wikihistory-blog

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Im going through the reigns of Roman Emperors and jfc it’s either “rule: ~20 years in relative peace” or “rule: 3 months and 2 days. Stabbed to death by praetorian guard”, there’s practically no middle ground.

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Good thing modern Americans think history books are for the gays, or it would be kind of awkward for all of these descendants of Crusaders to be throwing fits about how mean and crazy this tiny handful of ISIS infiltrators are.

To match what our ancestors did to theirs, ISIS would need to get Saudia Arabia, Iran, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Afghanistan, the Sudan and Indonesia to form a joint army to invade and despoil all of Italy in an attempt to take Rome. And then they would have to continuously reinforce it, and continually re-despoil the surrounding countryside, over the next couple hundred years, just to hold on to it.

Terrorism is bad. But there are worse things. And WE did those things, to THEM.

Just because it happened more than 2 weeks ago, doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.

We just had the good luck to commit all of our horrible atrocities in the name of religion before video and pastiche liberal secularism were invented.

We’re not “better.” We just got it out of our system a little earlier.

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Templars: Okay, so like...we need a theme song that says “We love Mary, Mild and Gracious Queen of Heaven, and Jesus, the Ever-Merciful.” But at the same time, also, like, “Fear our coming, for we will totally murder the FUCK out of your babies if you don’t convert to our religion and give us all your land.”

Hermann of Reichenau: ...I’ll see what I can do.

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So the English word “jade,” and the Latin-derived technical term for it, “nephrite,” both come from the Medieval Spanish name, which basically means “crotch rock.”

They thought that if you rubbed it on your gooch, it would make your penis stop hurting. Because in Medieval Europe, your penis hurt. Everyone’s penis. All the time. For a thousand different disgusting reasons.

Meanwhile, in China, they just called it its own word, and that word came to imply wealth or beauty and became a prefix or suffix to tons of other words.

And we call it “jade.” Which comes from the Spanish for “stone you rub on your taint to stop your pee from hurting.”

Truly, it was simple destiny that white people conquer the world!

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Be grateful the Vikings never really followed up their “discovery” of North America, aside from maybe a couple of temporary hunting camps. The first European on record to see the continent was Icelandic / Norwegian explorer Bjarni Herjolfsson.

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Leif Erikson, c. 970 – c. 1020 First European to set foot in the Americas Inspired by Bjarni’s tales; “There was now much talk about voyages of discovery. Leif, the son of Erik the Red, of Brattahlid, went to Bjarne Herjulfson, and bought the ship of him, and engaged men for it, so that there were thirty-five men in all.”  - Greenlandic Saga

They Discover the 3rd island Bjarni spotted and name it Helluland, “land of flat stones” (believed by historians to be Baffin Island). “Now prepared they their ship, and sailed out into the sea when they were ready, and then found that land first which Bjarne had found last. There sailed they to the land, and cast anchor, and put off boats, and went ashore, and saw there no grass. Great icebergs were over all up the country, but like a plain of flat stones was all from the sea to the mountains, and it appeared to them that this land had no good qualities. Then said Leif, “We have not done like Bjarne about this land, that we have not been upon it; now will I give the land a name, and call it Helluland.” Then went they on board, and after that sailed out to sea” - Greenlandic Saga

Baffin Island They discover yet another land and name it Markland, “the land of forests”. “-and found another land; they sailed again to the land, and cast anchor, then put off boats and went on shore. This land was flat, and covered with wood, and white sands were far around where they went, and the shore was low. Then said Leif, “This land shall be named after its qualities, and called Markland 2 (woodland.)”.” - Greenlandic Saga Leif spots a 3rd land (believed by historians to be Labrador) “They then immediately returned to the ship. Now sailed they thence into the open sea, with a northeast wind, and were two days at sea before they saw land, and they sailed thither and came to an island which lay to the eastward of the land, and went up there, and looked round them in good weather, and observed that there was dew upon the grass; and it so happened that they touched the dew with their hands, and raised the fingers to the mouth, and they thought that they had never before tasted anything so sweet.”  - Greenlandic Saga 

Labrador Peninsula  They Settle in the 4th land (now believed to be modern Newfoundland or the Gulf of Saint Lawrence) “After that they went to the ship, and sailed into a sound, which lay between the island and a ness (promontory), which ran out to the eastward of the land; and then steered westwards past the ness. It was very shallow at ebb tide, and their ship stood up, so that it was far to see from the ship to the water. But so much did they desire to land, that they did not give themselves time to wait until the water again rose under their ship, but ran at once on shore, at a place where a river flows out of a lake; but so, soon as the waters rose up under the ship, then took they boats, and rowed to the ship, and floated it up to the river, and thence into the lake, and there cast anchor, and brought up from the ship their skin cots, and made their booths. After this took they counsel, and formed the resolution of remaining there for the winter, and built there large houses. There was no want of salmon either in the river or in the lake, and larger salmon than they had before seen. The nature of the country was, as they thought, so good that cattle would not require house feeding in winter, for there came no frost in winter, and little did the grass wither there. Day and night were more equal than in Greenland or Iceland, for on the shortest day was the sun above the horizon from half-past seven in the forenoon till half-past four in the afternoon.” - Greenlandic Saga

Newfoundland and the Gulf of St. Lawrence  Leif’s foster father went missing and upon being found relates to Leif his discovery of a land of vines and grapes which Leif names, Vineland or Wineland (where they built a settlement that visitors would name Leifsbúðir, “Leif’s Booths” believed to be modern L’Anse aux Meadows) “I have not been much further off, but still have I something new to tell of; I found vines and grapes.” “But is that true, my fosterer?” quoth Leif. “Surely is it true,” replied he, “for I was bred up in a land where there is no want of either vines or grapes. “They slept now for the night, but in the morning, Leif said to his sailors: "We will now set about two things, in that the one day we gather grapes, and the other day cut vines and fell trees, so from thence will be a loading for my ship”. That was the counsel taken, and it is said their long boat was filled with grapes. Now was a cargo cut down for the ship, and when the spring came they got ready and sailed away, and Leif gave the land a name after its qualities, and called it Vinland, or Wineland.” - Greenlandic Saga

L’Ans aux Meadows After returning to Greenland, Leif’s tales become known to the people and his brother Thorvald wishes to explore these lands further, so they set sail back. Upon exploring the land further they find inhabitants, the Skrælings (“wretched ones”). Native contact “Now when spring began, they beheld one early morning, that a fleet of hide-canoes was rowing from the south off the headland; so many were they as if the sea were strewn with pieces of charcoal, and there was also the brandishing of staves as before from each boat. Then they held shields up, and a market was formed between them; and this people in their purchases preferred red cloth; in exchange they had furs to give, and skins quite grey. They wished also to buy swords and lances, but Karlsefni and Snorri forbad it. They offered for the cloth dark hides, and took in exchange a span long of cloth, and bound it round their heads; and so matters went on for a while. But when the stock of cloth began to grow small, then they split it asunder, so that it was not more than a finger’s breadth. The Skrælingar gave for it still quite as much, or more than before.” – Saga of Erik the Red, Chapter 11

There are two different accounts on how conflict began Account #1, Saga of Eric the Red: “Now it came to pass that a bull, which belonged to Karlsefni’s people, rushed out of the wood and bellowed loudly at the same time. The Skrælingar, frightened thereat, rushed away to their canoes, and rowed south along the coast. There was then nothing seen of them for three weeks together. When that time was gone by, there was seen approaching from the south a great crowd of Skrælingar boats, coming down upon them like a stream, the staves this time being all brandished in the direction opposite to the sun’s motion, and the Skrælingar were all howling loudly. Then took they and bare red shields to meet them. They encountered one another and fought, and there was a great shower of missiles. The Skrælingar had also war-slings, or catapults. Then Karlsefni and Snorri see that the Skrælingar are bringing up poles, with a very large ball attached to each, to be compared in size to a sheep’s stomach, dark in colour; and these flew over Karlsefni’s company towards the land, and when they came down they struck the ground with a hideous noise. This produced great terror in Karlsefni and his company, so that their only impulse was to retreat up the country along the river, because it seemed as if crowds of Skrælingar were driving at them from all sides. And they stopped not until they came to certain crags. There they offered them stern resistance. Freydis came out and saw how they were retreating. She called out, “Why run you away from such worthless creatures, stout men that ye are, when, as seems to me likely, you might slaughter them like so many cattle? Let me but have a weapon, I think I could fight better than any of you.” They gave no heed to what she said. Freydis endeavoured to accompany them, still she soon lagged behind, because she was not well; she went after them into the wood, and the Skrælingar directed their pursuit after her. She came upon a dead man; Thorbrand, Snorri’s son, with a flat stone fixed in his head; his sword lay beside him, so she took it up and prepared to defend herself therewith.

Then came the Skrælingar upon her. She let down her sark and struck her breast with the naked sword. At this they were frightened, rushed off to their boats, and fled away. Karlsefni and the rest came up to her and praised her zeal. Two of Karlsefni’s men fell, and four of the Skrælingar, notwithstanding they had overpowered them by superior numbers. After that, they proceeded to their booths, and began to reflect about the crowd of men which attacked them upon the land; it appeared to them now that the one troop will have been that which came in the boats, and the other troop will have been a delusion of sight. The Skrælingar also found a dead man, and his axe lay beside him. One of them struck a stone with it, and broke the axe. It seemed to them good for nothing, as it did not withstand the stone, and they threw it down. [Karlsefni and his company] were now of opinion that though the land might be choice and good, there would be always war and terror overhanging them, from those who dwelt there before them. They made ready, therefore, to move away, with intent to go to their own land. They sailed forth northwards, and found five Skrælingar in jackets of skin, sleeping [near the sea], and they had with them a chest, and in it was marrow of animals mixed with blood; and they considered that these must have been outlawed. They slew them.”

The Norse settlers suffer a surprise attack by swarthy well-armed strangers - By Roger Payne  Account #2, Greenlandic Saga: “Then went they to the ship, and saw upon the sands within the promontory three elevations, and went thither, and saw there three skin boats (canoes), and three men under each. Then divided they their people, and caught them all, except one, who got away with his boat. They killed the other eight, and then went back to the cape, and looked round them, and saw some heights inside of the frith, and supposed that these were dwellings.  After that, so great a drowsiness came upon them that they could not keep awake, and they all fell asleep. Then came a shout over them, so that they all awoke. Thus said the shout: “Wake thou! Thorvald! and all thy companions, if thou wilt preserve life, and return thou to thy ship, with all thy men, and leave the land without delay.” 

“Then rushed out from the interior of the frith an innumerable crowd of skin boats, and made towards them. Thorvald said then: “We will put out the battle-skreen, and defend ourselves as well as we can, but fight little against them.” So did they, and the Skrælings shot at them for a time, but afterwards ran away, each as fast as he could.

Then asked Thorvald his men if they had. gotten any wounds; they answered that no one was wounded. “I have gotten a wound under the arm,” said he, “for an arrow fled between the edge of the ship and the shield, in under my arm, and here is the arrow, and it will prove a mortal wound to me.”  In the spring they left to Greenland once again with grapes and vines. Thorstein Erikson, brother of Leif Ericson and the fallen Thorvald, wished to retrieve his brother’s body (this Journey would be ended by a fatal sickness) “Early that winter came sickness amongst Thorstein Erikson’s men, and there died many of his people”  “Now it was not long before the sickness came also into Thorstein’s house-” - Greenlandic Saga

“Three of Erik the Red’s children visited the North American continent: his sons Leif and Thorvald, and their sister Freydis.”

Saga of the Greenlanders -https://notendur.hi.is/haukurth/utgafa/greenlanders.html

Eirik the Red’s Saga - http://sagadb.org/eiriks_saga_rauda.en

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Complex of French noble possessions in 1477, before the Mad War (Charles VIII vs. "rebel" lords, supported by the Holy Roman Empire [Germany / Austria / Hungary], Spain, and England)

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Contemporary accounts suggest that Rodrigo was "handsome, with a most cheerful countenance and genial bearing. He is gifted with a honeyed and choice eloquence. Beautiful women are attracted to him and excited by him in a quite remarkable way, more strongly than iron is drawn to a magnet." 

Straight women, you are an eternal mystery.

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Corsican vendetta knife with floral detail

“may all your wounds be mortal”

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Combination Dagger with Flintlock Gun

Dated: 19th century

Culture: European

Measurements: overall length 38.5 cm

The dagger has a cusp of triangular section, assembled on a long neck of round section, faceted and octagonal at the base. It is provided with a opening gate holding a rounded, iron ramrod, for loading. On one side it features a flintlock barrel with an external spring and a trigger. The steel quillon is decorated with rings on the arms, buttoned at the ends. The steel grip is functioning as a barrel (6 mm cal.), shaped as a double baluster, featuring roundish knots alternated to rings.

Source: Copyright © 2015 Czerny’s International Auction House S.R.L.

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I don’t know which blog to post this on, and I’m not going to bother posting a bunch of Google images to “prove” it, because I think you’re more than capable of surfing the information super-highway on your own.

But looking, as I do, at a lot of Ancient Greek and Roman and Egyptian art, and also Bollywood musicals, as I do, I’m struck by how SIMILAR these people seem to look.

The “Roman” or “Hawkish” nose bridge. The dark olive skin complexion. The almost universally dark, naturally straight hair.

Every time they make a movie about Ancient Rome or Greece, they cast random white actors. And if you’re lucky that they DON’T do that with Ancient Egypt, they then cast Arab actors. Which is fine - use people from the places these people were from.

But all of these areas were invaded by tribes of other people between now and when they were at their imperial zenith.

We know the Greeks and Romans at least were “Indo-European.” The science / archaeology says there was a root Aryan race from somewhere in Iran that went both east and west and inter-mixed with the local people. The western branch became the Latins and Greeks and Celts and ancient Anatolians and maybe Germans and who knows who else. The eastern branch became the people of India and Pakistan and Central Asia.

But how much of even these ancient “races” were Aryan, and how were they the locals?

My extended point is, if you did a movie about Ancient Rome where all the Romans were played by Bollywood actors, I can tell you that they would at least look more like these people’s statues and paintings than casting Chris Pine.

By the late Roman Empire, there were emperors with blonde and red hair, who look a lot like just mixed-ethnicity white guys. But that was after Rome had absorbed half of Europe. And once the subject tribes were “Romanzied,” their children moved to Italy and learned Latin and the Romans don’t seem to have cared what the hell “race” they were. This was cultural imperialism, not racial nationalism. It was just as brutal and bigoted, but the population dynamics of the time were different, so they went a different direction with it.

Again, my point is simple - I WANT A BOLLYWOOD MUSICAL SET IN ANCIENT ROME!

And if you did that, I think there just might be a weird kind of ethnic accuracy to that.

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George Bain - Methods of Construction in Celtic Art, 1996.

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Roman_relations

Sino-Roman relations were essentially indirect throughout the existence of both empires. The Roman Empire and the ancient Han dynasty progressively inched closer in the course of the Roman expansion into the Ancient Near East and simultaneous Chinese military incursions into Central Asia. However, powerful intermediate empires such as the Parthians and Kushans kept the two Eurasian flanking powers permanently apart and mutual awareness remained low and knowledge fuzzy.

Only a few attempts at direct contact are known from records: In 97 BCE, the Chinese general Ban Chao unsuccessfully tried to send an envoy to Rome. Several alleged Roman emissaries to China were recorded by ancient Chinese historians. The first one on record, supposedly from either the Roman emperor Antoninus Pius or the later emperor Marcus Aurelius, arrived in 166 CE.

The indirect exchange of goods on the land (the so-called silk road) and sea routes included Chinese silk and Roman glassware and high-quality cloth.

In classical sources, the problem of identifying references to ancient China is exacerbated by the interpretation of the Latin term "Seres," whose meaning fluctuated and could refer to a number of Asian people in a wide arc from India over Central Asia to China. In Chinese records, the Roman Empire came to be known as "Da Qin", Great Qin, apparently thought to be a sort of counter-China at the other end of the world. According to Edwin G. Pulleyblank, the "point that needs to be stressed is that the Chinese conception of Da Qin was confused from the outset with ancient mythological notions about the far west".

I think we can all agree that it’s really sad that the armies of Ancient Rome and Han China never went toe-to-toe over control of Pakistan.

Now if you’ll excuse, me I have to go think about them doing that while dry-humping a chair.

...CHINA MADE A MOVIE ABOUT THIS BACK IN FEBRUARY?! AND JACKIE FUCKING CHAN WAS IN IT?! HOW THE FUCK DID I MISS THIS?!

Jackie Chan produced it and did the fight choreography?!

Why didn’t anyone tell me about this?!

What the fuck is wrong with you people?!

I DON’T CARE THAT IT HAS A 34% ROTTEN TOMATOES RATING. EVERYONE IS WRONG.

EVERYONE IS WRONG.

It is called Dragon Blade, and I have not seen it, but it is my favorite movie ever.

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I will always love how everyone thought World War I was going to be this exciting, super-manly, good-natured tussle. And they all put on their decorated hats and expensive uniforms and raised their sabers and valiant charged their cavalry into…machine gun fire and mustard gas.

And then suddenly everyone kind of stood there and went, “Oh shit.”

Apparently before you start a continent-wide war, you should pull Germany aside and find out if they just hate France like for fun, or if they REALLY seriously fucking hate France.

And 90% of the war was opposing armies sitting in damp trenches three feet apart dying of disease, because they’d invented all of the weapons that could kill like a thousand guys at once, but the only military tactics they knew were the ones where you run a thousand guys at someone at once. And apparently no one thought about this when the guys with waxed mustaches were parading around in epaulets and tiny gorgets in front of the new Flamethrower Brigades.

They were still carrying SWORDS into battle, and Germany decides to weaponize flaming gasoline. Think about this.

It’s like the cave man who accidentally figured out how to build an AK-47 out of leather and a stick, and when he actually shot someone with it 15 times, he screamed and dropped it and went off to sit in a corner and cry.

They strapped machine guns to balsa wood and paper airplanes, for god’s sake. And they’d fly them around each other in tight circles, while the copilots tried to throw grenades into the opposing pilot’s seat. They didn’t even figure out the timing dial thing for making sure the machine gun fire didn’t hit their own WOODEN propeller blades, so for a long time they just said “fuck it” and would SHOOT INTO THEIR OWN PROPELLER until it splintered apart. And then hope you could crash-land at a friendly air base to get it and the newspaper that was the wings replaced, so you could go back up and do it again.

Yeah, let’s mix explosions and fire with this thing. It can take it. Those are some sturdy BIKE TIRES.

I don’t want to grossly oversimplify it, but just keep in mind that World War I was partly what created guys like Hitler and Stalin. That war was fucking crazy, and World War II was only crazier by a factor of like a million because the guys who were in their 20s during WWI were in charge then, and I think all of their brains were broken.

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Wiki’s Full List

Adoptionism [2nd and 3rd Centuries AD] - Jesus was 100% some dude who was just really cool, who was born when the Holy Spirit made Mary get pregnant to herself. Then God “adopted” him when he was baptized by John the Baptist, and after he came back from the dead, he was either mostly God himself, or at least a wizard with his powers. The Orthodox position is that Jesus was born 100% God and 100% man, the son of Mary and God the Father through God the Holy Spirit.

Apollinarism [4th Century] - Jesus had a human body and a human “ghost” (i.e., the thing that gave him a personality and emotions), but his immortal soul / his higher intellect was God himself. Therefore, Jesus had one complete nature that was both God and man simultaneously, and that one nature was one person who died on the cross and rose again and was 100% god - but only because the God part of him overtook the human part. ...Or something like that. Even the people who believed in it argued about what exactly it meant, and ended up splitting into two factions. The Orthodox position agreed that Christ was simultaneously 100% God and 100% man, but thought Apollinaris was getting too wacky trying to specify how precisely it worked, and that doing that was only going to make things confusing, and lead to people wandering off half-cocked to do strange things with it. 

...Which is pretty much exactly what happened.

Antinomianism [1st Century] - If we’re Christians and we’re in good with God, he doesn’t care what the hell we do with our bodies. We are basically incapable of sinning, because he has agreed to overlook all of it once we accept Jesus. I think you know the Orthodox position on this. Surprisingly, it was used less as a justification for Christian orgies, and more as an excuse to dodge taxes.

Arianism [3rd to 8th Centuries] - Jesus was God’s son, but he’s not technically God. God created him, and declared him his son, and gave him his powers, and you have to go through him to get to God yourself, but he’s still secondary in importance to God himself. 

The Orthodox position is Jesus IS God, and along with the Holy Spirit and God the Father, the three of them are 100% one God, and all of them have existed forever as exactly that. Jesus took the form of a man, but it didn’t change his nature at all, before he was born or after he died. 

Arianism started out as a minor heresy in Egypt, but then it spread to Constantinople. It split the Eastern Church, with some emperors favoring it over orthodoxy and trying to force the entire Eastern Church to accept it. While this was going on, missionaries from there who accepted it ended up converting some of the big Germanic tribes invading the decaying Roman Empire. A minor religious argument suddenly became a convenient way for Germanic tribes to set themselves apart from the Romanized people they were fighting.

At one point, Arian Christians probably made up like 40% of all Christians, and their armies were directly threatening Rome itself. Generally, Arian rulers were tolerant of Orthodox churches, but even so, established their own Arian churches that started developing their own ideas and practices. But in North Africa, the Arian Vandals banned Orthodoxy and persecuted Orthodox clergy and congregants.

Again, this probably had more to do with the Vandals wanting the Romans to fuck off, and less to do with what anyone specifically thought about Jesus. But since North Africa was where most of Rome got its grain, this was bad.

Orthodoxy won out in the end because Orthodox missionaries had converted OTHER big Germanic tribes, and these (with the backing of the remains of the Empire), eventually conquered or politically dominated the Arian tribes. And the Byzantine emperors who favored it were replaced by those who hated it. Eventually the Nicean Creed was written to outright declare the Orthodox position, and translations of it are still recited as fundamental Christian “mission statements” in hundreds of Protestant and Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches every Sunday. But for roughly 300 years, Arianism had a close chance of becoming the only Christianity in Europe / North Africa, or at least a serious rival church. The only other time a “heresy” would manage this was when Protestantism emerged 700-odd years later.

You could argue that modern day Jehovah’s Witnesses are Arian, as they have similar beliefs about how Jesus relates to God the Father. But don’t mention that to them, because they get super pissed.

Circumcellions [4th Century] - Militant Berber Donatists who believed all property of any kind should be held communally. They quickly extended this to mean begging and stealing were fine, slavery was wrong, orgies were great, and all political authority was ungodly. They actively pursued this, engaging in public lewdness, disrupting law courts, and encouraging slave revolts. The catch was, they thought only people who died in the name of Christ would be saved, so they were actively trying to get people to kill them. When their aggressive defiance of the law didn’t work, they formed gangs that attacked pilgrims and soldiers along the roads with leather whips and clubs, trying to incite “sinners” to stab them to death so they could achieve their martyrdom.

Shockingly enough, it didn’t take long for their heresy, and all of them, to wind up dead.

Donatism [4th Century] - Any Christians who renounced Christianity during the last persecutions under Diocletian could never repent of it and should be banned from the Church forever. If they were clergy and repented and had since performed any rites or ordinations, anything they did was void, and anyone they ordained had to be re-ordained by someone who hadn’t “pussed out.” Starting in North Africa, it became a huge issue for the local church and effectively split it into Orthodox and Donatist factions, even after the Donatists were reprimanded and persecuted by newly-Christian Imperial authorities.

The schism would remain until the Arab Conquests of the 7th century effectively wiped out the North African church.

Docetism [1st Century] - Jesus never actually had a physical human body. He was some kind of really heavy ghost, who just PRETENDED to have a human body to show us he could do it. Therefore, when he was crucified, he only PRETENDED it hurt, and he only PRETENDED to die. So his body in the tomb was just a pretend body, and his body after the resurrection was just a new pretend body with pretend crucifixion wounds. The Orthodox position is that Jesus’s body was not pretend, it was real and 100% human.

Docetism itself was suppressed early on, but the idea of Jesus having a pretend body would show up again later as part of the beliefs of a large blob of sects now grouped together as Christian or Pseudo-Christian Gnostics. They generally thought of Jesus as an actual, literal ghost-wizard, who taught his followers secret magic spells to help them fight demons and have soul-sex with Female God after they died. So Docetism was kind of the least of the Gnostics problems, as far as the Orthodox Church was concerned.

Ebionites [1st to 4th Century] - Jews who accepted Jesus as a special prophet or instrument of God’s will, but denied his godhood. They also insisted that Christianity was in reality simply a continuation of Judaism, and therefore Christians were obligated to follow all the traditional Hebraic dietary and moral laws. Arguably the remnant of original Jewish followers of Jesus in Jerusalem, their view was apparently rejected by Peter and Paul themselves, who demanded an acceptance of Christ’s divinity, and envisioned more of a “universal” church. As the Church became more Roman and Greek than Jewish, they never consented to join it. They were also on the receiving end of Roman persecutions of both Jews and Christians (culminating in the disastrous end of the Bar Kokhba Revolt in 135, when thousands of Jews and Christians fled Jerusalem). Like other devout Jewish groups after this diaspora, Ebionite sects eked out an existence in isolated settlements throughout the Middle East and the Mediterranean. Some Ebionites apparently lived in Saudi Arabia, and there’s an argument that Islam’s conception of Jesus may have come from their influence.

Euchites (or Messalians) [3rd Century onward] - Syrian Christian mystics who believed that a lifestyle of deprivation and meditation on Christ would lead to physical “perceptions” of God, either through nature or actual manifestations of the divine presence. Once this was done, the adherent was “joined” mystically with God and made perfect, and was no longer obligated to any moral or spiritual law (but would continue to lead a moral life, as they were now “one” with God). The Orthodox Church, of course, believed that salvation came about through the rites and authority of the Church. The Euchites mysticism, or related ideas, would continue to influence the Orthodox Syrian Church, and various heretical sects, for hundreds of years.

Gnosticism [3rd Century onward] - Gnosticism was basically a combination of Greek philosophy / pagan mystery cultism and ancient Persian or Semitic mysticism that then inserted elements of Christianity. For all intents and purposes its own religion, it had dozens of sects, and remained consistently popular throughout the Christian world for hundreds of years, though largely underground. It also produced many writings and protected them as sacred, since it relied on long, complicated magic spells to do pretty much anything. It was apparently especially popular in Egypt, possibly because it maintained the pre-Christian Egyptian tradition of linking magic with the written word.

The root of Gnosticism was gnosis, a Greek philosophical concept meaning “secret” or “innate knowledge.” Gnostic sects claimed that Jesus had given his Disciples secret wisdom in the form of complex metaphors and spells, which would protect them from evil and give them great magical powers (pagan Greek mystery cults were pretty much exactly the same thing, but banned everyone from writing anything down, so we don’t know many details). Gnosticism was dualistic, claiming that the spiritual world was a constant struggle between equal or near-equal forces of Light and Darkness. Generally speaking, Light was the spiritual world, and Darkness was the material world, so the material world was inherently evil.

There was a huge variety of sects with different theologies, but most of them claimed that the powers of Darkness were led by an evil male god (routinely the traditional God of the Jews), who had created the world simply to trap Light so it could be more easily destroyed or consumed. Christ was a manifestation of the female “good god” of Truth, and was Truth’s attempt to educate humankind about its situation so it could use magic to free its souls from Darkness.

Some sects also claimed the Snake in the Garden of Eden was in fact the first “manifestation” of Truth, and that instead of encouraging Adam and Eve to sin against a good god, it was in fact educating them so they could defy the evil creator.

The Orthodox Church classified all the Gnostic sectarians as heretics or wizards who prayed to the Devil and asked demons to give them crazy powers. In Orthodox tradition, following from traditional Judaism, the material world is tainted by man’s sin, but is inherently perfect, as it was created by a perfect God. There is also no equality of forces in either tradition - God and his goodness are utterly powerful, and the forces of evil only have any power because he allows them to have it to test humankind, so we can prove our dedication to God. Gnostic texts were outlawed and destroyed wherever they were found, and attempts were made to forcibly convert Gnostics to Orthodoxy.

There was a revived interest in Greek mystery cults and Gnosticism in the early Renaissance, and works were published collecting surviving examples of the cosmology and spells. Much of our current conception of “black magic” and “witchcraft” comes from this period - the use of “ABRACADABRA!” as a spell is based on the kind of magical formulas Gnosticism would use to defend against the Evil Eye or impotence.

Pneumatomachianism [4th Century] - The Holy Spirit is God’s magic, but it’s not God himself. Jesus (who is God, fine) created it, and it’s basically just a tool he and God use to heal bone spurs and make snakes afraid of Irish priests. The Orthodox position is that God is the Trinity (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit), and all three have existed since forever.

Pneumatomacianists caused trouble following the first rendition of the Nicean Creed, so much so that it was updated to make it clear that they were stupid and wrong. They continued to argue for a generation until Christian co-emperors Theodosius II and Valentinian III accepted the Theodosian Code in 429, which made offenses against the Orthodox Church offenses against the state. Then they either shut their faces or their faces were forcibly shut.

Manichaeism [3rd Century onward] - Honestly more of a new religion than a Christian heresy, it borrowed a lot from Christianity and incorporated Jesus into its theology, so the Church noticed it and hated it. Coming out of Persia, it was a complicated mix of mystical Judaism, Christianity, Zoroastrianism, and even far-flung elements of Buddhism and Hinduism. It’s also been termed a form of Gnosticism, and shares many aspects in common with known Gnostic sects, both Christian and otherwise.

To explain it as simply as humanly possible, Manichaeism saw the world as a struggle between the equal forces of Light and Darkness, and that Light was the spiritual world, while Darkness was the material world. One had to follow the example of Jesus and “die” to the material world, and thus one would free one’s light-soul from Darkness and reach Nirvana or Enlightenment or Full Self-Realization.

It quickly spread from Persia, both West and East. St. Augustine was a Manichaeist in North Africa before “converting” to Orthodox Christianity. It followed the Silk Road across Central Asia, and persisted as an active faith as far away as China until at least the 13th century, when it was finally buried under political Islam and the movements of the Mongols.

Marcionism [2nd Century onward] - Jesus is God and most things about orthodoxy are fine, except that Judaism is an evil failed religion that worships the Devil, so anything that happened before Jesus should be ignored. The “God” of Christianity is a NEW god, the TRUE god, not the Jewish God. Christians should completely break away and figure out their own thing.

It was quickly suppressed as a sect, since Orthodoxy advocates Christianity as a direct continuation and fulfillment of traditional Judaism. But Marcionistic letters continued to circulate and influence various sects, and may have established an early Antisemitic strain in Roman Christianity. Christian Gnostic sects also routinely advocated the idea that the Jew God was bogus, and that the REAL god was a feminine spirit of Truth the Jew God was constantly trying to eat.

Monarchianism [2nd Century onward] - Whatever the Trinity actually may be, there is only one God, and he isn’t in any way split into three things. This is opposed to the Orthodox tradition of the Trinity, in which the “Godhead” is composed of the three 100% equal parts of the Father, Jesus the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Lots of different sects over lots of different years have adopted some form of this, to varying degrees. It was consistently most popular in the Eastern Church, especially after the emergence and cultural impact of Islam.

Monophysitism [5th Century] - Jesus has both a human and divine nature, but the divine nature overwhelms the human nature and that’s how all his stuff works. The Orthodox position was advocated by the Chalcedonians, that Christ’s two natures are 100% themselves and uncompromised, but exist simultaneously in one unified person who is both 100% man and 100% god (even though the man part is also totally sinless...maybe because of the god part? I...I don’t...)

Monothelitism [7th Century] - Christ has two natures, God and man. But they are unified in him in service to one separate, overarching personal will. The Orthodox position, which they probably invented on the fly just to be jerks about it, is that each of Christ’s natures has it’s OWN will, but the wills unify as a single personal will in the person of Christ (so, two halves making up one will). The Armenian and Syrian and Coptic Churches were accused of teaching Monothelitism and condemned for it, though they immediately argued back that they didn’t know what the hell anyone was talking about with this convoluted nonsense. But they apologized and promised to adopt the Orthodox position anyway, I guess as soon as they could figure out how it was actually different in any substantial way from whatever they had been teaching before then.

Montanism [2nd Century] - Montanus, a recent convert to Christianity, had been a priest of the Cult of either Apollo or Cybele. He quickly decided to keep doing exactly what he had been doing beforehand, just now for Jesus. And what he had been doing was getting high on either drugs or volcanic cave fumes and claiming to speak in God’s voice while dancing. Calling his work the New Prophesy, he said it replaced anything anyone had said about Jesus thus far, because Jesus spoke through him alone. “Him alone” quickly turned into “him and anyone else who wanted to do the same thing,” and soon there were several New Prophets making proclamations (notably, women), calling on Christians to resist persecution and live a life of communal equality and material deprivation and dedication. The Montanists also claimed that Jesus was going to return very soon and establish a New Jerusalem on a mountain in Turkey, and from there, he and the Christians would rule the world. As the Church was still persecuted at the time, people were excited by the this new boldness and Montanism spread quickly. Prolific early Orthodox Christian writer Tertullian, while never converting or renouncing anything, backed the Montanists and adopted some of their ideas.

The Orthodox Church felt that it and it alone had the right to make goofy declarations about what God wanted, and it ESPECIALLY didn’t like anyone encouraging female women ladies to think they could tell men to do things. The Montanists were declared heretical and demon-possessed, and local church authorities did what they could to stamp out the New Prophesy. Its followers scattered and often turned on each other, and as various rounds of state persecutions of the Church as a whole broke out, it faded away over the next few generations.

Modern Evangelical Protestantism and Quakerism / Shakerism, with its “Speaking in Tongues” and other ecstatic spiritual jiggling, is probably very similar to what the Montanists were doing, and they make very similar claims as to why.

Nestorianism [5th Century] - Jesus’s soul is God. But his body isn’t. God made them both and they are unified as one person, but his body is just a body and therefore, if we’re being specific, you can’t say Jesus’s body is God. Therefore, you can’t call his mother “Mary, the Mother of God,” because she’s only “Mary, the Mother of Jesus.” The Orthodox position is that, while Christ has both the divine and human natures, they comprise one single person, and that one single person is 100% God. He’s just 100% God with a 100% human body, that is also therefore God. And Mary is his mother, so she’s the Mother of God. The Nestorians were persecuted and fled to Persia, where they became influential in the Christian churches there. This led to a split between the Iranian Churches and the Orthodox Churches. Then the Iranian Churches spread beyond Persia, into Iraq and Syria, and also into Central Asia, leading to Nestorian Churches in India and China and Mongolia. It would take hundreds of years to sort out who was what.

Patripassianism (or Sabellianism, or Modalism, or Modalistic Monarchianism) [3rd Century] - God is one single entity, but we PERCEIVE him as having the nature of the Trinity. Therefore, there is no God the Son or God the Holy Spirit in actual fact - those are just aspects of one God, that he’s used at certain times to do certain things. Therefore, when Jesus died on the cross, the “son” didn’t die - God the Father died, IN THE FORM of the man or god-man Jesus. The Orthodox position is that God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit are all one god, but also three separate and distinct entities comprising the One God, and all three have existed like that for eternity.

Pelagianism [4th to 5th Centuries] - Human beings are born completely spiritually neutral, and can decide whether to be righteous or sinners. Christ’s example proves that we can reach God by simply choosing to be good, as he probably did.

This contradicted the Orthodox position espoused by Augustine, who came up with the idea that Adam and Eve’s original sin tainted all of humankind, and that was why we needed the grace of God through Jesus - without his sacrifice, we were all automatically doomed to hell. And it was only by this grace that salvation happened. We could choose to accept it or deny it, but that was the extent of our spiritual abilities.

Pelagius claimed this contradicted the idea that everything God created was naturally good and perfect. If it wasn’t, that meant God was flawed, which was wrong. While in Rome, Pelagius looked around and thought that Christians were using the concept of original sin or innate human physical frailty as an excuse to get drunk and molest people, knowing they could just repent it all later to a God who understood how crappy they were. Pelagius’s argument was that salvation required exercising human free will to genuinely choose goodness, and not just rely on purifying church rites and prayers.

The Church declared his teaching heretical because it would have sort of put all of them out of a job, but not before it got extremely popular in Southern Italy and Britain (where Pelagius was either from originally, or had spent time). When confronted, Pelagius claimed that most of what people accused him of saying he had never said, and it was never clear how much was his doing, and how much other people were simply blaming on him. Orthodox missionaries were sent to “reeducate” the problem areas, and soon the Orthodox position was back in force.

But this question about the place of free will in salvation wasn’t resolved. About 100 years later, French clergy argued that Augustine had gone too far in saying that God’s grace alone was the only means to salvation. These Semipelagians thought there had to be a balance between God’s grace and personal choice. But the Church also told them to shut up.

There are still modern day Christian denominational differences over how exactly human free will fits into salvation. Because invisible, possibly imaginary things are notoriously very hard to sort out to anyone’s satisfaction.

[wikihistory-blog]

Victor the First, AD 189 to 199.

His actual name was Victor, as at this point, most popes were still just using their regular first names. They were also routinely married and / or had mistresses / cabana boys and had children, since the Church at large was still arguing about whether all of this was okay or not, and if not, why the hell not. It got even more complicated considering the Greek and Egyptian churches had their own traditions about all this, and didn’t see why the Roman Church should tell them what to do. And to make matters even more complicated, for the first 200 years it was a thing, the Roman Empire kept trying to murder all the churches to death.

It’s argued that Victor was the first “African” pope, because he was from North Africa. But this is back when it was a Roman province and the people who live there now hadn’t conquered it yet, so ethnically, Victor was probably a descendant of Roman colonists.

Victor himself wasn’t a terribly exciting guy, but a couple of things happened when he was pope that serve as early examples of the kind of face-palming fun the Church was going to get up to with a neck-stabbing passion in a few relatively short years.

The first problem Victor ran into was when a Greek writer named Theodotus the Cobbler starting publishing letters and preaching that Jesus wasn’t actually God’s son. Theodotus said that, instead, biologically, Jesus was just the son of Mary. Apparently his idea was that the Holy Spirit had indeed sprayed its magic all up inside this 14 year old Jewish girl’s womb, but only to make it get ITSELF pregnant. Therefore, Jesus was just some guy, until God decided to “adopt” Jesus as his son when Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist as an adult. At this point Jesus was technically God’s son, but was STILL fully human. It wasn’t until after his resurrection from the dead that he became 100% of the same substance as God (which is why he didn’t do all that teleporting or flying until then).

How precise Theodotus was about this we don’t know, because we don’t have what he actually wrote. But since this was at a point in history where people sincerely believed in wizard magic, and seriously thought women were basically just giant squishy egg shells that held creamy penis yolk until ghosts told it to grow a head, I guess the finer details of his Adoptionist theory don’t really matter to us.

What DOES matter is that his theory, however strange and gross and sexist it was, contradicted the concept of Jesus a lot of the rest of the Church had been teaching for 50-odd years (or whenever Paul and the Gospel writers started circulating their own works presenting theories about where Jesus’s various body parts actually came from). There was no "New Testament” Bible at the time; congregations could pick and choose from dozens if not hundreds of available documents, which presented all kinds of radically different ideas. Church HQs in Rome, Greece and Egypt were beginning to realize they had to organize a comprehensive list so they could get everyone on the same page, but like everything else, that was a slow process, constantly interrupted by factional in-fighting and state persecution. So guys like Theodotus felt there was no good reason why they COULDN’T say whatever they wanted. Most church authorities KNEW they couldn’t, but at the same time, couldn’t really explain why, since their own ideas only came from writings other people like Theodotus had written.

To put it in terms this trash website can understand, it’s like when fandoms choose sides and start death-threatening each other over whether Cartoon Character A would do 1, or would do 2 instead, when the show has only been on for like 13 episodes and hasn’t dealt with any of that shit yet. Everyone is pissed, everyone knows everyone else is wrong, and it’s entirely based on arbitrary personal preferences, and the fighting itself is motivated by petty tribal bullshit that has absolutely nothing to do with the actual thing being fought over.

Like I said, keep this in mind, because most of Catholic Church / Christian history is 110% what I’ve just described, down to the present day. Except that instead of bored children sending anonymous death threat asks and doxxing each other’s moms, priests and kings have been torturing people to death and burning entire towns.

But back to the specific example of this at hand: Pope Victor I declared that Theodotus’s Adoptionist theory was heretical, because Victor was of the large Church fandom sect that believed Jesus was 100% God’s son from birth: that the Holy Spirit, being 100% God, had been Jesus’s father, so Jesus was at least half God, and half mortal.

...Sort of. The exact percentages would be the next huge fight they would get into. 

But for right now, the point was, Adoptionism was fucking BULLSHIT, because it said Jesus wasn’t technically God’s son / God himself, and knowing that he was was the entire point of the entire whole religion in the first place. So Pope Victor I told Theodotus to shut up and go back to making shoes, or he would excommunicate him (i.e., kick him out of the Church, i.e., doom his soul to hell for all eternity for being a stupid dick). Theodotus’s ideas were popular in Greece and Turkey, so he refused. So Victor excommunicated him. It wasn’t the first time a pope had done that, and OH GOD, it would not be the last.

Another thing that happened during Victor’s reign was the Quartodeciman Controversy. Christianity didn’t have too many holidays at this point, but the one big one they did have was, of course, Easter / Christian Passover / Pascha / Resurrection Day, i.e., the celebration of the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, one of the most important events in the religion. As you can tell by the variety of names it had, there was a lot of local variations of how and when it should be celebrated. To keep things as brief as possible, the Quartodeciman Controversy hinged on the different dates of the Roman Pascha celebration and the Greek Christian Passover. The Romans celebrated Pascha (Christ’s death and resurrection, his “passion”) on the Sunday after the 14th of Jewish month of Nisan, which was the date of the ancient Jewish Passover. This was because Jesus had come back from the dead three days after being crucified, which was right after he celebrated Passover with the Disciples, which had been on a Friday. The Greeks, however, celebrated ON the 14th of Nisan, regardless of what day of the week that was, because they considered Christ’s celebration of the Passover feast part of the whole “passion” thing, so they figured it made sense to just do their own Christian Passover when the Jews were doing theirs.

This had been going on for a long time, and by the time of Victor, everyone wanted to fix it, but wasn’t sure how, because most people thought it was certainly a problem, but not like a HUGE problem. Victor didn’t agree. He called synods (councils of bishops to meet and work this sort of thing out), and they synods eventually concluded that everyone should do Easter-that-wasn’t-Easter-quite-yet the way the Romans were doing it. The problem of course was, this decision had more to do with how many Roman or pro-Roman Church bishops were at the synods, and less to do with what anyone suspected God really wanted. So the synods’ decrees were basically ignored by the Eastern Church (Greek / Asia Minor). Victor got mad, since, as he occupied the same position Peter had, he figured that meant he was basically King of Christianity. He either excommunicated all the opposing churches, or at least wrote angry letters to them and refused to work with them unless they did what he wanted.

What sounds like a petty slap fight was...well, was 100% that. But it spoke to a larger problem: the Eastern Churches, founded by Paul, felt that they were 100% equal in authority and prestige to the Roman Church. From day one, they were convinced they could manage their own affairs as they saw fit. And from day one, the Pope in Rome thought fuck those guys for that. Because the Romans had copies of the books we now call the Four Gospels, which explain how Jesus had declared Peter to be “in charge” of the new faith. Peter had started the Roman Church. If the guy who started the Roman Church was “in charge” of the faith, that implied that anyone who was ever in charge of the Roman Church was therefore ALSO in charge of ALL other Christian churches. 

It made sense to the Romans. They didn’t care if it made sense to anyone else.

The problem was not resolved then. And would not be. For...the rest of forever. It would take centuries for any kind of church split to become anything resembling “official,” but even well before then, there were clearly basically two big Christian churches: the Roman (Catholic, Latin) one and the Byzantine (Eastern, Greek) one. And they did things very differently, and thought of things very differently. But both were reluctant to admit he obvious split, because both thought Jesus wouldn’t like that.

And so, in the time of Pope Victor I, the stage was set for 800+ years of the pettiest, most pointless, surprisingly bloody old man slap-fight over nothing the world had ever seen.

...At least, until Islam developed a few centuries later, and started doing basically the same stupid thing in its own context.

Because we all know there’s only one God. We just can’t ever seem to agree on which self-important guy with a beard he wants us all to send our money to.

[wikihistory-blog]

In honor of Pope Francis coming to the US this week, I thought I’d provide links to some of the other dope popes of history.

First up:

Peter (Shimon Bar Yona, Jewish), AD 33 to AD 67. 

The first pope. Because when you’re Jesus and you know you’re going to die and you need a guy to lead your new international religion, you pick a barely-literate fisherman who pretended he didn’t know you the SECOND you got in trouble with the cops.

No one knows why Peter moved to Rome, or even IF Peter ever in fact went to Rome...or even if there was any kind of ‘pope’ for like another hundred years, because there’s no evidence of any of it. But the Church now claims all of that happened, and it’s their deal, so why the fuck not?

Besides, while missionaries like the Apostle Paul were quickly making converts of Greeks and Romans and Syrians and Egyptians, the Church at this point was still largely just a weird-ass Jewish sect that the orthodox Jewish authorities fucking HATED (hence the reason they conspired with the Greco-Roman authorities to have Jesus killed as a crazy treasonous heretic in the first damn place). So getting the hell out of their city makes some sense.

...Or at least did, until the Church got popular in Rome and proceeded to piss off the Romans. The Romans were open-minded when it came to religions, especially weird-ass new religions. Have to do something between bathhouse orgies and the buffet, right? But no matter what stone or statue or abstract concept you prayed to, you still had to accept the Emperor as a sort of “King of Your Soul,” because that’s how politics worked back then. But the Jews wouldn’t do it. The Romans had, at this point, reluctantly decided to put up with that from them, so they could keep them as a part of the Empire. But damned if they were going to put up with it from some new weird-ass cult. A weird-ass cult which also met at night in the catacombs under the city, where they did this thing where one of their wizards turned pita and Merlot into a dead guy’s corpse so they could swallow it without throwing up, and then it made them so high on vampire-magic they would yell at everyone in made up languages.

The Cult of Bacchus was into drunken yelling and street fights, but at least they did that where the police could see them, and once they sobered up, they’d pray to the Emperor. These Christians were too damn weird for their own good and were asking for trouble. After a fire nearly destroyed Rome during the reign of Nero, everyone blamed the weird-ass tomb-lurking cannibal cultists no one liked. So Nero shrugged, built himself a new palace on the space the fire had conveniently cleared, and declared Christians enemies of the state.

Peter was soon captured by Rome’s Ironic Punishments Department, and sentenced to be crucified. But just before they hung him up, he stopped them and asked that they do him upside-down, because he didn’t feel worthy to die the same way as Jesus. Since they were already going to torture him to death, the Romans didn’t see the harm in honoring this weird-ass final request, and so Peter was crucified upside down.

And because we all read that Cracked article, we know that’s why the icon of an upside-down cross is not in fact a Satanic symbol, but is an ancient Catholic symbol used by popes ever since.