of Tyranny 4
TWO Political Maneuvering: 14
Making Christianity Palatable
to the Romans
THREE
Deciding Upon Doctrine: 30
Sex, Free Will, Reincarnation
and the Use of Force
FOUR
The Church Takes Over: 41
The Dark Ages
FIVE
The Church Fights Change: 54
The Middle Ages
SIX
Controlling the Human Spirit: 76
The Inquisition and Slavery
SEVEN The Reformation: 93
Converting the Populace
114
EIGHT The Witch Hunts:
The End of Magic and Miracles
NINE Alienation From Nature
TEN A World Without God
ELEVEN Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Illustration Credits
139
165
185
189
208
213
220
Preface
In June of 1995 the Chicago Tribune reported that Pope John
Paul II had urged the Roman Catholic Church to seize the
"particularly propitious" occasion of the new millennium to
recognize "the dark side of its history."1 In a 1994 confidential
letter to cardinals which was later leaked to the Italian press, he
asked,
How can one remain silent about the many forms
of violence perpetrated in the name of the
faithÑwars of religion, tribunals of the
Inquisition
rights
and other forms
of
of violations of the
persons?2
Unfortunately, too many have remained silent. Several years
ago I listened in amazement as an acquaintance spoke of how the
Christian Church had embodied the best of Western civilization
and how it had brought peace and understanding to the people it
touched. He seemed entirely unaware of the Church's dark past.
I decided to prepare a short presentation chronicling the dark
side of Christian historyÑa presentation to help balance the
perception that organized Christianity has historically lived up to
its professed principles and ideals.
I assumed that I would easily find all the information
necessary for this presentation at the bookstore, but was soon
shocked to find so little available on the subject. While historians
have certainly written about the dark side of Christian history,
their words have largely stayed within the confines of academe.
And few have written of Christianity's role in creating a world
in which people feel alienated from the sacred. Why, at a time
when so many are searching for deeper spiritual meaning, isn't
THE DARK SIDE OF CHRISTIAN HISTORY
there more accessible information about the history of the
institutions which are purported to convey such spiritual truth?
Without understanding the dark side of religious history, one
might think that religion and spirituality are one and the same.
Yet, organized religion has a very long history of curtailing and
containing spirituality, one's personal and private relationship
with God, the sacred, or the divine.
This book is what became of that short presentation. My
intention is to offer, not a complete picture of Christian history,
but only the side which hurt so many and did such damage to
spirituality. It is in no way intended to diminish the beautiful
work that countless Christian men and women have done to truly
help others. And it is certainly not intended as a defense of or
tribute to any other religion.
Helen Ellerbe
February 1996
Introduction
The Christian church has left a legacy, a world view, that
permeates every aspect of Western society, both secular and
religious. It is a legacy that fosters sexism, racism, the intolerance
of difference, and the desecration of the natural environment.
The Church, throughout much of its history, has demonstrated
a disregard for human freedom, dignity, and self-
determination. It has attempted to control, contain and confine
spirituality, the relationship between an individual and God. As
a result, Christianity has helped to create a society in which
people are alienated not only from each other but also from the
divine.
This ChristianityÑcalled "orthodox Christianity" hereÑis
embedded in the belief in a singular, solely masculine, authoritarian
God who demands unquestioning obedience and who
mercilessly punishes dissent. Orthodox Christians believe that
fear is essential to sustain what they perceive to be a divinely
ordained hierarchical order in which a celestial God reigns
singularly at a pinnacle, far removed from the earth and all
humankind.
While orthodox Christianity originally represented but one of
many sets of early Christian beliefs, it was these Christians who
came to wield political power. By adapting their Christianity to
appeal to the Roman government, they won unprecedented
authority and privilege. Their church became known as the
Church. This newly acquired power enabled them to enforce
conformity to their practices. Persecuting those who did not
conform, however, required the Church to clarify its own
THEDARKSIDEOFCHRISTIANHISTORY
doctrine and ideology, to define exactly what was and was not
heresy. In doing so, the Church consistently chose tenets and
ideologies that best supported its control over the individual and
society.
As it took over leadership in Europe and the Roman Empire
collapsed, the Church all but wiped out education, technology,
science, medicine, history, art and commerce. The Church
amassed enormous wealth as the rest of society languished in the
dark ages. When dramatic social changes after the turn of the
millennium brought an end to the isolation of the era, the Church
fought to maintain its supremacy and control. It rallied an
increasingly dissident society against perceived enemies,
instigating attacks upon Muslims, Eastern Orthodox Christians,
and Jews. When these crusades failed to subdue dissent, the
Church turned its force against European society itself, launching
a brutal assault upon southern France and instituting the Inquisition.
The crusades and even the early centuries of the Inquisition
did little to teach people a true understanding of orthodox
Christianity. It was the Protestant Reformation and the Catholic
Counter Reformation that accomplished this. Only during the
Reformation did the populace of Europe adopt more than a
veneer of Christianity. The Reformation terrified people with
threats of the devil and witchcraft. The common perception that
the physical world was imbued with God's presence and with
magic was replaced during the Reformation with a new belief
that divine assistance was no longer possible and that the
physical world belonged only to the devil. It was a three hundred
year holocaust against all who dared believe in divine assistance
and magic that finally secured the conversion of Europe to
orthodox Christianity.
By convincing people that God was separate from the physical
world, orthodox ChristianityÑperhaps unwittinglyÑlaid the
foundation for the modern world, a world believed to be
INTRODUCTION 3
mechanical and determined, a world in which God is at most a
remote and impersonal creator. People came to attribute their
sense of powerlessness, not so much to their sinful human nature
as to their insignificance in such a world. The theories of
scientists and philosophers such as Isaac Newton, Rene Descartes
and Charles Darwin reinforced orthodox Christian beliefs such
as the inevitability of struggle and the necessity for domination.
Such beliefs, however, are now proving not only to have serious
drawbacks, but also to be scientifically limited.
Orthodox Christianity has also had devastating impact upon
humanity's relationship with nature. As people began to believe
that God was removed from and disdainful of the physical world,
they lost their reverence for nature. Holidays, which had helped
people integrate the seasons with their lives, were changed into
solemn commemorations of biblical events bearing no connection
to the earth's cycles. The perception of time changed so that it
no longer seemed related to seasonal cycles. Newtonian science
seemed to confirm that the earth was no more than the inevitable
result of the mechanistic operation of inanimate components; it
confirmed that the earth lacked sanctity.
The dark side of Christian history can help us understand the
severing of our connection with the sacred. It can teach us of the
most insidious and damaging slavery of all: the control of people
through dictating and containing their spirituality. This ignored
side of history can illuminate the ideas and beliefs which foster
the denigration of human rights, the intolerance of difference,
and the desecration of the natural environment. Once recognized,
we can prevent such beliefs from ever wreaking such destruction
again. When we understand how we have come to be separated
from the divine, we can begin to heal not only the scars, but the
very alienation itself.
Chapter One
Seeds of Tyranny
100 -400 C.E.
Those who sought to control spirituality, to restrict personal
relationships with God, gained prominence within the first
centuries of the Christian era. Their beliefs formed the ideological
foundation for much of the dark side of the Christian
church's history. Committed to the belief in singular supremacy,
these orthodox Christians thought that fear and submission to
hierarchical authority were imperative. Not all Christians agreed.
In fact, contrary to the conventional depiction of the first
centuries of Christianity as a time of harmony and unity, early
Christians disagreed about everything from the nature of God
and the roles of men and women to the way one finds enlightenment.
Perhaps most pivotal to the group of Christians who would
triumphÑcalled "orthodox Christians" here*Ñwas the belief in
a singular supremacy, the belief that divinity is manifest in only
one image. The belief in a singular God differed radically from
the widespread belief that divinity could be manifest in a
multiplicity of forms and images. As people believe that God can
* The use of the term "orthodox" in this book refers to the traditional ideology
within most denominations of Christianity, not to any specific church or
denomination.
SEEDSOFTYRANNY 5
have but one face, so they tend to believe that worth or godliness
among humans can also have but one face. Different genders,
races, classes, or beliefs are all ordered as better-than or less-
than one another. Even the notion of two differing opinions
existing harmoniously becomes foreign; one must prevail and be
superior to the other.
Within such a belief structure, God is understood to reign
singularly from the pinnacle of a hierarchy based not upon love
and support, but upon fear. The Bible repeatedly exhorts people
to fear God: "Fear God, and keep His commandments: for this
is the whole duty of man."1 "Blessed is everyone that feareth
the Lord."2 "Fear Him, which after He hath killed hath power
to cast into hell; yea, I say unto you, Fear Him."3 The third
century Church Father, Tertullian, could not imagine how God
could not demand fear:
But how are you going to love, without some
fear that you do not love? Surely [such a God]
is neither your Father, towards whom your love
for duty's sake should be consistent with fear
because of His power; nor your proper Lord,
whom you should love for His humanity and fear
as your teacher.4
One's beliefs about God have impact upon one's beliefs about
society. As the Lord's Prayer states, God's will should "be done
on earth as it is in heaven." Orthodox Christians believed that
people should fear their earthly ruler as they fear God. The
fourth century St. John Chrysostom describes the absolute
necessity for fear:
...if you were to deprive the world of magistrates
and the fear that comes from them, houses, cities
and nations would fall upon one another in
unrestrained confusion, there being no one to
repress, or repel, or persuade them to be peaceful
through the fear of punishment.5
THEDARKSIDEOFCHRISTIANHISTORY
To the orthodox, fear was essential to maintaining order.
Christians, such as the second century Marcion, who stressed
the merciful, forgiving and loving nature of God, found themselves
at odds with the orthodox. In orthodox Christian eyes,
God must be prone to anger and demand discipline and punishment.
Tertullian wrote:
Now, if [Marcion's God] is susceptible of no
feeling of rivalry, or anger, or damage, or
injury, as one who refrains from exercising
judicial power, I cannot tell how any system of
disciplineÑand that, too, a plenary oneÑcan be
consistent in him.6
Scholars have suggested that the first line of the Christian creed,
"I believe in one God, Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and
earth," was originally written to exclude Marcion's followers by
emphasizing the monotheistic and judgmental nature of God.7
Orthodox Christians placed great importance upon the
singular authority of the bishop, upon rankings within the clergy,
and upon distinction between the clergy and the laity. As there
is only one God in heaven, declared the first century bishop,
Ignatius of Antioch, so there can be only one bishop in the
Church.8 "Your bishop presides in the place of God, and your
[priests] in the place... of the apostles," he wrote. "Apart from
these, there is no church."9 Such beliefs and attitudes, however,
were certainly not shared by all Christians. The orthodox
emphasized rank to such an extent that one Gnostic Christian
wrote of them: "They wanted to command one another, outrivalling
one another in their vain ambition," lusting "for power
over one another," "each one imagining that he is superior to the
others."10
Not all Christians accepted the belief in singular supremacy.
Some Gnostic Christians understood God to be multi-faceted,
having both masculine and feminine aspects. Some thought of the
divine as a dyad; one side being "the Ineffable, the Depth, the
SEEDSOFTYRANNY 7
Primal Father" while the other side was "Grace, Silence, the
Womb and Mother of the All."11 In the Gnostic Apocryphon of
John, a vision of God appears saying, "I am the Father, I am the
Mother, I am the Child."12 Theodotus, a Gnostic teacher, said,
"each one knows the Lord after his own fashion, and not all in
the same way."13 To root out Gnostic Christians from the
orthodox, the second century orthodox Bishop Irenaeus encouraged
Christians to "confess with the tongue one God the
Father."14
Without the belief in singular supremacy, it followed that
Gnostic Christians would also reject hierarchical order and strict
rankings within their church. In contrast to the orthodox Ignatius
of Antioch who believed that the rankings of bishop, priest and
deacon mirrored the heavenly hierarchy,15 some Gnostic Christians
did not even differentiate between clergy and laity, much
less between stations of the clergy. Tertullian described the
Gnostics:
So today one man is bishop and tomorrow
another; the person who is a deacon today,
tomorrow is a reader; the one who is a priest
today is a layman tomorrow; for even on the
laity they impose the functions of priesthood!16
And:
...they all have access equally, they listen
equally, they pray equallyÑeven pagans, if any
happen to come... They also share the kiss of
peace with all who come...17
Within an orthodox belief structure, there is no understanding
of shared authority and supremacy between genders; one must be
superior to the other. Perceiving the singular face of God to be
male, orthodox Christians considered male supremacy an
extension of heavenly order. St. Augustine wrote in the early
fifth century, "we must conclude, that a husband is meant to rule
over his wife as the spirit rules over the flesh."18 In his first
THE DARK SIDE OF CHRISTIAN HISTORY
letter to the Corinthians, St. Paul tried to explain the reason for
male supremacy:
For a man did not originally spring from
woman, but woman was made out of man; and
was not created for woman's sake, but woman
for the sake of man.19
As late as 1977, Pope Paul VI still explained that women were
barred from the priesthood "because our Lord was a man."20
Among the orthodox, women were to take submissive roles.
In the first letter to Timothy, St. Paul says:
Let a woman learn in silence with all
submissiveness, I permit no woman to teach or
to have authority over men; she is to keep
silent.21
When Christian monks in the fourth century hacked the great
scholar Hypatia to death with oyster shells, St. Cyril explained
that it was because she was an iniquitous female who had
presumed, against God's commandments, to teach men.22
There were early Christians, however, who embraced neither
the idea that God is exclusively male, nor the concept of male
supremacy. An early group known as the Essenes, many of
whose writings have been discovered in the Dead Sea Scrolls,
thought of divinity as having a feminine aspect. In the Essene
Gospel of Peace, Jesus says, "I will lead you into the kingdom
of our Mother's angels..."23 A Gnostic text tells how Eve, the
daughter of Sophia who had wished the first heavenly light into
the world, gives life to Adam:
...[Eve] said, 'Adam, live! Rise up on the
earth!' Immediately her word became a deed.
For when Adam rose up, immediately he opened
his eyes. When he saw her, he said, 'You will be
called "the mother of the living" because you
are the one who gave me life.'24
Not all early Christian women accepted subservient roles.
SEEDSOFTYRANNY 9
While Gnostics held a wide range of views, several of their
writings refer to Mary Magdalene as one of the most important
leaders of the early Christian movement. Some believed that she
was the first to see Jesus Christ resurrected and that she
challenged Peter's authority as part of the emerging Church
hierarchy. Tertullian was appalled at the role of women among
Gnostics:
The... women of the heretics, how wanton they
are! For they are bold enough to teach, to
dispute, to enact exorcisms, to undertake cures
Ñit may be even to baptize!25
Another point of contention among Christians dealt with the
nature of truth and how an individual might become enlightened.
Much of this argument centered around the resurrection of
Christ, around whether it was Christ's physical body or his spirit
that had been resurrected. Orthodox Christians insisted that it
had been Christ's physical body, to use Tertullian's words, his
"flesh suffused with blood, built up with bones, interwoven with
nerves, entwined with veins... "26 They believed that since it was
Christ's physical body, the resurrection was a one-time
occurrence, never to be experienced again.
The orthodox insisted that one could learn of Christ only
through those who had experienced this resurrection, the
Apostles, or those men appointed as their successors. This
confined power and authority to a small few and established a
specific chain of command.27 It restricted the avenues through
which one could discover God. Orthodox, catholic ("universal")
Christians claimed to be those appointed successors of the
Apostles and thus the only ones who could enlighten others.
Bishop Irenaeus declared:
It is incumbent to obey the priests who are in the
Church... those who possess the succession from
the apostles; those who, together with the
THE DARK SIDE OF CHRISTIAN HISTORY
succession of the episcopate, have received the
certain gift of truth.28
To this day the Pope traces his authority and primacy to Peter
himself, "first of the apostles," since he was "first witness of the
resurrection."29
Some Gnostics, however, called the belief in the resurrection
of Christ's literal, physical body rather than his spirit the "faith
of fools."30 They took issue both with the idea that anyone had
seen Christ in physical body after the resurrection as well as with
the assertion that Peter had been the first to experience the
resurrected Christ. Even the canonized gospels of Mark and John
relate how Jesus first appeared, not to Peter or to the Apostles,
but to Mary Magdalene.31 By Jesus's saying to Mary "Touch me
not,"32 some think that Jesus implied he was in spirit form rather
than in physical body. Believing Christ's spirit to have been
resurrected suggests that anyone, regardless of his or her rank,
could experience or "see the Lord" in dreams or visions.
Anyone could become empowered with the same authority as the
Apostles.33 Anyone could have access to and develop his or her
own relationship with God.
Christians disagreed about the very nature of truth. To the
orthodox, who believed that truth could come only through the
successors of the Apostles, truth was static and never-changing.
It had been revealed only once at the resurrection. Consequently,
they thought that one should learn of God only through the
Church, not from personal inquiry and not from one's own
experience. Blind faith was considered more important than
personal understanding. Bishop Irenaeus cautioned not to seek
answers "such as every one discovers for himself," but rather to
accept in faith that which the Church teaches and which "can be
clearly, unambiguously and harmoniously understood by all."34
He wrote, "If... we cannot discover explanations of all those
things in Scripture... we should leave things of that nature to
God who created us, being most properly assured that the
SEEDS OF TYRANNY 11
Scriptures are indeed perfect."35 Tertullian declared:
We want no curious disputation after possessing
Christ Jesus, no inquisition after enjoying the
gospel! With our faith, we desire no further
belief.36
One should unquestioningly accept and submit to whatever the
Church teaches.
Indeed, orthodox Christians deemed rigorous personal pursuit
of truth and understanding an indication of heresy. As Tertullian
wrote:
This rule... was taught by Christ, and raises
amongst ourselves no other questions than those
which heresies introduce, and which make men
heretics.37
And:
But on what ground are heretics strangers and
enemies to the apostles, if it be not from the
difference of their teaching, which each
individual of his own mere will has either
advanced or received?38
Since the orthodox believed truth to be known only to the
successors of the Apostles, one could learn of it only by
accepting the Church's teachings in blind faith.
Others, however, believing that Christ's spirit and presence
could be experienced by anyone at any time, considered truth to
be dynamic and ever-increasing. Some Gnostics believed that
truth and Gnosis or "knowledge" was found, not by looking to
the Church, but by looking within oneself. Self-knowledge would
lead to knowing God. A Gnostic teacher named Monoimus
wrote:
Look for (God) by taking yourself as the starting
point... Learn the sources of sorrow, joy, love,
hate... If you carefully investigate these matters
you will find him in yourself.39
THE DARK SIDE OF CHRISTIAN HISTORY
The first century Simon Magus taught that within each human
being dwells "the Boundless power, which... is the root of the
universe."40 The path to enlightenment involved not simply
accepting the words of the Church on faith, but an active
personal search for understanding. A Gnostic text reads "...the
rational soul who wearied herself in seekingÑshe learned about
God."41
These Christians believed self-exploration to be imperative to
one's spiritual path. In the Gnostic Gospel According to Thomas,
Jesus says:
If you bring forth what is within you, what you
bring forth will save you. If you do not bring
forth what is within you, what you do not bring
forth will destroy you.42
They believed that searching could dispel the ignorance that
produced a nightmarish existence in which one is caught in
"many illusions" and experiences "terror and confusion and
instability and doubt and division. "43 The Gospel of Truth reads:
ignorance... brought about anguish and terror.
And the anguish grew solid like a fog, so that no
one was able to see.44
Searching within oneself could bring the knowledge and
enlightenment to dispel such ignorance. They believed that Jesus
had encouraged self-exploration. Jesus said, "Seek, and ye shall
find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you" and "the Kingdom
of God is within you."45
Just as the orthodox wanted to control truth, so they wanted
strict control over who could dispense that truth. Early
Christians differed sharply about the role of the Church. Gnostic
Christians who valued personal exploration believed that the
structure of the Church should remain flexible, while orthodox
Christians insisted upon strict adherence to a singular Church.46
Bishop Irenaeus insisted there could be only one church, and
outside that church "there is no salvation."47 He said of the
SEEDS OF TYRANNY 13
Church, "she is the entrance to life, all others are thieves and
robbers."48 Ignatius, the Bishop of Antioch, wrote, "Let no man
deceive himself: if any one be not within the altar, he is deprived
of the bread of God. "49 And Clement, the Bishop of Rome from
90-100 C.E., argued that God alone rules all things, that He lays
down the law, punishing rebels and rewarding the obedient, and
that His authority is delegated to Church leaders. Clement went
as far as to say that whoever disobeys these divinely ordained
authorities has disobeyed God Himself and should receive the
death penalty.50
Long before the Church's attempt to control spirituality would
take its devastating toll, the seeds of its tyranny were evident in
the ideology of early orthodox Christians. Their belief in
singular supremacy limited the way one could understand God
and it eliminated any representation of shared supremacy. It
encouraged a fear-based authoritarian structure that segregates
people into positions of superiority or inferiority, restricts
personal empowerment, and demands unquestioning obedience.
Although orthodox Christians represented only one of many
early branches, within a few centuries they had effectively
suppressed the diversity of early beliefs and ideas. Orthodox
Christian beliefs became synonymous with Christianity itself.
Chapter TWO
Political Maneuvering:
Making Christianity
Palatable to the Romans
200 -500 C.E.
Christianity owes its large membership to the political
maneuvering of orthodox Christians. They succeeded in turning
Christianity from an abhorred minor cult into the official religion
of the Roman Empire. Their goal was to create what Bishop
Irenaeus called "the catholic church dispersed throughout the
whole world, even to the ends of the earth."1 To that end, they
used nearly any means. They revised Christian writings and
adapted their principles to make Christianity more acceptable.
They pandered to Roman authorities. They incorporated elements
of paganism. Orthodox Christianity appealed to the government,
not as a religion that would encourage enlightenment or spirituality,
but rather as one that would bring order and conformity to
the faltering empire. The Roman government in turn granted
orthodox Christians unprecedented privilege, enabling the
Christian church to become the very sort of authoritarian power
that Jesus had resisted.
Winning acceptance for Christianity was no small feat;
Christians were not well-liked within the Roman Empire.
POLITICALMANEUVERING 15
Romans had easily incorporated new gods and goddesses into
their pantheon with the hope of adding to their own protection
and security. The 313 C.E. Edict of Milan, for example, granted
everyone religious freedom so "whatever divinity (is) enthroned
in heaven may be well-disposed and propitious towards us and
all those under our authority."2 Christians, however, believing
theirs to be the one and only God, refused to allow Him to be
worshipped alongside others. When they refused to profess
loyalty to the Roman pantheon of gods, Christians were seen as
likely traitors to the Roman state. For once Roman emperors
began to represent themselves as divine, loyalty to the Roman
gods also symbolized loyalty to the Roman state.
Christians held attitudes that did little to endear them to
Romans. Bishop Irenaeus, for example, declared, "We have no
need of the law for we are already far above it in our godly
behavior."3 Accounts from around the year 200 reflect the
dislike Romans had for Christians:
...they were 'the ultimate filth', a gang 'of
ignorant men and credulous women', who 'with
meetings at night, solemn fasts and inhuman
food' made up 'a hole-in-the-corner, shadow-
loving crew', 'silent in public but clacking away
in corners', 'spitting on the gods and laughing
at holy things...'4
Yet, despite such an environment, Christians won not only
acceptance but political prominence as the official religion of the
Roman Empire under Emperor Constantine in the fourth century.
The orthodox used politically expedient means to accomplish
such ends. They designed an organization not to encourage
spirituality, but to manage large numbers of people. They
simplified the criteria for membership. The Catholic Church
decided that anyone who confessed the Creed, accepted baptism,
participated in worship, obeyed the Church hierarchy and
believed "the one and only truth from the apostles, which is
THEDARKSIDEOFCHRISTIANHISTORY
handed down by the Church"5 was a Christian. As one historian
writes, such criteria suggest that "to achieve salvation, an
ignoramus need only believe without understanding and obey the
authorities..."6 The orthodox ignored the argument that a true
Christian could only be identified by his or her behavior and
maturity, not by simply going through the motions of ritual.
Some Gnostic Christians, for example, insisted that Jesus had
said, "By their fruits ye shall know them..."7 Baptism did not
necessarily make one a Christian, they said, since many people
"go down into the water and come up without having received
anything."8 The simple standards of the orthodox, however,
made it much easier to garner a large following.
Orthodox Christians assembled the Bible not to bring all the
gospels together, but rather to encourage uniformity. From the
plethora of Christian gospels, Bishop Irenaeus compiled the first
list of biblical writings that resemble today's New Testament
around 180 C.E. By 393 and 397, Bishop Athanasius had a
similar list ratified by the Church councils of Hippo and
Carthage.9 By prohibiting and burning any other writings, the
Catholic Church eventually gave the impression that this Bible
and its four canonized Gospels represented the only original
Christian view. And yet, as late as 450, Theodore of Cyrrhus
said that there were at least 200 different gospels circulating in
his own diocese.10 Even the Catholic Encyclopedia now admits
that the "idea of a complete and clear-cut canon of the New
Testament existing from the beginning... has no foundation in
history."11
Beyond choosing from the many gospels and writings to
construct the Bible, the Church edited its message with each
translation. The Roman philosopher Celsus, witness to the
falsification of Christian writings already in the second century,
said of the revisionists,
Some of them, as it were in a drunken state
producing self-induced visions, remodel their
POLITICALMANEUVERING 17
Gospel from its first written form, and reform it
so that they may be able to refute the objections
brought against it.12
The Catholic Encyclopedia concedes that "In all the departments
forgery and interpolation as well as ignorance had wrought
mischief on a grand scale."13 Despite Church prohibitions
against any further research into the origins of the Gospels,
scholars have shown that all four canonized Gospels have been
doctored and revised.14 While the Church claimed that truth was
static in nature and had been revealed only once, it continually
found cause for changing that truth.
Attempts at uniformity did not entirely succeed. Even the four
canonized Gospels contradict one another. The Gospel of
Matthew tells us that Jesus was an aristocrat descended from
David via Solomon, whereas the Gospel of Luke tells us that
Jesus was from much more humble stock, and the Gospel of
Mark says that Jesus was born to a poor carpenter. At his birth,
Jesus was visited by kings according to Matthew, but according
to Luke, he was visited by shepherds. And at Jesus's death, the
Gospels of Mark and Matthew tell us that Jesus's last words
were "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" But
according to Luke, he said, "Father, into thy hands I commend
my spirit," and in John he says simply, "it is finished."15 As the
authors of Holy Blood, Holy Grail ask, "How can (the Gospels)
be unimpugnable when they impugn each other?"16
Yet, it was the Church's insistence upon uniformity that
appealed to the Roman Emperor Constantine. Constantine, a man
who had his own son executed and his wife boiled alive,17 saw
in Christianity a pragmatic means of bolstering his own military
power and uniting the vast and troubled Roman Empire. The
story is told of Constantine's dream which led to his acceptance
of Christianity in which he saw a cross in the sky inscribed with
the words, "In this sign thou shalt conquer." While he personally
converted to Christianity only on his deathbed, Constantine
THEDARKSIDEOFCHRISTIANHISTORY
recognized Christianity as a means of conquering dissention
within the Roman Empire and instated it as the Empire's official
religion.
Orthodox Christians dissociated Christianity from political
insurgence. In all likelihood, they compromised the truth of
Jesus's political involvement, holding Jews rather than Romans
accountable for his death. The canonized Gospels conspicuously
ignore the tension of increasing Jewish resistance to the Roman
occupation of Judea during Jesus's lifetime. One exception is in
the Gospel of Luke when it recounts how authorities "found this
man [Jesus] perverting our nation, and forbidding [Jews] to give
tribute to Caesar."18 Less than 40 years after Jesus's death, that
tension erupted into a violent war between the Roman army and
Jews.
Jesus was probably engaged in the concerns of his time as
both a political and spiritual leader. The term Christ, both in
Hebrew and in Greek, was a functional title for a king or a
leader.19 Given the political environment, it is far more likely
that the RomansÑnot the JewsÑkilled him for his political
activity. Crucifixion had been the standard Roman punishment
for sedition and the cross a symbol of Jewish resistance to
Roman occupation.20 Blaming Jews for Jesus's death was most
likely a convenient means of obscuring Jesus's political involvement
and dissociating Christianity from political rebellion.21
Once Christianity gained prominence, the orthodox allowed
the Roman emperor to directly influence Christian doctrine. To
settle ideological disputes in the Church, Constantine introduced
and presided over the first ecumenical council at Nicea in 325.
In his book The Heretics, Walter Nigg describes the means of
2.1 The Roman Emperor Constantine believed Christianity would provide
a means to greater political and military power. This illustration depicts him
on the eve of an important battle when he is said to have seen a cross in
the sky with the words, "In this sign thou shalt conquer."
POLITICAL MANEUVERING 19
THE DARK SIDE OF CHRISTIAN HISTORY
reaching a consensus:
Constantine, who treated religious questions
solely from a political point of view, assured
unanimity by banishing all the bishops who
would not sign the new profession of faith. In
this way unity was achieved. 'It was altogether
unheard-of that a universal creed should be
instituted solely on the authority of the emperor,
who as a catechumen was not even admitted to
the mystery of the Eucharist and was totally
unempowered to rule on the highest mysteries of
the faith. Not a single bishop said a single word
against this monstrous thing.'22
One of the political decisions reached at the Council of Nicea
established the Nicene creed, a means of keeping the belief in
singular supremacy intact while simultaneously incorporating
Jesus into the image of God. Jesus was not to be considered
mortal; he was an aspect of God which could be understood as
the Father, Son and Holy Ghost. This new Holy Trinity mimicked
a much older portrait of divinity that embodied the value
of difference. For instance, the vision of God in the Gnostic
Secret Book of John, "I am the Father, I am the Mother, I am
the Child,"23 illustrates the concept of synergy where the whole
created is greater than the sum of the parts. Another text called
The Sophia of Jesus Christ tells how masculine and feminine
energies together created a
...first-begotten, androgynous son. His male
name is called 'First-Begettress Sophia, Mother
2.2 A depiction of the Christian Trinity, a concept that allowed Jesus to be
considered part of God while still maintaining the belief in a singular
supremacy. It took the older concept of trinity illustrating the value of
difference, in which a man and a woman together create a synergy,
something that is greater than them both, and replaced it with a trinity that
exalted sameness.
POLITICAL MANEUVERING
THE DARK SIDE OF CHRISTIAN HISTORY
of the Universe.' Some call her 'Love.' Now
the first-begotten is called 'Christ. '24
Even the later Islamic Koran mistook the Christian Trinity for
this archetypal one, referring to it as the trinity of God, Mary
and Jesus.25
The Nicene Creed, however, established a trinity that extolled
sameness and singularity. All reference to a synergy, an energy,
a magic, that could result from two different people coming
together was lost. The council eliminated the image of father,
mother and child, replacing the Hebrew feminine term for spirit,
ruah, with the Greek neuter term, pneuma.26 The trinity was
now comprised of the father, the son, and a neuter, sexless
spirit. Christians depicted it as three young men of identical
shape and appearance.27 Later medieval sermons would compare
the trinity "to identical reflections in the several fragments of a
broken mirror or to the identical composition of water, snow and
ice."28 Two popes would ban the seventeenth century Spanish
nun Maria d'Agreda's book, The Mystical City of God, for
implying a trinity between God, Mary and Jesus.29 All allusions
to the value of difference were lost; divinity was to be perceived
as a singular image, either male or neuter but never female.
Yet, it was their belief in the many faces of God that helped
Romans accommodate Christianity, not the uniqueness of
Christian theology. Christianity resembled certain elements of
Roman belief, particularly the worship of Mithra, or Mithraism.
As "Protector of the Empire,"30 Mithra was closely tied to the
sun gods, Helios and Apollo. Mithra's birthday on December 25,
close to the winter solstice, became Jesus's birthday. Shepherds
were to have witnessed Mithra's birth and were to have partaken
in a last supper with Mithra before he returned to heaven.31
Mithra's ascension, correlating to the sun's return to prominence
2.3 Holding Jews rather than Romans accountable for Jesus's crucifixion
was most likely a means of making Christianity more acceptable to the
Roman government by ignoring Jesus's probable role as a political rebel.
POLITICAL MANEUVERING 23
THE DARK SIDE OF CHRISTIAN HISTORY
around the spring equinox, became the Christian holiday of
Easter. Christians took over a cave-temple dedicated to Mithra
in Rome on the Vatican Hill, making it the seat of the Catholic
Church. The Mithraic high priest's title, Pater Patrum, soon
became the title for the bishop of Rome, Papa or Pope.32 The
fathers of Christianity explained the remarkable similarities of
Mithraism as the work of the devil, declaring the much older
legends of Mithraism to be an insidious imitation of the one true
faith.33
With no initial support from the Church, the figure of Mary
became revered as an image for the feminine aspect of God. As
Christianity paralleled Mithraism, so the worship of Mary
resembled the worship of faces of the Goddess, particularly that
of mother/son traditions such as Isis/Horus, Juno/Mars, Cybele/
Attis, and Neith/Ra. Mary was perceived to be a more accessible,
approachable and humane figure than the judgmental,
almighty God. She was more gentle and forgiving and much
more likely to help one in everyday affairs. The fifth century
historian Sozomen describes Mary's character in his writing of
the Anastasia in Constantinople:
A divine power was there manifested, and was
helpful both in waking visions and in dreams,
often for the relief of many diseases and for
those afflicted by some sudden transmutation in
their affairs. The power was attributed to Mary,
the Mother of God, the holy Virgin, for she does
manifest herself in this way.34
Neither the Bible nor the early Church encouraged Marian
worship or even recognized Mary as a saint.35 Although the
Council of Nicea reaffirmed that Christ was indeed born from
the Virgin Mary, the fourth century Bishop Epiphanius expressed
2.4 The early Church reluctantly permitted worship of the Virgin Mary. In
doing so, it allowed pre-Christian veneration of feminine divinity to
continue as Marian worship.
POLITICAL MANEUVERING 25
THE DARK SIDE OF CHRISTIAN HISTORY
the sentiment of orthodox Christians: "Let the Father, the Son
and the Holy Spirit be worshipped, but let no one worship
Mary. "36 During the first five centuries, Christian art depicted
Mary in a less venerable state than even the Magi, the three wise
men, who wore halos while Mary wore none.37 St. Chrysostom
in the fourth century accused Mary of trying to domineer and
"make herself illustrious through her son."38 Diminishing
Mary's significance was a way of discouraging her association
with older pre-Christian faces of the Goddess. Bishop Epiphanius
wrote:
God came down from heaven, the Word clothed
himself in flesh from a holy Virgin, not, assuredly,
that the Virgin should be adored, nor to
make a goddess of her, nor that we should offer
sacrifice in her name, nor that, now after so
many generations, women should once again be
appointed priests... (God) gave her no charge to
minister baptism or bless disciples, nor did he
bid her rule over the earth.39
Christianity, as the orthodox understood it, was about the
singular power of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, not about
any feminine aspect of God.
Nevertheless, Marian worship persisted. When a council at
Ephesus in 431 implied that Mary could be safely worshipped,
crowds burst into delirious celebrations, accompanied by
torchlight processions and shouts of "Praised be the Theotokos
(Mother of God)!"40 Older temples and sacred sites, once
dedicated to pre-Christian goddesses, were rededicated or
replaced with churches for Mary. In Rome on the Esquitine hill
the Santa Maria Maggiore replaced Cybele's temple. Near the
Pantheon a church dedicated to Mary adjoined Isis's sanctuary
while another was built on a site which had been dedicated to
Minerva. On the Capitoline in Aracoeli the Santa Maria supplanted
a temple of the Phoenician goddess Tanit. In Cyprus,
POLITICALMANEUVERING 27
shrines that were Aphrodite's hallowed ground easily became
those of Mary, who to this day is still called Panaghia
Aphroditessa.41 Geoffrey Ashe notes in The Virgin:
Like Cybele [Mary] guarded Rome. Like Athene
she protected various other cities. Like Isis she
watched over seafarers, becoming and remaining
the 'Star of the Sea'. Like Juno she cared for
pregnant women... She wore a crown recalling
Cybele's. Enthroned with her child she
resembled Isis with Horus. She even had touches
of Neith about her.42
The Church had not subdued veneration for feminine divinity; it
had simply renamed it.
Interestingly, the Christian version of feminine divinity
excluded any portrayal of one of the most powerful aspects of
the Goddess, the face of the old, wise crone. Three faces of
feminine divinity were common throughout pre-Christian
traditions, that of the Virgin or Maiden, the Mother, and the
Crone. Mary embodied the first two as both Virgin and Mother.
The third face of the Crone, representing the culmination of
feminine power and wisdom, was excluded from the Christian
canon of saints. The Church's rejection of the Crone is
significant in that it is precisely the Crone figure who later came
to symbolize the ultimate enemy of the ChurchÑthe witch.
The Church reaped enormous gains by compromising its
ideology and adapting to prevalent beliefs. In 319 Constantine
passed a law excusing the clergy from paying taxes or serving in
the army43 and in 355 bishops were exempted from ever being
tried in secular courts.44 In 380 Emperor Theodosius passed a
decree that read:
We shall believe in the single Deity of the
Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, under the
concept of equal majesty and of the Holy Trinity.
1. We command that those persons who follow
THE DARK SIDE OF CHRISTIAN HISTORY
this rule shall embrace the name of Catholic
Christians. The rest, however, whom We adjudge
demented and insane, shall sustain the infamy of
heretical dogmas, their meeting places shall not
receive the name of churches, and they shall be
smitten first by divine vengeance and secondly by
the retribution of Our own initiative, which We
shall assume in accordance with the divine
judgement.45
The Theodosian laws made it illegal to disagree with the Church.
And a 388 prohibition forbade any public discussions of religious
topics.
The ancient, multidimensional Pagan worship was prohibited
in 392 and considered a criminal activity. In 410 the emperor
Honorius decreed:
Let all who act contrary to the sacred laws know
that their creeping in their heretical superstition
to worship at the most remote oracle is punishable
by exile and blood, should they again be
tempted to assemble at such places for criminal
activities...46
Pagan temples were pillaged and destroyed. A 386 written
protest to the Roman government of Christian pillaging remains:
If they [the Christians] hear of a place with
something worth raping away, they immediately
claim that someone is making sacrifices there
and committing abominations, and pay the place
a visitÑyou can see them scurrying there, these
guardians of good order (for that is what they
call themselves), these brigands, if brigands is
not too mild a word; for brigands at least try to
conceal what they have done: if you call them
brigands, they are outraged, but these people,
on the contrary, show pride in their exploits...
they believe they deserve rewards!47
POLITICALMANEUVERING 29
By 435 a law threatened any heretic in the Roman Empire
with death. Judaism remained the only other legally recognized
religion. Yet, Jews were isolated as much as possible, with
intermarriage between Jew and Christian carrying the same
penalty as adultery: the woman would be executed.48 The Church
had triumphed. The belief in but one face of God had led to the
legal enforcement of but one religion.
Orthodox Christians acted on their belief about God. As they
perceived God to control in an authoritarian manner, so they set
about finding a way in which they, in God's name, could
exercise similar authoritarian control. To that end, they built an
organization that appealed to the government of the Roman
Empire by promoting uniformity and obedience. In all likelihood,
these Christians altered the story of Jesus's death in order
to dissociate Christianity from rebellion against Roman authority.
They established criteria that made it easy to recruit large
numbers of people. The early Church compromised its ideology
to accommodate contemporary beliefs. It was through political
maneuvering that the Church won its standing as the official
religion of the Roman Empire and the accompanying secular
power and privilege.
Chapter Three
Deciding upon Doctrine:
Sex, Free Will, Reincarnation
and the Use of Force
300 -500 C.E.
The Church formulated its doctrine regarding sex, free will
and reincarnation in response to early heretics. In each case, it
chose ideological positions which best justified Church control
over the individual and over society. The Church also developed
a doctrine which justified its use of force in order to compel
obedience. It was not long before the Church needed that
doctrine to defend its violent suppression of heresy.
"Heresy" comes from the Greek hairesis meaning "choice."1
In the early centuries there was much to choose from within
ChristianityÑand consequently, many heresies. Gnostics were
joined by Marcionites, Montanists, Arians, Sabellians,
Nestorians, Monophysites, the Copts in Egypt, the Jacobites in
Syria, and the Armenian Orthodox Church in disagreeing with
the Catholic Church. The heresies surrounding Pelagius, Origen,
and the Donatists led to particularly significant new doctrine.
The Mannichaean heresy, while not leading to specific doctrine,
set a precedent for the Church's denial of unpopular aspects of
its own ideology.
DECIDINGUPONDOCTRINE 31
The Pelagian controversy brought about Church doctrine
regarding human free will and sexuality. Pelagius, an Irish monk
who arrived in Rome at the beginning of the fifth century,
believed that a person had freedom of will and responsibility for
his or her actions. He believed that a person's own efforts play
a part in determining whether or not he or she will be saved. In
Pelagius's eyes, reliance upon redemption by Christ should be
accompanied by individual responsibility and efforts to do good.2
In granting humans responsibility for their acts, the Creator gave
them freedom. As one historian writes:
Pelagius fought for the immeasurably precious
good of man's freedom. That freedom cannot be
surrendered without loss of human dignity...
Unless man's freedom to make his own decisions
is recognized, he is reduced to a mere
marionette. According to Pelagius, the Creator
conferred moral authority upon man, and to
detract from that authority is to cast doubt upon
man's likeness to God.3
Pelagius' most vehement opposition came from St. Augustine,
the celebrated Doctor of the Church and Bishop of Hippo.
Salvation, as Augustine saw it, is entirely in God's hands; there
is nothing an individual can do. God has chosen but a few people
to whom He will give bliss and salvation. It is for these few that
Christ came into the world. All others are damned for all
eternity. In Augustine's eyes, it is only God's grace and not any
action or willingness on the part of the individual that leads to
salvation.
Augustine believed that our freedom of will to choose good
over evil was lost with the sin of Adam. Adam's sin, that, in
Augustine's words, is in the "nature of the semen from which
we were propagated," brought suffering and death into the
world, took away our free will, and left us with an inherently
evil nature.4 To sin is now inevitable. Should we occasionally do
THEDARKSIDEOFCHRISTIANHISTORY
good, it is only because of irresistible grace. "When, therefore,
man lives according to man, not according to God, he is like the
devil," Augustine wrote.5 An individual, according to Augustine,
has little power to influence his or her predetermined fate and is
entirely dependent upon God for salvation.
Human sexuality, to Augustine, clearly demonstrates a human
inability to choose good over evil. Augustine based this belief
upon his own experience. Having himself led a promiscuous life
in his youth during which he fathered and then abandoned an
illegitimate child, he thought that sex was intrinsically evil. He
complained of sexual desire:
Who can control this when its appetite is
aroused? No one! In the very movement of this
appetite, then, it has no 'mode' that responds to
the decisions of the will... Yet what he wishes he
cannot accomplish... In the very movement of
the appetite, it has no mode corresponding to the
decision of the will.6
According to Augustine, human will is powerless either to
indulge sexual desire or to suppress it:
But even those who delight in this pleasure are
not moved to it at their own will, whether they
confine themselves to lawful or transgress to
unlawful pleasures; but sometimes this lust
importunes them in spite of themselves, and
sometimes fails them when they desire to feel it,
so that though lust rages in the mind, it stirs not
in the body. Thus, strangely enough, this
emotion not only fails to obey the legitimate
desire to beget offspring, but also refuses to
serve lascivious lust; and though it often opposes
its whole combined energy to the soul that resists
it, sometimes also it is divided against itself, and
while it moves the soul, leaves the body
unmoved.7
DECIDING UPON DOCTRINE 33
"This diabolical excitement of the genitals," as Augustine
referred to sex, is evidence of Adam's original sin which is now
transmitted "from the mother's womb," tainting all human
beings with sin, and leaving them incapable of choosing good
over evil or determining their own destiny.8
Augustine's views regarding sexuality differed sharply from
pre-Christian views which often considered sex to be an integral
part of the sacredness of life. His views did, however, represent
those of many Christians. With the exception of minor heretical
groups such as the Gnostic Carpocratians who exalted sex "as a
bond between all created things,"9 nearly all Christians thought
that sex should be avoided except for purposes of procreation.
St. Jerome warns, "Regard everything as poison which bears
within it the seed of sensual pleasure."10 In her book Adam, Eve
and the Serpent, Elaine Pagels writes:
Clement (of Alexandria) excludes oral and anal
intercourse, and intercourse with a menstruating,
pregnant, barren, or menopausal wife and
for that matter, with one's wife 'in the morning',
'in the daytime', or 'after dinner'. Clement
warns, indeed, that 'not even at night, although
in darkness, is it fitting to carry on immodestly
or indecently, but with modesty, so that whatever
happens, happens in the light of reason...' for
even that union 'which is legitimate is still
dangerous, except in so far as it is engaged in
procreation of children.'11
Sex as an act that empowers the individual threatens a religion
intent upon controlling society. As Clement said, "lust is not
easy to restrain, being devoid of fear..."12
Denying human free will and condemning sexual pleasure
made it easier to control and contain people. Augustine wrote:
THE DARK SIDE OF CHRISTIAN HISTORY
DECIDING UPON DOCTRINE 35
...man has been naturally so created that it is
advantageous for him to be submissive, but
disastrous for
not the
him to
will
follow
of
his own
his
will, and
creator...13
He believed that Adam's "sin was a despising of the authority of
God... it was just that condemnation followed..."14 Augustine
wrote to the bishop of Rome in 416, warning him that Pelagian
ideas undermined the basis of episcopal authority and that
appeasing the Pelagians would threaten the Catholic Church's
new-found power.15 Augustine's friend, the African bishop
Alypius, brought 80 Numidian stallions to the imperial court as
bribes to persuade the Church to side with Augustine against
Pelagius. Augustine won. In April of 418 the pope
excommunicated Pelagius. Ever since, the Catholic Church has
officially embraced the doctrine of hereditary transmission of
original sin.16
The Church formulated its position regarding reincarnation in
response to the controversy surrounding Origen. Origen, a
Christian scholar, thought that the human soul exists before it is
incarnated into a physical body and then passes from one body
to another until it is reunited with God, after which it no longer
takes on a physical form. He believed that all souls eventually
return to God. He thought that while Christ could greatly speed
the reconciliation with God, such reconciliation would not take
place without effort by the individual. Since humankind had
fallen from God by its own free will, he argued, so humankind
must also reunite with God through its own volition. The
orthodox opposed Origen's theories, insisting that they depended
too heavily upon individual self-determination.17
Orthodox Christians also thought the theory of reincarnation
3.1 St. Augustine, the much celebrated Father of the Church. His ideas and
arguments gave the Church doctrines which denied human free will,
condemned sex, and justified the use of force in order to compel obedience
to the Church.
36 THE DARK SIDE OF CHRISTIAN HISTORY
minimized the role of Jesus Christ, downplayed the necessity for
salvation in this lifetime, and diminished the unique nature of
Christ's resurrection. A person's salvation, in orthodox eyes,
depends not upon self-determination and free will, as Origen's
theories suggest, but only upon embracing Jesus Christ.
Furthermore, if a person could choose to reunite with God in
any one of many lifetimes, then there would be little fear of
eternal damnationÑand fear was deemed essential by the
orthodox. Origen's idea that the soul is separable from the body
also seemed to diminish the extraordinary nature of Christ's
resurrection. The miracle of Christ's resurrection was understood
to offer the possibility of overcoming physical death. If,
however, each soul periodically overcomes death by separating
from one body and entering into another, then Jesus's feat would
not have been unique.
Origen's work also challenged the Church's control of
intellectual and spiritual pursuit. Although he meticulously cited
scripture to support his beliefs, Origen found that the scriptures
provided limited direction in certain areas. Having received the
education of a learned Greek, Origen continued to seek answers
both in Platonic philosophy and in his own imagination when
scripture was unavailing.18 Augustine, too, had pondered
questions to which scripture provided little guidance. Augustine
asked, for example:
...and what before that life again, O God my
joy, was I anywhere or in any body? For this I
have none to tell me, neither father nor mother,
nor experiences of others, nor mine own
19
memory.
Whereas Origen continued to contemplate and explore such
questions, Augustine retreated from inquiry outside the scripture.
He wrote:
Either I would like to know those things of which
I am ignorant as to the origin of the soul, or
DECIDING UPON DOCTRINE
else I should like to know if it is not for us to
learn such things as long as we live here in this
world. And yet, what if this is one of those
things of which we are told: 'Seek not the things
that are too high for thee, and search not into
the things that are above thy ability: but the
things that God hath commanded thee, think of
them always and in many of his works be not
curious.' (Ecclesiastes 3:22)20
Augustine went so far as to entertain the idea that before creating
the world, God had busied Himself preparing a place of
punishment for those with the audacity to question what had
preceded creation.21
Although Origen died in 284, debate over his theories
continued until 553 when he was officially anathematized, or
cursed, by the Second Council of Constantinople. In condemning
Origen, the Church indirectly dealt with the issue of
reincarnation. Christians were not to believe in the pre-existence
of souls, the existence of discarnate consciousness, or that a
person has any more than this one lifetime to turn to the
Christian God without being subject to eternal damnation.
Furthermore, the anathemas against Origen served as another
reminder that, regardless of the sincerity of one's faith, one
should always remain within the ideological confines of
scripture.
In dealing with the Donatist heresy, the Church set a
precedent for using violence to suppress dissent. When the
Donatists demanded higher standards of the clergy than the
Catholic Church, their movement spread like wildfire, with
Donatists outnumbering Catholics in Africa by the middle of the
fourth century.22 Having long maintained that no one should be
forced to believe against his will, Augustine tried to bring the
Donatists back into the Catholic fold through discussion. Yet,
when the talks failed, he resorted to force, invoking the newly
THE DARK SIDE OF CHRISTIAN HISTORY
established Theodosian laws against heresy. The Church
followed his advice and brutally crushed the Donatist
movement.23
In opposing the Donatists, Augustine set forth the principle
Cognite intrare, "Compel them to enter", that would be used
throughout the middle ages to justify the Church's violent
suppression of dissent and oppression of difference. Augustine
contended:
The wounds of a friend are better than the kisses
of an enemy. To love with sternness is better
than to deceive with gentleness... In Luke 14:23
it is written: 'Compel people to come in!' By
threats of the wrath of God, the Father draws
souls to the Son.24
Even at the beginning of the twentieth century Pope Leo XIII
still argued that the ends justified the means:
The death sentence is a necessary and efficacious
means for the Church to attain its end when
rebels act against it and disturbers of the
ecclesiastical unity, especially obstinate heretics
and heresiarchs, cannot be restrained by any
other penalty from continuing to derange the
ecclesiastical order and impelling others to all
sorts of crime... When the perversity of one or
several is calculated to bring about the ruin of
many of its children it is bound effectively to
remove it, in such wise that if there be no other
remedy for saving its people it can and must put
these wicked men to death.25
Another controversy, the Mannichaean heresy, demonstrated
the Church's willingness to deny its own ideology when it was
unpopular and unprofitable. Begun by the Persian Mani in the
third century, Mannichaean theology is the logical consequence
of the belief in singular supremacy. The belief in one all
DECIDING UPON DOCTRINE 39
powerful God often elicits the question of why there is pain and
evil in the world. Why does an almighty God, who creates
everything, create human suffering? The most common answer
is that there must be a conflicting force, power, or god creating
the evil; there must be a devil. A dualistic theology arises which
understands life to be a struggle between God and satan, between
good and evil, and between spirit and matter. The concept of a
devil is exclusive to monotheism; evil is easier to understand and
does not pose the need for a devil when there are many faces of
God. In his book Religion and the Decline of Magic, Keith
Thomas writes of early, pre-monotheistic Judaism:
The early Hebrews had no need to personify the
principle of evil; they could attribute it to the
influence of other rival deities. It was only the
triumph of monotheism which made it necessary
to explain why there should be evil in the world
if God was good. The Devil thus helped to
sustain the notion of an all-perfect divinity.26
Mannichaeans embraced orthodox Christian ideology more
completely than the early Catholic Church. They took the idea
seriously that spirituality and godliness are detached from the
physical world. The belief in a singular supremacy creates a
hierarchy that separates its components, creating a division
between heaven and earth, between spirit and matter. The
components higher up on the hierarchy are considered good; the
components lower down are considered evil. Accordingly,
Mannichaeans advocated stringent asceticism and withdrawal
from the world. Women, seen to tempt men with the earthly
pleasures of sex and family, were considered to be part of
satan's forces. To be closer to God, Mannichaeans believed that
one must avoid anything that would bind one to earthly life.
Although the Church itself would adopt just such a
Mannichaean theology centuries later during the Reformation, in
the early years it could not politically afford to fully embrace
THE DARK SIDE OF CHRISTIAN HISTORY
such monotheism. The Church was struggling to incorporate vast
numbers of people who still understood the world in a pagan,
pantheistic and polytheistic context. Most people thought that
everything within the physical world was imbued with a sense of
the divine, that there was little separation between spirit and
matter, and that divinity was personified in many different faces.
To advocate a complete renunciation of the physical world as
satan's realm and to abolish all but one divine persona would
have led to certain failure in the Church's efforts to spread
Christianity. So, although it still maintained the belief in a
singular supremacy and in its implicit hierarchy, the Church also
allowed worship of not only the Holy Virgin Mary, but also a
multitude of angels and saints. Mannichaeanism may have been
more consistent with orthodox ideology, but it was politically
imprudent. Mannichaeans and all others who promoted similar
ideas in the centuries that followed were labelled heretics.
The tenets formulated in response to early heretics lent
doctrinal validation to the Church's control of the individual and
society. By opposing Pelagius, the Church adopted Augustine's
idea that people are inherently evil, incapable of choice, and thus
in need of strong authority. Human sexuality is seen as evidence
of their sinful nature. By castigating Origen's theories of
reincarnation, the Church upheld its belief in the unique physical
resurrection of Christ as well as the belief that a person has but
one life in which to obey the Church or risk eternal damnation.
With the Donatists, it established the precedent of using force to
compel obedience. And with the Mannichaeans, the Church
demonstrated its willingness to abandon its own beliefs for
political expediency.
Chapter Four
The Church Takes Over:
The Dark Ages
500 -1000 C.E.
The Church had devastating impact upon society. As the
Church assumed leadership, activity in the fields of medicine,
technology, science, education, history, art and commerce all but
collapsed. Europe entered the Dark Ages. Although the Church
amassed immense wealth during these centuries, most of what
defines civilization disappeared.
The western Roman Empire fell during the fifth century
under repeated attacks by the Germanic Goths and the Huns
while the Roman province of Africa fell to the Vandals. Many
blamed Christianity. In 410 when the Christian Visigoths sacked
Rome, "the eternal city" which had held strong for 620 years,
criticism of the new religion intensified. One of St. Augustine's
most famous works, The City of God, was written as a defense
of Christianity against such accusations.
However, the eastern Roman Empire, also called the Byzantine
Empire, fared better. Especially under Emperor Justinian's
rule (527-565), it recovered much of its power, regained control
of Italy from the Ostrogoths and recovered Africa from the
Vandals. Justinian and his wife, Theodora, were credited with
THE DARK SIDE OF CHRISTIAN HISTORY
the revival of literature, art, architecture, as well as the codification
of Roman Law. But this flourishing Byzantine culture was
cut short when the bubonic plague, beginning in 540, struck with
a virulence unknown at any time in human history either before
or since. In Byzantium alone, the plague was said to have
claimed 10,000 people a day. The severity of this plague is
difficult to fathom. The later Black Death of the 1300's, which
some think killed one-third of Europe's population, claimed an
estimated 27 million lives. In contrast, the sixth century plague
is thought to have taken 100 million lives.1 The Roman Empire
never recovered.
The plague had quite different impact upon Christianity.
People flocked to the Church in terror.2 The Church explained
that the plague was an act of God, and disease a punishment for
the sin of not obeying Church authority. The Church branded
Justinian a heretic. It declared the field of Greek and Roman
medicine, useless in fighting the plague, to be heresy.3 While the
plague assured the downfall of the Roman Empire, it strengthened
the Christian church.
After the plague, the Church dominated the formal discipline
of medicine. The most common medical practice between the
sixth and sixteenth centuries used for every malady became
"bleeding." Christian monks taught that bleeding a person
would prevent toxic imbalances, prevent sexual desire, and
restore the humors. By the sixteenth century this practice would
kill tens of thousands each year. Yet, when a person died during
blood-letting, it was only lamented that treatment had not been
started sooner and performed more aggressively.4
Technology disappeared as the Church became the most
cohesive power in Western society. The extensive aqueduct and
plumbing systems vanished. Orthodox Christians taught that all
aspects of the flesh should be reviled and therefore discouraged
washing as much as possible. Toilets and indoor plumbing
disappeared. Disease became commonplace as sanitation and
THE CHURCH TAKES OVER 43
4.1 Once the fields of Greek and Roman medicine were declared
heretical, the dangerous medical practice of bleeding became common.
This engraving published in 1516 illustrates the points from which blood
was to be let.
THEDARKSIDEOFCHRISTIANHISTORY
hygiene deteriorated. For hundreds of years, towns and villages
were decimated by epidemics.5 Roman central heating systems
were also abandoned.6 As one historian writes:
From about A.D. 500 onward, it was thought no
hardship to lie on the floor at night, or on a
hard bench above low drafts, damp earth and
rats. To be indoors was luxury enough. Nor was
it distasteful to sleep huddled closely together in
company, for warmth was valued above privacy.7
The vast network of roads that had enabled transportation and
communication also fell into neglect and would remain so until
almost the nineteenth century.8
The losses in science were monumental. In some cases the
Christian church's burning of books and repression of intellectual
pursuit set humanity back as much as two millennia in its
scientific understanding. Already in the sixth century B.C.E.,
Pythagoras had come up with the idea that the earth revolved
around the sun. By the third century B.C.E., Aristarchus had
outlined the heliocentric theory and Eratosthenes had measured
the circumference of the Earth. By the second century B.C.E.,
Hipparchus had invented longitude and latitude and had determined
the obliquity of the ecliptic.9 After the onset of the Dark
Ages, however, it would not be until the sixteenth century C.E.
that Copernicus would reintroduce the theory that the earth
revolves around the sun. And when Galileo attempted to promote
the heliocentric theory in the seventeenth century, he was tried
by the Inquisition in Rome. Only in 1965 did the Roman
Catholic Church revoke its condemnation of Galileo. St.
Augustine echoed the Church's scientific understanding of the
world:
It is impossible there should be inhabitants on
the opposite side of the earth, since no such race
is recorded by Scripture among the descendants
of Adam.10
THECHURCHTAKESOVER
History was rewritten to become a verification of Christian
beliefs. Orthodox Christians thought history necessary only in
order to place the events of the past into Biblical context. In
Daniel Boorstin's words, "History became a footnote to orthodoxy."
11 He writes in his book The Discoverers:
The Christian test was a willingness to believe in
the one Jesus Christ and His Message of salvation.
What was demanded was not criticism but
credulity. The Church Fathers observed that in
the realm of thought only heresy had a history.12
Eusebius of Caesarea set about during the time of Constantine to
rewrite the history of the world into a history of Christianity:
'Other writers of history,' Eusebius wrote,
recorded the fighting of wars waged for the
sake of children and country and other possessions.
But our narrative of the government of
God will record in ineffaceable letters the most
peaceful wars waged in behalf of the peace of
'13
the soul...
Blind faith replaced the spirit of historical investigation. One
should trust, as Eusebius said, "the incontrovertible words of the
Master to his disciples: 'It is not for you to know the times or
the seasons, which the Father hath put in his own power.'"14
Although the Church restricted historical inquiry more
severely, it carried on a process of rewriting history that had
started much earlier. Twentieth century archeology is beginning
to reveal a very different picture of human history than may have
been told even in pre-Christian Rome. The idea that history
began only 5,000 years ago is terribly inaccurate. During the
neolithic age after people had turned from hunting and gathering
to agriculture, particularly between 7000 B.C.E. and 4000
B.C.E., cultures of startling sophistication flourished. Art,
architecture, city-planning, dance, ritual drama, trade both by
land and sea, writing, law and government were well-known to
THE DARK SIDE OF CHRISTIAN HISTORY
these peoples. The first ideas of democracy originally date back
not to the Greeks but far earlier to this neolithic age. Perhaps
most remarkable is that these cultures show no evidence of
hierarchy as we know it; they knew no war, organized oppression
or slavery.15
Rewriting history to erase awareness of such a past helped
those in power deflect criticism for the current state of affairs.
Portraying human society as having steadily evolved rather than
having experienced major setbacks gives the impression that,
however ugly and violent society may be now, it was even more
savage in the past. Augustine's disciple, Orosius, for instance,
in his Seven Books of Histories against the Pagans, demonstrated
that the evils of the time could not be blamed on Christianity
because earlier times had experienced even worse calamities.16
Distorting and rewriting history gave the impression that
Christianity had not only lifted society from harsher, more
barbaric times, but that a social structure of hierarchy and
domination had always existed and was therefore inevitable.
The Christian church had similar impact upon education and
learning. The Church burned enormous amounts of literature. In
391 Christians burned down one of the world's greatest libraries
in Alexandria, said to have housed 700,000 rolls.17 All the books
of the Gnostic Basilides, Porphyry's 36 volumes, papyrus rolls
of 27 schools of the Mysteries, and 270,000 ancient documents
gathered by Ptolemy Philadelphus were burned.18 Ancient
academies of learning were closed. Education for anyone outside
of the Church came to an end. And what little education there
was during the Dark Ages, while still limited to the clergy, was
advocated by powerful kings as a means of providing themselves
with capable administrators.19
4.2 As the Church grew more powerful, Christians closed academies and
burned books as well as whole libraries. This engraving depicts converts to
St. Paul burning books.
THE CHURCH TAKES OVER 47
THE DARK SIDE OF CHRISTIAN HISTORY
The Church opposed the study of grammar and Latin. Pope
Gregory I, or Gregory the Great, a man thought to have been
one of the greatest architects of the medieval order,20 objected to
grammatical study. He wrote:
I despise the proper constructions and cases,
because I think it very unfitting that the words of
the celestial oracle should be restricted by the
rules of Donatus [a well-known grammarian].21
Gregory the Great also condemned education for all but the
clergy as folly and wickedness. He forbade laymen to read even
the Bible. He had the library of the Palatine Apollo burned "lest
its secular literature distract the faithful from the contemplation
of heaven."22
The Fourth Council of Carthage in 398 forbade bishops to
even read the books of gentiles.23 Jerome, a Church Father and
early monastic in the fourth century, rejoiced that the classical
authors were being forgotten. And his younger monastic
contemporaries were known to boast of their ignorance of
everything except Christian literature.24 After Christians had
spent years destroying books and libraries, St. John Chrysostom,
the preeminent Greek Father of the Church, proudly declared,
"Every trace of the old philosophy and literature of the ancient
world has vanished from the face of the earth."25
Monastic libraries, the only libraries left, were composed of
books of devotion. Even the most significant monastic libraries
carried little aside from books about Christian theology.26 While
monks did copy manuscripts, such work was not esteemed for its
intrinsic value but rather considered part of the prescribed
manual labor, necessary in the effort of "fighting the Devil by
pen and ink," in the words of the Christian Cassiodorus.27
4.3 St. Gregory the Great, Pope from 590-604. While best known for
strengthening the Pope's independence from the Byzantine Emperor, he also
burned books and restricted reading and education to the clergy.
THE CHURCH TAKES OVER 49
THE DARK SIDE OF CHRISTIAN HISTORY
Copying manuscripts, even if those manuscripts were classical,
did not necessarily indicate an appreciation for classical learning.
An historian notes that the order of Cluni followed customs that
implied a lack of respect for classical works. "If a monk wanted
a book during the hours of silence, he made a sign of turning the
leaves; if he wanted a classical book, he scratched his ear like a
dog."28
The Church had devastating impact upon artistic expression.
According to orthodox Christianity, art should enhance and
promote Christian values; it should not serve simply as an
individual's creative exploration and expression. New works of
art which did not concur with the Church's ideology would not
be created again until the Renaissance. Marble statues of ancient
Rome were torn down, most notably by Gregory the Great, and
made into lime. Architectural marbles and mosaics were either
made into lime or went to adorn cathedrals all over Europe and
as far away as Westminster Abbey in London. The ravaging of
marble works accounts for the thin ornate slabs with ancient
inscriptions still found in many churches today.29
The rise of the Christian church coincided with a severe
economic collapse throughout the western world. The Church did
little to encourage trade. The canons of Gratian include a sixth
century document which states, "Whoever buys a thing in order
to re-sell it intact, no matter what it is, is like the merchant
driven from the Temple."30 The Church stigmatized lending
money at interest, which made funding economic ventures
extremely difficult. Commercial contracts of the time indicate
that the Church would sometimes intervene and free a debtor
from liabilities, undermining even further the likelihood of
anyone wanting to lend money.31
The Church itself, however, was one of the few profitable
organizations of the time. As such, it provided a potentially
lucrative occupation for many men. Money and power played a
critical role in a man's ascent through the Church hierarchy and
THECHURCHTAKESOVER 51
contributed to the disreputable nature of the medieval Church. At
least forty different Popes are known to have bought their way
into the papacy.32 Allegations of murder and crime within the
Church abounded as the papacy so frequently changed hands. In
a particular one hundred year period, more than forty Popes
came to office. In the twelve year period from 891 to 903 alone,
no less than ten different Popes held power.33
The Church amassed inordinate wealth during the Dark Ages.
Patrimonial properties, the Church-held lands that were free and
clear of taxes or military obligation to the king, made up
between one-quarter and one-third of western Europe.34 In
addition to patrimony, bishops often held territories in feudal
tenure, obliging them like any count or baron to provide the king
with soldiers when called. The Church made money by collecting
revenues from imperial rulers, by confiscating property as
the result of court judgments, by selling the remission of sins
(called "indulgences"), by selling ecclesiastical offices (called
"simony"), and sometimes by simply taking land by force.35
Alliances with the state were essential to the Church's secular
influence and wealth. However, unlike during the Roman
Empire, several imperial forces now held power. By the year
700, for example, the West was divided into four political
realms. Spain was ruled by the Christian Visigoths and would
fall in 711-713 to the Islamic Moors. Anglo-Saxons ruled
England. The Franks ruled Gaul. Italy was held primarily by the
Lombards with a few regions still in the hands of the Byzantine
Empire.36 The new, more complicated alliance between the
Church and various imperial rulers came to be known as the
Holy Roman Empire and was best symbolized by the Pope's
crowning of Charlemagne in 800 and the German king, Otto I,
in 952.
Both Church and state profited from their alliance. Imperial
rulers provided not only military resources but also lucrative
positions for the clergy. By overseeing the administrative matters
THE DARK SIDE OF CHRISTIAN HISTORY
of rulers, bishops became vested with both military and civil
authority. They came to be as powerful and as influential as the
greatest of feudal lords. The historian Jeffrey Burton Russell
writes:
The system was self-perpetuating: the more
power and wealth the bishops had, the more the
kings needed to appoint loyal men; but to secure
and preserve the loyalty of such men, the kings
had to bestow upon them further power and
wealth. It is no wonder that the bishops kept
their eyes more attentively upon the throne than
upon the cross.37
In an age when the belief in the divine right of kings prevailed,
the Pope's support of a king was thought to be essential. The
Church also brought a semblance of unity to an imperial realm
by converting its people to Christianity.
These widespread conversions, however, were usually little
more than a facade. Pope Gregory I in a letter to his emissary to
Britain, St. Augustine of Canterbury, illustrates his concern with
the appearance that people had converted to Christianity:
...the people will have no need to change their
place of concourse; where of old they were wont
to sacrifice cattle to demons, thither let them
continue to resort on the day of the Saint to
whom the Church is dedicated, and slay their
beasts, no longer as a sacrifice to demons, but
for a social meal in honour of Him whom they
now worship.38
Although the medieval Church wrought havoc in most arenas
of life, it did not effect real change in the way common people
perceived God. The Church's continual admonishments against
pagan practices indicate how insubstantial most conversions to
Christianity were. It constantly warned against customs relating
to trees, nature and the belief in magic, occasionally going so far
THE CHURCH TAKES OVER
as to raze a church after discovering that people were actually
worshipping older gods or goddesses there.39 A 742 Church
decree read:
... every pagan defilement should be rejected and
spurned, whether it be sacrifices of the dead, or
soothsaying and divining, or amulets and omens,
or incantations, or the offering of sacrificesÑby
(all of) which ignorant people perform pagan
rites alongside those of the church, under cover
of the names of the sacred martyrs and confes
40
sors.
Sacred springs were renamed in honor of saints and churches
built over the sites of pagan temples, yet the nature of reverence
and worship remained unchanged.
The Church played a critical role in taking Europe into the
Dark Ages. Its devastating impact was felt in nearly every sphere
of human endeavor. Ironically, the one area where the medieval
Church had little profound impact was in changing the spirituality
of common people. While most people adopted a Christian
veneer, they did not significantly change their understanding or
perception of God.
Chapter Five
The Church Fights Change:
The Middle Ages
1000 -1500 C.E.
The spirit of the Middle Ages challenged the Church's now-
established authority. The Church responded by bolstering its
authoritarian structure, asserting the Pope's supremacy over all
imperial powers, and rallying Europe against Muslims, Jews and
Eastern Orthodox Christians. When the crusades failed to unify
Europe under its control, the Church attacked whomever it
perceived as an enemy: money-lenders, supporters of nation-
states, and the Cathars.
Dramatic changes after the turn of the millennium ushered in
the high Middle Ages. An agricultural society began to give way
to rapidly growing towns as the population exploded in a surge
unparalleled in the Western world until the 19th and 20th
centuries.1 Many more people began making their livelihoods in
commerce and industry, giving rise to a new social class of
traders and manufacturers.2 These merchants often served as
examples that through wit, activity and industry one could
change one's lot in life. Merchants also disseminated new
information and ideas from the Arab and Greek worlds as they
traveled along trade routes from northern Spain and southern
THE CHURCH FIGHTS CHANGE 55
Italy.
Latin classics, largely lost under Christian rule, were
translated from Arabic back into Latin. When Aristotle's work
was reintroduced to the West, its example of systematic thought
spawned scholasticism, a discipline that challenged the Church's
demand that one accept its assertions on blind faith. The twelfth
century Peter Abelard, for example, used the scholastic method
to encourage individual decision-making, to question authoritarian
assertions, and to point out contradictions in Church doctrine
and scripture.
The Church's confinement of all education and creativity to
monasteries began to break down. Not only were lay schools
created to provide elementary education to merchant and artisan
classes, but universities were formed in urban areas such as
Paris, Oxford, Toulouse, Montpellier, Cambridge, Salerno,
Bologna and Salamanca.3 The age saw literary epics and
romances such as The Romance of the Rose, The Song of the
Cid, Arthur's Knights of the Round Table, the Nibelungenlied,
and Dante's Divine Comedy.4 Court jesters or fools provided
contemporary sources of vernacular poetry and literature.
Renewed interest in architecture produced the culmination of the
Romanesque style and the beginning of Gothic artistic and
engineering feats. Even within twelfth century monasteries, the
art of illumination and ornamentation of manuscripts came alive.5
Art, literature, philosophy and architecture all began to flourish
again during the high Middle Ages.
Having prospered and thrived while society remained subdued
and quiescent, the Church now resisted the many changes taking
place. Papal prohibitions in 1210 and 1215 restricted the teaching
of Aristotle's works in Paris. By 1272 discussion of any purely
theological matter was forbidden.6 St. Bernard of Clairvaux gave
voice to Church sentiment when he said of Abelard's scholasticism,
"everything (is) treated contrary to custom and tradition."
Bernard wrote:
THE DARK SIDE OF CHRISTIAN HISTORY
The faith of simplicity is mocked, the secrets of
Christ profaned; questions on the highest things
are impertinently asked, the Fathers scorned
because they were disposed to conciliate rather
than solve such problems. Human reason is
snatching everything to itself, leaving nothing for
faith.7
The Church demonstrated a similar disdain for the revival of
classical literature. As the twelfth century Christian Honorius of
Autun asked:
How is the soul profited by the strife of Hector,
the arguments of Plato, the poems of Virgil, or
the elegies of Ovid, who, with others like them,
are now gnashing their teeth in the prison of the
infernal Babylon, under the cruel tyranny of
Pluto?8
The Church regarded poetry with particular disfavor, sometimes
classifying poets with magicians whom the Church despised. The
illustrations in the twelfth century Hortus deliciarum of Herrad
of Landsberg, for example, depict four "poets or magicians,"
each with an evil spirit prompting him.9 Clerics insisted that
court jesters also "have no use or virtue" and are "beyond hope
of salvation."10
Orthodox Christians expressed disdain for the flourishing
creativity and declared supporters of the arts to be heathens and
pagans. The outspoken fifteenth century Dominican prophet
Girolamo Savonarola believed that classical poets should be
banished and that science, culture and education should return
entirely to the hands of monks. He wrote:
The only good thing that we owe to Plato and
Aristotle is that they brought forward many
arguments which we can use against the heretics.
Yet they and other philosophers are now in
hell... It would be good for religion if many
THE CHURCH FIGHTS CHANGE 57
books that seem useful were destroyed. When
there were not so many books and not so many
arguments and disputes, religion grew more
quickly than it has since.11
Savonarola carried out his moral reforms in Florence using
techniques characteristic of a police state: controlling personal
morality through the espionage of servants and organizing bands
of young men to raid homes of items that were inconsistent with
orthodox Christian ideals. Books, particularly those of Latin and
Italian poets, illuminated manuscripts, women's ornaments,
musical instruments, and paintings were burned in a huge bonfire
in 1497, destroying much of the work of Renaissance Florence.
Yet medieval society abounded with dissent. Many began to
seek a relationship with God outside of the Church. Common
people in the Middle Ages found little in the Church to which
they could relate. Churches had become grander and more
formal, sharply emphasizing the difference between the clergy
and laity. In some churches, a choir screen would even segregate
the congregation from the altar. The language of the Mass,
which in the fourth century had been changed from Greek to
Latin so as to be more easily understood, was by the end of the
seventh century totally incomprehensible to most people,
including many priests. As a result, services were often an
unintelligible mumbling which was absolutely meaningless to the
congregation.12
The Church, now enormously wealthy, interested itself more
in collecting money than in relating to its members. The
medieval Church's preoccupation with riches was such that its
ten commandments were said to have been reduced to one:
"Bring hither the money."13 Priests were selected more on the
basis of their money than upon any other virtue. A huge
disparity developed not only between the clergy and the laity but
also between ranks of the clergy. The income of a wealthy
bishop, for example, could range from 300 times to as much as
THE DARK SIDE OF CHRISTIAN HISTORY
1000 times that of a vicar.14 In the twelfth century the Church
forbade clergy to marry in order to prevent property from
passing out of the Church to the families of clergy.15 The
incongruity of an extravagantly wealthy organization representing
the ideals of Jesus Christ prompted the papal bull or edict Cum
inter nonnullos in 1326 which proclaimed it heresy to say that
Jesus and his Apostles owned no property.16
Those seeking a more meaningful connection with God
increasingly turned to movements outside the Catholic Church.
These medieval heresies exhibited great diversity of thought.
There were apocalyptic sects that were convinced that the world
was coming to an end, such as those led by Tanchelin, Peter de
Bruys, Henry of Lausanne, and Arnold of Brescia. Other groups
such as the Waldensians and Lollards foreshadowed the Protestants
in their desire for a stricter adherence to Christian scripture.
And yet other groups like the Brethren of the Free Spirit,
the Tulupins, and the Adamites embraced pantheistic and
animistic beliefs that perceived the physical world to be wholly
imbued with God's presence.17 At the turn of the fourteenth
century, Meister Eckhart challenged the very need for a Church.
He wrote, "When the Kingdom appears to the soul and it is
recognized, there is no further need for preaching or instruction."
18
Many heretics insisted upon a direct relationship with God.
Despite the danger, they translated the Bible into common or
vernacular languages which lay people could understand. Simple
possession of such a Bible was punishable by death.19 In the
spirit of providing images to which people could relate, the
portrayal of Christ also became more human and accessible.
From Romanesque depictions of Jesus as the stiff, hieratic, and
unapproachable judge of the universe, Gothic art now portrayed
him as more of a suffering, compassionate human being.20
The cult of the Virgin blossomed in the Middle Ages. The
Virgin Mary became a figure to whom one could turn for
THE CHURCH FIGHTS CHANGE
forgiveness and who could protest God's judgment and unrelenting
law. In his book The Virgin, Geoffrey Ashe tells of the
stories which illustrate her kindness and compassion:
A thief prays to her before going out to rob, and
when he is hanged, she sustains him in the air
till the hangman acknowledges the miracle and
lets him live.
A nun who leaves her convent to plunge into
vice, but keeps praying to Mary, returns at last
to find that Mary has taken her place and no one
has missed her.21
Complete litanies were devoted to the Virgin Mary. The grandest
of medieval cathedrals were dedicated to her: at Paris, Chartres,
Reims, Amiens, Rouen, Bayeux, Coutances, Noyon, and Laon.22
She developed names like "spiritual vessel," "cause of our joy,"
"Ark of the Covenant" and "Seat of Wisdom." Chaucer refers
to her as the "almighty and all merciful Queen."23 A painted
wooden figure of the Madonna and child by a fourteenth century
German artist gives an indication of medieval veneration for this
female image of divinity. When her figure is opened, the
Madonna is shown to contain the whole Trinity.24
The Church responded, not by trying to meet people's needs,
but by strengthening its own authoritarian structure, developing
its own judicial system, and more forcefully asserting its
supremacy over all. The papacy expanded its administrative and
advisory council called the curia, increased its regulation of
bishops, began again to summon councils, and, most significantly,
used papal legates. Papal legates were officers who could
override the authority of bishops and archbishops, effectively
eroding the local authority of bishops and bringing the monasteries
more directly under papal control.25
The Church developed its own system of law to claim
authority in secular matters. The revival of civil law, derived
from Roman and Germanic law, had been replacing many feudal
THE DARK SIDE OF CHRISTIAN HISTORY
THE CHURCH FIGHTS CHANGE 61
OPPOSITE: Figure 5.1 This fifteenth century woodcut illustrates the nurturing
and protective nature attributed to the Virgin Mary.
ABOVE: Figure 5.2 This woodcut, also from the fifteenth century, similarly
depicts the Madonna as a protectress. With the help of angels, she shelters
people from God's arrows.
THE DARK SIDE OF CHRISTIAN HISTORY
customs and facilitating trade by implementing principles with
wider application than rural customs which could differ with
each locale.26 Roman law, however, did not recognize the Pope.
By 1149 St. Bernard had realized the implicit threat of civil law
to the Church and complained that the courts rang with Justin-
ian's laws rather than those of God.27 By 1219 the Pope had
forbidden priests to study Roman law and had altogether
prohibited its teaching at the University of Paris.28
Instead, the Church drew up its own system called canon law.
The eleventh century Ivo of Chartres and the twelfth century
Gratian reworked the bulk of uncoordinated and often conflicting
decrees and letters into comprehensive codes that asserted the
Pope's supremacy. Should the Pope himself find these laws
inconvenient, however, he was allowed under these same canon
laws to dispense with them at any time. Ecclesiastical tribunals
claimed jurisdiction over all cases in which Church interests
were at stake such as those concerning tithes, benefices, donations
and wills. To protect its own, the Church claimed the right
to try all members of the clergy.29 The Church also claimed
jurisdiction over any matter pertaining to a sacrament or an oath.
As one historian points out, "there was scarcely a limit to [the
Church's] intervention; for in medieval society wellnigh everything
was connected with a sacrament or depended upon an
oath."30
Many of the Church's efforts at systematizing and adding
credence to canon law focused upon establishing the Pope's
supremacy over imperial powers. The theory of the "plentitude
of power" gave the Pope as the vicar of Christ full authority
over both secular and spiritual affairs. It allowed him to prohibit
the distribution of sacraments within an imperial realm and to
both excommunicate and depose a king.31 Dictates of canon law
invalidated the ordination of imperially appointed Popes, called
anti-popes, and any members of the clergy ordained as a result
of such imperially appointed Popes.
THECHURCHFIGHTSCHANGE 63
Ancient letters were "discovered" and incorporated into
canon law as evidence of the Pope's supremacy over imperial
powers. One such letter, the "Donation of Constantine,"
purported to be a letter from Emperor Constantine to Pope
Sylvester in which Constantine attributes his power to the Pope.
It reads, "We give to... Sylvester, the Universal Pope... the city
of Rome and all the provinces, districts, and cities of Italy and
the Western regions..."32 By the sixteenth century these letters
were exposed as total forgeries.
The Pope became increasingly involved in directing political
conflicts and the conquering of lands. Pope Boniface VIII wrote
to the Hapsburg Albert of Austria, "We donate to you, in the
plentitude of our power, the kingdom of France, which belongs
of right to the Emperors of the West."33 In his letter to King
Henry II of England, the twelfth century Pope Adrian IV
sanctioned the English invasion of Ireland. He wrote:
It is not doubted, and you know it, that Ireland
and all those islands which have received the
faith, belong to the Church of Rome; if you wish
to enter that Island, to drive vice out of it, to
cause law to be obeyed and St. Peter's Pence to
be paid by every house, it will please us to
assign it to you. 34
Historian Phillip Schaff describes the actions of the medieval
papacy:
To depose princes, to absolve subjects from
allegiance, to actively foment rebellion as against
Frederick II, to divert lands as in Southern
France, to give away crowns, to extort by threat
of the severest ecclesiastical penalties the payment
of tribute, to punish religious dissenters
with perpetual imprisonment or turn them over
to the secular authorities, knowing death would
be the punishment, to send and consecrate
THE DARK SIDE OF CHRISTIAN HISTORY
crusading armies, and to invade the realm of the
civil court, usurp its authority, and annul a
nation's code, as in the case of Magna Charta,
Ñthese were the high prerogatives actually
exercised by the papacy. 35
Papal desire for power grew insatiable. Seeing themselves as
superior to all other mortals, Popes claimed not only that every
person was subject to papal authority, but that the Pope himself
was accountable to no one but God. In 1302 Pope Boniface
issued the bull Unam Sanctam:
Therefore, if the earthly power errs, it shall be
judged by the spiritual power... but if the supreme
spiritual power errs it can be judged only
by God, and not by man... Therefore we declare,
state, define and pronounce that it is
altogether necessary to salvation for every
human creature to be subject to the Roman
pontiff.36
Understandably, arguments erupted over who would be Pope and
hold such power. In what was called the Great Schism, two
separate lines of Popes, one living in Rome and one in Avignon,
reigned from 1378 to 1417. They disagreed, not over matters
concerning Christian ideology or religious practices, but over
politics and who should reign.
Another means with which the Church responded to the time
was an attempt to focus attention away from the tumultuous
social changes and towards an outside enemy. In 1095 Pope
Urban II called for the knights of Europe to unite and march to
Jerusalem to save the holy land from the Islamic infidel. The
crusades provided an opportunity to vastly increase the influence
of the Catholic Church. They also served a political purpose
much closer to home. When the Pope initiated the first crusade
in 1095, many of the imperial powers were outside the Church:
the King of France, the King of England, and the German
THE CHURCH FIGHTS CHANGE 65
Emperor.37 The crusades were a means of uniting much of
Europe in the name of Christianity.
Crusaders, caught up in their sense of righteousness, brutally
attacked the Church's enemies. Pope Gregory VII had declared,
"Cursed be the man who holds back his sword from shedding
blood. "38 The chronicler, Raymond of Aguilers, described the
scene when a band of crusaders massacred both Muslims and
Jews in Jerusalem in 1099:
Wonderful things were to be seen. Numbers of
the Saracens were beheaded... Others were shot
with arrows, or forced to jump from the towers;
others were tortured for several days, then
burned with flames. In the streets were seen piles
of heads and hands and feet. One rode about
everywhere amid the corpses of men and horses.
In the temple of Solomon, the horses waded in
the blood up to their knees, nay, up to the
bridle. It was a just and marvelous judgement of
God, that this place should be filled with the
blood of unbelievers.39
Nicetas Choniates, a Byzantine chronicler, wrote, "Even the
Saracens (the Muslims) are merciful and kind compared to these
men who bear the cross of Christ on their shoulders."40
Another enemy targeted by the crusades was the Eastern
Church based in Constantinople. The cultures of the East and
West had been growing apart for centuries. Having upheld more
respect for the arts, literature and education, Eastern culture
seemed more sophisticated than the West. The East had reverently
preserved the writings of the ancient Greeks. Greek
remained the official language of law, government, the Eastern
church, and Eastern literature. In the West, however, even the
Greek alphabet was lost. As the historian Charles H. Haskins
writes, "at the hands of the medieval scribe a Greek word
becomes gibberish or is omitted with grecum inserted in its
THE DARK SIDE OF CHRISTIAN HISTORY
THE CHURCH FIGHTS CHANGE 67
placeÑit was "all Greek" to him."41 Starting in the late 700's the
two cultures began to use different coinage.42 Disparity between
the two cultures grew as the churches each developed their own
forms of Christian rites. They celebrated Easter on different
days. They differed in their views regarding the use of icons,
and in the ordering of the Holy Trinity in the Nicene Creed.43
There was little that the East and West now shared in common
other than that they both considered themselves Christian.
In 1054, after attempts at reconciling the differences between
Rome and Constantinople failed, the two branches of Christianity
formalized their separation. To a Roman Church that vigorously
asserted its supremacy over all, however, such a separation was
seen as an affront to and a rejection of the Pope's authority.
With the help of priests who encouraged the idea that the
schismatic Greeks were satan's henchmen and were to blame for
every misfortune, the People's Crusade of 1096 sacked Belgrade,
the chief imperial city after Constantinople.44 A Greek chronicler
wrote of the Pope:
...he wished to compel us to recognize the
Pope's primacy among all prelates and to commemorate
his name in public prayers, under
pain of death against those who refuse.45
Later in 1204 Pope Innocent III sent a group of crusaders to
Constantinople. The soldiers of Christ fell upon Constantinople
with a vengeance, raping, pillaging and burning the city.46
According to the chronicler Geoffrey Villehardouin, never since
the creation of the world had so much booty been taken from a
city.47 The Pope's response to the Greek Emperor:
...we believe that the Greeks have been punished
through (the Crusades) by the just judgement of
5.3 Pope Urban preaching the crusades. While the ostensible purpose of
the crusades was to rescue the holy land from the infidel, the crusades also
helped unify Europeans under the banner of Christianity and avert criticism
from the papacy.
THE DARK SIDE OF CHRISTIAN HISTORY
God: these Greeks who have striven to rend the
Seamless Robe of Jesus Christ... Those who
would not join Noah in his ark perished justly in
the deluge; and these have justly suffered famine
and hunger who would not receive as their
shepherd the blessed Peter, Prince of the
Apostles...48
To the Pope, the rape of Constantinople was just punishment for
not submitting to the Roman Catholic Church. Biblical passages
supported his stance: "But those mine enemies, which would not
that I should reign over them, bring hither, and slay them before
me."49 Following the attack, a Latin patriarch subject to the
Pope ruled the domain until 1261.50 Constantinople, however,
was left severely weakened and in 1453 fell to Turkish conquest.
In the roughly 200 years of crusades, thousands, if not
millions, were killed. Invading crusaders destroyed in much the
same way as the Church had at the onset of the Dark Ages. They
burned any books they found.51 Hebrew scrolls such as 12,000
volumes of the Talmud and the works of Maimonides were
burned.52 While they pillaged and looted with a vengeance,
crusaders were often unable to transport anything upon the
difficult journey home. Although the crusades did bring about
moments of solidarity as Europeans rallied together in the name
of Christianity, they fell far short of all their other intentions.
The crusades failed to gain more than fleeting control of
Jerusalem, and failed to enrich their crusaders. Far from gaining
converts to the Roman Catholic Church, the crusades spread a
bitter animosity that still lingers today.53
European Jews were often the first victims of a crusade. But
Christian persecution of Jews continued long after the crusades
ended. Jews became the scapegoats for many problems that the
Church could not fix. When, for example, the black death, the
5.4 A depiction of Crusaders entering Constantinople.
THE CHURCH FIGHTS CHANGE 69
THE DARK SIDE OF CHRISTIAN HISTORY
bubonic plague, struck in the fourteenth century, the Church
explained that Jews were to blame and prompted attacks upon
them.54 A whole folklore developed claiming that Jews kidnapped
and ate Christian children in Jewish rituals of cannibalism, and
that Jews stole and profaned the blessed Christian sacraments.
These were the same tales that Romans once told of the hated
Christians, the same tales that Christians would tell of witches,
and the same tales Protestants would tell of Catholics.55 Pogroms,
the raiding and destroying of Jewish synagogues and
ghettos, became a common demonstration of Christian righteousness.
Jews were easy targets for they had never been embraced by
Christian society. Under the feudal system, a ceremony of
investiture involving a Christian oath excluded Jews from
working the land and sent them into commerce and crafts in the
towns. However, with the rapid population expansion of the
eleventh and twelfth centuries and the consequent influx of
people to the cities, artisan guilds were established, each with its
own patron saint. Jews were again driven from the crafts into
what fields remained: banking, money-changing and moneylending.
56 Persecuting Jews, therefore, also became a convenient
means of getting rid of one's creditors. Religious arguments
were taken up by indebted kings to justify their confiscation of
Jewish property and their expulsion of Jews from their
domains.57
Anyone who held power became a likely target for the
Church. The Knights Templar, a group originally formed to
protect crusaders, gained political influence and became known
as trustworthy moneylenders.58 They were also thought to have
brought back with them Gnostic, Kabalistic, and Islamic
mysteries. Threatened by the Templars' growing political power,
suspicious of their seemingly independent religious beliefs, and
jealous of their wealth, both Church and kings had reason to
persecute them. As with the Jews, incredible stories began to
THE CHURCH FIGHTS CHANGE 71
circulate about the Templars, including accounts of an initiation
ritual which involved denying Christ, God, and the Virgin, and
spitting, trampling and urinating upon the cross. Accused of
homosexuality, of killing illegitimate children, and of witchcraft,
the Templars were murdered and their property confiscated.59
The Church found itself at odds with a seemingly endless
array of people in the Middle Ages. It reacted swiftly and
forcefully to suppress the first seeds of nationalism and desire for
independence from Rome. When disputes over tribute payments
arose in 1275, the Pope excommunicated the whole town of
Florence.60 And, when a group of smaller Italian city-states
organized a revolt against papal control in 1375, the Pope's
legate in Italy, Robert of Geneva, hired a mercenary band to
reconquer the area. After failing to take the city of Bologna, this
band set upon the smaller town of Cessna.61
Swearing clemency by a solemn oath on his
cardinal's hat, Cardinal Robert persuaded the
men of Cessna to lay down their arms, and won
their confidence by asking for 50 hostages and
immediately releasing them as evidence of good
will. Then summoning his mercenaries... he
ordered a general massacre 'to exercise justice.'
... For three days and nights beginning February
3, 1377, while the city gates were closed, the
soldiers slaughtered. 'All the squares were full of
dead.' Trying to escape, hundreds drowned in
the moats, thrust back by relentless swords.
Women were seized for rape, ransom was placed
on children, plunder succeeded the killing, works
of art were ruined, handicrafts laid waste, 'and
what could not be carried away, they burned,
made unfit for use or spilled upon the ground.'
The toll of the dead was between 2,500-5000.62
Robert of Geneva was appointed Pope three years later in 1378
and became Clement VII.63
THE DARK SIDE OF CHRISTIAN HISTORY
Judging by the ferocity of its attack upon a group called the
Cathars, the Church was more grandly threatened by this heresy
than by any other in history. Catharism thrived in southern
France, an area then known as Langedoc. Politically and
culturally distinct from the north, Langedoc was tolerant of
difference. Many races lived together harmoniouslyÑGreeks,
Phoenicians, Jews and Muslims. Jews were not only free from
persecution, but held management and advisory positions with
lords and even prelates. There was less class distinction, a milder
form of serfdom, freer towns, and a judicial system based upon
Roman law.64 Nowhere were citizens as educated.65 Culture and
commerce flourished, making it one of the most prosperous
regions in Europe.
Catharism incorporated diverse religious elements. There is
evidence of a strong connection between Catharism, Moslem Sufi
communities and the Jewish Kabbalist tradition.66 Women served
as priests and could administer even the most important rite, the
consolamentum.67 Cathars were closely associated with the
Troubadours, the writers of romantic poetry, and were thought
to believe that God was manifest in nature's colors and sounds.68
They were liked and protected both by the upper classes and by
their Catholic neighbors to such an extent that, when the Roman
Catholic Church later attacked, many Catholics chose to die
rather than turn their Catharan neighbors over to the Church.69
Responding to the growing popularity of the Cathars, the
Catholic Church accused them of the standard malefactions:
desecrating the cross and the sacraments, cannibalism, renouncing
Christ, and sexual orgies.70 And, yet, the Catholic St.
Bernard, who was hardly a friend of the Cathars, said of them:
If you interrogate them, nothing can be more
Christian; as to their conversation, nothing can
be less reprehensible, and what they speak they
prove by deeds. As for the morals of the heretic,
he cheats no one, he oppresses no one, he
THE CHURCH FIGHTS CHANGE 73
strikes no one; his cheeks are pale with fasting,
he eats not the bread of idleness, his hands
labor for his livelihood.71
Circulating scandalous stories of Catharan atrocities did little
either to check the Cathars' popularity or to stem the tide of
tolerance and independent thought. Disregarding one of the
5.5 -Innocent III, Pope from 1198 to 1216.
THE DARK SIDE OF CHRISTIAN HISTORY
Church's most severe sentences, the town of Viterbo even
elected an excommunicated heretic as chamberlain.72
In 1139 the Church began calling councils to condemn the
Cathars and all who supported them.73 By 1179 Alexander III
proclaimed a crusade against these enemies of the Church
promising two years' indulgence, or freedom from punishment
for sins, to all who would take up arms, and eternal salvation for
any who should die. While this set a precedent for providing the
Church with a warlike militia to fight the Church's private
quarrels,74 it failed to rally force against the popular Cathars.
Then in 1204 Pope Innocent III destroyed what remained of the
independence of local churches when he armed his legates with
the authority "to destroy, throw down, or pluck up whatever is
to be destroyed, thrown down, or plucked up and to plant and
build whatever is to be built or planted."75 In 1208 when
Innocent III offered, in addition to indulgences and eternal
salvation, the lands and property of the heretics and their
supporters to any who would take up arms, the Albigensian
Crusade to slaughter the Cathars began.
The savagery of the thirty-year-long attack decimated
Langedoc. At the Cathedral of St. Nazair alone 12,000 people
were killed. Bishop Folque of Toulouse put to death 10,000.76
When the crusaders fell upon the town of Beziers and the
commanding legate, Arnaud, was asked how to distinguish
Catholic from Cathar, he replied, "Kill them all, for God knows
his own!"77 Not a child was spared. One historian wrote that
"even the dead were not safe from dishonor, and the worst
humiliations were heaped upon women."78 The total slain at
Beziers as reported by papal legates was 20,000, by other
chroniclers the numbers killed were between 60,000 and
100,000.79 The Albigensian crusade killed an estimated one
million people, not only Cathars but much of the population of
southern France. Afterwards, with its population nearly annihilated,
its buildings left in rubble, and its economy destroyed, the
THECHURCHFIGHTSCHANGE
lands of southern France were annexed to the north.
Entrenched in its authoritarian structure and consumed by the
belief in its own supremacy, the Catholic Church was unable to
respond to the rapid growth and changes of medieval society.
Instead it demanded obedience to the Pope's dictates. When
crusades against the Muslim, Greek and Jewish infidel failed to
bring about lasting European unity under the banner of Christianity,
the Church struck closer to home, attacking anyone who
threatened its power or disobeyed its commands. Its thirty-yearlong
Albigensian crusade ushered in a five-hundred-year-long
period of brutal repression, the length and scope of which has no
parallel in the Western world.
Chapter Six
Controlling
the Human Spirit:
the Inquisition and Slavery
1250 -1800
There has been no more organized effort by a religion to
control people and contain their spirituality than the Christian
Inquisition. Developed within the Church's own legal framework,
the Inquisition attempted to terrify people into obedience.
As the Inquisitor Francisco Pena stated in 1578, "We must
remember that the main purpose of the trial and execution is not
to save the soul of the accused but to achieve the public good
and put fear into others."1 The Inquisition took countless human
lives in Europe and around the world as it followed in the wake
of missionaries. And along with the tyranny of the Inquisition,
churchmen also brought religious justification for the practice of
slavery.
The unsubmissive spirit of the high Middle Ages only seemed
to exacerbate the Church's demand for unquestioning obedience.
The Church's understanding of God was to be the only understanding.
There was to be no discussion or debate. As the
Inquisitor Bernard Gui said, the layman must not argue with the
CONTROLLINGTHEHUMANSPIRIT 77
unbeliever, but "thrust his sword into the man's belly as far as
it will go."2 In a time of burgeoning ideas about spirituality, the
Church insisted that it was the only avenue through which one
was permitted to learn of God. Pope Innocent III declared "that
anyone who attempted to construe a personal view of God which
conflicted with Church dogma must be burned without pity."3
Before the Inquisition was fully underway, the Church
welcomed heretics back to its fold under terms it considered
reasonable. The following is an example of such terms:
On three Sundays the penitent is to be stripped
to the waist and scourged by the priest from the
entrance of the town... to the church door. He is
to abstain forever from meat and eggs and
cheese, except on Easter, Pentecost, and Christmas,
when he is to eat of them as sign of his
abnegation of his Manichaean errors. For
twoscore days, twice a year, he is to forgo the
use of fish, and for three days in each week that
of fish, wine, and oil, fasting, if his health and
labors will permit. He is to wear monastic
vestments, with a small cross sewed on each
breast. If possible, he is to hear mass daily and
on feast-days to attend church at vespers. Seven
times a day he is to recite the canonical hours,
and, in addition the Paternoster ten times each
day and twenty times each night. He is to
observe the strictest chastity. Every month he is
to show this paper to the priest, who is to watch
its observance closely, and this mode of life is to
be maintained until the legate shall see fit to
alter it, while for infraction of the penance he is
to be held as a perjurer and a heretic, and to be
segregated from the society of the faithful.4
Few heretics returned to the Church of their own accord.
THE DARK SIDE OF CHRISTIAN HISTORY
The Church turned to its own canon law to authenticate an
agency which could enforce adherence to Church authority. In
1231 Pope Gregory IX established the Inquisition as a separate
tribunal, independent of bishops and prelates. Its administrators,
the inquisitors, were to be answerable only to the Pope.5 Its
inquisitional law replaced the common law tradition of "innocent
until proven guilty" with "guilty until proven innocent."6
Despite an ostensible trial, inquisitional procedure left no
possibility for the suspected to prove his or her innocence; the
process resulted in the condemnation of anyone even suspected
of heresy.7 The accused was denied the right of counsel.8 No
particulars were given as to the time or place of the suspected
heresies, or to what kind of heresies were suspected. A suspected
friendship with a convicted heretic was also a crime, yet no
information was given as to which heretic the accused was to
have "adored." The names of the accusing witnesses were kept
secret.9 One's only recourse was an appeal to the Pope in Rome
which was so futile as to be farcical.10 The friar Bernard
Delicieux declared:
.. .that if St. Peter and St. Paul were accused of
'adoring' heretics and were prosecuted after the
fashion of the Inquisition, there would be no
defense open for them.11
The inquisitor presided over inquisitional procedure as both
prosecutor and judge. While he was technically to arrive at his
decision after consulting with an assembly of experts of his
choosing, this check to his power was soon abandoned.12 An
inquisitor was selected primarily on the basis of his zeal to
prosecute heretics.13 He and his assistants, messengers and spies
were allowed to carry arms. And in 1245, the Pope granted him
the right to absolve these assistants for any acts of violence.14
This act rendered the Inquisition, which was already free from
6.1 Inquisitors presided both as prosecutor and judge, leaving little
possibility for someone accused of heresy to ever be proven innocent.
CONTROLLING THE HUMAN SPIRIT 79
THE DARK SIDE OF CHRISTIAN HISTORY
any secular jurisdiction, unaccountable to even ecclesiastical
tribunals.
Inquisitors grew very rich. They received bribes and annual
fines from the wealthy who paid to escape accusation.15 The
Inquisition would claim all the money and property of alleged
heretics.16 As there was little chance of the accused being proven
innocent, there was no need to wait for conviction to confiscate
his or her property.17 Unlike Roman law that reserved a portion
of property for the convicted's nearest heirs, canon and inquisitional
law left nothing. Pope Innocent III had explained that God
punished children for the sins of their parents. So unless children
had come forth spontaneously to denounce their parents, they
were left penniless. Inquisitors even accused the dead of heresy,
sometimes as much as seventy years after their death. They
exhumed and burned the alleged heretic's bones and then
confiscated all property from the heirs.18
Inquisitors rarely shared the money collected with the
episcopal courts, the civil government, or spent it building
churches as planned.19 One historian writes how the inquisitor
was often able to "seize everything for himself, not even sending
a share to the officials of the Inquisition at Rome."20 Inquisitors
were reluctant to pay for even the cost of feeding their victims,
encouraging the families or the community to pay such costs. It
was hardly a coincidence that the eagerness of the Inquisition in
any given region was proportionate to the opportunities for
confiscation.21
Ironically, inquisitors were most often chosen from Dominican
and Franciscan orders, both of which originally professed
vows of poverty. The Church did little to encourage their ideal
of poverty. Although it regarded the Franciscan founder, Francis
of Assisi, as a saint, the Church persecuted Francis's followers
who upheld his ideas of poverty, those known as the Fraticelli,
or "Spiritual Franciscans." The Church denounced the Fraticelli
as "false and pernicious" and in 1315 excommunicated them.22
CONTROLLING THE HUMAN SPIRIT 81
Pope Martin V ordered their village of Magnalata leveled and
every resident slain.23 The Franciscans who abandoned Francis's
teachings, however, were often appointed as inquisitors. While
it did not overtly endorse the Inquisition's avarice and corruption,
the Church did little to stop it.
The Inquisition had devastating economic impact. Aside from
directly seizing the property of successful merchants by accusing
them of heresy, inquisitors crippled commerce by holding certain
operations suspect. For example, maps and map-makers, so
essential to navigating traders and merchants, were held in deep
suspicion. Inquisitors believed the printed word to be a channel
of heresy and so hampered the communication produced by the
fifteenth century invention of the printing press.24 The mere
suspicion of heresy annulled all rights of the suspected individual.
25 When accused, all debts owed by the heretic and any liens
which secured those debts became null and void. The historian
Henry Charles Lea writes:
As no man could be certain of the orthodoxy of
another, it will be evident how much distrust
must have been thrown upon even the commonest
transactions of life. The blighting influence of
this upon the development of commerce and
industry can readily be perceived, coming as it
did at a time when the commercial and industrial
movement of Europe was beginning to usher in
the dawn of modern culture.26
While inquisitors themselves prospered, their activity left
communities impoverished.
The Inquisition was merciless with its victims. The same man
who had been both prosecutor and judge decided upon the
sentence. In 1244 the Council of Narbonne ordered that in the
sentencing of heretics, no husband should be spared because of
his wife, nor wife because of her husband, nor parent because of
helpless children, and no sentence should be mitigated because
THE DARK SIDE OF CHRISTIAN HISTORY
of sickness or old age.27 Each and every sentence included
flagellation.
Of the sentences, pilgrimages were considered the lightest.
Yet, undertaken on foot, such penances could take years, during
which the penitent's family might perish.28 Carrying a much
greater stigma than pilgrimages was "wearing the crosses," also
known as poena confusibilis or "humiliating punishment." The
penitents were required to wear large saffron-colored crosses on
the front and back, which subjected them to public ridicule and
hindered every effort of earning a livelihood.29 A more frequent
sentence was perpetual imprisonment, which always entailed a
scant diet of bread and water, sometimes meant being kept in
chains, and occasionally entailed solitary confinement. The life
expectancy in all the prison sentences was very short.30
The harshest sentence of burning at the stake was given to
those who either failed in their previous penance, relapsed into
heresy, or who would not confess to any crime. Although the
Church had begun killing heretics in the late fourth century and
again in 1022 at Orlean, papal statutes of 1231 now insisted that
heretics suffer death by fire.31 Burning people to death technically
avoided spilling a drop of blood. The words of the Gospel
of John were understood to sanction burning: "If a man abide
not in me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered; and men
gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned."32
The Church distanced itself from the killing by turning
heretics over to secular authorities for the actual burning. Such
secular authorities, however, were not allowed to decline. When
the Senate of Venice in 1521 refused to approve such executions,
for example, Pope Leo X wrote that secular officials were:
...to intervene no more in this kind of trial, but
promptly, without changing or inspecting the
sentences made by the ecclesiastical judges, to
execute the sentences which they are enjoined to
carry out. And if they neglect or refuse, you (the
CONTROLLING THE HUMAN SPIRIT 83
Papal legate) are to compel them with the
Church's censure and other appropriate
measures. From this order there is no appeal.33
In practice, any secular authorities who refused to cooperate
were excommunicated and subject to the same treatment as
suspected heretics.34
By far the cruelest aspect of the inquisitional system was the
means by which confessions were wrought: the torture chamber.
Torture remained a legal option for the Church from 1252 when
it was sanctioned by Pope Innocent IV until 1917 when the new
Codex Juris Canonici was put into effect.35 Innocent IV
authorized indefinite delays to secure confessions, giving
inquisitors as much time as they wanted to torture the accused.36
Although the letter of law forbade repeating torture, inquisitors
easily avoided this rule by simply "continuing" torture, calling
any interval a suspension.37 In 1262 inquisitors and their
assistants were granted the authority to quietly absolve each other
from the crime of bloodshed.38 They simply explained that the
tortured had died because the devil broke their necks.
Thus, with license granted by the Pope himself, inquisitors
were free to explore the depths of horror and cruelty. Dressed
as black-robed fiends with black cowls over their heads,
inquisitors extracted confessions from nearly anyone. The
Inquisition invented every conceivable devise to inflict pain by
slowly dismembering and dislocating the body. Many of these
devices were inscribed with the motto "Glory be only to God."39
The rack, the hoist and water tortures were the most common.
Victims were rubbed with lard or grease and slowly roasted
alive.40 Ovens built to kill people, made infamous in twentieth
century Nazi Germany, were first used by the Christian
Inquisition in Eastern Europe.41 Victims were thrown into a pit
full of snakes and buried alive. One particularly gruesome
torture involved turning a large dish full of mice upside down on
the victim's naked stomach. A fire was then lit on top of the dish
THE DARK SIDE OF CHRISTIAN HISTORY
causing the mice to panic and burrow into the stomach.42 Should
a victim withstand such pain without confessing, he or she would
be burned alive at the stake, often in mass public burnings,
called auto-da-fe.43
Contemporary writings echo the terror created by the
Inquisition. Juan de Mariana reported in the 1490's that people
...were deprived of the liberty to hear and talk
freely, since in all cities, towns and villages
there were persons placed to give information of
what went on. This was considered by some the
most wretched slavery and equal to death.44
A writer in 1538 described life in the Spanish city of Toledo:
...preachers do not dare to preach, and those
who preach do not dare to touch on contentious
matters, for their lives and honour are in the
mouths of two ignoramuses, and nobody in this
life is without his policeman... Bit by bit many
rich people leave the country for foreign realms,
in order not to live all their lives in fear and
trembling every time an officer of the Inquisition
enters their house; for continual fear is a worse
death than a sudden demise.45
The Inquisition often targeted members of other religions as
severely as it did heretics. The Inquisition now lent its authority
to the long-standing Christian persecution of Jews. Particularly
during the Christian Holy Week of the Passion, Christians
frequently rioted against Jews or refused to sell them food in
hopes of starving them.46 At the beginning of the thirteenth
century, Pope Innocent III required Jews to wear distinctive
clothing.47 In 1391 the Archdeacon of Seville launched a "Holy
6.2 A mass burning or auto-da-fe. As one inquisitor stated, "We must
remember that the main purpose of the trial and execution is not to save the
soul of the accused but to achieve the public good and put fear into
others."48
CONTROLLING THE HUMAN SPIRIT
85
THEDARKSIDEOFCHRISTIANHISTORY
War against the Jews."49 By 1492 the Inquisition in Spain had
become so virulent in its persecution of Jews that it demanded
either their conversion to Christianity or their expulsion.
Muslims experienced little better. Not surprisingly, Islamic
countries offered far safer sanctuaries to escaping Jews than
Christian lands.
Historians have often diminished Christian responsibility for
the Inquisition by dividing the Inquisition into three separate
phases: the medieval, the Spanish and the Roman. The greater
secular influence of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella is
thought to separate the Spanish Inquisition from the medieval.
Yet, the Spanish Inquisition's most influential leader, the
Dominican Tomas de Torquemada, was appointed Inquisitor
General by Pope Sixtus IV. Jews were expelled from Spain, not
from a profit motive (there was little money to be made in
banishing a large community whose taxes were paid directly to
the crown), but from the fear that Jews contaminated Christian
society.50 The Roman Inquisition is distinct from the medieval
mainly because it was renamed. In 1542 Pope Paul III reassigned
the medieval Inquisition to the Congregation of the Inquisition,
or the Holy Office. Each phase was identical, however, in its
demand for absolute submission of the individual to authority, a
demand rooted in the orthodox conviction that God similarly
requires unquestioning obedience.
The tyranny inherent in the belief in singular supremacy
accompanied explorers and missionaries throughout the world.
When Columbus landed in America in 1492, he mistook it for
India and called the native inhabitants "Indians." It was his
avowed aim to "convert the heathen Indians to our Holy Faith"51
that warranted the enslaving and exporting of thousands of
Native Americans. That such treatment resulted in complete
6.3 A painting of Christopher Columbus landing in the New World. His
converting native inhabitants to Christianity seemed to justify the atrocities
committed against them.
THE DARK SIDE OF CHRISTIAN HISTORY
genocide did not matter as much as that these natives had been
given the opportunity of everlasting life through their exposure
to Christianity.52 The same sort of thinking also gave Westerners
license to rape women. In his own words, Columbus described
how he himself "took [his] pleasure" with a native woman after
whipping her "soundly" with a piece of rope.53
The Inquisition quickly followed in their wake. By 1570 the
Inquisition had established an independent tribunal in Peru and
the city of Mexico for the purpose of "freeing the land, which
has become contaminated by Jews and heretics. "54 Natives who
did not convert to Christianity were burned like any other
heretic.55 The Inquisition spread as far as Goa, India, where in
the late 16th and early 17th centuries it took no less than 3,800
lives.56
Even without the formal Inquisition present, missionary
behavior clearly illustrated the belief in the supremacy of a single
image of God, not in the supremacy of one all-encompassing
divinity. If the image of God venerated in a foreign land was not
Christian, it was simply not divine. Portuguese missionaries in
the Far East destroyed pagodas, forced scholars to hide their
religious manuscripts, and suppressed older customs.57 Mayan
scribes in Central America wrote:
Before the coming of the Spaniards, there was
no robbery or violence. The Spanish invasion
was the beginning of tribute, the beginning of
church dues, the beginning of strife.58
In 1614 the Shogun of Japan, Iyeyazu, accused the missionaries
of "wanting to change the government of the country and make
themselves masters of the soil."59
With no understanding of shared supremacy and authority,
missionaries fought among themselves just as had early orthodox
6.4 Some missionaries felt that it was their right to kill native inhabitants
who refused to convert to Christianity or submit to the Church.
CONTROLLING THE HUMAN SPIRIT 89
THE DARK SIDE OF CHRISTIAN HISTORY
Christians who had "wanted to command one another" and
lusted "for power over one another."60 In Japan and China, the
Dominicans fought bitterly with the Jesuits. In the Near East, the
Franciscans fought with the Capuchins. And in India, the Jesuits
fought several wars against the Capuchins.61 A Seneca chief
asked of a Moravian missionary in 1805, "If there is but one
religion, why do you white people differ so much about it?"62
Missionaries often took part in the unscrupulous exploitation
of foreign lands. Many became missionaries to get rich quickly
and then return to Europe to live off their gains. In Mexico,
Dominicans, Augustinians and Jesuits were known to own "the
largest flocks of sheep, the finest sugar ingenios, the best kept
estates..."63 The Church, particularly in South America,
supported the enslavement of native inhabitants and the theft of
native lands. A 1493 papal Bull justified declaring war on any
natives in South America who refused to adhere to Christianity.64
As the jurist Encisco claimed in 1509:
The king has every right to send his men to the
Indies to demand their territory from these idolaters
because he had received it from the pope.
If the Indians refuse, he may quite legally fight
them, kill them and enslave them, just as Joshua
enslaved the inhabitants of the country of Ca
65
naan.
Orthodox Christians defended slavery as part of the divinely
ordained hierarchical order. Passages in the Bible support the
institution of slavery:
Both thy bondmen, and thy bondmaids, which
thou shalt have, shall be of the heathen that are
round about you; of them shall ye buy bondmen
and bondmaids. Moreover of the children of the
strangers that do sojourn among you, of them
shall ye buy, and of their families that are with
you, which they begat in your land: and they
CONTROLLING THE HUMAN SPIRIT
shall be your possession. And ye shall take them
as an inheritance for your children after you, to
inherit them for a possession; they shall be your
bondmen for ever.66
St. Paul instructed slaves to obey their masters.67 The early St.
John Chrysostom wrote:
The slave should be resigned to his lot, in obeying
his master he is obeying God...68
And in the City of God, St. Augustine wrote:
...slavery is now penal in character and planned
by that law which commands the preservation of
the natural order and forbids disturbance.69
While there were missionaries who recognized the humanity
of Native Americans and worked earnestly to improve their lot,
few recognized an inherent injustice in the idea of slavery. Even
the well-known Jesuit Antonio Vieira, who was imprisoned by
the Inquisition for his work on behalf of the native inhabitants,
advocated importing black Africans to serve as slaves for
colonial settlers. And he still considered fugitives from slavery
guilty of sin and worthy of excommunication.70
Orthodox Christianity also supported the practice of slavery
in North America. The eighteenth century Anglican Church
made it clear that Christianity freed people from eternal damnation,
not from the bonds of slavery. The Bishop of London,
Edmund Gibson, wrote:
The Freedom which Christianity gives, is a
Freedom from the Bondage of Sin and Satan,
and from the Dominion of Men's Lusts and
Passions and inordinate Desires; but as to their
outward Condition, whatever that was before,
whether bond or free, their being baptised, and
becoming Christians, makes no manner of
Change in it.71
Slaves should, however, be converted to Christianity, it was
THE DARK SIDE OF CHRISTIAN HISTORY
argued, because they would then become more docile and
obedient.72
Both the Inquisition and those supporting the practice of
slavery relied upon the same religious justification. In keeping
with the orthodox Christian belief in a singular and fearful God
who rules at the pinnacle of hierarchy, power resided solely with
authority, not with the individual. Obedience and submission
were valued far more than freedom and self-determination. The
Inquisition played out the darkest consequences of such a belief
system as it imprisoned and killed the bodies and spirits of
countless peopleÑand not simply for a brief moment of time.
The Inquisition spanned centuries and was still active in some
places as late as 1834.73
Chapter Seven
The Reformation:
Converting the Populace
1500 -1700 C.E.
Both the Protestant Reformation and the Catholic Counter
Reformation attempted to purge Christianity of pre-Christian and
pagan elements. While the medieval Church had embraced
orthodox ideology in theory, in practice it had concerned itself
far more with amassing wealth and enforcing social obedience
than with directing the spirituality of common people. Reformers
now set about teaching the European populace a better understanding
of orthodox Christianity. By frightening people with
stories of the devil and the danger of magic, they convinced
people to believe in an authoritarian God who demanded
discipline, struggle, and the renunciation of physical pleasure.
Protesting a Church more concerned with collecting money
than with teaching scripture, Martin Luther ignited the Protestant
Reformation. When he posted his 95 theses on the door of his
town's church in 1517, Luther gave voice to a widespread
resentment of the Church. His protest found support among the
exploited peasantry, those who advocated independence from the
Holy Roman Empire, and those who resented the money being
sent to the Church in Rome and the Church's immense landed
THEREFORMATION 95
estates. Protestantism soon swept through Germany, Switzerland,
the Low Countries, England, Scotland, the Scandinavian
Kingdoms, as well as through parts of France, Hungary and
Poland.
The Catholic Church responded with its own Reformation,
called the Counter Reformation, centered around the decisions
and canons of the Council of Trent which met between 1545 and
1563. The animosity between Protestants and Catholics sparked
a series of civil wars in France and England as well as the
bloody Thirty Years War involving Germany, Sweden, France,
Denmark, England, the Netherlands, and the Holy Roman
Empire represented by the Hapsburgs. That both sides considered
themselves Christian did not temper the bloodshed. On
August 24, 1572, for example, in what is known as the massacre
of St. Bartholomew's Day, 10,000 Protestants were slaughtered
in France. Pope Gregory XIII wrote to France's Charles IX,
"We rejoice with you that with the help of God you have
relieved the world of these wretched heretics."1
Yet, both Protestants and Catholics were concerned with
establishing a Christianity based upon orthodox ideology.
Protestants led this effort by advocating stricter adherence to
scripture. Aided by the printing press, the Protestant message
demonstrated more uniformity and was less likely to be adapted
to older pagan beliefs.2 The harsher tenets of the Old Testament
took on greater prominence. Rather than invoking God's
participation as a helpmate in life as many had continued to do,
Protestants believed that one should be more concerned with
supplication and obedience to God's sovereign will. Jesus should
be seen, not as a human being with whom to relate, but as part
of almighty God. Some Protestants even denied that Jesus had
taken on a biologically human body; his had been a "celestial
flesh."3
7.1 A depiction of Martin Luther burning the Papal Bull. His protests
against the Catholic Church touched off the Protestant Reformation.
7.2 & 7.3 Depictions of the massacre of Protestants in Calabria (left) and
the massacre of St. Bartholomew's Day (above). The presence of two
major branches of Christianity, each convinced that theirs was the only
true path to God, turned Europe into a bloodbath.
THEDARKSIDEOFCHRISTIANHISTORY
Protestants viewed the worship of saints and Mary, which had
an intensely personal tone, as a form of idolatry and a diminishment
of Jesus's single-handed victory. An individual, they
believed, should develop a relationship with God strictly through
the word of scripture rather than through the humanized images
of Jesus, Mary, the saints, or even through symbols. Much in
the way that fourth century Christians vandalized the sacred sites
and images of more ancient traditions, so now Protestant mobs,
incited by preachers and with the endorsement of public authority,
destroyed images of saints.4 Although Protestantism vehemently
denied the necessity of the Church as an intermediary
between the individual and God, it removed most of the means
through which a direct and personal relationship might develop.
Catholic reformers also diminished the veneration of saints.
Saints were now to be seen as heroic figures and models of
virtue rather than as friends or benefactors.5 But the Catholic
Church was reluctant to part with the authority it had built over
centuries. Yes, Christian faith should be sourced in the Bible,
butÑas the Council of Trent declaredÑthe Bible was best
clarified by "the testimonies of approved holy fathers and
councils, the judgement and consensus of the Church."6
Catholics were also unwilling to dispense with the ritualistic and
sacramental nature of church services. Some Protestants, on the
other hand, rejected rituals and sacraments entirely, insisting that
one should experience God strictly through preaching or reading
scripture.7
Protestant leaders fervently embraced St. Augustine's ideas
about free will and predestination: that Adam's fall from grace
had left humanity inherently flawed, incapable of acting correctly,
and thus entirely dependent upon God's mercy. Salvation
was now possible only through the grace of God, not through
individual determination. "Free will after the Fall is nothing but
a word," said Luther in 1518. "Even doing what in him lies,
man sins mortally."8 Most Catholics believed that while Adam's
sin had inclined us towards evil and diminished our free will, his
THEREFORMATION 99
sin had not destroyed our free will entirely. Canon Four of the
Council of Trent reads:
If anyone says that man's free will, moved and
stimulated by God, cannot cooperate at all by
giving its assent to God when he stimulates and
calls him... and that he cannot dissent, if he so
wills, but like an inanimate creature is utterly
inert and passive, let him be anathema.9
Even though Protestants lacked the organized Catholic
hierarchy to demarcate who was better than whom, they
continued to rank human beings. Martin Luther believed that
differences in gender, class, race, and belief indicated superior
and inferior states of being. In 1533 he wrote, "Girls begin to
talk and to stand on their feet sooner than boys because weeds
always grow up more quickly than good crops."10 In 1525 he
supported the merciless suppression of the Peasants' War, a
rebellion that his own spirit of independence from the Roman
Church had helped to ignite.11 Although Luther could find no
scriptural warrant for exterminating Jews, he believed that they
should be enslaved or thrown out of Christian lands and that
their ghettos and synagogues should be burned.12 He thought that
the rebellious Anabaptists should be killed and even publicly
affirmed a 1531 edict by Wittenberg theologians sanctioning their
execution.13
Other Protestant leaders were no more tolerant. John Calvin,
whose doctrine formed the basis of Presbyterianism, wrote of:
...the eternal principle, by which [God] has
determined what He will do with each man. For
He does not create them equal, but appoints
some to eternal life, and others to eternal damnation.
14
Calvin established a powerfully repressive, police-state theocracy
in Geneva that is perhaps best remembered for burning the well-
known physician, Michael Servetus, because of his dissenting
THE DARK SIDE OF CHRISTIAN HISTORY
views of Christianity. Calvin's pupil, John Knox, condemned all
other creeds. As Protestants fragmented, each new denomination
laid claim to the sole divine truth, denouncing all others.
In keeping with their belief in an authoritarian God, both
Protestants and Catholics advocated strict enforcement of their
perception of God's laws. The Catholic Church had already
established the means with which to control society and enforce
obedience. Protestants, however, lacked the well-developed
judicial structure and hierarchy of the Catholic Church and
lacked its global reach. Instead, they transferred the enforcement
of personal morality to the state. Aside from its secular functions,
the state should now uphold the moral purity of society;
it should be "the Godly state."15 The domestic family unit,
governed by the father, also took on new importance as the
microcosm of the authoritarian structure.
Both Protestants and Catholics diminished the important role
of the community, making it easier for the Church and state to
have more direct control of the individual. The Reformation
discouraged fraternities, which in the Middle Ages had provided
for its members in times of need, organized celebrations and
plays, helped care for the poor, and set up hospitals.16 Community
festivals, crucial to the harmony and vitality of the community,
were curtailed. Catholic confessions, which had been a
public act of forgiveness that restored a sinner back into the
community, became a private matter between the individual and
the priest with the introduction of the confession-box in 1565.17
And the role of god-parents, which had served to cement social
ties in ritual friendship, was diminished.18 The Reformation
eroded the community's capacity to intervene with the authority
of the Church, state, or family patriarch.
The ReformationÑboth Protestant and CatholicÑreplaced the
importance of communal harmony with an emphasis upon Godly
order and obedience. The ten commandments took the place of
the doctrine of the seven deadly sins which had formed the core
THEREFORMATION 101
of medieval morality: pride, envy, anger, avarice, gluttony, sloth
and lechery. Those sins that destroyed the sense of community
had been considered the worst: pride, envy, anger and avarice.
The most important of the ten commandments, however, was the
one that upheld, not communal harmony, but parental and civil
authority: "Honour thy father and mother."19 Some laws in
Puritan New England even decreed the death penalty for young
who might curse or "smite" their parents.20 Sin, rather than
something which disrupted communal harmony, now came to be
seen as disobedience to authority.21
Reformers had become aware not only of how little respect
the Church commanded, but also of how ignorant common
people were of orthodox Christianity. In 1547 Stephen Gardner
described a parish in Cambridge: "when the vicar goeth into the
pulpit to read that [he] himself hath written, then the multitude
of the parish goeth straight out of the church, home to drink."22
The historian Keith Thomas reports how, when a rector in Essex
"preached in 1630 about Adam and Eve making themselves coats
of fig-leaves, one loud-mouthed parishioner demanded to know
where they got the thread to sew them with."23 Orthodox
Christianity was especially foreign to people in rural areas. In
1607 John Norden wrote:
In some parts where I have travelled, where
great and spacious wastes, mountains and heaths
are, ...many cottages are set up, the people
given to little or no kind of labour, living very
hardly with oaten bread, sour whey, and goat's
milk, dwelling far from any church or chapel,
and are as ignorant of God or of any course of
life as the very savages amongst the infidels.24
To deal with the paganism of common people, Protestants and
Catholics during the Reformation focused upon teaching the
concept of a singular, heavenly God. In contrast to their
understanding of divinity through a multiplicity of faces that
THE DARK SIDE OF CHRISTIAN HISTORY
could be experienced in every aspect of life, people were now
taught to understand God strictly as a heavenly father who was
no longer part of or interested in the physical realm. Spirituality,
or a relationship with God, lay in repudiating physical pleasure,
which often encompassed not just the pleasure of the physical
senses but simple comforts as well. The late seventeenth century
Tronson went so far as to declare:
If you want to be heirs of Jesus and paradise,
that is, if you want not to be damned everlastingly
but to be happy for ever in heaven, then
you must renounce the world entirely and bid it
an eternal farewell.25
The physical body was also to be repudiated. Since God was
no longer to be found in the physical, the body was ungodly.
Protestants and Catholics competed with each other over how
little they could care for their bodies, using little soap and water
throughout a lifetime.26 A Jesuit in the 1700's, explaining that
"religious modesty" is enough to prevent anyone from bathing,
told a story of one who violated the prohibition:
A youth who dared to bathe at one of our country
houses did drown there, perhaps by God's
merciful judgement, for He may have wished this
fearful example to serve as law.27
A Catholic sermon from around 1700 advises one "to treat one's
body as a sworn enemy, and subdue it through work, fasts,
hairshirts, and other mortifications."28 A Sorbonne prior and
doctor named Joseph Lambert warned rural folk:
...you must regard every kind of touching of
your own and others' bodies, every liberty, as
the most serious of sins; although these lewd acts
may indeed be secret, they are loathsome in
God's sight, who sees them all, is offended by
them, and never fails to punish them most
severely.29
THE REFORMATION 103
While orthodox Christians had long considered sex for any
purpose other than procreation to be sinful, it was only during
the Reformation that most common people learned this. Christian
history is replete with condemnations of human sexuality. In the
fifth century St. Augustine developed a theory not only of how
sin passed from generation to generation by the sexual act, but
also how sexual desire was in itself proof of the lack of human
free will. Inquisitors at the turn of the sixteenth century wrote
that "God allows the devil more power over the venereal act, by
which the original sin is handed down, than over other human
actions."30 Reformers now took such attitudes and exhorted
ordinary people to repudiate sexual pleasure even within a
heterosexual marriage. It became common, for example, to cite
Jerome's remark that a husband committed a sin if he enjoyed
sex with his wife too much.31
Pleasure in any form was now to be repudiated. Grignon de
Montfort, a Catholic missionary, denounced love songs, tales
and romances "which spread like the plague... and corrupt so
many people."32 A prominent eighteenth century Augustinian
priest repeatedly condemned public entertainment. "Public
performances are inherently opposed to the spirit of Christianity."
"Plays give only dangerous lessons." "Plays are the
source of our time's dissoluteness."33 In seventeenth century
New England where Puritans controlled much of society,
warnings or actual punishment befell any youths caught sledding
or swimming and any adults caught simply enjoying themselves
when they might be better employed.34 To enjoy oneself on the
Sabbath was considered a terrible offense. A Massachusetts law
of 1653 prohibited Sunday walks and visits to the harbor as
being a waste of time. Playing children or strolling young men
and women were warned that they were engaging in "things
tending much to the dishonor of God, the reproach of religion
and the prophanation of the holy Sabbath."35 John Lewis and
104 THE DARK SIDE OF CHRISTIAN HISTORY
Sarah Chapman were brought before the New London court in
1670 for "sitting together on the Lord's Day, under an apple tree
in Goodman Chapman's orchard."36
The pleasures of physical beauty and aesthetics were similarly
disparaged. The seventeenth century bastion of Puritanism in
New England frowned upon ornamentation of any sort. Furniture
and dwellings were extremely austere. Beautiful clothing was
considered sinful. In 1634 the General Court forbade garments:
...with any lace on it, silver, gold or thread...
also all outworks, embroidered or needlework
caps, bands and rails... all gold and silver
girdles, hatbands, belts, ruffs, beaver hats.37
Clothing which revealed the female body was illegal. A 1650
New England law prohibited "short sleeves, whereby the
nakedness of the arm may be discovered."38 Christians came to
believe that anything which focused attention upon the physical
world was ungodly.
The perceived separation of humanity from a strictly heavenly
God produced a great sense of shame during the Reformation.
Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits, declared:
I am mere dung, I must ask our Lord that when
I am dead my body be thrown on the dungheap
to be devoured by the birds and dogs... Must
?39
this not be my wish in punishment for my sins
And Calvin wrote:
We are all made of mud, and this mud is not just
on the hem of our gown, or on the sole of our
boots, or in our shoes. We are full of it, we are
nothing but mud and filth both inside and outside.
40
7.4 John Knox, the founder of Scottish Presbyterian ism. Believing the
physical world to be ungodly, Protestant reformers condemned pleasure of
any sort: physical, sexual or aesthetic.
THEDARKSIDEOFCHRISTIANHISTORY
In the mid-1700's Jonathan Edwards, the Calvinist New England
theologian, preached:
(You are) a little, wretched, despicable creature;
a worm, a mere nothing, and less than nothing;
a vile insect, that has risen up in contempt
against the majesty of heaven and earth.41
One should cope with one's intrinsically evil nature through
discipline, chastisement and struggle. Reformers extolled
discipline and struggle as measures of a person's spirituality and
godliness. Much of the Catholic Counter Reformation focused
upon the administration and education of priests so that they
could better teach discipline and the laws of the almighty God to
their parishioners. Penance became a means of avoiding sinful
behavior rather than a way of making amends for sins already
committed.42 The Puritan Cotton Mather affirmed the value of
punishment and echoed Augustine's "compel them to enter" with
his famous phrase "Better whipt, than Damn'd."43
Suffering and hardship marked a true orthodox Christian's
life. Jesus's greatest act was understood to be, not his miracles
of healing or his courageous rebellion against injustice, but his
suffering and dying on the cross. The Church canonized
individuals as saints, not because of their ease of accomplishment,
but because of their torment and martyrdom. As the poet
of the Spiritual Canticle wrote, one may not "look for Christ
without the cross," and "suffering is the livery of those who
love..."44 The seventeenth century Antoine Godeau preached
that "a true Christian takes joy in having some afflictions to
suffer, because suffering is the badge of a true Christian. "45
Magic, or the belief that God could intervene and make
physical life easier, became a sure sign of ungodliness during the
Reformation. God reigned from above and demanded hard work
and suffering. As the historian Keith Thomas notes, "man was
to earn his bread by the sweat of his brow."46 Magic was also
perceived as an arrogant attempt to impersonate God. For, as
THEREFORMATION 107
one reformer asked in 1554, "if ye may make at your pleasure
such things to drive devils away and to deal both body and soul,
what need have ye of Christ?"47 According to the seventeenth
century Francis Bacon, magical remedies should be shunned
because they "propound those noble effects which God hath set
forth unto man to be bought at the price of labour, to be attained
by a few easy and slothful observances."48 John Cotta, an
English physician of the same period, wrote:
God hath given nothing unto man but for his
travail and pain; and according to his studious
industry, care, prudence, providence, assiduity
and diligence, he dispenseth unto him every
good thing. He hath not ordained wonders and
miracles to give supply unto our common needs,
nor to answer the ordinary occasions or uses of
our life.49
This was news to much of medieval Europe. Most people still
believed in a multifaceted God who could be called upon to
assist in everyday life. The early Church, unable to convert
people from such a belief, had established its own system of
ecclesiastical magic.50 The Church had a whole range of
formulas involving prayer and the invocation of God's name
designed to encourage God's assistance in practical, secular
matters. So strong was the belief in the power of the spoken
word, for instance, that the Church discouraged people from
learning exactly what the priest was saying for fear that they
would be able to use such powerful words to work their own
magic.51 And so strong was the belief that perjury would
summon God's vengeance, that the Church relied upon a
witness's honesty in testifying after he or she had sworn an oath
upon a Bible or a relic.52 The belief in the magical power of the
word was still so prevalent in Protestant England that in 1624 the
Parliament passed an act prohibiting swearing and cursing.53
It was against the medieval Church's endorsement of magic
THE DARK SIDE OF CHRISTIAN HISTORY
that Protestants most fervently rebelled. "The Papists," wrote
Calvin, "pretend there is a magical force in the sacraments,
independent of efficacious faith..."54 The Calvinist James
Calfhill proclaimed that "the vilest witches and sorcerers of the
earth" were
...the priests that consecrate crosses and ashes,
water and salt, oil and cream, boughs and
bones, stocks and stones; that christen bells that
hang in the steeple; that conjure worms that
creep in the field; that give St. John's Gospel to
hang about men's necks...55
Protestants attacked sacraments such as confirmation as nothing
...but plain sorcery, devilry, witchcraft, juggling,
legerdemain, and all that naught is. The
bishop mumbleth a few Latin words over the
child, charmeth him, crosseth him, smeareth him
with stinking popish oil, and tieth a linen brand
about the child's neck and sendeth him home...56
"The sacraments," wrote John Canne in 1634, "were not
ordained by God to be used... as charms and sorceries."57
Magic not only attested to what reformers believed was a
false understanding of God, it also interfered with the new
method of indicating social rank. Pre-reformational society had
designated a man's rank either by his position within the Church
hierarchy or by his status as a noble or fighter. But as the
Church hierarchy and the role of nobility declined, financial
7.5 This caricature of the Pope mocked the sacramental nature of the
Catholic Church and was popular among Protestants in England, Holland
and Germany for over a century. Articles used in Catholic worship
compose the figure: the hat is a church-bell decorated with holy-water
brushes, the mouth an open wine flagon, the eye a chalice covered by the
holy wafer, the cheek a plate used in the communion service, the shoulder
the mass-book.
THE REFORMATION 109
THE DARK SIDE OF CHRISTIAN HISTORY
success became one of the only means of identifying a person's
position in the divine hierarchy. Wealth was considered to be a
symbol of a person's hard work and spiritual evolution. Such a
"Puritan work ethic" would crumble, however, if a person could
achieve prosperity magically.
The increased significance of financial success did not,
however, lead churchmen to encourage poor people to escape
their poverty or to better their lot. The poor were to endure
financial injustice without protest. A seventeenth century
preacher explained that:
If there are people who abuse the authority of
sovereigns and charge you unfair taxes, God
allows it in order to enact His justice, to punish
your sins and the ill use you make of your
property.58
A missionary hymn from the eighteenth century called An
exhortation for working people urges people to bear their station
in life quietly:
Do not suffer to complain
Of life's arduous pain,
And harbor no envy
For those who dwell on high.59
To believe that you could change your situation through any
means other than hard work and struggle, to believe in divine
assistance, indicated collusion with the devil. Reformers taught
that God was in heaven, not on earth. Any supernatural energy
in the physical world could therefore only be the work of the
devil and his demons. Indeed, the whole belief in and fear of the
devil became paramount during the Reformation. Martin Luther
reported having physical encounters with the devil and
7.6 Reformers taught that God no longer took part in the physical world;
the world was now the realm of only the devil and his demons, such as
the one depicted in this woodcut. Anything magical or supernatural could
now only be the devil's work.
THE REFORMATION 111
THE DARK SIDE OF CHRISTIAN HISTORY
wrote, "We are all subject to the Devil, both in body and
goods..."60 According to Luther, "The Devil liveth, yea, and
reigneth throughout the whole world..."61 Jean Calvin said that
the true Christian saint had to engage in an "unceasing struggle
against him"62 and John Knox called the devil the "prince and
God of this world."63 The Trent Catechism echoed the importance
of belief in the devil:
Many imagine that the whole matter is fictitious,
since they think that they are not attacked themselves.
This means that they are in the power of
the Devil and have no Christian virtue. Therefore
the Devil has no need to tempt them, as
their souls are already the Devil's abode.64
Belief in the devil's power became an essential counterpart to
the belief in God. The Protestant Roger Hutchinson wrote:
If there be a God, as we most steadfastly must
believe, verily there is a Devil also; and if there
be a Devil, there is no surer argument, no
stronger proof, no plainer evidence, that there is
a God.65
Another writer pointed out that "he that can already believe that
there is no Devil will ere long believe that there is no God..."66
Like the early Mannichaeans, reformed Christians emphasized
belief in the devil as much if not more than belief in God. The
catechism of the Jesuit Canisius, for example, mentions the name
of satan more often than it does the name of Jesus.67
The perceived power of satan increased proportionately with
the spread of orthodox Christianity. Belief in the devil is a means
of frightening people into obedience. Churchmen of the Reformation
were no different from earlier orthodox Christians who
had considered fear to be imperative. In 1674 Christophe
Schrader advised other preachers of the necessity of having:
...a very great fear of the all-powerful and
excellent God who chased the rebel angels from
THE REFORMATION 113
heaven and our first ancestors from paradise,
destroyed practically the whole universe with the
deluge, and overthrew whole kingdoms and
cities.68
The devil is a necessary counterpart to such an "all-powerful and
excellent" God. The devil carries out God's judgment, tormenting
sinners for all eternity. He is, as King James I called him,
"God's hangman."69
Like many orthodox doctrines and ideas, belief in the devil
makes people feel powerless. Attributing malevolence and
negativity to the devil removes responsibility from human
beingsÑas well as the power that accompanies responsibility.
For, if one is responsible for something, one can do something
about it. But if negativity comes from an external devil, one can
do little but cower in fear or attack those who represent the
devil. Like the belief in the lack of human free will, the belief
in the devil engenders a sense of powerlessness, making people
easier to control.
The Reformation brought profound and dramatic change.
Nations and imperial powers claimed their independence from
the Pope. Medieval social structures and values changed. Perhaps
most significantly, the Reformation changed the way people
perceived the world. The physical world, once a divine, magical
creation, was now understood to be alien to God, belonging only
to the devil. The spiritual path was to be marked by suffering,
struggle and chastisement. Together the Protestant Reformation
and Catholic Counter Reformation converted the people of
Europe to orthodox Christianity.
Chapter Eight
The Witch Hunts:
The End of Magic
and Miracles
1450 -1750 C.E.
The Reformation did not convert the people of Europe to
orthodox Christianity through preaching and catechisms alone.
It was the 300 year period of witch-hunting from the fifteenth to
the eighteenth century, what R.H. Robbins called "the shocking
nightmare, the foulest crime and deepest shame of western
civilization,"1 that ensured the European abandonment of the
belief in magic. The Church created the elaborate concept of
devil worship and then, used the persecution of it to wipe out
dissent, subordinate the individual to authoritarian control, and
openly denigrate women.
The witch hunts were an eruption of orthodox Christianity's
vilification of women, "the weaker vessel," in St. Peter's words.2
The second century St. Clement of Alexandria wrote: "Every
woman should be filled with shame by the thought that she is a
woman. "3 The Church father Tertullian explained why women
deserve their status as despised and inferior human beings:
THE WITCH HUNTS 115
And do you not know that you are an Eve? The
sentence of God on this sex of yours lives in this
age: the guilt must of necessity live too. You are
the devil's gateway: you are the unsealer of that
tree: you are the first deserter of the divine law:
you are she who persuaded him whom the devil
was not valiant enough to attack. You destroyed
so easily God's image, man. On account of your
desertÑthat is, deathÑeven the Son of God had
to die.4
Others expressed the view more bluntly. The sixth century
Christian philosopher, Boethius, wrote in The Consolation of
Philosophy, "Woman is a temple built upon a sewer."5 Bishops
at the sixth century Council of Macon voted as to whether
women had souls.6 In the tenth century Odo of Cluny declared,
"To embrace a woman is to embrace a sack of manure... "7 The
thirteenth century St. Thomas Aquinas suggested that God had
made a mistake in creating woman: "nothing [deficient] or
defective should have been produced in the first establishment of
things; so woman ought not to have been produced then."8 And
Lutherans at Wittenberg debated whether women were really
human beings at all.9 Orthodox Christians held women responsible
for all sin. As the Bible's Apocrypha states, "Of woman
came the beginning of sin/ And thanks to her, we all must
die."10
Women are often understood to be impediments to spirituality
in a context where God reigns strictly from heaven and demands
a renunciation of physical pleasure. As I Corinthians 7:1 states,
"It is a good thing for a man to have nothing to do with a
woman." The Inquisitors who wrote the Malleus Maleficarum,
"The Hammer of the Witches," explained that women are more
likely to become witches than men:
'Because the female sex is more concerned with
things of the flesh than men;' because being
THE DARK SIDE OF CHRISTIAN HISTORY
formed from a man's rib, they are 'only imperfect
animals' and 'crooked' whereas man belongs
Christ
to a privileged sex from whose midst
emerged.11
King James I estimated that the ratio of women to men who
"succumbed" to witchcraft was twenty to one.12 Of those
formally persecuted for witchcraft, between 80 to 90 percent
13
were women.
Christians found fault with women on all sorts of counts. An
historian notes that thirteenth century preachers
...denounced women on the one hand for... the
'lascivious and carnal provocation' of their
garments, and on the other hand for being over-
industrious, too occupied with children and
housekeeping, too earthbound to give due
thought to divine things.14
According to a Dominican of the same period, woman is "the
confusion of man, an insatiable beast, a continuous anxiety, an
incessant warfare, a daily ruin, a house of tempest ...a hindrance
to devotion."15
As reformational fervor spread, the feminine aspect of
Christianity in the worship of Mary became suspect. Throughout
the Middle Ages, Mary's powers were believed to effectively
curtail those of the devil.16 But Protestants entirely dismissed
reverence for Mary while reformed Catholics diminished her
importance. Devotion to Mary often became indicative of evil.
In the Canary islands, Aldonca de Vargas was reported to the
Inquisition after she smiled at hearing mention of the Virgin
Mary.17 Inquisitors distorted an image of the Virgin Mary into
a device of torture, covering the front side of a statue of Mary
with sharp knives and nails. Levers would move the arms of the
statue crushing the victim against the knives and nails.18
The witch hunts also demonstrated great fear of female
sexuality. The book that served as the manual for understanding
THEWITCHHUNTS 117
and persecuting witchcraft, the Malleus Maleficarum, describes
how witches were known to "collect male organs in great
numbers, as many as twenty or thirty members together, and put
them in a bird's nest..."19 The manual recounts a story of a man
who, having lost his penis, went to a witch to have it restored:
She told the afflicted man to climb a certain
tree, and that he might take which he liked out
of a nest in which there were several members.
And when he tried to take a big one, the witch
said: You must not take that one; adding, because
it belonged to a parish priest.20
A man in 1621 lamented, "of women's unnatural, unsatiable
lust... what country, what village doth not complain."21
While most of what became known as witchcraft was invented
by Christians, certain elements of witchcraft did represent an
older pagan tradition. Witchcraft was linked and even considered
to be synonymous with "divination," which means not only the
art of foretelling the future, but also the discovery of knowledge
by the aid of supernatural power.22 It suggests that there is such
power availableÑsomething orthodox Christians insisted could
only be the power of the devil, for God was no longer to be
involved with the physical world.
The word "witch" comes from the old English wicce and
wicca, meaning the male and female participants in the ancient
pagan tradition which holds masculine, feminine and earthly
aspects of God in great reverence. Rather than a God which
stood above the world, removed from ordinary life, divinity in
the Wiccan tradition was understood to imbue both heaven and
earth. This tradition also recalled a period when human society
functioned without hierarchyÑeither matriarchal or patriarchalÑ
and without gender, racial or strict class rankings. It was a
tradition that affirmed the potential for humanity to live without
domination and fear, something orthodox Christians maintain is
THE DARK SIDE OF CHRISTIAN HISTORY
impossible.*
The early Church had tried to eradicate the vestiges of this
older non-hierarchical tradition by denying the existence of
witches or magic outside of the Church. The Canon Episcopi, a
Church law which first appeared in 906, decreed that belief in
witchcraft was heretical.23 After describing pagan rituals which
involved women demonstrating extraordinary powers, it declared:
For an innumerable multitude, deceived by this
false opinion, believe this to be true and, so
believing, wander from the right faith and are
involved in the error of the pagans when they
think that there is anything of divinity or power
except the one God.24
Nevertheless, the belief in magic was still so prevalent in the
fourteenth century that the Council of Chartres ordered anathema
to be pronounced against sorcerers each Sunday in every
church.25
It took the Church a long time to persuade society that
women were inclined toward evil witchcraft and devil-worship.
Reversing its policy of denying the existence of witches, in the
thirteenth century the Church began depicting the witch as a
slave of the devil.26 No longer was she or he to be associated
with an older pagan tradition. No longer was the witch to be
thought of as benevolent healer, teacher, wise woman, or one
who accessed divine power. She was now to be an evil satanic
agent. The Church began authorizing frightening portrayals of
* The idea that humanity could live without domination and violence,
far from being an idealistic myth, is beginning to be substantiated by
a new picture of human history. The work of James Mellaart, Marija
Gimbutas, and Riane Eisler illustrates that humanity lived as much as
25,000 years in peace, much longer than the 3500-5000 years that it
has lived with warfare and domination.
THE WITCH HUNTS 119
the devil in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.27 Images of a
witch riding a broom first appeared in 1280.28 Thirteenth century
art also depicted the devil's pact in which demons would steal
children and in which parents themselves would deliver their
children to the devil.29 The Church now portrayed witches with
the same images so frequently used to characterize heretics: "...a
small clandestine society engaged in anti-human practices,
including infanticide, incest, cannibalism, bestiality and orgiastic
sex..."30
The Church developed the concept of devil-worship as an
astoundingly simplistic reversal of Christian rites and practices.
Whereas God imposed divine law, the devil demanded adherence
to a pact. Where Christians showed reverence to God by
kneeling, witches paid homage to the devil by standing on their
heads. The sacraments in the Catholic Church became excrements
in the devil's church. Communion was parodied by the
Black Mass.31 Christian prayers could be used to work evil by
being recited backwards.32 The eucharist bread or host was
imitated in the devil's service by a turnip. The baptismal
"character" or stigmata of the mysteries was parodied by the
devil's mark impressed upon the witch's body by the claw of the
devil's left hand.33 Whereas saints had the gift of tears, witches
were said to be incapable of shedding tears.34 Devil worship was
a simple parody of Christianity. Indeed, the very concept of the
devil was exclusive to monotheism and had no importance within
the pagan, Wiccan tradition.
The Church also projected its own hierarchical framework
onto this new evil witchcraft. The devil's church was to be
organized such that its dignitaries could climb the ranks to the
position of bishop, just like in the Catholic Church.35 Julio Caro
Baroja explains:
...the Devil causes churches and altars to appear
with music... and devils decked out as saints.
The dignitaries reach rank of bishop, and sub
THE DARK SIDE OF CHRISTIAN HISTORY
THE WITCH HUNTS 121
deacons, deacons and priests serve Mass. Candles
and incense are used for the service and
water is sprinkled from a thurifer. There is an
offertory, a sermon, a blessing over the equivalents
of bread and wine... So that nothing should
be missing there are even false martyrs in the
organization.36
Again, such hierarchy was entirely a projection of the Church
that bore no resemblance to ancient paganism. By recognizing
both masculine and feminine faces of God and by understanding
God to be infused throughout the physical world, the Wiccan
tradition had no need for strict hierarchical rankings.
Pope John XXII formalized the persecution of witchcraft in
1320 when he authorized the Inquisition to prosecute sorcery.37
Thereafter papal bulls and declarations grew increasingly
vehement in their condemnation of witchcraft and of all those
who "made a pact with hell."38 In 1484 Pope Innocent VIII
issued the bull Summis desiderantes authorizing two inquisitors,
Kramer and Sprenger, to systematize the persecution of
witches.39 Two years later their manual, Malleus Maleficarum,
was published with 14 editions following between 1487-1520 and
at least 16 editions between 1574-1669.40 A papal bull in 1488
called upon the nations of Europe to rescue the Church of Christ
which was "imperiled by the arts of Satan."41 The papacy and
the Inquisition had successfully transformed the witch from a
phenomenon whose existence the Church had previously
rigorously denied into a phenomenon that was deemed very real,
very frightening, the antithesis of Christianity, and absolutely
deserving of persecution.
It was now heresy not to believe in the existence of witches.
8.1 A fifteenth century woodcut entitled "Witches Sabbath." Such
characterizations of witchcraft were simplistic reversals of Christian rites
and rituals created by churchmen that had very little to do with the pre-
Christian Wiccan tradition.
122 THEDARKSIDEOFCHRISTIANHISTORY
As the authors of the Malleus Maleficarum noted, "A belief that
there are such things as witches is so essential a part of Catholic
faith that obstinately to maintain the opposite opinion savors of
heresy."42 Passages in the Bible such as "Thou shalt not suffer
a witch to live" were cited to justify the persecution of witches.43
Both Calvin and Knox believed that to deny witchcraft was to
deny the authority of the Bible.44 The eighteenth century founder
of Methodism, John Wesley, declared to those skeptical of
witchcraft, "The giving up of witchcraft is in effect the giving up
of the Bible. "45 And an eminent English lawyer wrote, "To
deny the possibility, nay, actual existence of Witchcraft and
Sorcery, is at once flatly to contradict the revealed Word of God
in various passages both of the Old and New Testament."46
The persecution of witchcraft enabled the Church to prolong
the profitability of the Inquisition. The Inquisition had left
regions so economically destitute that the inquisitor Eymeric
complained, "In our days there are no more rich heretics... it
is a pity that so salutary an institution as ours should be so
uncertain of its future. "47 By adding witchcraft to the crimes it
persecuted, however, the Inquisition exposed a whole new group
of people from whom to collect money. It took every advantage
of this opportunity. The author Barbara Walker notes:
Victims were charged for the very ropes that
bound them and the wood that burned them.
Each procedure of torture carried its fee. After
the execution of a wealthy witch, officials usually
treated themselves to a banquet at the expense of
48
the victim's estate.
In 1592 Father Cornelius Loos wrote:
Wretched creatures are compelled by the severity
of the torture to confess things they have never
done... and so by the cruel butchery innocent
lives are taken; and, by a new alchemy, gold
and silver are coined from human blood.49
In many parts of Europe trials for witchcraft began exactly as the
THEWITCHHUNTS 123
trials for other types of heresy stopped.50
The process of formally persecuting witches followed the
harshest inquisitional procedure. Once accused of witchcraft, it
was virtually impossible to escape conviction. After cross-
examination, the victim's body was examined for the witch's
mark. The historian Walter Nigg described the process:
...she was stripped naked and the executioner
shaved off all her body hair in order to seek in
the hidden places of the body the sign which the
devil imprinted on his cohorts. Warts, freckles,
and birthmarks were considered certain tokens of
amorous relations with Satan.51
Should a woman show no sign of a witch's mark, guilt could
still be established by methods such as sticking needles in the
accused's eyes. In such a case, guilt was confirmed if the
inquisitor could find an insensitive spot during the process.52
Confession was then extracted by the hideous methods of
torture already developed during earlier phases of the Inquisition.
"Loathe they are to confess without torture," wrote King James
I in his Daemonologie.53 A physician serving in witch prisons
spoke of women driven half mad:
...by frequent torture... kept in prolonged squalor
and darkness of their dungeons... and constantly
dragged out to undergo atrocious torment
until they would gladly exchange at any moment
this most bitter existence for death, are willing to
confess whatever crimes are suggested to them
rather than to be thrust back into their hideous
dungeon amid ever recurring torture.54
Unless the witch died during torture, she was taken to the
stake. Since many of the burnings took place in public squares,
inquisitors prevented the victims from talking to the crowds by
using wooden gags or cutting their tongue out.55 Unlike a heretic
or a Jew who would usually be burnt alive only after they had
THEDARKSIDEOFCHRISTIANHISTORY
relapsed into their heresy or Judaism, a witch would be burnt
upon the first conviction.56
Sexual mutilation of accused witches was not uncommon.
With the orthodox understanding that divinity had little or
nothing to do with the physical world, sexual desire was
perceived to be ungodly. When the men persecuting the
accused witches found themselves sexually aroused, they
assumed that such desire emanated, not from themselves, but
from the woman. They attacked breasts and genitals with
pincers, pliers and red-hot irons. Some rules condoned sexual
abuse by allowing men deemed "zealous Catholics" to visit
female prisoners in solitary confinement while never allowing
female visitors. The people of Toulouse were so convinced that
the inquisitor Foulques de Saint-George arraigned women for
no other reason than to sexually abuse them that they took the
dangerous and unusual step of gathering evidence against him.57
The horror of the witch hunts knew no bounds. The
Church had never treated the children of persecuted parents
with compassion, but its treatment of witches' children was
particularly brutal. Children were liable to be prosecuted and
tortured for witchcraft: girls, once they were nine and a half,
and boys, once they were ten and a half.58 Younger children
were tortured in order to elicit testimony that could be used
against their parents.59 Even the testimony of two-year-old
children was considered valid in cases of witchcraft though
such testimony was never admissible in other types of trials.60
A famous French magistrate was known to have regretted his
leniency when, instead of having young children accused of
witchcraft burned, he had only sentenced them to be flogged
while they watched their parents burn.61
8.2 The torture inflicted upon women accused of witchcraft was especially
cruel.
THE WITCH HUNTS
125
THEDARKSIDEOFCHRISTIANHISTORY
Witches were held accountable for nearly every problem. Any
threat to social uniformity, any questioning of authority, and any
act of rebellion could now be attributed to and prosecuted as
witchcraft. Not surprisingly, areas of political turmoil and
religious strife experienced the most intense witch hunts. Witch-
hunting tended to be much more severe in Germany, Switzerland,
France, Poland and Scotland than in more homogeneously
Catholic countries such as Italy and Spain.62 Witch-hunters
declared that "Rebellion is as the sin of Witchcraft."63 In 1661
Scottish royalists proclaimed that "Rebellion is the mother of
witchcraft. "64 And in England the Puritan William Perkins
called the witch "The most notorious traytor and rebell that can
be..."65
The Reformation played a critical role in convincing people
to blame witches for their problems. Protestants and reformed
Catholics taught that any magic was sinful since it indicated a
belief in divine assistance in the physical world. The only
supernatural energy in the physical world was to be of the devil.
Without magic to counter evil or misfortune, people were left
with no form of protection other than to kill the devil's agent,
the witch. Particularly in Protestant countries, where protective
rituals such as crossing oneself, sprinkling holy water or calling
on saints or guardian angels were no longer allowed, people felt
defenseless.66 As Shakespeare's character, Prospero, says in The
Tempest:
Now my charms are all o 'erthrown,
And what strength
which is most faint...67
I have's mine own,
It was most often the sermons of both Catholic and Protestant
preachers that would instigate a witch hunt. The terrible Basque
witch hunt of 1610 began after Fray Domingo de Sardo came to
preach about witchcraft. "[T]here were neither witches nor
bewitched until they were talked and written about," remarked
THEWITCHHUNTS 127
a contemporary named Salazar.68 The witch hunts in Salem,
Massachusetts, were similarly preceded by the fearful sermons
and preaching of Samuel Parris in 1692.69
The climate of fear created by churchmen of the Reformation
led to countless deaths of accused witches quite independently of
inquisitional courts or procedure. For example, in England
where there were no inquisitional courts and where witch-hunting
offered little or no financial reward, many women were killed
for witchcraft by mobs. Instead of following any judicial
procedure, these mobs used methods to ascertain guilt of
witchcraft such as "swimming a witch," where a woman would
be bound and thrown into water to see if she floated. The water,
as the medium of baptism, would either reject her and prove her
guilty of witchcraft, or the woman would sink and be proven
innocent, albeit also dead from drowning.70
As people adopted the new belief that the world was the
terrifying realm of the devil, they blamed witches for every
misfortune. Since the devil created all the ills of the world, his
agentsÑwitchesÑcould be blamed for them. Witches were
thought by some to have as much if not more power than Christ:
they could raise the dead, turn water into wine or milk, control
the weather and know the past and future.71 Witches were held
accountable for everything from a failed business venture to a
poor emotional state. A Scottish woman, for instance, was
accused of witchcraft and burned to death because she was seen
stroking a cat at the same time as a nearby batch of beer turned
sour.72 Witches now took the role of scapegoats that had been
held by Jews. Any personal misfortune, bad harvest, famine, or
plague was seen as their fault.
The social turmoil created by the Reformation intensified
witch-hunting. The Reformation diminished the important role of
community and placed a greater demand for personal moral
perfection. As the communal tradition of mutual help broke
THE DARK SIDE OF CHRISTIAN HISTORY
down and the manorial system which had provided more
generously for widows disappeared, many people were left in
need of charity.73 The guilt one felt after refusing to help a needy
person could be easily transferred onto that needy person by
accusing her of witchcraft. A contemporary writer named
Thomas Ady described a likely situation resulting from a failure
to perform some hitherto customary social obligation:
Presently [a householder] cryeth out of some
poor innocent neighbour that he or she hath
bewitched him. For, saith he, such an old man
or woman came lately to my door and desired
some relief, and I denied it, and God forgive
me, my heart did rise against her... and presently
my child, my wife, myself, my horse, my
cow, my sheep, my sow, my hog, my dog, my
cat, or somewhat, was thus and thus handled in
such a strange manner, as I dare swear she is a
witch, or else how should these things be?74
The most common victims of witchcraft accusations were
those women who resembled the image of the Crone. As the
embodiment of mature feminine power, the old wise woman
threatens a structure which acknowledges only force and domination
as avenues of power. The Church never tolerated the image
of the Crone, even in the first centuries when it assimilated the
prevalent images of maiden and mother in the figure of Mary.
Although any woman who attracted attention was likely to be
suspected of witchcraft, either on account of her beauty or
8.3 Witches, as illustrated in this painting of a witch trial, were thought
to possess mighty supernatural powers. The Reformation spread the belief
that the only supernatural power or magic came from the devil and that
Cod no longer offered any protective magic; the only recourse left to those
in a frightening situation was to do away with the devil's agent, the witch.
THE WITCH HUNTS 129
THE DARK SIDE OF CHRISTIAN HISTORY
because of a noticeable oddness or deformity, the most common
victim was the old woman. Poor, older women tended to be the
first accused even where witch hunts were driven by inquisitional
procedure that profited by targeting wealthier individuals.
Figure 8.4 Old and poor women were most often the first accused of
witchcraft.
THEWITCHHUNTS 131
Old, wise healing women were particular targets for witch-
hunters. "At this day," wrote Reginald Scot in 1584, "it is
indifferent to say in the English tongue, 'she is a witch' or 'she
is a wise woman.'"75 Common people of pre-reformational
Europe relied upon wise women and men for the treatment of
illness rather than upon churchmen, monks or physicians. Robert
Burton wrote in 1621:
Sorcerers are too common; cunning men,
wizards and white witches, as they call them, in
every village, which, if they be sought unto, will
help almost all infirmities of body and mind.76
By combining their knowledge of medicinal herbs with an
entreaty for divine assistance, these healers provided both more
affordable and most often more effective medicine than was
available elsewhere. Churchmen of the Reformation objected to
the magical nature of this sort of healing, to the preference
people had for it over the healing that the Church or Church-
licensed physicians offered, and to the power that it gave
women.
Until the terror of the witch hunts, most people did not
understand why successful healers should be considered evil.
"Men rather uphold them," wrote John Stearne, "and say why
should any man be questioned for doing good."77 As a
Bridgettine monk of the early sixteenth century recounted of "the
simple people", "I have heard them say full often myself... 'Sir,
we mean well and do believe well and we think it a good and
charitable deed to heal a sick person or a sick beast'... "78 And
in 1555 Joan Tyrry asserted that "her doings in healing of man
and beast, by the power of God taught to her by the... fairies, be
both godly and good..."79
Indeed, the very invocations used by wise women sound quite
Christian. For example, a 1610 poem recited when picking the
herb vervain, also known as St. Johnswort, reads,
THE DARK SIDE OF CHRISTIAN HISTORY
Hallowed be thou Vervain, as thou growest on
the ground / For in the mount of Calvary there
thou was first found / Thou healest our Saviour,
Jesus Christ, and staunchest his bleeding wound
/ In the name of the Father, the Son, and the
Holy Ghost / I take thee from the ground.80
But in the eyes of orthodox Christians, such healing empowered
people to determine the course of their lives instead of
submitting helplessly to the will of God. According to churchmen,
health should come from God, not from the efforts of
human beings. Bishop Hall said, "we that have no power to bid
must pray... "81 Ecclesiastical courts made the customers of
witches publicly confess to being "heartily sorry for seeking
man's help, and refusing the help of God..."82 An Elizabethan
preacher explained that any healing "is not done by conjuration
or divination, as Popish priests profess and practice, but by
entreating the Lord humbly in fasting and prayer..."83 And
according to Calvin, no medicine could change the course of
events which had already been determined by the Almighty.84
Preachers and Church-licensed male physicians tried to fill
the function of healer. Yet, their ministrations were often
considered ineffective compared to those of a wise woman. The
keeper of the Canterbury gaol admitted to freeing an imprisoned
wise woman in 1570 because "the witch did more good by her
physic than Mr. Pudall and Mr. Wood, being preachers of God's
word... "85 A character in the 1593 Dialogue concerning Witches
said of a local wise woman that, "she doeth more good in one
year than all these scripture men will do so long as they
live..."86
8.5 Plantain, the herb depicted in this medieval woodcut, was used as a
remedy for snake bites and scorpion stings. It was one of many herbs used
by healers. By targeting anyone with an understanding of the medicinal
properties of plants, the witch-hunts all but destroyed the Western herbal
tradition.
THE WITCH HUNTS
133
THEDARKSIDEOFCHRISTIANHISTORY
Even the Church-licensed male physicians, who relied upon
purgings, bleedings, fumigations, leeches, lancets and toxic
chemicals such as mercury were little match for an experienced
wise woman's knowledge of herbs.87 As the well-known physician,
Paracelsus, asked, ".... does not the old nurse very often
beat the doctor?"88 Even Francis Bacon, who demonstrated very
little respect for women, thought that "empirics and old women"
were "more happy many times in their cures than learned
physicians..."89
Physicians often attributed their own incompetence to witch
craft. As Thomas Ady wrote:
The reason is ignorantiae pallium maleficium et
incantatioÑa cloak for a physician's ignorance.
When he cannot find the nature of the disease,
he saith the party is bewitched.90
When an illness could not be understood, even the highest body
of England, the Royal College of Physicians of London, was
known to accept the explanation of witchcraft.91
Not surprisingly, churchmen portrayed the healing woman as
the most evil of all witches. William Perkins declared, "The
most horrible and detestable monster... is the good witch."92
The Church included in its definition of witchcraft anyone with
knowledge of herbs for "those who used herbs for cures did so
only through a pact with the Devil, either explicit or implicit."93
Medicine had long been associated with herbs and magic. The
Greek and Latin words for medicine, "pharmakeia" and "veneficium,"
meant both "magic" and "drugs."94 Mere possession of
herbal oils or ointments became grounds for accusation of
witchcraft.95
A person's healing ability easily led to conviction of witchcraft.
In 1590 a woman in North Berwick was suspected of
witchcraft because she was curing "all such as were troubled or
grieved with any kind of sickness or infirmity."96 The ailing
THEWITCH HUNTS 135
archbishop of St. Andrews called upon Alison Peirsoun of
Byrehill and then, after she had successfully cured him, not only
refused to pay her but had her arrested for witchcraft and burned
to death.97 Simply treating unhealthy children by washing them
was cause for convicting a Scottish woman of witchcraft.98
Witch-hunters also targeted midwives. Orthodox Christians
believed the act of giving birth defiled both mother and child. In
order to be readmitted to the Church, the mother should be
purified through the custom of "churching," which consisted of
a quarantine period of forty days if her baby was a boy and
eighty days if her baby was a girl, during which both she and
her baby were considered heathen. Some thought that a woman
who died during this period should be refused a Christian burial.
Until the Reformation, midwives were deemed necessary to take
care of what was regarded as the nasty business of giving birth,
a dishonorable profession best left in the hands of women. But
with the Reformation came an increased awareness of the power
of midwives. Midwives were now suspected of possessing the
skill to abort a fetus, to educate women about techniques of birth
control," and to mitigate a woman's labor pains.99
A midwife's likely knowledge of herbs to relieve labor pains
was seen as a direct affront to the divinely ordained pain of
childbirth. In the eyes of churchmen, God's sentence upon Eve
should apply to all women. As stated in Genesis:
Unto the woman [God] said, I will greatly
multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in
sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy
desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule
over thee.100
** Written evidence of herbal contraceptives dates back at least to
1900 B.C.E. (Noonan, 23). Information about contraceptives during
the Middle Ages was passed on by healers and midwives.
THEDARKSIDEOFCHRISTIANHISTORY
To relieve labor pains, as Scottish clergymen put it, would be
"vitiating the primal curse of woman..."101 The introduction of
chloroform to help a woman through the pain of labor brought
forth the same opposition. According to a New England minister:
Chloroform is a decoy of Satan, apparently
offering itself to bless women; but in the end it
will harden society and rob God of the deep
earnest cries which arise in time of trouble, for
help.102
Martin Luther wrote, "If [women] become tired or even die,
that does not matter. Let them die in childbirthÑthat is why they
are there."103 It is hardly surprising that women who not only
possessed medicinal knowledge but who used that knowledge to
comfort and care for other women would become prime suspects
of witchcraft.
How many lives were lost during the centuries of witch-
hunting will never be known. Some members of the clergy
proudly reported the number of witches they condemned, such
as the bishop of Wurtzburg who claimed 1900 lives in five
years, or the Lutheran prelate Benedict Carpzov who claimed to
have sentenced 20,000 devil worshippers.104 But the vast majority
of records have been lost and it is doubtful that such documents
would have recorded those killed outside of the courts.
Contemporary accounts hint at the extent of the holocaust.
Barbara Walker writes that "the chronicler of Treves reported
that in the year 1586, the entire female population of two
villages was wiped out by the inquisitors, except for only two
women left alive."105 Around 1600 a man wrote:
Germany is almost entirely occupied with building
fires for the witches... Switzerland has been
compelled to wipe out many of her villages on
their account. Travelers in Lorraine may see
THEWITCHHUNTS 137
thousands and thousands of the stakes to which
witches are bound.106
While the formal persecution of witches raged from about
1450 to 1750, sporadic killing of women on the account of
suspected witchcraft has continued into recent times. In 1928 a
family of Hungarian peasants was acquitted of beating an old
woman to death whom they claimed was a witch. The court
based its decision on the ground that the family had acted out of
"irresistible compulsion."107 In 1976 a poor spinster, Elizabeth
Hahn, was suspected of witchcraft and of keeping familiars, or
devil's agents, in the form of dogs. The neighbors in her small
German village ostracized her, threw rocks at her, and threatened
to beat her to death before burning her house, badly
burning her and killing her animals.108 A year later in France, an
old man was killed for ostensible sorcery.109 And in 1981, a mob
in Mexico stoned a woman to death for her apparent witchcraft
which they believed had incited the attack upon Pope John
Paul II.110
Witch hunts were neither small in scope nor implemented by
a few aberrant individuals; the persecution of witches was the
official policy of both the Catholic and Protestant Churches.111
The Church invented the crime of witchcraft, established the
process by which to prosecute it, and then insisted that witches
be prosecuted. After much of society had rejected witchcraft as
a delusion, some of the last to insist upon the validity of
witchcraft were among the clergy.112 Under the pretext of first
heresy and then witchcraft, anyone could be disposed of who
questioned authority or the Christian view of the world.
Witch-hunting secured the conversion of Europe to orthodox
Christianity. Through the terror of the witch hunts, reformational
Christians convinced common people to believe that a singular
male God reigned from above, that he was separate from the
earth, that magic was evil, that there was a powerful devil, and
that women were most likely to be his agents. As a by-product
THEDARKSIDEOFCHRISTIANHISTORY
of the witch hunts, the field of medicine transferred to exclusively
male hands and the Western herbal tradition was largely
destroyed. The vast numbers of people brutalized and killed, as
well as the impact upon the common perception of God, make
the witch hunts one of the darkest chapters of human history.
Chapter Nine
Alienation from Nature
Christianity has distanced humanity from nature. As people
came to perceive God as a singular supremacy detached from the
physical world, they lost their reverence for nature. In Christian
eyes, the physical world became the realm of the devil. A
society that had once celebrated nature through seasonal festivals
began to commemorate biblical events bearing no connection to
the earth. Holidays lost much of their celebratory spirit and took
on a tone of penance and sorrow. Time, once thought to be
cyclical like the seasons, was now perceived to be linear. In their
rejection of the cyclical nature of life, orthodox Christians came
to focus more upon death than upon life.
Earthliness is synonymous with sinfulness throughout much
of the Bible. For example, Colossians states:
Put to death therefore what is earthly in you:
immorality, passion, evil desire, and covetousness,
which is idplatry. On account of these the
wrath of God is coming.1
A similar message is also found in James: "This [bitter jealousy
and selfish ambition in your hearts] is not such as comes down
from above, but is earthly, unspiritual and devilish."2 Paul
describes enemies of the cross of Christ as people "whose God
is their belly... who mind earthly things."3 The message is
clear: the earth is ungodly.
The Bible suggests that it was God Himself who ordained the
antagonism between humanity and nature. God punishes Adam
140 THE DARK SIDE OF CHRISTIAN HISTORY
for having eaten from the forbidden tree of knowledge. He says
to Adam:
...cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow
shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life;
Thorns and thistles shall it bring forth to thee;
and thou shalt eat the herb of the field...4
In sharp contrast to earlier traditions in which harmony with
nature was a sign of godliness, orthodox Christians understood
God to have ordered that the earth become alien and hostile.
Nature was instead seen as the realm of the devil. The
Church chose the image of Pan, the Greek god of nature, to
portray the devil. The horned, hoofed, and goat-legged man had
been associated with a number of fertility figures and had
previously been deemed essential to rural well-being. With Pan's
guidance, all the mythical creatures of earth were thought to
work in harmony: fairies, elves and devas. Pan's skill on the
pan-pipes was believed to fill the woods and pastures with
enchanted music. His name, "Pan," meant "all" and "bread."
But, particularly after the turn of the millennium when the
Church authorized specific portrayals of the devil, the vilified
Pan came to evoke terror or "panic" as the image of satan.
The perceived separation of nature from God affected the
treatment of animals. The canonized thirteenth century scholar,
Thomas Aquinas, declared that animals have no afterlife, have
no inherent rights, and that "by a most just ordinance of the
Creator, both their life and their death are subject to our use."5
Animals were often thought to be agents of the devil. In his 1991
book, Replenish the Earth, Lewis Regenstein writes that:
...in the ten centuries preceding the present one,
there are accounts of the trials, torture and
execution (often by hanging) of hundreds of
animals, mainly by ecclesiastical courts acting
9.1 The Greek god Pan was associated with nature and fertility before
Christians vilified his image as that of the devil.
ALIENATION FROM NATURE
141
142 THE DARK SIDE OF CHRISTIAN HISTORY
under the assumption that animals can be used
by the devil to do his work.6
The Inquisition spread the frightening belief in werewolves.7 And
in 1484 Pope Innocent VIII officially ordered pet cats to be
burned together with witches, a practice which continued
throughout the centuries of witch-hunting.8
The belief that animals were agents of the devil contributed
to the breakdown in the natural control of rodents. Zealous
Christians most frequently targeted cats, wolves, snakes, foxes,
chickens and white cocks as animals to be eliminated. Since
many of these animals helped control the population of crop-
eating and plague-carrying rodents, their elimination intensified
outbreaks of plague.9 To make matters worse, Church-licensed
physicians ordered cats and dogs to be killed during times of
plague thinking that this would halt infection.10 Quite the reverse,
of course, was true.
The Church spent centuries prohibiting displays of reverence
that involved nature. Worship should take place indoors away
from the natural elements. Christians destroyed outdoor temples
and built churches with roofs in their stead. The Church
condemned the veneration of trees and springs, where people
would place candles or decorations. The sixth century bishop
Martin of Braga asked, "But what is the lighting of wax lights
at rocks or trees or wells or crossroads if it is not worship of the
devil?"11 The General Capitularies of Charlemagne in 789
decreed:
With regard to trees, and rocks and springs,
wherever ignorant people put lights or make
other observances, we give notice to everyone
that this is a most evil practice, execrable to
God, and wherever they are found, they are to
be taken away and destroyed.12
Stories attempted to illustrate that the elemental power of
trees, groves and nature had submitted to Christ. The fifth
ALIENATIONFROMNATURE 143
century St. Martin of Tours is said to have stood under a revered
pine tree as he ordered the tree to be cut down. As the tree was
falling on him, he made the sign of the cross and the tree raised
itself up again and fell away from him. A similar story involves
the eighth century missionary St. Boniface in Hesse. As he
chopped at a sacred oak tree, the trunk of the tree is said to have
burst into four equal parts and landed in the shape of a cross.
And a twelfth century manuscript portrays a scene in which a
blind woman is taking an axe to a tree. Despite the presence of
the tree's spirits which rise up aghast, a bishop stands beside her
blessing her action. Instead of suffering any dire consequences,
the woman has her sight restored.13 According to such stories,
the supernatural power of the earth had submitted to that of the
celestial Christian God.
But until the Reformation and the witch hunts, most people
did not believe this. Unable to convince people of the absence of
God in nature, the early Church instead incorporated aspects of
the very nature worship it condemned, much in the same way
that it developed ecclesiastical magic when it could not eliminate
pagan magic. Images of archetypal fertility figures, usually male,
sometimes horned, sometimes covered in foliage and disgorging
vegetation, found their way into Christian iconography and
manuscript illumination. Leaves became a frequent motif in
Christian art. Trees which had traditionally been venerated often
appeared in churchyards.14 And church columns were sculpted to
simulate tree trunks and perhaps even the mythical tree of life.15
In its attempt to assimilate people who still revered the divinity
manifest in nature, the Church incorporated the very imagery
that the orthodox insisted was tied to the devil.
HOLIDAYS
The Church also incorporated annual pagan festivals and
holidays, claiming them as Christian. People used to mark the
144
THE DARK SIDE OF CHRISTIAN HISTORY
ALIENATION FROM NATURE 145
seasons with celebrations and rituals that integrated their activity
with the earth's cycles. The Church placed Christian holidays to
coincide with these older festivals in hopes of winning easier
acceptance and recognition for its new religion. While the
traditional meaning of most of these holidays had nothing to do
with orthodox Christianity, the Church usually tolerated the older
rituals as it tried to teach a new biblical meaning. It was only
during the Reformation that orthodox Christians insisted that the
older nature-oriented significance of holidays be abolished.
The cycle of the year, at both the change of the four seasons
as well as the height of each season, used to hold great importance.
The winter solstice, the darkest day of the year, was a
time of new birth. Often it was symbolized by the birth of an
annual male fertility figure, a representation of the year's new
sun. The height of the winter, midway between the winter
solstice and spring equinox, was a time to nurture that new life.
Spring was about encouraging fertility, when the sun and earth
would unite to later bring forth the abundance of the harvest and
the bounty of the hunt. From the summer solstice through
autumn the sun's energy transferred to the crops. The height of
summer and the fall equinox were celebrations of the year's
harvest and bounty. The end of the year when fields lay dormant
and the earth seemed to die at the height of autumn was a time
to honor the dead and release the past.
By adopting these festivals as Christian, the early Church
sought both to win the allegiance of the populace as well as to
harness the vitality of such festivals. While there is nothing to
indicate the actual time of Jesus's birth, such an event most
easily correlated to winter solstice festivals. The Roman celebra
9.2 This medieval woodcut suggests the type of story spread by the
Church in hopes of persuading people to abandon their veneration of
nature. In such stories, Christians would cut down sacred trees with
impunity in order to illustrate how the power of nature had submitted to
that of the Christian God.
THEDARKSIDEOFCHRISTIANHISTORY
tion of the birth of the sun god, Mithra, for instance, had also
been observed on December 25th. In pre-Christian Egypt and
Syria, a winter solstice ritual involved participants who would
withdraw into the inner womb-like sanctuary of shrines until
midnight at which time they would come forth trumpeting, "The
Virgin has brought forth! The light is waxing!"16 Admonitions
against celebrating such a holiday by Tertullian, St. Augustine
and Pope Leo I notwithstanding,17 the Church adopted the winter
solstice as Christmas. The birth of God's sun at the solstice
easily correlated to the birth of God's son.
An Egyptian winter solstice celebration of the birth of Osiris,
the divine representation of masculine fertility, on January sixth
became the Christian Epiphany.18 The Church declared that it
signified the manifestation of Jesus's divinity. Yet, the spirit of
both Christmas and the Christian Epiphany embodied the
timeless celebrations of the winter solstice. The difference
between them was due more to a difference in calendars than a
difference in meaning; the Egyptian calendar was twelve days
behind the Julian calendar.19 The dates of many current holidays
do not fall exactly on the solstice, equinox, or height of the
season for a similar reason. Means of tracking time varied
tremendously. Our present calendar was not completely adopted
in England until 1751, in Russia until 1919, or in China until
1949.20
Festivals to mark the height of winter also found their way
into Christianity. Whether celebrated on the second or fourteenth
of February, celebrations in honor of feminine faces of divinity
such as Brigit and Venus, who encouraged art, poetry, healing,
fire and wisdom, became the Christian Candlemas.21 Over time,
however, the holiday lost the meaning of nourishing creativity
and inspiration, and instead commemorated the end of Mary's
The following chart outlines the seasonal celebrations and the correlating
Christian holiday.
THEDARKSIDEOFCHRISTIANHISTORY
forty day period of purification after having given birth.
The Church adopted spring equinox celebrations as Easter. As
this time had already been one of celebrating the sun's resurrection
and return to prominence, celebrating the resurrection of the
son of God required no great change in understanding. In fact,
the Easter celebrations were so similar to earlier celebrations
Ñparticularly those which recognized the resurrection of the
Babylonian Adonis, the Greek Apollo and the Roman AttisÑthat
a bitter controversy arose with pagans claiming that the Christian
Easter celebration was a spurious imitation of the ancient
traditions.22 Vernal equinox bonfires, originally prohibited by the
Church, found their way as Easter fires into the official liturgy
of Rome by the ninth century.23 Fertility symbols associated with
spring, such as the egg and the incredibly prolific rabbit,
survived as well.
Yet, as Christianity spread, festivals of spring and summer
gradually lost their original meaning. The height of spring
became Pentecost or Whitsunday, an observance not of fertility,
but of the biblical event when people spoke in tongues, and a
commemoration of the birth of the Church. The summer solstice
no longer was to recognize the culmination of the sun's light, but
rather was to honor St. John who had baptized Christ. Celebrations
of the summer season became holidays for the Virgin Mary
such as "Our Lady's Herb Day" and Assumption Day, the day
when Mary was "assumed" into heaven.24
Fall equinox celebrations were incorporated as Michaelmas
(the feast of the archangel Michael, the conqueror of satan) and
the Nativity of Mary. Gratitude for the harvest, and the blessing
of the year's medicinal herbs, of nearby mountains, or of the
ocean remained a part of these autumn holidays. To this day,
shrines of Mary covered in ears of corn resembling the older
9.3 Much of the pre-Christian reverence for feminine divinity transferred
to the worship of the Virgin Mary and resulted in holidays in her honor
throughout the year.
ALIENATION FROM NATURE 149
THE DARK SIDE OF CHRISTIAN HISTORY
pagan figures of grain can be found in autumn.25
The height of fall, the end of the earth's annual cycle, was
believed to be a time when the veil that separates the world of
the living from the world of the dead becomes very thin. Despite
Church attempts to prevent the celebration of this holiday, by the
ninth century the feast of All Saints Day had been moved to
November first and by 1045 the monasteries of Cluny had begun
to observe the time as a "day of all the departed ones."26 The
earlier nature-oriented significance of the season survived more
fully, however, in the secular celebration of Halloween.
Pagans also observed the cycles of the moon. Often these
festivals involved veneration for feminine facets of God.
Christian theologians condemned celebrations observing the
cycles of the moon, called la Luna, as madness or "lunacy,"
while St. Augustine denounced women's dances in honor of the
new moon as "impudent and filthy."27 When the Church could
not halt such celebrations, however, it again incorporated them
into the Christian calendar, usually under the guise of honoring
Mary. The Church formally recognized the following: the day
when St. Anne conceived Mary, December 8th; the day Mary
was born, September 8th; the day Jesus's conception was
announced to Mary, also called the Annunciation, March 25th;
the day Mary was purified from having given birth, February
2nd or 14th; and the day Mary was assumed into heaven, or the
Assumption, August 15th. Unofficial celebrations of Mary were
even more numerous.
CELEBRATION
While adopting nature-oriented festivals helped garner
membership for the early Church, the celebratory spirit of these
festivals conflicted with the asceticism and solemnity of the
orthodox. As the sixteenth century Guillaume Briconnet warned,
ALIENATIONFROMNATURE
"[H]olidays are not for the pleasure of the body, but for the
salvation of the soul; not for laughter and frolic, but for weeping."
28 With the Reformation, both Protestant and Catholic
Churches attempted to abolish not only the nature-oriented
practices of festivals but also the joyful spirit that accompanied
them. Holidays were now to be strict commemorations of
biblical events that had no connection to the earth's seasons.
The Church identified pagan practices as those which
displayed either enjoyment or a connection with nature. Reverence
for nature was so closely linked with expressions of joy that
St. Augustine thought that the word "jubilation" derived from
jubilus, the song hummed by those tending vines and olives.29
The ninth century Synod of Rome reported that "Many people,
mostly women, come to church on Sundays and holy days not to
attend the Mass but to dance, sing broad songs, and do other
such pagan things. "30 The Catechisme de Meaux describes pagan
practices:
Dancing round the fire, playing, holding feasts,
singing vulgar songs, throwing grasses over the
fire, gathering grasses before midnight or before
breakfast, wearing grasses, keeping them for the
whole year, keeping brands or cinders from the
fire and the like...31
Dancing was particularly offensive to orthodox Christians. In
the sixth and seventh centuries ecclesiastical dancing was
prohibited as being too sensual and too much enjoyed by women.
Inquisitors claimed that both women and devil-worshippers
danced.32 Dancing was a sign of spiritual decay to New England's
Puritan ministers who in 1684 published a pamphlet
entitled An Arrow against Profane and Promiscuous Dancing,
drawn out of the Quiver of the Scriptures.33 An eighteenth
century missionary hymn warns that satan
...slithers through the flesh
Of dancing men and dames
1 52 THE DARK SIDE OF CHRISTIAN HISTORY
To hold them in the mesh
Of his hot and am'rous flames.34
Certainly not all Christians agreed with the orthodox. In the Acts
of John, for instance, Jesus danced and said:
To the Universe belongs the dancer, He who
does not dance does not know what happens.
Now if you follow my dance, see yourself in
35
me.
To the orthodox, neither nature nor physical pleasure were
imbued with God's presence; both were of the devil. The Church
had long condemned sensual pleasure as ungodly. As the twelfth
century Bishop of Chartres, Sir John of Salisbury, declared:
Who except one brreft of sense would approve
sensual pleasure itself, which is illicit, wallows
in filthiness, is something that men censure, and
that God without doubt condemns?36
Holidays had involved such gaiety and pleasure that the Bishop
of Autun wrote in 1657, "It is not appropriate to multiply
holidays of obligation for fear of multiplying the occasions of
sin..."37
With the Reformation came the demand to curtail or abolish
the celebratory and nature-oriented character of holidays.
Laughter and revelry were seen as inappropriate for Christians
engaged in daily combat with satan. Orthodox Christians wanted
to ban maypoles and Sunday dancing, bagpipes and fiddlers
accompanying bridal couples to Church, the throwing of corn,
and the distribution of doles to the poor as "superstitious and
heathenical."38 Wedding celebrations, according to New England
magistrates and ministers, should not result in "riotous or
immodest irregularities."39 A law in 1639 prohibited the custom
of drinking toasts or health-drinking as an "abominable" pagan
practice.40 One should not adjourn to the tavern after meetings,
and nature-oriented occasions such as harvest huskings should
not degenerate into merrymaking occasions.41
ALIENATIONFROMNATURE 153
In 1647 the English Parliament ordered that Christmas, along
with other pagan holidays, should cease to be observed. A 1652
Parliamentary act repeated that "no observance shall be had on
the five-and-twentieth of December, commonly called Christmas
day; nor any solemnity used or exercised in churches in respect
thereof."42 Market was to be kept and stores were to remain
open on Christmas day.43 In New England, where celebrating
Christmas was considered a criminal offense and remained
forbiddgn until the second half of the nineteenth century, a
person caught celebrating Christmas was liable to end up at the
stocks or the whipping post.44 Factory owners changed starting
hours to 5:00 a.m. on Christmas day and threatened termination
for those who were tardy. As late as 1870 in Boston, students
who failed to attend public schools on Christmas were punished
by public dismissal.45
Practices involving nature at holidays were curtailed.
Orthodox Christians ceased Church processions around towns
and fields, which were intended to bless crops, to ask for a
change in weather, or to appeal for protection against insects.
They suppressed the practice of collecting branches, foliage and
flowers to be taken back to the church.46 The 1683 Addendum
to the constitution of the diocese of Annecy read:
...we order the people, under pain of excommunication,
to suppress and abolish entirely the
torches and fires customarily lit on the first
Sunday of Lent... and the masquerades... which
are merely shameful relics of Paganism.47
Efforts to abolish paganism centered upon doing away with
reverence and enjoyment of both nature and feminine energy.
Not surprisingly, the imagery used in reference to nature often
had strong sexual overtones. Francis Bacon, whose aim was "to
endeavor to establish the power and dominion of the human race
itself over the universe," frequently used such imagery.48 In his
book The Rebirth of Nature, Rupert Sheldrake writes,
ALIENATION FROM NATURE 155
Using metaphors derived from contemporary
techniques of interrogation and torture of
witches, [Francis Bacon] proclaimed that nature
'exhibits herself more clearly under the trials
and vexations of art [mechanical devices] than
when left to herself.' In the inquisition of truth,
nature's secret 'holes and corners' were to be
entered and penetrated. Nature was to be 'bound
into service' and made a 'slave' and 'put in
constraint.' She would be 'dissected,' and by
the mechanical arts and the hand of man, she
could be forced out of her natural state and
squeezed and moulded,' so that 'human
knowledge and human power meet as one.'49
Nature was to be conquered, not enjoyed and certainly not
revered.
A grim cheerlessness came to distinguish Christians. Already
in the twelfth century the Abbot, Ruppert of Deutz, tried to
defend the somberness of a Christian holiday:
It is not a fast to make us sad or darken our
hearts, but it rather brightens the solemnity of
the Holy Spirit's arrival; for the sweetness of the
Spirit of God makes the faithful loathe the
pleasures of earthly food.50
By the eighteenth century, "boring" and "pious" were thought
to be synonymous.51 In 1746 Diderot described the extremes of
Christian "unhappiness":
What cries! what shrieks! what groans! Who has
imprisoned all these woeful corpses? What
crimes have all these wretches committed? Some
are beating their breasts with stones, others are
9.4 Orthodox Christians, particularly during the Reformation, curtailed
large festivals and celebrations. In some countries even Christmas, along
with other "pagan" holidays, was banned.
1 56 THE DARK SIDE OF CHRISTIAN HISTORY
tearing bodies with hooks of are beating their
breasts with iron; remorse, pain and death lurk
in their eyes... "52
As one man commented during the Reformation, "It was never
merry England since we were impressed to come to the
church."53
TIME
Christians encouraged a new concept of time that similarly
had no connection to nature's cycles. Up until the Reformation,
most people understood time to be cyclical. Reformational
Christians, however, adopted St. Augustine's idea of linear time.
Augustine described the pagan theory of cycles, circuitus
temporum, as:
...those argumentations whereby the infidel seeks
to undermine our simple faith, dragging us from
the straight road and compelling us to walk with
him on the wheel.54
Like the theory of reincarnation, the idea of cyclical time
denied the uniqueness and finality of Jesus Christ.55 If time
spirals around, providing repeated opportunities to grow and
change, then the spirit of Jesus's life and resurrection could
theoretically be experienced by anyone at anytime, regardless of
9.5 As people during the Reformation came to perceive the nature of time
to be linear rather than cyclical, time seemed to become an unrelenting
task-master, demanding that one spend every moment fulfilling one's duties
and obligations. This sixteenth century allegorical representation shows
time rewarding industry and punishing indolence. The concept of linear
time also frightened many into thinking that there is but one chance to turn
to God, rather than the numerous opportunities inherent in the concept of
cyclical time.
ALIENATION FROM NATURE 157
1 58 THE DARK SIDE OF CHRISTIAN HISTORY
apostolic succession or hierarchical rank. Moreover, if time is
cyclical, life might not consist of just one frightening chance to
repent or else to be forever damned, but rather of unlimited
opportunities to develop a closer relationship with God. Controlling
people is more difficult when they believe that there are
many means and opportunities to return to God other than simply
the one that the Church offers.
Reformational Christians disparaged the beliefs and practices
associated with the concept of cyclical time. They opposed the
belief in lucky and unlucky days, such as that it was unlucky to
marry during a waning moon or that a sin committed on a holy
day was worse than one committed at another time. Time should
move evenly in a straight line without the disruptions and
irregularity of changing seasons; six working days should always
be followed by a sabbath resting day throughout the year.56 As
one Puritan character in a contemporary satire declares:
...it was passing folly
To think one day more than another holy...57
The pendulum clock was invented in 1657 as a testimony to the
belief that minutes were uniform in duration. By 1714, the new
concept of even, linear time had become familiar enough for a
man to write in reference to the belief in lucky and unlucky days
that "some weak and ignorant persons may perhaps regard such
things, but men of understanding despise them... "58 As with so
many elements of orthodox Christianity, the concept of linear
time was adopted by common people only after the Reformation.
DEATH
Orthodox Christians repudiated the cyclical nature of physical
life as well. Passages in the New Testament exhibit disdain for
the cycle of life: "Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth
forth sin: and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death."59
ALIENATIONFROMNATURE 159
By fostering an alienation from sex, birth, and the physical body,
orthodox Christians came to focus most intently upon death, not
only as a tool to evoke fear but also as an end in itself.
Christian theologians understood sex, at best, to be permissible
if engaged in solely for purposes of procreationÑat worst, to
be a mortal sin. Yet, they also believed that the birthing of a
child was an ungodly act. The Church, with its licensed physicians,
spurned the field of midwifery. A woman who died in
labor or in child-bed was sometimes refused a Christian burial.60
Purifying or "churching" a woman for 40 to 80 days after she
gave birth was deemed essential if a she was to be readmitted
into the Church and proper Christian society. Even the Virgin
MaryÑin some people's eyesÑneeded to be purified after having
brought Jesus into the world.
Orthodox Christianity encouraged an alienation from the
physical body itself. God's presence, it was believed, was not to
be found in the physical world. Paul wrote in Corinthians,
"therefore we are always confident, knowing that, whilst we are
at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord."61 The Bible
affirms that meaningful, spiritual life is found only when one is
detached from the physical body: "For if ye live after the flesh,
ye shall die: but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of
the body, ye shall live."62 "For to be carnally minded is death;
but to be spiritually minded is life and peace."63 Physical life is
equated with sin and spiritual decay, while physical death and a
repudiation of physical well-being is thought to bring spiritual
life.
A disregard for the well-being of the physical body characterized
orthodox Christian behavior from the fell of the Roman
Empire when aqueduct systems, bathing houses and hygiene
were held in contempt and neglected. Protestants and reformed
Catholics attempted to outdo one another in their negligence of
bodily hygiene. As the Augustinian priest and chaplain to the
King of Poland declared:
THE DARK SIDE OF CHRISTIAN HISTORY
Follow Our Lord's example, and hate your body;
if you love it, strive to lose it, says Holy Scripture,
in order to save it; if you wish to make
peace with it, always go armed, always wage
war against it; treat it like a slave, or soon you
yourself shall be its unhappy slave.64
In the Christian world the very word "carnal," which means
simply "of or relating to the body,"65 took on the meaning of sin
and immorality.
Orthodox Christians also often contended that death was not
a natural part of life but rather was a punishment. St. Augustine
argued that death existed only as a punishment for sin:
Wherefore we must say that the first men were
indeed so created, that if they had not sinned,
they would not have experienced any kind of
death; but that, having become sinners, they
were so punished with death, that whatsoever
sprang from their stock should also be punished
with the same death.66
And:
...therefore it is agreed among all Christians
who truthfully hold the catholic faith, that we
are subject to the death of the body, not by the
law of nature, by which God ordained no death
for man, but by His righteous infliction on
account of sin...67
Just as Augustine had argued that sin had created sexual desire,
so he also believed that sin had created death.
Death, in the eyes of the orthodox, was to be conquered. Paul
wrote in I Corinthians, "The last enemy that shall be destroyed
is death."68 St. Ignatius, the bishop of Antioch, describes how
the Apostles "despised death, and were found to rise above
death."69 Christian faith is believed to imbue one with power
over death. In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus says:
ALIENATION FROM NATURE 161
But they which shall be accounted worthy to
obtain that world, and the resurrection from the
dead, neither marry, nor are given in marriage:
Neither can they die any more; for they are
equal unto angels; and are the children of God,
being the children of the resurrection.70
Instead of accepting death as a natural part of the life cycle,
orthodox Christians used death as a tool to evoke fear in people.
The fourth century St. Pachomius advised his monks: "Above
all, let us always keep our last day before our eyes and let us
always fear everlasting torment."71 St. Benedict's rule instructs:
"Dread the Day of Judgment, fear Hell, desire eternal life with
entirely spiritual ardour, keep the possibility of death ever before
your eyes."72 The ancient concept of an underworld where one
would go after death for rest and rejuvenation became the
frightening Christian idea of hell, a place filled with fire and
brimstone where one endures eternal pain and agony. Death,
particularly in a context where there is but one life and one
chance to do the right thing, became a terrifying prospect.
It took the Church a long time, however, to teach such an
orthodox understanding of death. The Church initially made
Christianity comprehensible to the populace by incorporating
pre-Christian ideas. The concept of purgatory adopted by the
medieval Church mitigated the harshness of orthodox ideology.
Instead of being sent directly to heaven or hell after death, one's
soul could go to purgatory, an intermediate place, to do penance
and be punished for sins before hopefully being allowed into
heaven.73 Such a concept also proved quite lucrative for the
Church. By maintaining that it could influence the destiny of
these souls, the Church collected a good deal of medieval
society's money for its services on behalf of those in purgatory.
With the spread of orthodox Christianity during the Reformation,
however, all activities that dealt with death as a natural part
of life were to be isolated and reviled. No longer should one
THE DARK SIDE OF CHRISTIAN HISTORY .
think of departed ones as being in purgatory; people would be
judged immediately upon dying and sent directly to heaven or
hell. A person's death should no longer be made into an
important occasion or seen as part of a natural cycle. Funerals
went from being large community events to small family
affairs.74 Orthodox Christians tried to ban the tolling of Church
bells at funerals and the use of special mourning garments.75
Cemeteries, once busy meeting places, should be segregated
from everyday life. Dancing, games, and commercial activities
in cemeteries were routinely forbidden.76 A 1701 city ordinance
in New England prohibited making coffins, digging graves or
holding funerals on the Sabbath as acts that profaned the holy
day.77
Ironically, in attempting to conquer death and isolate it from
life, orthodox Christianity fostered a preoccupation with death.
Augustine perceived life to be wholly overshadowed by death.
"For no sooner do we begin to live in this dying body, than we
begin to move ceaselessly towards death."78 Death, according
to the orthodox, could bring salvation. Augustine wrote:
But now, by the greater and more admirable
grace of the Savior the punishment of sin is
turned to the service of righteousness. For then
it was proclaimed to man, 'If thou sinnest, thou
shalt die'; now it is said to the martyr, 'Die,
that thou sin not.' Then it was said, 'If ye
transgress the commandments, ye shall die'; now
it is said, 'If ye decline death, ye transgress the
commandment.'79
Orthodox Christians, in their effort to conquer it, often ended
up glorifying death. Jesus's most valuable act was understood to
be, not his miracles of healing or his message of love and peace,
but rather his act of dying. The Bible states that "the day of
death [is better] than the day of one's birth."80 It became
ALIENATION FROM NATURE 163
customary to call a Martyr's day of death his or her
"birthday."81 Augustine tried to explain why death had taken on
such an elevated character:
Not that death, which was before an evil, has
become good, but only that God has granted to
faith this grace, that death, which is the admitted
opposite to life, should become the instru
ment by which life is reached.82
St. John Cimacus of the seventh century wrote, "Just as bread is
the most necessary of all foods, so meditation on death is the
most important of all actions."83 And the prominent St. John
Chrysostom declared that "the principal character [of a Christian]
is to desire and love death."84 Orthodox Christianity had
taken on the character of a death cult.
A preoccupation with death overshadowed Christian attitudes
towards the world at large. Understanding earthly, physical life
to be inimical to spirituality fostered a zealous anticipation of the
end of the world. Christians expected God to revisit the earth in
a second coming to usher in the end times. In the canonized
Gospel of Matthew, Jesus gives the impression that such an end
may be short at hand: "Truly, I say to you, there are some
standing here who will not taste death before they see the Son of
Man coming in his kingdom."85 Periodic waves of expecting the
destruction of the world marked Christian history. During the
Reformation in England, for example, eighty books were
published on the subject of the world's end.86
Orthodox Christianity changed the way people think about the
earth and the natural environment. When God is believed to
reign from above, nature is understood to be distant from, if not
devoid of, God's presence. Such a world view led to dramatic
changes in the meaning of holidays, the character of those
holidays, and the perception of time, all of which were alienated
from the earth's seasonal cycles. The facets of human life which
THE DARK SIDE OF CHRISTIAN HISTORY
speak of a connection to cycles, such as birth, sex, and death
were disparaged. Rather than appreciating the natural life cycle,
orthodox Christians denied that cycle entirely and became
preoccupied with death.
Chapter Ten
A World Without God
1600 -the Present
Orthodox Christianity fostered humanity's shift towards a
world view that pays little heed to the idea of divinity. By
teaching that the earthly realm is devoid of sanctity, Christians
built the ideological foundation for modern society. Modern
thinkers perpetuated the concepts of orthodox Christianity,
providing scientific validation for the belief in hierarchy,
domination and struggle. With the approach of the twenty-first
century, however, there is a growing awareness not only of the
drawbacks of such concepts, but also of their limited scientific
accuracy.
Soon after people accepted the belief that God no longer
wielded supernatural power in the physical world, it became
common, particularly among the educated, to believe that the
devil also exercised no such power. Once the idea of divine
magic had been rejected, it was easy to accept that no magic,
divine or evil, operates in the physical realm. Physical reality
was instead perceived to be the mechanistic operation of
inanimate components functioning entirely upon rational and
definable laws, similar to that of a huge clock. As Shakespeare's
character Lafew says of the age:
They say miracles are past; and we have our
philosophical persons, to make modern and
THE DARK SIDE OF CHRISTIAN HISTORY
familiar, things supernatural and causeless.1
This new perception and world view characterized what has
been called the "Age of Enlightenment." Lacking the passionate
creativity of the Renaissance, the Enlightenment was inspired by
seventeenth century thinkers such as Galileo, Rene Descartes,
Johannes Kepler, Isaac Newton, Francis Bacon, Benedict
Spinoza, and John Locke. While most still believed that God had
originally created the world, they now thought that the universe
functioned according to comprehensive laws which required no
further intervention on God's part.
These new beliefs and attitudes mirrored those of orthodox
Christianity. As orthodox Christians believed there to be a
division between heaven and earth, so scientists perceived there
to be a similar division, coined by Descartes as that between
mind and matter. As Christians believed God to be detached
from the physical world, so scientists thought that consciousness
and physical reality were detached from one another. Although
orthodox Christianity and modern thinkers differed in their belief
about the devil, both understood the physical world as a realm
devoid of divinity and sanctity.
The belief that the physical world functioned independently
of consciousness found new validation in Newton's laws. His
laws of motion and of gravity depicted a universe which operated
upon a thoroughly impartial, mechanical and deterministic basis.
Newton based all of his work upon experimental evidence as a
testimony to the belief that matter was devoid of supernatural
influence and consciousness; since the thoughts of the person
conducting the experiment would have no impact upon matter,
every experiment's result should be able to be duplicated.2 In
other words, he believed that it was possible for a person to
observe a physical phenomenon without influencing it. Accepting
the orthodox Christian idea that God no longer had impact upon
the physical world, modern thinkers concurred that human
consciousness similarly did not influence physical phenomena.
A WORLD WITHOUT GOD 167
10.1 This woodcut illustrates the shift in humanity's perception of the
universe. As the image suggests, it was as if people moved from a magical
world of personified forces, to an indifferent, mechanical world which
functioned much like a clock. The workings of the universe came to be
attributed not to magic or supernatural intervention, but to Newton's laws
of gravity and motion.
THE DARK SIDE OF CHRISTIAN HISTORY
A WORLD WITHOUT GOD
Scientists and philosophers also embraced the concept of
hierarchy and applied it to their work. Hierarchical order
requires all components to be separated and ranked according to
their superiority or inferiority; it focuses upon a component's
difference rather than upon its supportive relationship and
connection to the whole. Scientists similarly focused upon the
separation, isolation and analysis of increasingly smaller
particles. Little attention was given to the relationship connecting
a component to its surrounding elements or environment.
Modern philosophy echoed the same idea with the belief that
reality emanated from and was caused by insignificant and
random events rather than from and by larger, intentional
consciousness. Descartes coined the belief with his famous
phrase Cogito ergo sum, "I think, therefore I am." The smaller,
less significant act of thinking leads to the larger, more significant
reality of being. While many still believed that God
originally created the universe, most now thought that truth
would be found, not by focusing upon or trying to understand
God's plan or intention, but by understanding the small,
separate, mechanical parts of the universe.
Belief in the necessity of domination and struggle, as well as
in the absence of divine intervention, found new justification in
Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. As orthodox Christianity,
particularly during the Reformation, stressed the nobility of
struggle and the sinfulness of magic and supernatural assistance,
so Darwin portrayed the natural world as a place where struggle
and competition characterize every aspect of "the great and
complex battle of life." Struggle, according to Darwin, was
essential to maintaining the natural order and preventing the
disastrous explosion of any one population.
10.2 Sir Isaac Newton. His scientific laws of gravity and motion lent
validation to the orthodox Christian belief that God no longer worked
miracles or intervened in the physical world.
170 THEDARKSIDEOFCHRISTIANHISTORY
While orthodox Christians maintained that domination and
struggle were necessary to sustain a divine hierarchy, Darwin
believed the same qualities necessary to uphold a natural
hierarchy:
Man, like every other animal, has no doubt
advanced to his present high condition through
a struggle for existence consequent on his rapid
multiplication; and if he is to advance still
higher, it is to be feared that he must remain
subject to severe struggle. Otherwise he would
sink into indolence, and the more gifted men
would not be more successful in the battle of life
than the less gifted.3
Both orthodox Christians and modern thinkers deemed hierarchy
essential, whether that hierarchy differentiated human beings
according to their proximity to God or according to their ability
to survive. Darwin's theories provided a new rationalization for
subjugating people according to race or gender; they were now
believed to be "naturally" weaker.
Despite their similarities, orthodox Christianity is often
thought to oppose modern science and thought. The Catholic
Church did continue its tradition of hindering scholarly work by
persecuting Galileo through the Inquisition and by opposing
much of Newton's work.* And, indeed, there were ideological
differences between orthodox Christians and modern thinkers.
* While Galileo's heliocentric theory challenged the Church's theory that the
sun revolved around the earth, Newton's work challenged the basis for Catholic
authority. His insistence upon the possibility of experimentally verifying
physical phenomenon called into question the basis for the Church's claim to
authority. The authority of the Catholic Church rests upon apostolic
succession, the idea that truth has been revealed only during the one-time event
of Jesus's flesh-and-bone resurrection and, consequently, that truth is accessible
only through the successors of the Apostles who witnessed me resurrection.
AWORLDWITHOUTGOD 171
Modern thinkers, for example, dismissed the idea that the devil
exercised supernatural influence, while the orthodox fervently
insisted upon it. Darwin's theory of evolution does differ from
the Christian concept of creation. Yet, the premise of modern
thought, that the universe functioned without divine intervention
or magic, was one that both Catholics and Protestants themselves
had fiercely advocated.
Even Charles Darwin did not believe that his work opposed
the tenets of orthodox Christianity. Reformational Christians
would certainly have agreed with him that physical reality
functions "not by miraculous acts of creation" but rather through
struggle and competition.4 Darwin wrote in The Origin of
Species, "I see no good reason why the views given in this
volume should shock the religious feelings of any one." He
describes how a religious man:
...learnt to see that it is just as noble a conception
of the Deity to believe that He created a few
original forms capable of self-development into
other and needful forms, as to believe that He
required a fresh act of creation to supply the
voids caused by the action of His laws.5
Modern thought supported orthodox Christian concepts far more
than it contradicted them.
However, while Darwin believed that his work did not oppose
the concept of an almighty God, his theories were used by others
to deny even a remote creator. Atheism simply extended the
Christian idea that God is distant and removed from the physical
world. Once people accepted that, it was not difficult to believe
that God did not exist at all. The seeds of atheism also grew in
popularity as a reaction to the brutality of the witch hunts.
People began to argue that religion did not guarantee a moral
conscience and that an absence of religious conviction did not
1 72 THE DARK SIDE OF CHRISTIAN HISTORY
10.3 Sir Charles Darwin. The orthodox Christian belief in the necessity of
hierarchy, domination and struggle found new justification in Darwin's
work.
A WORLD WITHOUT GOD 173
lead to moral depravity. The late seventeenth century Historical
and Critical Dictionary, for instance, affirmed that "atheism does
not necessarily lead to the corruption of mores."6
Atheism does, however, threaten the underpinnings of a fear-
based social order. Although God may have been relegated to a
more distant position in heaven, fear of His punishment was still
thought to enforce individual morality. Many thought that the
judicial system depended upon fear. In his book Obstruction of
Justice By Religion, Frank Swancara notes that:
...the judges who moulded the common law
thought that one who does not believe in nor
fear Divine punishment after death cannot be
trusted as a witness in a court of law.7
Most thinkers of the Enlightenment found atheism as threatening
as did orthodox Christians. Voltaire asked,
What restraint, after all, could be imposed on
covetousness, on the secret transgressions committed
with impunity, other than the idea of an
eternal master whose eye is upon us and who
will judge even our most private thoughts?8
And John Locke wrote:
Those are not at all to be tolerated who deny the
being of a God. Promises, covenants, and oaths,
which are the bonds of human society, can have
no hold upon an atheist.9
Both orthodox Christianity and modern thinkers, while willing
to dispense with the belief in magic and miracles, still relied
upon the belief in God's fearful punishment.
Modern thought most often validated Christian tenets. The
perception that the universe operates like a machine or a clock
corroborated St. Augustine's contention that human beings have
no free will. In his book The Dancing Wu Li Masters, Gary
Zukav writes:
1 74 THE DARK SIDE OF CHRISTIAN HISTORY
If we are to accept the mechanistic determination
of Newtonian physicsÑif the universe really is a
great machineÑthen from the moment that the
universe was created and set into motion, everything
that was to happen in it already was
determined.
According to this philosophy, we may seem to
have a will of our own and the ability to alter
the course of events in our lives, but we do not.
Everything, from the beginning of time, has been
predetermined, including our illusion of having
a free will. The universe is a prerecorded tape
playing itself out in the only way that it can. The
status of men is immeasurably more dismal than
it was before the advent of science. The Great
Machine runs blindly on, and all things in it are
but cogs.10
Whether on account of determinism or because of humanity's
lowly position within a divine hierarchy, people continued to
believe that the individual has little inherent power or free will.
Science adopted the same ideas that encouraged Christians to
treat the natural environment as a realm devoid of sanctity.
Fritjof Capra describes how the division between mind and
matter
...allowed scientists to treat matter as dead and
completely separate from themselves, and to see
the material world as a multitude of different
objects assembled into a huge machine... From
the second half of the seventeenth to the end of
the nineteenth century, the mechanistic... model
of the universe dominated all scientific thought.
It was paralleled by the image of a monarchial
God who ruled the world from above by imposing
his divine law on it.11
A WORLD WITHOUT GOD 1 75
By advocating a division between heavenly and earthly realms,
or between mind and matter, both Christians and modern
thinkers disassociated themselves from the physical world.
Many concepts which originated in orthodox Christian
ideology and found validation among modern thinkers are now,
at the end of the twentieth century, proving to be of limited
scientific accuracy. Scientific discoveries, most notably in
quantum mechanics, have shown classical physics to be severely
limited in its capacity to explain the workings of the universe.
The principles and laws that appear to govern the mechanistic,
deterministic universal machine simply do not apply to subatomic
particles. Sub-atomic particles defy attempts to establish
them absolutely within time and space. The physicist Stephen
Hawking observes that this phenomenon, called the uncertainty
principle
...signaled an end to [the] dream of a theory of
science, a model of the universe that would be
completely deterministic: one certainly cannot
predict future events exactly if one cannot even
measure the present state of the universe precisely!
12
The belief that the universe functions upon entirely rational
and definable laws is now in question. While Newton thought
that, given enough information, one can absolutely determine the
outcome of an event, quantum mechanics has shown that at best
one can know only the probability of any outcome.13 Gary Zukav
describes what became known as the Copenhagen Interpretation:
...scientists attempting to formulate a consistent
physics were forced by their own findings to
acknowledge that a complete understanding of
reality lies beyond the capabilities of rational
thought.14
Recent science has also challenged the belief that physical
matter is completely inanimate, unresponsive, and substantive.
176
THEDARKSIDEOFCHRISTIANHISTORY
In their explorations of wave functions, scientists have found
physical reality to be both "idea-like" and "matter-like."15 The
division between mind and matter, which corroborated the
Christian division between heaven and earth, is not true scientifically.
The physical world is not composed of solid, inert, and
inanimate matter as was thought in classical physics. The
physicist Henry Stapp writes:
If the attitude of quantum mechanics is correct
...then there is no substantive physical world, in
the usual sense of this term. The conclusion here
is not the weak conclusion that there may not be
a substantive physical world but rather that there
definitely is not a substantive physical world.16
Another physicist, E.H. Walker writes:
Consciousness may be associated with all quantum
mechanical processes... since everything
that occurs is ultimately the result of one or
more quantum mechanical events, the universe is
'inhabited' by an almost unlimited number of
rather discrete conscious, usually nonthinking
entities that are responsible for the detailed
working of the universe.17
Such findings contradict the belief in the separation of mind and
matter.
Both the division between mind and matter and the idea that
the earth is devoid of consciousness are also called into question
by the more recent Gaia theory. Put forward primarily by James
Lovelock, the Gaia theory suggests that the earth may be a self-
regulating system. Such a theory explains the relative constancy
of the earth's climate, the surprisingly moderate amounts of salt
in the oceans and the steady level of oxygen, all of which permit
life to thrive.18 It may not be an accident or the result of random
chance that the earth has maintained an environment capable of
supporting life. Rather, the earth's activities may be the result of
AWORLDWITHOUTGOD 177
self-regulating behavior, which suggests the existence of
consciousness.
Even the classical means of verifying truth are now considered
erroneous. Newton believed that since experiments relating
to physical matter involved inanimate particles which lacked
consciousness, all results from such experiments should be
repeatable; the person conducting the experiment could act as an
objective observer without having any impact upon the physical
matter. The possibility of such an objective observer, however,
now no longer seems feasible; quantum mechanics has shown
that the simple act of observation does have impact upon the
matter observed. The physicist John Wheeler writes:
May the universe in some strange sense be
'brought into being' by the participation of those
who participate?... 'Participator' is the incon
trovertible new concept given by quantum mechanics.
It strikes down the term 'observer' of
classical theory, the man who stands safely
behind the thick glass wall and watches what
goes on
quantum
without taking part.
mechanics
It can't be done,
says. 19
Recent scientific discoveries are proving the Newtonian and
Cartesian perception of a mechanistic universe, which developed
out of the belief that God no longer inhabited the world, to be of
limited accuracy.
The modern scientific method, which emphasizes dissecting
and analyzing ever smaller components and echoes the Christian
attempt to segregate hierarchical components, is also being
reconsidered. Recent science suggests that truth might better be
found, not just by focusing upon the separation and segregation
of components, but also by understanding the interrelatedness of
such components within a larger system. "Parts," as the
physicist David Bohm explains,
1 78 THE DARK SIDE OF CHRISTIAN HISTORY
...are seen to be in immediate connection, in
which their dynamical relationships depend, in
an irreducible way, on the state of the whole
system (and, indeed, on that of broader systems
in which they are contained, extending ultimately
and in principle to the entire universe). Thus,
one is led to a new notion of unbroken wholeness
which denies the classical idea of
analyzability of the world into separately and
independently existent parts...20
Understanding the relationship of matter to the whole system
might reveal more truth than analyzing the isolated components
of that matter. Understanding how components work together
might be more productive than ordering those components
hierarchically.
The orthodox insistence upon the inherent value of struggle,
which found renewed justification in Darwin's ideas, might also
warrant revaluation. The Gaia theory, which proposes that the
earth may be a self-regulating system, suggests that living
organisms form symbiotic living patterns in order to bring about
mutually beneficial situations. It suggests that order and
evolution come about, not only through domination, struggle and
competition as both orthodox Christianity and Darwinian theory
imply, but also through cooperation.
The impact of Christian tenets and modern science upon
modern life are endless. Modern Western medicine took a
similar view of the human body as classical physics did of the
universe: "physicians" came to understand the human body as
the mechanistic operation of inanimate components with little or
10.4 This engraving published in 1680 illustrates the human body as if it
were the mechanistic operation of inanimate components entirely divorced
from human consciousness. This understanding, adopted by Western
medicine, mirrored the orthodox Christian belief that God was divorced
from the physical world.
A WORLD WITHOUT GOD 1 79
THEDARKSIDEOFCHRISTIANHISTORY
no connection to consciousness. An early proponent of seeing the
body as a machine, Thomas Hobbes, wrote in 1651, "For what
is the heart, but a spring; and the nerves but so many strings;
and the joints, but so many wheels, giving motion to the whole
body. "21 As orthodox Christians understood God to be detached
from the physical world, so Western medicine understood the
workings of the human body to be disconnected from a person's
mind or consciousness. Illness was seen simply as a malfunction
of mechanical parts, the cause for which lay wholly in the
physical world.
In the same way that orthodox Christians tried to subdue
lower hierarchical components, Western physicians attempted to
prevail over the body rather than to work together with it, by
encouraging its ability to heal itself. An example of such a
practice is the treatment of non-life-threatening illness with
antibiotics. Antibiotics subdue the body's immune system, the
body's own capacity to defend itself from illness. While antibiotics
are extraordinarily valuable in the treatment of life-threatening
illness, the frequent use of them in less serious situations has
led to a whole new group of diseases and has spawned new
strains of bacteria which do not respond to any known treatment.
Many are now calling into question modern medicine's precept
that the body is a mechanical instrument devoid of any connection
to consciousness, an instrument that is best subdued.
Orthodox Christian ideology has also influenced modern
commerce and industry. In mimicry of religious hierarchy,
businesses were structured with power vested in a single
authority at the top of the organization. Fear, domination and
competition, thought so essential to maintain the divine hierarchical
order, were seen as necessary characteristics of business. As
uniformity was thought to produce unity, so businesses valued
conformity and comprised themselves of people of similar race,
gender and creed.
AWORLDWITHOUTGOD 181
More recently, however, a number of companies are finding
a different structure and ideology to be more profitable. Businesses
in which the employees are valued and are empowered
with ownership and responsibility often function more productively
than those which adhere to a strict hierarchical model.
Cooperation both within a company as well as with its outside
suppliers is proving to be more profitable than the fierce
competition previously prized. In addition, some are questioning
the value of uniformity and sameness in the workplace. An
environment in which people have dissimilar perspectives and
different ways of solving problems is more likely to produce
creative solutions than one in which everyone thinks the same
way.
Beyond affecting science, philosophy, medicine and business,
orthodox Christianity has had tremendous impact upon modern
social structure and government. The belief in singular supremacy,
hierarchy, and an inherently sinful human nature thwarts
efforts to create pluralistic societies which value individual self-
determination. Power and authority within such a belief structure
must descend from a singular pinnacle rather than rise from a
pluralistic root. Anything that empowers the individual ultimately
challenges such an authoritarian structure.
It was, for example, never the intention of New England
Puritan leaders to establish a government which represented the
people's own views and desires.22 "Democracy, I do not
conceyve, that ever God did ordeyne as a fitt government eyther
for church or commonwealth," wrote the Puritan John Cotton.
"If the People be governors, who shall be governed?"23 As the
historians Joseph Gaer and Ben Siegel write:
The Puritans had derived the belief that government's
prime function is 'to regulate man's
corruption,' that its divinely appointed leaders
are to be obeyed unquestioningly, and that the
A WORLD WITHOUT GOD
state's welfare is much more important than the
individuals.24
The democratic principles established in the United States were
created in spite of orthodox Christianity, not because of it. As a
treaty written during George Washington's administration and
ratified by the U.S. Senate in 1797 stated, "The government of
the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian
religion. "25
Orthodox Christians repeatedly opposed religious freedom in
America. The Puritan John Norton expressed the orthodox view
of liberty of worship as "a liberty to blaspheme, a liberty to
seduce others from the true God. A liberty to tell lies in the
name of the Lord." When Vermont passed a bill allowing
religious liberty, the Dartmouth Gazette (November 18, 1807)
echoed the orthodox sentiment, calling the bill a striking example
"of the pernicious and direful, the infernal consequences to
which the leveling spirit of democracy must inevitably tend."26
During Thomas Jefferson's and James Madison's efforts to
separate church and state, Madison pointed to history and argued
that whenever "ecclesiastical establishments" had shaped civil
society, they had supported political tyranny; never had they
protected the people's liberties.27
Organized Catholics have done no more than Protestants to
support personal liberty and democracy. From opposing the
Magna Carta in the thirteenth century, to establishing a precedent
for totalitarian states with the Inquisition, to refusing to protest
10.5 While some Americans felt the threat to the principles of their
Constitution posed by the Roman Catholic Church (as illustrated by this
1855 engraving), fewer were aware of the similar threat posed by the
branches of Protestantism. In forging the Constitution and its Bill of Rights,
the founding fathers of the United States rejected orthodox Christian
ideology. As the U.S. Senate ratified in 1797, "The government of the
United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion."28
184 THE DARK SIDE OF CHRISTIAN HISTORY
the attempted Nazi extermination of Jews during World War II,29
the Catholic Church has championed authoritarianism and
opposed democracy and freedom. As the nineteenth century
Pope Gregory XVI wrote:
It is in no way lawful to demand, to defend, or
to grant unconditional freedom of thought, or
speech, of writing, or of religion, as if they were
so many rights that nature has given to man.30
Power and authority should, in the eyes of the orthodox, be
exercised only by those at the top of the hierarchy.
Orthodox Christianity provided the ideological foundation for
modern science and society. Once people had accepted the idea
that God was in heaven and not on earth, that there was no more
supernatural intervention or magic, scientists and philosophers
began to verify just such a world. Their science and philosophy
confirmed that the physical world functioned mechanically and
independently of consciousness and God. They also corroborated
the orthodox Christian belief in the necessity for struggle and
domination. These beliefs and concepts, however, are now being
called into question, not only because of their practical drawbacks,
but also because of their limited scientific accuracy.
Chapter Eleven
Conclusion
The dark side of Christian history has been and continues to
be about the domination and control of spirituality and human
freedom. Orthodox Christians built an organization that from its
inception encouraged not freedom and self-determination, but
obedience and conformity. To that end, any means were
justified. Grounded in the belief in a singular, authoritarian and
punishing God, orthodox Christians created a church that
demanded singular authority and punished those who disobeyed.
During the Dark Ages, civilization collapsed as the Church
took control of education, science, medicine, technology and the
arts. Crusaders marched into the Middle East killing and
destroying in the name of the one Christian God. The Inquisition
established a precedent in the Middle Ages for the systematic
policing and terrorization of society. The Protestant and Catholic
Counter Reformation sparked wars where Christians slaughtered
other Christians, each convinced that theirs was the one and only
true path. And the holocaust of the witch hunts plumbed the
depths of horror as it eradicated countless women and men as
well as the belief in earth-based divinity. In 1785 Thomas
Jefferson wrote:
Millions of innocent men, women, and children,
since the introduction of Christianity, have been
burnt, tortured, fined, imprisoned; yet we have
not advanced one inch towards uniformity. What
THE DARK SIDE OF CHRISTIAN HISTORY
has been the effect of coercion? To make one
half of the world fools, and the other half hypocrites.
To support error and roguery all over the
earth.1
Christianity's impact has been perhaps most insidious upon
the modern world. By terrifying people into believing that there
was no divine supernatural assistance in the physical world,
orthodox Christians created the environment where people
believed the universe to be pre-determined, mechanical, and
devoid of consciousness. But instead of attributing such an
understanding to religious belief, people now credited science as
having objectively proven such a world. Most people came to
think that struggle, domination and authoritarian control wereÑ
perhaps not divinely ordainedÑbut natural and necessary
qualities of life in such an impersonal universe. Interestingly, the
very science that once verified orthodox Christian concepts is
now discovering the limitations of a mechanistic view of the
universe.
Ignoring the dark side of Christian history perpetuates the
idea that oppression and atrocity are the inevitable results of an
inherently evil or savage human nature. There have beenÑ
especially during the neolithic ageÑpeaceful cultures and
civilizations, however, which functioned without oppressive
hierarchical structures. It is clearly not human nature that causes
people to hurt one another. People of gentler cultures share the
same human nature as we of Western civilization; it is our
beliefs that differ. Tolerant and more peaceful cultures have
respected both masculine and feminine faces of God, both
heavenly and earthly representations of divinity. It is the limited
belief in a singular supremacy and only one face of God that has
resulted in tyranny and brutality.
Ignoring the dark side of Christian history allows the beliefs
which have motivated cruelty to go unexamined. The belief in a
singular face of God who reigns at the pinnacle of a hierarchy
CONCLUSION 187
sustained by fear has devastating consequences. People must
constantly determine who is superior to whom. Every aspect
which differentiates people whether it be gender, race, belief,
sexual preference, or socio-economic status, becomes a criterion
by which to rank an individual as either better than or less than
another. And it is the ranking and subordination of a person's
humanity and value that comprises sexism, racism, and the
intolerance of difference.
Unity and oneness within an orthodox Christian belief system
are perceived to come from sameness and conformity, not from
the synergy and harmony of difference. A society's diversity is
most often understood to be a liability rather than an asset. A
peaceful society is thought to be one where everyone is the
same. Within such a belief system, an end to sexism or racism
is misunderstood to mean simply a change of roles. Instead of
men dominating women, women would dominate men. Instead
of whites dominating blacks, blacks would dominate whites.
There is no understanding of shared authority, cooperation and
support.
Belief in a strictly heavenly or sky-based God who is
disconnected from the earth has had enormous ramifications
upon humanity's treatment of the natural environment. As
orthodox Christianity spread, the means of integrating human
activity with seasonal cycles through festivals were curtailed.
Holidays came to commemorate biblical events, not the phases
of the year. The concept of linear time replaced that of cyclical
time, further alienating people from nature's ebb and flow.
Modern science then validated the orthodox perception that the
earth lacked sanctity by portraying the physical world as a
mechanistic realm entirely devoid of consciousness.
However, as dark as moments of Christian history have been,
awareness of them need not lead to a complete rejection of
Christianity. There have been Christians throughout its history
who have fought against the tyranny of orthodox beliefs and
THE DARK SIDE OF CHRISTIAN HISTORY
behavior. There have been countless Christians who valued love
and forgiveness over fear and punishment, who encouraged
personal empowerment and understanding over submission and
blind faith.
The dark side of Christian history was not an unavoidable
result of human nature; it was the result of a very specific
ideology and belief structure. As we have ignored the horror of
Christian history, so we have ignored scrutiny of Christian
beliefs and their pervasiveness in our seemingly godless modern
world. Without scrutiny, the destructive patterns have continued
to alienate people from God, the natural environment, and each
other.
Yet, with understanding and attention, we can stop such
harmful patterns. We can recognize that efforts to convince us
that God demands our fear and unquestioning submission are in
fact efforts to control us and to contain our spirituality. We can
recognize that the belief in a singular supremacy lies at the root
of chauvinism, racism and totalitarianism. We can move towards
a world that values diversity, freedom and human dignity. And
we can embrace the hope and pursue the dream that humanity
can be free to act humanely.
Notes
Preface
1.
Peggy Polk, "Papal State" (Chicago Tribune, June 5, 1995, "Tempo" p. 2.)
2.
Ibid., 2.
Chapter One -Seeds of Tyranny
1.
Ecclesiastes 12:13.
2.
Psalms 128.
3.
Luke 12:5.
4.
Tertullianus against Marcion, Book I, Ch. XXVII. Ante-Nicene Christian
Library (Edinburgh: T&T Clark)
5.
Elaine Pagels, Adam, Eve and the Serpent (New York: Random House, 1988)
92.
6.
Tertullianus against Marcion, Book I, Ch. XXVI.
7.
Elaine Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels (New York: Random House, 1979) 28.
8.
Ibid., 35.
9.
Ignatius, Magnesians VI and Trallians III. Ante-Nicene Christian Library
(Edinburgh: T&T Clark)
10.
"Tripartite Tractate" I,5 79.21-32 from The Nag Hammadi Library, James M.
Robinson, Director (New York: Harper & Row, 1977) 69.
11.
Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels, 50.
12.
The Secret Teachings of Jesus, translated by Marvin W. Meyer (New York:
Random House, 1984) 56.
13.
The Excerpta Ex Theodoto of Clement of Alexandria, translated by Robert
Pierce Casey (London: Christophers, 1934) 59.
14.
Irenaeus Against Heresies, 4.33.3.
15.
Ignatius, Magnesians VI and Trallians III.
16.
Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels, 42-43.
17.
Ibid., 42.
18.
Pagels, Adam, Eve and the Serpent, 113-114.
19.
I Corinthians 11:8-9.
20.
Riane Eisler, The Chalice and the Blade (San Francisco: Harper & Row,
1987) 131-132.
21.
I Timothy 2:11-13.
22.
Riane Eisler, The Chalice and the Blade, 132-133.
190
NOTES
23.
The Essene Gospel of Peace, edited and translated by Edmond Bordeaux
Szekely (San Diego: Academy of Creative Living, 1971) 7.
24.
"On the Origin of the World" II. 116.2-8 from The Nag Hammadi Library,
172.
25.
Tertullian, "On Prescription Against Heretics" Chapter XLI, Ante-Nicene
Fathers; Translations of the Writings of the Fathers down to A.A. 325, Vol.
III (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1951) 263.
26.
Tertullian, "On the Flesh of Christ" Chapter V, Ibid., 525.
27.
Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels, 10 and Hans von Campenhausen Ecclesiastical
Authority and Spiritual Power: In the Church of the First Three Centuries,
Translated by J.A. Baker (Stanford University Press, 1969) 18-24.
28.
Irenaeus Against Heresies, 4.26.2. Volume I (Buffalo: The Christian
Literature Publishing Co., 1885)
29.
Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels, 11.
30.
Ibid., 11.
31.
Mark 16:9, John 20:11-17.
32.
John 20:17.
33.
Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels, 3-17.
34.
Irenaeus Against Heresies, 2.27.1-2.
35.
Ibid., 2.27.2.
36.
Tertullian, "On Prescription Against Heretics" Chapter VII, 246.
37.
Ibid., Chapter XIII, 249.
38.
Ibid., Chapter XXXVII, 261.
39.
Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels, xix-xx.
40.
Hippolytus Philosophumena 6.9, Volume II, Translated by F. Legge (London:
Society For Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1921) 5.
41.
"Authoritative Teaching" VI, 3 34.32-35.2 from The Nag Hammadi Library,
283.
42.
Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels, 126.
43.
"The Gospel of Truth" 29.2-6 from The Nag Hammadi Library, 43.
44.
"The Gospel of Truth" 17.10-15 from The Nag Hammadi Library, 40.
45.
Matthew 7:7 and Luke 17:21.
46.
Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels, 25.
47.
Ibid., xxiii.
48.
Irenaeus Against Heresies, 3.4.1.
49.
Ignatius, Ephesians V
50.
Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels, 34.
Chapter Two -Political Maneuvering
1.
Elaine Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels (New York: Random House, 1979) 100.
2.
John Holland Smith, The Death of Classical Paganism, (New York: Charles
Scribner, 1976) 49.
3.
St. Irenaeus, Proof of the Apostolic Preaching, translated and annotated by
Josephy P. Smith (Westminster, Maryland: The Newman Press, 1952) 106.
NOTES
191
4.
Smith, The Death of Classical Paganism, 5.
5.
Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels, 21.
6.
Joel Carmichael, The Birth of Christianity (New York: Hippocrene Books,
1989) 170-171.
7.
Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels, 104.
8.
Ibid., 104.
9.
Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh & Henry Lincoln, Holy Blood, Holy Grail
(New York: Dell, 1982) 364, 318.
10.
Barbara Walker, The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets (San
Francisco: Harper & Row, 1983) 467.
11.
Ibid., 469.
12.
Lloyd M. Graham, Deceptions and Myths of the Bible (New York: Citadel
Press, 1975) 445.
13.
Ibid., 445.
14.
Baigent, Leigh, Lincoln, Holy Blood, Holy Grail, 327-329.
15.
Ibid., 317-318.
16.
Ibid., 317.
17.
Riane Eisler, The Chalice and the Blade (San Francisco: Harper & Row,
1987) 131.
18.
Luke 23:2.
19.
Baigent, Leigh, Lincoln, Holy Blood, Holy Grail, 326-327.
20.
Carmichael, The Birth of Christianity, 35, 177, 178.
21.
See both Holy Blood, Holy Grail and Joel Carmichael's The Birth of
Christianity for further discussion.
22.
Walter Nigg, The Heretics: Heresy Through the Ages, Edited and translated
by Richard and Clara Winston (New York: Dorset Press, 1962) 127. The
quoted material is by E. Schwarz and is taken from the same page of text.
23.
The Secret Teachings of Jesus, translated by Marvin W. Meyer (New York:
Random House, 1984) 56.
24.
"The Sophia of Jesus Christ" III,4, from The Nag Hammadi Library edited by
James M. Robinson (New York: Harper & Row, 1977) 217.
25.
Geoffrey Ashe, The Virgin: Mary's Cult and the Re-emergence of the Goddess
(London: Arkana, 1976, 1988) 206.
26.
Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels, 52.
27.
Francis X. Weiser, Handbook of Christian Feasts and Customs (New York:
Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1952) 257.
28.
Robert W. Ackerman, Backgrounds to Medieval English Literature (New
York: Random House, 1966) 92.
29.
Ashe, The Virgin, 224-225.
30.
Walker, The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets, 663.
31.
Arthur Cotterell, Myths and Legends (New York: MacMillan Publishing
Company, 1989) 131.
32.
Walker, The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets, 663-665.
33.
Sir James George Frazer, The Golden Bough Vol.1 abridged edition (New
York: Collier Books, 1922) 415.
192
NOTES
34.
Ashe, The Virgin, 179.
35.
Ibid., 8, 125.
36.
Ibid., 139, 150-151.
37.
Walker, The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets, 611.
38.
Ashe, The Virgin, 129.
39.
Ibid., 151.
40.
Ibid., 191.
41.
Ibid., 192.
42.
Ibid., 192-193.
43.
Charles Merrill Smith, The Pearly Gates Syndicate (New York: DoubleDay,
1971) 27-28.
44.
J.N. Hillgarth, The Conversion of Western Europe (Englewood Cliffs, NJ:
Prentice Hall, 1969) 49.
45.
Ibid., 46.
46.
Smith, The Death of Classical Paganism, 218.
47.
Ibid., 166-167.
48.
Hillgarth, The Conversion of Western Europe, 44-48.
Chapter Three -Deciding Upon Doctrine
1.
Evrett Ferguson, Michael P. McHugh & Frederick W. Norris, Encyclopedia
of Early Christianity (New York & London: Garland Publishing, 1990) 420.
2.
Walter Nigg, The Heretics: Heresy Through the Ages (New York: Dorset
Press, 1962) 138.
3.
Ibid., 138.
4.
Elaine Pagels, Adam, Eve and the Serpent (New York: Random House, 1988)
107.
5.
Saint Augustine, The City of God, Book XIV, Ch.4, translated by Marcus
Dods (New York: The Modern Library, 1950) 445.
6.
Pagels, Adam, Eve and the Serpent, 141.
7.
Augustine, The City of God, Book XIV, Ch. 16, 465.
8.
Pagels, Adam, Eve and the Serpent, 131-134.
9.
Nigg, The Heretics, 37.
10.
Barbara Walker, The Wman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets (San
Francisco: Harper & Row, 1983) 910.
11.
Pagels, Adam, Eve and the Serpent, 28.
12.
Ibid., 45.
13.
Ibid., 107.
14.
Augustine, The City of God, Book XIV, Ch. 15, 462.
15.
Pagels, Adam, Eve and the Serpent, 125.
16.
Ibid., 129-130, 134.
17.
Quincy Howe, Jr., Reincarnation For The Christian (Philadelphia:
Westminster Press, 1974) 65-72.
18.
Ibid., 66.
19.
Reincarnation, compiled and edited by Joseph Head and S.L. Cranston (New
NOTES
193
York: The Julian Press, 1961) 38.
20.
Howe, Reincarnation For The Christian, 81.
21.
Ibid., 67.
22.
The New Columbia Encyclopedia edited by William H. Harris and Judith S.
Levey (New York & London: Columbia University Press, 1975) 782.
23.
Nigg, The Heretics, 117.
24.
Ibid., 116.
25.
Lloyd M. Graham, Deceptions and Myths of the Bible (New York: Citadel
Press, 1975) 468.
26.
Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic (New York: Charles
Scribner's Sons, 1974) 477.
Chapter Four -The Church Takes Over
1.
Charles Panati, Panati's Extraordinary Endings of Practically Everything
(New York: Harper & Row, 1989) 225-228.
2.
Ibid., 225.
3.
Ibid., 225.
4.
Ibid., 264-265.
5.
Charles Panati, Extraordinary Origins of Everyday Things (New York: Harper
& Row, 1987) 201-202.
6.
Ibid., 131.
7.
Ibid., 328.
8.
The New Columbia Encyclopedia edited by William H. Harris and Judith S.
Levey (New York & London: Columbia University Press, 1975) 2331.
9.
Lloyd M. Graham, Deceptions and Myths of the Bible (New York: Citadel
Press, 1975) 448.
10.
Ibid., 449.
11.
Daniel J. Boorstin, The Discoverers (New York: Random House, 1983) 573.
12.
Ibid., 572.
13.
Ibid., 573.
14.
Ibid., 573.
15.
Riane Eisler, The Chalice and the Blade (San Francisco: Harper & Row,
1987) and Merlin Stone, When God Was a Woman (New York: Dorset Press,
1976).
16.
Boorstin, The Discoverers, 573.
17.
The New Columbia Encyclopedia, 61, and Eisler, The Chalice and the Blade.
18.
Graham, Deceptions and Myths of the Bible, 444.
19.
Jeffrey Burton Russell, A History of Medieval Christianity (New York:
Thomas Y. Cromwell, 1968) 103.
20.
Ibid., 40.
21.
Charles Homer Haskins, The Renaissance of the 12th Century (Cleveland &
New York: Meridian Books, 1927) 96.
22.
Barbara G. Walker, The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets (San
Francisco: Harper & Row, 1983) 208.
194
NOTES
23.
Haskins, The Renaissance of the 12th Century, 95.
24.
John H. Smith, The Death of Classical Paganism (New York: Charles
Scribner's Sons, 1976) 223.
25.
Walker, The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets, 208.
26.
Smith, The Death of Classical Paganism, 247.
27.
Haskins, The Renaissance of the 12th Century, 34.
28.
Ibid., 43.
29.
Boorstin, The Discoverers, 581.
30.
H. Daniel-Rops, Cathedral and Crusade (New York: E.P. Dutton &
Company, Inc., 1957) 273.
31.
Ibid., 274.
32.
Malachi Martin, Decline and Fall of the Roman Church (New York: G.P.
Putnam's Sons, 1981) 141.
33.
Graham, Deceptions and Myths of the Bible, 464.
34.
Russell, A History of Medieval Christianity, 92, and Graham, Deceptions and
Myths of the Bible, 470.
35.
Russell, A History of Medieval Christianity, 92.
36.
Ibid., 65.
37.
Ibid., 93.
38.
Joan O'Grady, The Prince of Darkness (Longmead: Element Books, 1989) 62.
39.
Smith, The Death of Classical Paganism, 229.
40.
Ibid., 246.
Chapter Five -The Church Fights Change
1.
Jeffrey Burton Russell, A History of Medieval Christianity (New York:
Thomas Y Cromwell, 1968) 106.
2.
Charles Homer Haskins, The Renaissance of the 12th Century (Cleveland &
New York: Meridian Books, 1927) 62.
3.
Albert Clement Shannon, The Medieval Inquisition (Washington D.C.:
Augustinian College Press, 1983) 141.
4.
Ibid., 141.
5.
Haskins, The Renaissance of the 12th Century, 45.
6.
Ibid., 364.
7.
Walter Nigg, The Heretics: Heresy Through the Ages (New York: Dorset
Press, 1962) 169.
8.
Haskins, The Renaissance of the 12th Century, 96.
9.
Ibid., 97.
10.
Ibid., 55-56.
11.
Jacob Burckhardt, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, edited by Irene
Gordon (New York: Mentor Books, 1960) 336.
12.
Russell, A History of Medieval Christianity, 97-98.
13.
Barbara W. Tuchman, A Distant Mirror (New York: Ballantine Books, 1978)
327.
NOTES
195
14.
Henri Daniel-Rops, Cathedral and Crusade (New York: E.P. Dutton &
Company, Inc., 1957) 246.
15.
Henry C. Lea, History of Sacerdotal Celibacy in the Christian Church, 4th
edition revised (London: Watts & Co., 1932) 264, 279.
16.
Barbara G. Walker, The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets (San
Francisco: Harper & Row, 1983) 438.
17.
Daniel-Rops, Cathedral and Crusade, 521.
18.
Theodore Nottingham, "The Birth Within: Meister Eckhart and the Knowing
of God" GNOSIS, No. 18 (Winter 1991) 19.
19.
Walker, The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets, 212.
20.
Jeffrey Burton Russell, Witchcraft in the Middle Ages (Ithaca & London:
Cornell University Press, 1972) 102.
21.
Geoffrey Ashe, The Virgin: Mary's Cult and the Re-emergence of the Goddess
(London: Arkana, 1976, 1988) 219.
22.
Ibid., 217.
23.
Ibid., 217, 221.
24.
Ibid., 154.
25.
Russell, A History of Medieval Christianity, 124-126, 150.
26.
Russell, A History of Medieval Christianity, 149, and Haskins, The
Renaissance of the 12th Century, 207.
27.
Henry Charles Lea, The Inquisition of the Middle Ages, Abridgement by
Margaret Nicholson (New York: MacMillan, 1961) 24.
28.
Haskins, The Renaissance of the 12th Century, 217-218.
29.
Daniel-Rops, Cathedral and Crusade, 240.
30.
Ibid., 241.
31.
Russell, A History of Medieval Christianity, 165.
32.
Ibid., 75.
33.
Lloyd M. Graham, Deceptions and Myths of the Bible (New York: Citadel
Press, 1975) 470.
34.
Ibid., 470.
35.
Phillip Schaff, History of the Christian Church Vol. V: The Middle Ages
(Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1952) 775-6.
36.
Russell, A History of Medieval Christianity, 168-169.
37.
Daniel-Rops, Cathedral and Crusade, 433-435.
38.
Malachi Martin, Decline and Fall of the Roman Church (New York: G.P.
Putnam's Sons, 1981) 134, and Daniel-Rops, Cathedral and Crusade, 276.
39.
James A. Haught, Holy Horrors (Buffalo: Prometheus, 1990) 25-26.
40.
Martin, Decline and Fall of the Roman Church, 134.
41.
Haskins, The Renaissance of the 12th Century, 280.
42.
Russell, A History of Medieval Christianity, 75.
43.
Ibid., 64.
44.
Daniel-Rops, Cathedral and Crusade, 439-441.
45.
G.G. Coulton, Inquisition and Liberty (Glouster, MA: Peter Smith, 1969)
165.
46.
Russell, A History of Medieval Christianity, 159-160.
196
NOTES
47.
Karen Armstrong, Holy War: The Crusades and Their Impact on Today's
World (New York: Doubleday, 1988) 387.
48.
Coulton, Inquisition and Liberty, 164-165.
49.
Luke 19:27.
50.
Martin, Decline and Fall of the Roman Church, 134.
51.
The common belief that the crusaders returned from their exploits with
literature and learning is mistaken. To quote Charles H. Haskins, "The
Crusaders were men of action, not men of learning, and little can be traced
in the way of translations in Palestine or Syria." (The Renaissance of the 12th
Century, 282.)
52.
Graham, Deceptions and Myths of the Bible, 444.
53.
For more discussion, see Karen Armstrong, Holy War: The Crusades and
Their Impact on Today's World.
54.
Russell, A History of Medieval Christianity, 75.
55.
Ibid., 156.
56.
Ibid., 155.
57.
Ibid., 157.
58.
Walker, The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets, 510.
59.
Ibid., 510.
60.
Martin, Decline and Fall of the Roman Church, 146.
61.
Tuchman, A Distant Mirror, 321 -322.
62.
Ibid., 322.
63.
The New Columbia Encyclopedia edited by William H. Harris and Judith S.
Levey (New York & London: Columbia University Press, 1975) 2442.
64.
Coulton, Inquisition and Liberty, 59.
65.
Lea, The Inquisition of the Middle Ages, 27.
66.
Timothy O'Neill, "Century of Marvels, Century of Light" 14-18 and Judith
Mann, "The Legend of the Cathars" GNOSIS, No.4, 28.
67.
Ian Begg, The Cult of the Black Virgin (London: Arkana, 1985) 136 and Lea,
The Inquisition of the Middle Ages, 43.
68.
Otto Rahn, Kreuzzug gegen den Gral, as quoted in Nigg, The Heretics, 182
183.
69.
Lea, The Inquisition of the Middle Ages, 74.
70.
Russell, Witchcraft in the Middle Ages, 125.
71.
Lea, The Inquisition of the Middle Ages, 46.
72.
Ibid., 54.
73.
Ibid., 54.
74.
Ibid., 57-59.
75.
Ibid., 64.
76.
John Kimsey, "The Code of Love," GNOSIS, No.18 (Winter 1991) 27.
77.
Lea, The Inquisition of the Middle Ages, 75.
78.
Friedrich Heer, The Medieval World, translated by Janet Sondheimer, (New
York: NAL, 1961) 214.
79.
Lea, The Inquisition of the Middle Ages, 75.
NOTES
197
Chapter Six -Controlling the Human Spirit
1.
Henry Kamen, Inquisition and Society in Spain (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1985) 161.
2.
G.G. Coulton, Inquisition and Liberty (Glouster, MA: Peter Smith, 1969) 81.
3.
Peter Tompkins, "Symbols of Heresy" in The Magic of Obelisks (New York:
Harper, 1981) 57.
4.
Henry Charles Lea, The Inquisition of the Middle Ages, Abridgement by
Margaret Nicholson (New York: MacMillan, 1961) 221-222.
5.
Henri Daniel-Rops, Cathedral and Crusade (New York: E.P.Dutton &
Company, Inc., 1957) 547 and Jeffrey Burton Russell, Witchcraft in the
Middle Ages (Ithaca & London: Cornell University Press, 1972) 155.
6.
Rossell Hope Robbins, The Encyclopedia of Witchcraft and Demonology (New
York: Bonanza Books, 1981) 13.
7.
Lea, The Inquisition of the Middle Ages, 216.
8.
Ibid., 211.
9.
Ibid., 214.
10.
Ibid., 215.
11.
Ibid., 214.
12.
Ibid., 177-179.
13.
Ibid., 177.
14.
Ibid., 174.
15.
Ibid., 226-227.
16.
Coulton, Inquisition and Liberty, 132.
17.
Barbara G. Walker, The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets (San
Francisco: Harper & Row, 1983) 439.
18.
Lea, The Inquisition of the Middle Ages, 248.
19.
Ibid., 226-227.
20.
Robbins, The Encyclopedia of Witchcraft and Demonology, 271.
21.
Ibid., 271.
22.
Barbara W. Tuchman, A Distant Mirror (New York: Ballantine Books, 1978)
36.
23.
Walker, The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets, 438.
24.
Daniel J. Boorstin, The Discoverers (New York: Random House, 1983) 275.
25.
Lea, The Inquisition of the Middle Ages, 70.
26.
Ibid., 248.
27.
Ibid., 232-233.
28.
Ibid., 222.
29.
Ibid., 224-225.
30.
Ibid., 233-236.
31.
Walter Nigg, The Heretics: Heresy Through the Ages (New York: Dorset
Press, 1962) 220.
32.
John 15:16.
33.
Walker, The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets, 443.
34.
Lea, The Inquisition of the Middle Ages, 252.
198
NOTES
35.
Coulton, Inquisition and Liberty, 154-155.
36.
Ibid., 148.
37.
Jean Plaidy, The Spanish Inquisition (New York: Citadel Press, 1967) 139.
38.
Coulton, Inquisition and Liberty, 154-155.
39.
Walker, The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets, 1007.
40.
Coulton, Inquisition and Liberty, 155.
41.
Walker, The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets, 445.
42.
Plaidy, The Spanish Inquisition, 138-145.
43.
Coulton, Inquisition and Liberty, 169.
44.
Kamen, Inquisition and Society in Spain, 163.
45.
Ibid., 164.
46.
John Bossy, Christianity in the West 1400-1700 (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1985) 84-85.
47.
Jeffrey Burton Russell, A History of Medieval Christianity (New York:
Thomas Y. Cromwell, 1968) 157.
48.
Kamen, Inquisition and Society in Spain, 161.
49.
Walker, The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets, All.
50.
Kamen, Inquisition and Society in Spain, 14-29.
51.
Hugh A. Mulligan, "Columbus Saga Sinking Fast" (Associated Press, March
8, 1992).
52.
Jon Margolis, "War of words over Columbus rages on", The Sunday Denver
Post, July 28, 1991, p.7.
53.
Ibid., 7,20.
54.
Cecil Roth, The Spanish Inquisition (New York: W. W Norton & Company,
1964) 210.
55.
Plaidy, The Spanish Inquisition, 165.
56.
Roth, The Spanish Inquisition, 221.
57.
Jean Delumeau, Catholicism Between Luther and Voltaire (London: Burns and
Oats, 1977) 90.
58.
Walker, The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets, 447.
59.
Delumeau, Catholicism Between Luther and Voltaire, 79.
60.
"Tripartite Tractate" 1,5 -79.21-32 from The Nag Hammadi Library, James
M. Robinson, Director (New York: Harper & Row, 1977) 69.
61.
Delumeau, Catholicism Between Luther and Voltaire, 82.
62.
Forrest Wood, The Arrogance of Faith (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1990)
13.
63.
Delumeau, Catholicism Between Luther and Voltaire, 82.
64.
Ibid., 85.
65.
Ibid., 85.
66.
Leviticus 25:44-46.
67.
Ephesians 6:5, I Timothy 6:1, Titus 2:9-10.
68.
Daniel-Rops, Cathedral and Crusade, 263.
69.
Elaine Pagels, Adam, Eve and the Serpent (New York: Random House, 1988)
114.
70.
Delumeau, Catholicism Between Luther and Voltaire, 88.
NOTES
199
71.
Wood, The Arrogance of Faith, 119.
72.
Ibid., 127.
73.
Walker, The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets, 447.
Chapter Seven -The Reformation
1.
Lloyd M. Graham, Deceptions and Myths of the Bible (New York: Citadel
Press, 1975)461.
2.
John Bossy, Christianity in the West 1400-1700 (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1985) 97.
3.
Ibid., 94, 109.
4.
Ibid., 95.
5.
Ibid., 28.
6.
Jean Delumeau, Catholicism Between Luther and Voltaire (London: Burns and
Oats, 1977) 9.
7.
Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic (New York: Charles
Scribner's Sons, 1974) 56.
8.
Delumeau, Catholicism Between Luther and Voltaire, 10.
9.
Ibid., 15.
10.
The "Natural Inferiority" of Women compiled by Tama Starr (New York:
Poseidon Press, 1991) 36.
11.
The New Columbia Encyclopedia edited by William H. Harris and Judith S.
Levey (New York & London: Columbia University Press, 1975) 1631.
12.
Bossy, Christianity in the West 1400-1700, 86.
13.
Walter Nigg, The Heretics: Heresy Through the Ages (New York: Dorset
Press, 1962) 304-305 and James A. Haught, Holy Horrors (Buffalo:
Prometheus, 1990) 111.
14.
Jean Delumeau, Sin and Fear, translated by Eric Nicholson (New York: St.
Martins Press, 1990) 536.
15.
Brian P. Levack, The Witch-Hunt in Early Modern Europe (London:
Longman, 1987) 103.
16.
Bossy, Christianity in the West 1400-1700, 59-62.
17.
Bossy, Christianity in the West 1400-1700, 47, 134, and Thomas, Religion
and the Decline of Magic, 155.
18.
Bossy, Christianity in the West 1400-1700, 117-118.
19.
Ibid., 35, 116.
20.
Joseph Gaer and Ben Siegel, The Puritan Heritage: America's Roots in the
Bible (New York: Mentor Books, 1964) 74-76.
21.
Bossy, Christianity in the West 1400-1700, 125, 134.
22.
Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, 161.
23.
Ibid., 161.
24.
Ibid., 162.
25.
Delumeau, Catholicism Between Luther and Voltaire, 44.
26.
Charles Panati, Extraordinary Origins of Everyday Things (New York: Harper
& Row, 1987) 202.
200
NOTES
27.
Delumeau, Sin and Fear, 437.
28.
Ibid., 437.
29.
Ibid., 438-439.
30.
Heinrich Kramer and James Sprenger, The Malleus Maleficarum, Translated
by Montague Summers (New York: Dover Publications, 1971) 167.
31.
Reay Tannahill, Sex In History (Michigan: Scarborough House, 1992) 161
and Karen Armstrong, The Gospel According to Woman: Christianity's
Creation of the Sex War in the West (New York: Doubleday, 1986) 329.
32.
Delumeau, Sin and Fear, 438.
33.
Ibid., 438.
34.
Gaer and Siegel, The Puritan Heritage: America's Roots in the Bible, 87.
35.
Ibid., 31.
36.
Ibid., 31.
37.
Ibid., 88.
38.
Ibid., 87.
39.
Delumeau, Catholicism Between Luther and Voltaire, 43.
40.
Delumeau, Sin and Fear, 27.
41.
Jonathan Edwards, "The Justice of God in the Damnation of Sinners," from
The Works of Jonathan Edwards, A.M. (London: Henry G. Bohn) 673.
42.
Bossy, Christianity in the West 1400-1700, 126.
43.
Gaer and Siegel, The Puritan Heritage: America's Roots in the Bible, 118.
44.
Delumeau, Catholicism Between Luther and Voltaire, 47.
45.
Delumeau, Sin and Fear, 457.
46.
Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, 278.
47.
Ibid., 52, 269-270.
48.
Ibid., 278.
49.
Ibid., 278.
50.
Ibid., 277.
51.
Bossy, Christianity in the West 1400-1700, 68.
52.
Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, 29, 44.
53.
Ibid., 503.
54.
Ibid., 53.
55.
Ibid., 52.
56.
Ibid., 56.
57.
Ibid., 57.
58.
Delumeau, Sin and Fear, 460.
59.
Ibid., 461.
60.
Levack, The Witch-Hunt in Early Modern Europe, 97.
61.
Ibid., 97.
62.
Ibid., 97.
63.
Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, All.
64.
Joan O'Grady, The Prince of Darkness (Longmead: Element Books, 1989)
110.
65.
Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, 476.
66.
Ibid., 476.
NOTES
201
67.
Delumeau, Catholicism Between Luther and Voltaire, 173.
68.
Delumeau, Sin and Fear, 496.
69.
Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, 472.
Chapter Eight -The Witch Hunts
1.
Rossell Hope Robbins, The Encyclopedia of Witchcraft and Demonology (New
York: Bonanza Books, 1981) 3.
2.
I Peter 3:7.
3.
The "Natural Inferiority" of Women compiled by Tama Starr (New York:
Poseidon Press, 1991) 45.
4.
Joan Smith, Misogynies: Reflections on Myths and Malice (New York: Fawcett
Columbine, 1989) 66.
5.
The "Natural Inferiority" of Women, Starr, 45.
6.
Karen Armstrong, The Gospel According to Woman: Christianity's Creation
of the Sex War in the West (New York: Doubleday, 1986) 71.
7.
Smith, Misogynies, 61.
8.
Saint Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica (New York & London:
Blackfriars, McGraw-Hill, Eyre & Spottiswoode) Question 92, 35.
9.
Armstrong, The Gospel According to Woman, 69.
10.
Apocrypha, Ecclesiasticus 25:13-26.
11.
Walter Nigg, The Heretics: Heresy Through the Ages (New York: Dorset
Press, 1962) 277.
12.
Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic (New York: Charles
Scribner's Sons, 1974) 520.
13.
Carol F. Karlsen, The Devil in the Shape of a Woman (Vintage Books: New
York, 1987) 266.
14.
Barbara W. Tuchman, A Distant Mirror (New York: Ballantine Books, 1978)
211.
15.
Ibid., 211.
16.
Joan O'Grady, The Prince of Darkness (Longmead: ElementBooks, 1989) 84.
17.
Henry Kamen, Inquisition and Society in Spain (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1985) 163.
18.
Jean Plaidy, The Spanish Inquisition (New York: Citadel Press, 1967) 143.
19.
Heinrich Kramer and James Sprenger, The Malleus Maleficarum, Translated
by Montague Summers (New York: Dover Publications, 1971) 121.
20.
Ibid., 121.
21.
Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, 568-569.
22.
The Merriam-Webster Dictionary (New York: Pocket Books, 1974) 215.
23.
Julio Caro Baroja, The World of Witches (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1961) 60-61 and Brian P. Levack, The Witch-Hunt in Early Modern
Europe (London: Longman, 1987) 45.
24.
Jeffrey Burton Russell, Witchcraft in the Middle Ages (Ithaca & London:
Cornell University Press, 1972) 76-77.
25.
O'Grady, The Prince of Darkness, 62.
202
NOTES
26.
Baroja, The World of Witches, 81.
27.
Bengt Ankarloo and Gustav Henningsen, Early Modern European Witchcraft
Centres and Peripheries (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990) 25.
28.
Russell, Witchcraft in the Middle Ages, 164.
29.
Ibid., 134.
30.
Margot Adler, Drawing Down the Moon (New York: Beacon Press, 1979) 49.
31.
Baroja, The Vforld of Witches, 149-150.
32.
Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, 43.
33.
Nigg, The Heretics, 280 and Jean Delumeau, Catholicism Between Luther and
Voltaire (London: Burns and Oats, 1977) 174.
34.
Delumeau, Catholicism Between Luther and Voltaire, 174.
35.
Baroja, The World of Witches, 165.
36.
Ibid., 165.
37.
Jeffrey Burton Russell, A History of Medieval Christianity (New York:
Thomas Y. Cromwell, 1968) 173.
38.
Ibid., 173.
39.
Levack, The Witch-Hunt in Early Modern Europe, 49.
40.
Smith, Misogynies, 68.
41.
Montague Summers, The History of Witchcraft and Demonology (New York:
New Hyde Park, 1956) 12.
42.
Robbins, The Encyclopedia of Witchcraft and Demonology, 9.
43.
Exodus 22:18.
44.
Barbara G. Walker, The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets (San
Francisco: Harper & Row, 1983) 1088.
45.
Ibid., 1088.
46.
Summers, The History of Witchcraft and Demonology, 63.
47.
Robbins, The Encyclopedia of Witchcraft and Demonology, 271.
48.
Walker, The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets, 1086.
49.
Robbins, The Encyclopedia of Witchcraft and Demonology, 16.
50.
Levack, The Witch-Hunt in Early Modern Europe, 110.
51.
Nigg, The Heretics, 281.
52.
Baroja, The Vforld of Witches, 168-169.
53.
Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, 502.
54.
Walker, The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets, 1004.
55.
Ibid., 445.
56.
Russell, Witchcraft in the Middle Ages, 151.
57.
Walker, The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets, 445-446.
58.
Ibid., 445.
59.
Ibid., 1004.
60.
Robbins, The Encyclopedia of Witchcraft and Demonology, 229.
61.
Ibid., 4.
62.
Levack, The Witch-Hunt in Early Modern Europe, 105.
63.
Ibid., 59.
64.
Ibid., 59.
65.
Ibid., 59.
NOTES
203
66.
Levack, The Witch-Hunt in Early Modern Europe, 102, and Thomas, Religion
and the Decline of Magic, 493-495.
67.
Shakespeare, The Tempest, epilogue, written in 1610-1611.
68.
Levack, The Witch-Hunt in Early Modern Europe, 149-150.
69.
Ibid., 150.
70.
Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, 551, and Walker, The Woman's
Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets, 1008.
71.
Walker, The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets, 1083.
72.
Robbins, The Encyclopedia of Witchcraft and Demonology, 4.
73.
Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, 555.
74.
Ibid., 554.
75.
Ibid., 436.
76.
Ibid., 177.
77.
Ibid., 265-266.
78.
Ibid., 266.
79.
Ibid., 266.
80.
Ibid., 178.
81.
Ibid., 479.
82.
Ibid., 265.
83.
Ibid., 479.
84.
Ibid., 85.
85.
Ibid., 264.
86.
Ibid., 264.
87.
Jeanne Achterberg, Woman As Healer (Boston: Shambala, 1991) 105.
88.
Ibid., 106.
89.
Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, 14.
90.
Ibid., 537.
91.
Ibid., 537.
92.
Robbins, The Encyclopedia of Witchcraft and Demonology, 540.
93.
Ibid., 540.
94.
John T. Noonan, Jr., Contraception (New York and Toronto: The New
American Library, 1965) 42.
95.
Achterberg, Woman As Healer, 92.
96.
Robbins, The Encyclopedia of Witchcraft and Demonology, 540.
97.
Baroja, The World of Witches, 125.
98.
Robbins, The Encyclopedia of Witchcraft and Demonology, 4.
99.
Walker, The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets, 655.
100.
Genesis 3:16.
101.
Walker, The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets, 656.
102.
Ibid., 656.
103.
Armstrong, The Gospel According to Woman, 69.
104.
Walker, The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets, 444.
105.
Ibid., 444.
106.
Robbins, The Encyclopedia of Witchcraft and Demonology, 4-5.
107.
Walker, The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets, 1087.
204
NOTES
108.
Levack, The Witch-Hunt in Early Modern Europe, 229.
109.
Ibid., 229.
110.
Ibid., 229.
111.
Robbins, The Encyclopedia of Witchcraft and Demonology, 17.
112.
Ibid., 17.
Chapter Nine -Alienation from Nature
1.
Colossians 3:5-6.
2.
James 3:14-15.
3.
Philippians 3:18-19.
4.
Genesis 3:17-18.
5.
Lewis Regenstein, Replenish the Earth (New York: Crossroad, 1991) 72.
6.
Ibid., 75.
7.
Barry Holstun Lopez, Of Wolves and Men (New York: Charles Scribner's
Sons, 1978) 238-239.
8.
Regenstein, Replenish the Earth, 73.
9.
Ibid., 74-76.
10.
Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic (New York: Charles
Scribner's Sons, 1974) 9.
11.
John Holland Smith, The Death of Classical Paganism, (New York: Charles
Scribner, 1976)240-241.
12.
Ibid., 246.
13.
William Anderson, Green Man (London and San Francisco: HarperCollins,
1990) 51,52-53,50.
14.
Ibid., 52.
15.
Ibid., 63.
16.
Sir James George Frazer, The Golden Bough Vol.1 Abridged Edition (New
York: Collier Books, 1922) 416.
17.
Francis X. Weiser, Handbook of Christian Feasts and Customs (New York:
Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1952) 53.
18.
Jeffrey Burton Russell, Witchcraft in the Middle Ages (Ithaca & London:
Cornell University Press, 1972) 51.
19.
Weiser, Handbook of Christian Feasts and Customs, 141.
20.
Daniel J. Boorstin, The Discoverers (New York: Random House, 1983) 599.
21.
Barbara G. Walker, The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets (San
Francisco: Harper & Row, 1983) 116-118.
22.
Frazer, The Golden Bough, 419.
23.
Weiser, Handbook of Christian Feasts and Customs, 215-216.
24.
Ibid., 290.
25.
Ibid., 291.
26.
Ibid., 278, 309.
27.
Barbara G. Walker, The Woman's Dictionary of Symbols and Sacred Objects
(San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1988) 344-345.
28.
Jean Delumeau, Sin and Fear, translated by Eric Nicholson (New York: St.
NOTES
205
Martins Press, 1990) 457.
29.
Anderson, Green Man, 31.
30.
Walker, The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets, 759.
31.
Jean Delumeau, Catholicism Between Luther and Voltaire (London: Burns and
Oats, 1977) 177.
32.
Walker, The Woman's Dictionary of Symbols and Sacred Objects, 176.
33.
Joseph Gaer and Ben Siegel, The Puritan Heritage: America's Roots in the
Bible (New York: Mentor Books, 1964) 92.
34.
Delumeau, Sin and Fear, 437.
35.
Walker, The Woman's Dictionary of Symbols and Sacred Objects, 176.
36.
The "Natural Inferiority" of Women compiled by Tama Starr (New York:
Poseidon Press, 1991) 46.
37.
Delumeau, Catholicism Between Luther and Voltaire, 197.
38.
Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, 66.
39.
Gaer and Siegel, The Puritan Heritage: America's Roots in the Bible, 86.
40.
Ibid., 86-87.
41.
Ibid., 86.
42.
Weiser, Handbook of Christian Feasts and Customs, 64.
43.
Ibid., 65.
44.
Gaer and Siegel, The Puritan Heritage: America's Roots in the Bible, 85.
45.
Weiser, Handbook of Christian Feasts and Customs, 65-66.
46.
Delumeau, Catholicism Between Luther and Voltaire, 169-197.
47.
Ibid., 177.
48.
Rupert Sheldrake, The Rebirth of Nature: The Greening of Science and God
(Park Street Press, Rochester, Vermont, 1991) 40.
49.
Ibid., 43.
50.
Weiser, Handbook of Christian Feasts and Customs, 35.
51.
Delumeau, Catholicism Between Luther and Voltaire, 228.
52.
Ibid., 206.
53.
Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, 151.
54.
Boorstin, The Discoverers, 571.
55.
Ibid., 571.
56.
Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, 619-622.
57.
Ibid., 621.
58.
Ibid., 623.
59.
James 1:15.
60.
Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, 38-39.
61.
2 Corinthians 5:6.
62.
Romans 8:13.
63.
Romans 8:6.
64.
Delumeau, Sin and Fear, 448.
65.
The Merriam-Webster Dictionary (New York: Pocket Books, 1974) 118.
66.
Saint Augustine, The City of God translated by Marcus Dods (New York: The
Modern Library, 1950) Book 13, Ch.3, 413.
67.
Ibid., Book 13, Ch. 15, 423.
206
NOTES
68.
1 Corinthians 15:26.
69.
J.H. Strawley, The Epistles of St. Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch (London:
Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1900) 92-93.
70.
Luke 20:34-36. (Underline added)
71.
Delumeau, Sin and Fear, 54.
72.
Ibid., 54.
73.
John Bossy, Christianity in the West 1400-1700 (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1985) 26.
74.
Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, 603-604.
75.
Ibid., 66.
76.
Delumeau, Sin and Fear, 39.
77.
Gaer and Siegel, The Puritan Heritage: America's Roots in the Bible, 92.
78.
Augustine, The City of God, Book 13, Ch. 10, 419.
79.
Ibid., Book 13, Ch. 4, 415.
80.
Ecclesiastes 7:1.
81.
Weiser, Handbook of Christian Feasts and Customs, 277.
82.
Augustine, The City of God, Book 13, Ch. 4, 415.
83.
Delumeau, Sin and Fear, 55.
84.
Ibid., 352.
85.
Matthew 16:28.
86.
Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, 142.
Chapter Ten -A World Without God
1.
Shakespeare, All's Well that Ends Well, Act II, Scene iii.
2.
Gary Zukav, The Dancing Wu Li Masters (Toronto: Bantam Books, 1979) 2125.
3.
Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex Part
One, Volume III (New York, P.F. Collier & Son, 1871) 642.
4.
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection or the
Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life Volume II (New York:
D. Appleton & Co., 1897) 303.
5.
Ibid., 294.
6.
Jean Delumeau, Catholicism Between Luther and Voltaire (London: Burns and
Oats, 1977) 204.
7.
Frank Swancara, Obstruction of Justice By Religion (Denver: W. H.
Courtwright Publishing Co., 1936) 27.
8.
Frank E. Mauel, The Changing of the Gods (Hanover, NH: University Press
of New England, 1983) 66.
9.
John Locke, "A Letter Concerning Toleration," 1689 as printed in The
Founders' Constitution, Volume 5 (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1987) 69.
10.
Zukav, The Dancing Wu Li Masters, 26.
11.
Fritjof Capra, The Tao of Physics (Toronto: Bantam Books, 1984) 8.
12.
Stephen W. Hawking, A Brief History of Time (Toronto: Bantam Books, 1988)
55.
NOTES
207
13.
Zukav, The Dancing Wu Li Masters, 27.
14.
Ibid., 38.
15.
Ibid., 80-83.
16.
Ibid., 82.
17.
Ibid., 63.
18.
"Gaia: the Veiled Goddess", The Economist, December 22, 1990.
19.
Zukav, The Dancing Wu Li Masters, 29.
20.
Ibid., 297.
21.
Andrew Kimbrell, "Body wars", Utne Reader (May/June 1992) 59.
22.
Joseph Gaer and Ben Siegel, The Puritan Heritage: America's Roots in the
Bible (New York: Mentor Books, 1964) 29.
23.
Ibid., 77.
24.
Ibid., 78.
25.
Treaties and Other International Acts of the United States of America, edited
by Hunter Miller, Volume 2 (Washington: United States Government Printing
Office, 1931) 349-385, and Peter McWilliams, Aint Nobody's Business If You
Do: The Absurdity of Consensual Crimes in a Free Society (Los Angeles:
Prelude Press, 1993) 153.
26.
Ibid., 103-104.
27.
Ibid., 102.
28.
See note #25.
29.
Lawrence Lader, Politics, Power & the Church (New York: Macmillan
Publishing Company, 1987) 135-140, "World Watch" The Rocky Mountain
News, April 14, 1992, and "Vatican denies helping Nazis flee after war", The
Associated Press, February 15, 1992.
30.
John Dollison, Pope-Pourri (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994) 9.
Chapter Eleven -Conclusion
1.
Forrest G. Wood, The Arrogance of Faith (New York: Alfred A. Knopf,
1990) 27.
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CREDITS 221
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About the Author
Helen Ellerbe was born in Beirut, Lebanon, grew up in
Saudi Arabia, and was educated in Connecticut, Colorado
and Germany. She has worked as a German translator, a
Fortune 500 sales representative, a stockbroker, a sculptor
of mythological figures, and most recently, as a researcher,
writer, and public speaker. She lives in the San Francisco
Bay Area with her husband.
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