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To sum it up in one sentence: They gave up their founders' idea of a Republic, and installed tyrants, for the sake of "national security." That was the "decline." And here is the "fall."
The seminal date, 415 AD. The event: A mob of Christian monks assaulted the famous philosopher Hypatia, head of the Alexandria Library, and murdered her by skinning her alive,* at the behest of one Bishop Cyril of Alexandria, later to be known as "Saint," who had taken to calling himself "patriarch" (the first such use of the word). Reports were sent to Rome of this heinous murder of a Roman citizen and the most beloved teacher of her era, but nothing was done to punish Cyril. Roman law thus came to an end, and with it, a thousand years of Greek and Roman advancement in science, literature, philosophy, education and social and political organization. The seat of government, Rome, had long since been taken over by "Christian" emperors, who had made "Nicene Christianity" (dogmatic Christianity) the official religion of the empire, and was suffering the combined degradation of religion-driven government and the chaos of war, rebellion, in-fighting, assassinations, power struggles, and incursions and conquests (such as that of Alaric the Visigoth) that resulted in the breakup of the empire. Thus ensued a thousand years of darkness in European civilization--the catastrophic loss of knowledge (of medicine, astronomy, mathematics, engineering, art, and all subjects), and the reign of poverty, illiteracy, superstition, ignorance, witchburnings, pogroms, forced baptisms, plague, inquisitions, rule by torture and capital punishment, the complete oppression of the human mind and human freedom, and the servitude for the common folk in petty fiefdoms--collectively known as the "Dark Ages." At its height, the Alexandria Library had contained over 700,000 manuscripts--virtually all the knowledge of the ancient world--and the city itself was a haven of religious tolerance and scholarship, under Roman/Ptolemaic rule. The Christians had begun burning manuscripts when Hypatia was a young girl--including the earliest gospels (called the Gnostic Gospels) that disagreed with dogmatic Christianity--and, after her death, the entire Library was lost to civil disorder and ignorance.
Beware, my friends, for this configuration of events is upon us once again, and at its heart is a combination of fear, ignorance and cruelty that would have appalled the luminous figure of the New Testament who advised people to "love thy neighbor."
History does not repeat itself, but certain themes do recur in what seems to be a cyclical or spiral pattern (William Butler Yeats called it "the gyre"). So it is well to know history and what the pattern of it shows--in this case, the ruination that can result from the poisonous mixing of religion and government, and from establishment of the rule of men in place of the rule of law. Didn't we learn this once before? Isn't this what Thomas Jefferson was all about?
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*(There was a Middle Eastern mystical belief, at the time, that flaying prevented the murdered person's soul from going to Heaven. If true, Hypatia did not go to the Christian heaven, where Cyril (as an anointed "saint" of the Catholic Church, to this day) is said to be resident next to God--but to some other place, possibly where Jesus himself resides, welcoming all of the victims of the hypocritical, dogmatic, uncharitable religion that he warned his followers, time and again, in every way that he could, not to found.)
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