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History 104A, October 19: An Easter to Remember: The Beginnings of Christianity.

Last time we talked about the fall and rise of Rome. I'm not

sure they fully fall unless they're eliminated. Certainly their

cultures continue. In other words, did England fall during World War

I or is England still there? I think even in England, weren't

there -- the English still exist in something called the United

States, Australia, Canada. They perverted the whole world, even in

India. However, the glory that was Rome is, as the story goes,

certainly leaves a lot of curiosity as to why the greatness fell. And

as I indicated given, argued Christianity, and Pirrene argued Muslim,

Islam nobody blames the Jews for that anyway, everything else maybe.

In any case, other interpretations exist perhaps with a little more

basis for them, if it fell. And among those, with simply the

expansion of the Germanic peoples into Rome, putting pressure on the

empire, the bad administrative system which began to leave the city

itself undefended as well as the inability financially to provide

cleanup of the swamps. And people began to leave because of the fact

that the levy's didn't hold and therefore mosquitos began to expand

again and malaria became prevalent.

Another argument for decline and fall of Rome is the whole bread

and circuses, the sense that people were not given productive

employment. And tied to that is a theory by a name named Wallbank who

blamed it on slavery. The Romans simply didn't have to work. Slaves

did everything for them. While the Romans developed such technology

including such things as the windmill, there was no need to. You

could push some of the grinding stones and waterwheels with slave

labor and slaves abounded. And it was during the medieval period when

slavery began to totally decline, when Rome was no longer there, that

we began to see some of that Roman technology being put to use. So

the invasion from without though, I think has a lot to say with it.

Another argument is sort of the Sodom and Gomorrah argument. I

don't know in I touched on the whole issue of Sodom and Gomorrah and

the differences in interpretation, for example, between Jewish

scholars and Christian scholars. Christian scholars blame the

destruction on the immorality of sex. That's all we ever see when we

see pictures of Sodom and Gomorrah is the sexual activity going on.

But the Jewish scholars blame it on the lack of hospitality. They

didn't take care of their neighbors. They weren't neighborly. They

didn't provide health, education, and welfare. And again, that same

argument has been made for Rome. That while they provided bread and

circuses, they did not provide productive employment, a national

healthcare program, or anything of that kind of a nature. And of

course, many ultra conservatives who see that make ties to the United

States in its decline quote/unquote and fall often blame it on the

homosexuality, the excessive heterosexuality, whatever that means, and

often ignore the whole issue of health, education, and welfare.

Others blame that ignoring of people and seeing people as people may

well be the actual cause for a fall of the United States. Again, it's

hard to prove any of these factors. Probably the best one was Bury

who argued that it was a combination of factors. I tend to like that.

I tend to be somewhat eclectic in that I think all of the factors do

play a role.

I also mentioned the concept of the led in the pipes earlier and

how that prevented the Roman purity from going on, because in Rome

itself, they could not have a lot of children and reproduce, so

whoever came into the society, all those barbarians, those Chinese and

Indians, whoever came into your country and having a lot of kids while

the white people just aren't having enough kids, which of course is

not valid anyway. You hear these kinds of arguments being made today

certainly. And so there is definitely a racist argument that was made

for the decline of Rome by who else, Germanic scholars. And one of

the names of the scholars was a man named Frank.

Either way, during this period of time, as people become

frustrated as the money becomes inflated, as the coins become

literally ugly and not worth a lot of money, there is the expansion of

insecurity which breeds the need for security which breeds religion.

Once again, Christianity was not the only religion that was expanding

and offering salivation and offering a better life in the afterlife or

in some form of continuation of life. The question that of course

arises is, why did Christianity prevail? The answer for many of you

and obviously we're not going to argue it, is that Christianity is a

true faith, your true faith. And obviously people recognized it and

recognized the God. However, as a historian, sociologist,

anthropologist looking at it, we look at other perhaps causes,

forgetting the religious response of truth. And there were many

religions, as I indicated, in Rome. The Roman military followed the

Mithra derivation which is part of the Zoroastrian, the trend of the

male, the strength of fire, the strength of battle, very male oriented

very military oriented. It didn't seem to appeal to many outside the

military.

Then there was a Isis/Osiris cult coming out of Egypt, which of

course emphasized the mother goddess. While it had a heaven, it had a

termination of life, accepted, there was no real hell. Zoroastrianism

itself had a hell to it, a burning fire. They may not have called it

hell. The question is, what did Christianity offer people? There was

also the philosophical offer of Neoplatonism. Ethical culture is also

exists more on the East Coast. I don't think I've met anybody from

the ethical culture religion faith? It's much more active along with

Unitarians. Again, while I've met one or two Unitarians, I haven't

met many in California. Anybody encounter Unitarians? Those are

religions that are more, shall we say, philosophical than they really

emphasize a sense of faith and afterlife and death.

The basis for the expansion of Christianity perhaps is one and

perhaps most important of all, it's missionary zeal. Christ said, do

not leave your fire of life under a barrel; meaning, it is your job to

spread that faith. And Christians are militant almost in spreading

the faith. What that translates to is, many religions did not go out

to convert. Zoroastrians, as I indicated, you had to be basically

born into. Judaism, I guess we indicate an ego, believes you come to

them and then you spend a year studying. And that's a long time. And

most of all, for adult males to become a Jew and get that little piece

cut off, it's kind of hard for them to adapt to. Not very many men

want an operation in that certain section at that age. So this was a

difficult faith to join, if you will.

As I say, others dealt with female brains, male principles, but

they may have gone out -- they were the mystics, mystical faiths, the

Dionysian cults where wine, women, and song were celebrated, but it

didn't give that sense of the missionary zeal. The Christians had

something else in that zeal. They had a very simple story. It wasn't

like the secret cults where you joined and nobody else knew the secret

of the cult, the Scientology or the Mason, secret handshakes of there

was an openness to it. There was a faith that had a story about a man

who was God who died for everyone else's sins. And one that did have

some mystery, but that was not understandable.

The sacrifice therefore for man's sins certainly had a major role

to do with the expansion of Christianity. The faith itself appeal

today all classes of people, from slaves to the wealthy. People

adapted it because it gave them a sense of serenity. I haven't seen

the movie yet. And in part it had good salespeople candidly. The

best of all was Paul or Saul as his name was or not. It makes a

difference how well something is advertised and sold and that

missionary zeal went forth as well. There are those who claim that

Saul invented Christianity. A man Homer Smith, in A Man and His Gods,

using German historical research, argued that Paul, like many great

leaders for some strange reason, was epileptic and the argument is

that during certain epileptic fits people get visions and that Paul

received that vision on the road to Tarsus, Damascus, on the road to

Damascus, and there, who saw Christ which he had never met. And with

that, Saul who had been a persecutor of Christians previously, turned

around, converted to a faith that was, in a sense, at that time, a

cult of Judaism, and began the process of spreading the story of an

individual who died for people's sins. Of course the name Christ is a

Greek word meaning the messiah. And Saul himself, Paul, was living in

the Greek world of Damascus, Antioch, and Tarsus. The story I think

we're all familiar with or most of us are familiar with. And that is

that Christ went around claiming to be the king of kings, the son of

God, whether it was a capital S or a small S becomes questionable, but

seemed to fulfill the predictions in the Bible Isaiah and others of

the coming of the messiah of God on Earth. And he was challenged as

king of the Jews of the Sanhedrim. This was the Jewish council who

spoke to Herod as well to the Roman prefect Pontius Pilot who decided

to execute him by crucifixion. And a Roman soldier aided his death by

slitting open which side? The left side?

A Right side.

THE PROFESSOR: His body was buried and disappeared, put in a

cave and like a catacomb and then disappeared. Translation, the

belief being that he was resurrected. He was then seen wandering by a

number of witnesses afterwards for a short period of time.

I got a call the other day from an individual -- this is

absolutely off the subject but not totally -- who I hadn't seen in 20

some odd years from power lifting. They're making a movie like

pumping iron and they want to get me interviewed and was going to

propose that I be added to the hall of fame for some strange reason, I

don't know why. He was going back to stories, and I don't have good

memories of these kinds of things. One day we had a weight lifting

test on a Saturday and we went into Sunday which happened to be Easter

Sunday. And the audience up there was mainly Mexican American. And I

was doing the announcing on the microphone. And I got on the

microphone and it was about 12:30, look folks, I know this is Easter

Sunday and you're very concerned, but don't worry about it, they found

the body and cancelled easter. He was amazed that I wasn't hung by my

cahones. I was just out of it since '98. But it sounds like

something, as you all know, I can have said. I never question things

that people tell me I have done or said.

In any case, with the resurrection of Christ, which by the way

does not appear for whatever reason in Roman literature. There are

stories of a number of people who claim to be messiahs, if you will

saviors at the time but nothing that seems to deal with the large

impact that Christians today feel. It was probably a small group;

therefore, not the recognition that we tend to see. But what came out

of that group, a small group, a small cult if you will, was a mass

movement and perhaps a true faith, through in many ways, martyrdom.

Translation, Christians in their solid belief faced death openly

quote/unquote turning the other cheek for their faith. When people

saw that willingness to put forth their lives much in many ways like

Martin Luther King Jr. or Gandhi and a nonviolent civil disobedient

way -- and I personally think that that's what's lost on some of our

movements today, that sense of moral height an ethical height where

you know you're right and you accept law or you die for your cause

without crying or bitching or exchange or suing.

A And the Tibetans do. They have done nonviolent protests for 53

years now.

THE PROFESSOR: Well, maybe it's gotten them to a better

afterlife -- I'm sorry, reincarnation, or maybe they went directly. I

don't know. I wouldn't say it's gotten them nowhere. And the Dali

Llama has received a lot of respect throughout the world. There's a

lot of empathy for the cause. It may not have gotten them their

independence, but it's perhaps provided a salivation. I have no doubt

that if rebellion had broken out in Tibet, the Chinese communists

would have done what they did on Tiennemen Square on the worse levels.

I think that sense of the world's respect for the Tibetans was in many

ways, the respect that was given for Christianity. And not only that,

I think that knowing all of these quote/unquote liberals in this

country who have adopted the Dali Llama as a spiritual leader, I'm

talking about white liberals who pay a fortune to hear him whenever he

comes to this country, is an indication of a spread of the faith that

we probably would have known nothing about except that they would have

been wiped out except for that passive resistance. But that's, you

know, the way I view it. Sorry. Don't get me wrong. I'm a violent

person, so I could not function that way. I go by George Bernard Shaw

that says, martyrdom is the only way a man can become famous without

ability. I respect it, by all means.

And again, if Christ were crucified and resurrected in 33 ADCE,

it really wasn't until the fourth century that you really begin to see

that spread of Christianity. And here I don't know if you can see

these pentagons or whatever they are -- five shaped figures. If you

look here, this is the spread in the fifth century. In the first

century of Christianity, you pretty much see it in a very small narrow

area of the Middle East and partly into Egypt. So you're talking

about 300 years. And so 50 years is nothing historically dealing with

the Tibetans. What we're talking about is a movement that takes

hundreds of years for people to adapt to. Of course part of that

adaption comes about with the quote/unquote the decline and fall of

Rome. People see something else, a higher sect and join in; or again

based, on your views, the true faith.

In dealing with that expansion itself, the first -- I pointed out

that while Christianity is expanding, it really doesn't get its depth

in Rome until that's fourth century or in the Mediterranean when

Constantine allows after the edict of Milan, the ability of Christians

to worship freely in the Roman empire both East and West. And then

with Theodosus at around the end of the fourth century, making it the

faith of the Roman empire.

I know what else I forget to mention. Another element of

Christianity at that time, not so perhaps today, but certainly of the

early Christian faith, salivation came through only seven sacraments.

You didn't have to read, study, but there were seven sacraments which

are an outward signs of an inward gains. They include such things as

baptism, picked up perhaps from John the Baptist, confirmation,

marriage, holy blessed rights they used to be called. There's seven.

And the acceptance of those became the basis of the passing on of

salivation itself. In any case, the other faiths are still there.

And we begin to see some organism of the church and certainly

taking up the posts in the Roman cities where they begin to set up the

bishops and Rome itself is emptied by the Romans. And as I indicate,

they head off as a capital to Ravenna which is better defended and

Rome is left under the administration of the Pope and certainly Leo

who some may have said is the first of the Popes having and convincing

Attila of the Hun to leave that area in the fifth century in 451. And

as we can see here, it replaces Rome around the Mediterranean sea.

This area does become Christian by the fifth century. And within this

base and within the faith they pick up on some other religious

elements, one of which is being hermits, hermitage. It was pretty

common in the orient for people to go out in the wilderness and live

in a cave, much like Mohammed did, to find religion, to find God. And

the weather there allows for it. And of course they followed the

sense of Christ going out in the dessert for 40 days. And that sense

of being creates some very strange actions on the faith.

One guy, Simon Stylus was the name given to him because he lived

on the poll, literally on top of the poll for 40 years. Food was

brought up to me. We've had some strange tree huggers go up in the

trees and live up there for a long period of time too. Others went

off to caves, and again, showed their dedication which spread to

others.

And then in the north because the weather wasn't quite as

favorable to individuals going out and living on their own, it needs

more community, we develop what's known as the monastic movements.

And monasteries begin to clear the land. They worked together as part

of the faith. And we create monastic orders. Of course perhaps the

most famous was the Benediction, the sense of work, faith, celibacy.

By the way, a monk is someone who lives under an order. And they are

usually not priests in that they cannot give the sacraments. They are

cloistered, meaning they live within the monastery. They can teach

but people come to the monastery where their main element is working

for Christ. And a lot of the innovations, especially in agriculture,

came out of these northern monasteries. And of course we continue

that tradition, not just from fourth century, fifth century on, but

some of you may remember from your genetics, Mendel and his work with

chick peas as a monk and the whole basis of genetics at the end of the

19th century. So it is not something that just stays and -- you know.

It is also argued that because of the spread of monasticism and

the spread of Christianity that is less of a reverence for nature,

that primitive people lived with nature and feared it. They feared

those little trolls and elves and fairies and, you know, in the

forests, the gargoyles, scare them away. Did you read about those

people found in Indonesia that was only about 12,000 years old and

they were apparently only about 3 feet tall? They were now calling

them Lord of the Rings or something. How many people read about that?

Interesting little tidbits that maybe there is some truth to. Oh

well -- with big feet. We don't know if they were hairy or not.

It is argued that the lack of reverence for nature because

Christianity had one God, allowed for the devastation of the forests

and the lands and that the hard work interfered with environmentalism.

We'll let you go from there on that one.

In any case, that expansion itself that faith that isolation

later leads to a different kind of monastic order which is basically

the development of convents, and that is friars and sisters rather

than nuns. Friars live under an order but they go out and they

preach. They go out and they teach. They work in the community, the

dominions certainly 13th century AD right next door here are sisters.

They are not totally cloistered. They spend some time in the

cloisters in the convent, but they can go forth and work in the

community. The nuns and the monks today also get out into the

communities as well. And of course there are individuals besides,

during this period of time, whose names become important for their

teaching such as St. Augustine and his City of God coming out of the

Alexandria area here. And certainly the stories of other teachers

from mostly the areas in here that begin to develop some of the

theory; St. Augustine the City of God, famous work dealing with the

concept of church and honor and to some extent perhaps the identity

with Rome. That's certainly a questionable level.

The primacy of Rome coming out of it, if you will, meaning how

come Rome becomes the center of the church. And of course, as I

indicated before, by the seventh century, the other major cities with

their Popes, disputes over who was in control or their bishops --

Alexandria, Antioch, Rome, Damascus, and Constantinople. What happens

is Constantinople becomes very isolated and develops a different what,

we call the eastern religion, the Aryan faith. And of course by 1453

disappears as a Christian city. And so Rome is pretty much left to

dominate the center of Christianity and remains the center of western

Christianity until the year 1517 when a man by the name of Martin

Luther, not Martin Luther King Junior please, Martin Luther, posted on

Halloween, all hallows night, October 31st they have arguments against

what he believed the Catholic church was preaching, which started what

we know as the Protestant reformation. It succeeded. Many of the

theories and ideas that we presented previously as philosophy had been

presented previously. His sunk in because of the times and because of

the age itself.

I've got the seven sacraments here: Baptism; confirmation;

matrimony; the Eucharist, where the bread and wine enters into a

mystic communication as the blood and body of the Christ; extreme

angst, which as I indicated, are the last rights; and ordination, a

Christian becoming a priest. I mentioned St. Jerome and St.

Augustine.

What I would like to do is some of you have your packets with you

and in the back of your packet, the one that has the booklet on it, if

you have it, if not, it's okay, you can follow me. On page 23 there

is a cross to bear, if you will. We have a group meeting on Friday --

as the Roman citizen in the first or second century, would you have

converted to Christianity, why or why not. For those that have the

cross, it's one of those nice little gimmicks for aiding you in

understanding perhaps, to have some of the power of the church and the

reasons for that power. I want to go around and explain it in part.

We'll start at the top and go to the left. Tithe -- what is the

tithe?

A It's a tax.

THE PROFESSOR: It's a tax placed on people who are members of

the church. 10 percent of a person's income was given, collected for

the church. That is still part and parcel of some faiths today,

certainly the Mormon faith is one. The World Church of God not only

collects 10 percent of year, but on the third year collects an extra

10 percent. Many churches, including like Jewish temples, base a

percentage on your income to become a member. Obviously, the power it

wields is wealth. The money that went to the church can be used for

church preachings, buildings, teaching, education, et cetera.

Sacraments -- gave people a belief that they could achieve

salivation. And following basically six rules, not a lot of

complexity to it. But the power of the church, it was only the

priests and the church that could issue those sacraments. If you were

not a member of the church and the sacraments were cut off, you were

doomed at least for God knows how long. And I guess that's literal,

in purgatory, meaning between hell and heaven. One of the things that

Catholic Church, by the way, eliminated back in 1963 was something

known as limbo, not the dance under the bar. That was the place where

people who did not know Christianity would wait until judgment day.

They were outside of hell, purgatory, and Heaven. Somehow it was

decided that was not a proper interpretation of Biblical teaching.

Missionary zeal -- the spreading of the gospel. Perhaps the Pope

that was most active in pushing missionaries was Gregory the Great as

a Pope in the end of the sixth century and the beginning of the

seventh century. Perhaps the strongest of the Popes in medieval times

in the early medieval times, famous also for the Gregorian chants, but

sending out to the Germanic tribes, sending out to the Visigoths to

the galls or franks and sending out visionaries as far as Ireland. It

is also believed that some of those missionaries may well have reached

the new world.

Church courts -- perhaps similar to the old military courts.

People who were priests were tried not in civil courts but in church

courts. Anything dealing with the church was tried within special

courts that were run by the priests, the bishops. I haven't used the

term cardinals because cardinals don't come into effect until later in

the medieval period. Perhaps the most infamous of those courts

becomes the papal court, starting in the 13th century, which we know

as the inquisition that reaches its full power in the 15th century,

the Spanish inquisition, where people who's faith is questionable are

brought before the court and forced to confess. If they don't

confess, they're crushed to death, beaten until they confess in some

way. And of course we know in Joan of Arch and others who are placed

in the fires of purity that are called the auto de fe A-U-T-O D-E F-E,

the testing of faith to purify. And I think I talked about it

earlier, didn't I, how if you confessed to your crime, to your sin,

you were garreted, strangled before you were burned. But if you

refused to confess, you were burned alive. Either way, you went to

hell.

Education -- up until basically the 18th century, the church

controlled what you learned, the knowledge you received. I pointed

out that people got their education by going to the monasteries and

often what we might call elementary schools were held within the

monasteries. Priests taught philosophy, learning, education of

various forms, and people came to them. And by the 13th century,

1200, we began to see the formation of a higher educational system

called the universities that were under the cathedrals. And the

cathedrals, the bishops appointed a rector, a president rather, a

chancellor to run those universities who was a member of the clergy.

And we'll talk further about some of those individuals. Obviously

knowledge is power. And if the church controlled the knowledge, it

had the power over people's lives.

Anointing of kings -- kings claimed to be God given. And prove

that they were God directed, God driven, they received their crown

from the hands of the bishop. The bishops placed the crown on the

king's head literally. Much like -- we mentioned Charlemaigne who had

the Pope come to Aachen in Germany or the holy Roman empire and crown

him holy Roman emperor. Therefore, the church, when it didn't like a

king, could take that power away by removing their sanction of that

king. We'll talk more about that under excommunication and interdict.

I also identified the power and strength and role of the church

came from its technological advances in farming. It developed such

things as the three field system of agriculture where one field was

left fallow, not to be grown to help the land. What's the word I'm

looking for? Re-fertilize itself. That's not the world. And of

course from these monasteries there created a whole system of

excessive wealth because they began to sell their goods and they began

to invest it in the land. And some of the monasteries became

extremely wealthy from their farming and farming innovations. In the

ninth century or in the tenth century, 900s, the Cistercians were very

much involved in also creating bookkeeping that later is going to be

used in the development of capitalism. That's getting ahead of the

story.

Excommunication -- church didn't like you, felt you were a

heretic, you spoke out, you were removed from the church,

excommunicated. You became an outcast. You were ostracized. What it

meant was, you could not get the sacraments. If you were not

receiving any of the sacraments, communion, baptism, confirmation,

whatever, then you were doomed for damnation. And you said who gives

a shit? The answer is, people did because they believed it. It was

an absolute faith. Many of you wouldn't in a sense being concerned.

Maybe even being kicked out of America couldn't concern you. But when

people had a sincere faith, this was damage to their existence. And

so the threat of excommunication, which by the way still goes on

today, as you know, not just the Catholic church, but other churches

use excommunication, was the means of removing people who are heretics

or in opposition to the church philosophy.

I'll pick up for the second half and then go into the group

meeting. If you don't bring it with you, you might want to bring it

with you next time. See you on Friday. Group meeting Friday.

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