Christians' destructive rage against Paganism

[Bear Wild]

The assumption that pagan heritage disappeared primarily due to "destructive rage" is false though, it primarily disappeared for the same reason that most heritage of any kind no longer exists, people preferred to invest their limited resources in doing something else.

This is not entirely correct. There was active destruction of pagan sites throughout Europe specifically because they were seen as pagan and still respected by the people that still saw them as sacred.

 

[Bear Wild]

How much would you expect to survive had there been no attempt to deliberately remove anything for being pagan and decisions had been made purely on social utility and economic grounds as happens today with churches and other buildings that no longer fulfil their original purpose?

The church knew exactly what it as doing which had nothing to do with economics and utility of the land. It systematically disconnected the peoples sacred connection to the land with a connection to a supernatural sacred with a central location in Rome. The sacred sites in Ireland were destroyed and built over by the Christians to deviate connection with the land to connection to the church. It is well documented how many pagan sites were intentionally built over and not just for the utility of it.

 

[Augustus]

This is not entirely correct. There was active destruction of pagan sites throughout Europe specifically because they were seen as pagan and still respected by the people that still saw them as sacred.

It happened to some extent, but it was not the primary reason.

The church knew exactly what it as doing which had nothing to do with economics and utility of the land. It systematically disconnected the peoples sacred connection to the land with a connection to a supernatural sacred with a central location in Rome. The sacred sites in Ireland were destroyed and built over by the Christians to deviate connection with the land to connection to the church. It is well documented how many pagan sites were intentionally built over and not just for the utility of it.

That doesn't really answer the question though.

How many would we expect to survive without any active destruction for religious reasons? Probably not a great deal more than exist today would be my best guess.

 

[Estro Felino]

Often we just don't really know.

Some temples were destroyed in a "destructive rage", most were just repurposed as they were no longer viable as temples, occupied valuable land and were built of valuable materials. Many that were "destroyed" had long fallen into disrepair.

The assumption that pagan heritage disappeared primarily due to "destructive rage" is false though, it primarily disappeared for the same reason that most heritage of any kind no longer exists, people preferred to invest their limited resources in doing something else.

The colosseum still stands; it wasn't destroyed. They just used it as quarry to get building material for Papal Rome.
A big portion of it was dismantled by this way.
I am speaking of those temples which were demolished because they were considered insignificant emblem of something despicable: paganism and polytheism.
If Christians had had respect towards Pagans, they would have
1) allowed Pagans to practice their religion
2) preserved pagan temples from decay

They did neither.

The same thing has happened with building of all kinds since time immemorial and is happening today with churches.

Today it's impossible...because even deconsecrated and/or abandoned churches are considered "cultural goods" and whoever damages an ancient church, will be prosecuted and jailed. At least in my country. What about yours?

How does that match with "destructive rage" any more than the conversion of a derelict church into a cafe or apartments would qualify as "destructive rage"?

I reiterate the thought: if it deals with an ancient church, that's forbidden. That is considered a cultural good, even if it's privately owned.

The RCC cannot decide anything about the ancient Catholic churches in Italy. It's the Ministry of Cultural Goods that decides their fate.

It is the standard economics described above. Just like how much of Hadrian's Wall became roads and the Rosetta Stone had been used to build a fort wall.

Back when there was no awareness of cultural heritage.
But now there is something called UNESCO.

I certainly wish more stuff did survive from the past, but seems a bit silly to blame folk in the past for having different priorities to us regarding the best use of their limited resources.

Of course I blame them.
I restored an ancient vase, it took me months of work.

So, if you please, I am really angry at those who destroy. Because nowadays archeologists spend so much time on restoring cultural goods.

 

[Augustus]

If Christians had had respect towards Pagans, they would have
1) allowed Pagans to practice their religion
2) preserved pagan temples from decay

So the fact we don't spend billions of $$ today preserving every single church that is no longer socially or financially viable is disrespectful to Christians?

I wonder if today's pagans want their taxes to go towards such an end?

Today it's impossible...because even deconsecrated and/or abandoned churches are considered "cultural goods" and whoever damages an ancient church, will be prosecuted and jailed. At least in my country. What about yours?

If they are unremarkable they can be demolished.

If they have minor historic or aesthetic value they need to be converted into cafe/apartments/etc. in a manner that sufficiently preserves their structure rather than demolished.

Ones with significant cultural value are preserved and become tourist attractions.

Back when there was no awareness of cultural heritage.
But now there is something called UNESCO.

Yes, but there wasn't then. So why blame people for not having an awareness of something that didn't really exist?

Your argument is basically that people 1500 years ago should have anticipated the future and made many sacrifices to their standard of living and quality of life just in case people in the future wanted more tourist attractions.

Many things that were destroyed were replaced with things that were better and that we now view as defining features of our cultural heritage.

Of course I blame them.
I restored an ancient vase, it took me months of work.

So, if you please, I am really angry at those who destroy. Because nowadays archeologists spend so much time on restoring cultural goods.

If you lived in a town where people might come and kill or enslave you, I'm going to guarantee that you would prefer city walls than some disused building that you don't particularly care for.

Also if you had the choice between a pretty building that you don't use and a pretty building that you do use, most would choose the latter.

People, particularly in the pre-modern world, were not overflowing with limitless resources.

 

[Estro Felino]

If they are unremarkable they can be demolished.

That's absolutely horrific.
I was raised in a town that is called the town of the 100 churches because there are even relics of ancient churches which you will consider unremarkable. The cultural value depends on the ancientness, not on the looks.

If they have minor historic or aesthetic value they need to be converted into cafe/apartments/etc. in a manner that sufficiently preserves their structure rather than demolished.

That's even worse. O my God.

Ones with significant cultural value are preserved and become tourist attractions.

I have seen these things in Belgium. And I guess Benelux is one big region:

https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pont_des_Trous.

Or they demolished this jewel in France. Église Saint-Corneille-et-Saint-Cyprien de La Baconnière — Wikipédia
That's horrendous.
That would be unthinkable and criminal in my country.
Medieval architecture is sacred.

Do you know that in Perugia there are people who live in buildings from the XIII century?

Yes, but there wasn't then. So why blame people for not having an awareness of something that didn't really exist?

Maybe because Christianity kinda barbarized Rome and the Roman Empire, let's be honest about that.
And I am a proud Christian. I recite the rosary, I pray as a Christian.
But Christianity is about self-criticism.

Your argument is basically that people 1500 years ago should have anticipated the future and made many sacrifices to their standard of living and quality of life just in case people in the future wanted more tourist attractions.

Tourism has been existing for three millennia. Read the Itinerarium Antoninum or even Strabo's Geography. They were tour guides.
Back then there was more respect towards monuments.

Many things that were destroyed were replaced with things that were better and that we now view as defining features of our cultural heritage.

Modern buildings are unwatchable, compared to what the temple of Artemis was.

If you lived in a town where people might come and kill or enslave you, I'm going to guarantee that you would prefer city walls than some disused building that you don't particularly care for.

I understand this point. Many temples were dismantled to build walls to protect cities from the pirates and the Ottomans.
I understand that.
But they could have used the quarries and fabricated new building material.
Italy and Greece are filled with limestone quarries.

Also if you had the choice between a pretty building that you don't use and a pretty building that you do use, most would choose the latter.

Honestly I would have preferred to let an Ottoman slit my throat than seeing a temple demolished,
but I understand and respect those who wanted to live.

People, particularly in the pre-modern world, were not overflowing with limitless resources.

There was no slavery any more, so they had no time to get building material from quarries.

 

[Augustus]

That's absolutely horrific.
I was raised in a town that is called the town of the 100 churches because there are even relics of ancient churches which you will consider unremarkable. The cultural value depends on the ancientness, not on the looks.

That's even worse. O my God.
I have seen these things in Belgium. And I guess Benelux is one big region:
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pont_des_Trous. Or they demolished this jewel in France. Église Saint-Corneille-et-Saint-Cyprien de La Baconnière — Wikipédia
That's horrendous.
That would be unthinkable and criminal in my country.
Medieval architecture is sacred.

Do you know that in Perugia there are people who live in buildings from the XIII century?

Many churches are from the 20th C and are not ancient.

Most of the ones that get converted are late 19th or early 20thC. They are mostly fairly generic period architecture. The 50th to 100th most impressive churches in a town are not "cultural treasures".

Medieval churches or any with significant architectural value would likely have stronger safeguards.

But when you have tens of thousands of churches, you can't subsidise them all and keep them open as empty churches with almost no worshipers.

Who do you think should pay for it? What is the value in having an empty, unused church which is not particularly ancient or aesthetically different from thousands of other ones?

More people will get to use and appreciate the building as a cafe anyway.

Back then there was more respect towards monuments.

Like the Temple in Jerusalem?

In general though, Romans would destroy whatever building they wanted to if they thought they could build something more impressive in its place.

They would also take whatever they liked from one city and move it somewhere else if it suited them.

Modern buildings are unwatchable, compared to what the temple of Artemis was.

Temples were not replaced with "modern buildings", but with what are now ancient buildings.

Many prime locations in cities were repurposed into Cathedrals or other public buildings.

The only way you got to build the next generation of wonders was to replace buildings from older generations.

Remember, most of these weren't ancient or wondrous any more than the average early 20th C Parish church is.

Honestly I would have preferred to let an Ottoman slit my throat than seeing a temple demolished,
but I understand and respect those who wanted to live.

I doubt you would have said that had you been born in the 15th C.

I understand this point. Many temples were dismantled to build walls to protect cities from the pirates and the Ottomans.
I understand that.
But they could have used the quarries and fabricated new building material.
Italy and Greece are filled with limestone quarries.

People have limited resources. Being able to spend these productively might be the difference between life and death.

That they "could" have done something doesn't mean it made much sense to the people in that time and place.

People today aren't generally willing to die to protect unimportant, fairly modern buildings. People in the past weren't either.

 

[Estro Felino]

Many churches are from the 20th C and are not ancient.

So? There are churches which were built during the Fascist period, but it's unthinkable to undo them.
It's criminal. They are considered cultural goods.

Most of the ones that get converted are late 19th or early 20thC. They are mostly fairly generic period architecture. The 50th to 100th most impressive churches in a town are not "cultural treasures".

Medieval churches or any with significant architectural value would likely have stronger safeguards.

But when you have tens of thousands of churches, you can't subsidise them all and keep them open as empty churches with almost no worshipers.

Who do you think should pay for it? What is the value in having an empty, unused church which is not particularly ancient or aesthetically different from thousands of other ones?

The EU wastes money on nonsense....they do have the billions to safeguard historical heritage.

More people will get to use and appreciate the building as a cafe anyway.

Some of them will.

Like the Temple in Jerusalem?

In general though, Romans would destroy whatever building they wanted to if they thought they could build something more impressive in its place.

They would also take whatever they liked from one city and move it somewhere else if it suited them.

There were so many wicked people during the Roman time who destroyed ancient Greek cities and also Jerusalem.
That was an incredible cultural loss. So many cities undone and replaced with Roman buildings and temples.
The fact that there were destructive people even back then doesn't mean that we are authorized to demolish ancient buildings now.

Temples were not replaced with "modern buildings", but with what are now ancient buildings.

Often incredibly horrendous buildings, aesthetically speaking.

I doubt you would have said that had you been born in the 15th C.

It also depends on the situation. The Ottomans took Greece but they didn't certainly destroy the Parthenon.

 

[Estro Felino]

Temple of Venus before the Colosseum. Before and after.

 

[Augustus]

So? There are churches which were built during the Fascist period, but it's unthinkable to undo them.
It's criminal. They are considered cultural goods

What is the point of keeping an ugly modern building no one uses?

Spending billions every year to maintain empty churches with no congregation. A building no one really cares about and no one goes in to.

100k per year for the hundreds of thousands of churches across Europe. Much more when they need to be repaired. Tens of billions if dollars per year

You might be interested in this article about pagan temples in Rome:

The evidence has revealed that individual temples and temple sites were converted primarily because they were interesting from an architectural or topographical point of view. There is nothing to suggest that their status as former places of pagan worship made them any less or more attractive than other buildings possessed of similar architectural and topographical qualities, such as the ancient Senate House or the large hall of Vespasian’s Forum Pacis...

The conversions of temples in Rome cannot, therefore, be explained by Deichmann’s notion of an ecclesia triumphans. An oppositional model simply does not apply to the temple conversions in Rome. The accumulated evidence has shown definitively that, contrary to popular belief, the phenomenon of temple conversion in Rome was limited to the reuse of a relatively small number of buildings and sites, which occurred long after the demise of paganism and without any sign of triumphalism or wanton destruction...

When studying early Christian attitudes towards the pagan past, we find that there was apparently not a single Christian policy towards former places of worship, but there existed different modes, violent and nonviolent, of approaching them. The phenomenon of temple conversion in Rome was essentially nondestructive, quite unlike the treatment of Mithraea, which should, therefore, be treated as a separate phenomenon.

All of this adds up to the following picture, which revolves around the fact that, throughout Late Antiquity, Rome was still replete with property that could be alienated only by the emperor. Until the formation of the Papal State, many buildings and places in Rome remained officially in public use, whether they were temples, public buildings, or public places. What portion of this real estate was made available to the Church was therefore principally a matter of imperial, not Church policy.
The Conversion of Temples in Rome - Feyo L. Schuddeboom

Journal of Late Antiquity, Volume 10, Number 1, Spring 2017, pp. 166-186



Also on the decline in temple usage even before Christianisation, akin to the decline in church attendance today.

Many of the changes in religious practice in the late empire can be tied to the vicissitudes of the Roman economy. During the upheavals of the third century, the lack of public money and changes in attitudes toward private benefaction weakened many public ceremonies.22 Under Diocletian, resources were again available to repair temples and reinvigorate festivals (and to renew the persecution of Christians). But Constantine would soon shift imperial favor to Christianity, while many of the old cults had not fully recovered from the neglect brought on by the financial collapse...

Epigraphical and literary evidence, on the one hand, demonstrates that some pagans continued to conduct sacrifices into the sixth century. On the other hand, epigraphical evidence also suggests a steep decline in cult practices starting in the third century...

“Broad estimates suggest that more than half of the population still identified with the traditional religions, but, according to our sources, they did not openly embrace the return of public money and social prestige to the worship of the gods. Julian’s revival appears to have failed because ritual sacrifice had never recovered from its decline in the third century. Comments from Julian’s contemporaries confirm the impression that animal sacrifice was by then uncommon and, therefore, nonessential to pagan identity.”


The Oxford Handbook of Late Antiquity
Scott Fitzgerald Johnson

Often incredibly horrendous buildings, aesthetically speaking.

European buildings from the 10th to 19th c contain some of the most beautiful ever built.

Many were built on the sites of older and less impressive buildings.

Would we be better off with the older and less impressive buildings today?

You can’t have your cake and eat it where you get all ancient buildings and all medieval buildings and all renaissance buildings and so forth.

 

[Estro Felino]

What is the point of keeping an ugly modern building no one uses?

What do you mean by modern?
Even 19th century buildings can be considered "modern".

Spending billions every year to maintain empty churches with no congregation. A building no one really cares about and no one goes in to.

The EU spends billions on stuff that is really useless.

100k per year for the hundreds of thousands of churches across Europe. Much more when they need to be repaired. Tens of billions if dollars per year

The money circulates.
Architects and masons need to work too...

You might be interested in this article about pagan temples in Rome:

The evidence has revealed that individual temples and temple sites were converted primarily because they were interesting from an architectural or topographical point of view. There is nothing to suggest that their status as former places of pagan worship made them any less or more attractive than other buildings possessed of similar architectural and topographical qualities, such as the ancient Senate House or the large hall of Vespasian’s Forum Pacis...

Of course, I know. Many buildings and temples were spared by the destructive rage because they were re-used. Sometimes with zero changes, as we can see in the Pantheon of Rome.

The conversions of temples in Rome cannot, therefore, be explained by Deichmann’s notion of an ecclesia triumphans. An oppositional model simply does not apply to the temple conversions in Rome. The accumulated evidence has shown definitively that, contrary to popular belief, the phenomenon of temple conversion in Rome was limited to the reuse of a relatively small number of buildings and sites, which occurred long after the demise of paganism and without any sign of triumphalism or wanton destruction...

Exactly. Well said. A small number of buildings and sites.
The practice of iconoclasm implid the destruction of statues, paintings, icons that belonged to the Pagan religion.

When studying early Christian attitudes towards the pagan past, we find that there was apparently not a single Christian policy towards former places of worship, but there existed different modes, violent and nonviolent, of approaching them. The phenomenon of temple conversion in Rome was essentially nondestructive, quite unlike the treatment of Mithraea, which should, therefore, be treated as a separate phenomenon.

No, it was a destructive approach. Read the Theodosius' edicts after the great Edict of Thessaloniki.
That is why the Roman aristocracy that was mostly pagan reacted with a war. A war on Theodosius.

Battle of the Frigidus - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Just some detail: it wasn't the Germanic peoples that made the Western Roman Empire collapse. It was the destructive rage towards the Pagan religion and the persecutions of pagan that demolished ancient Rome.

European buildings from the 10th to 19th c contain some of the most beautiful ever built.

I wasn't speaking of them.

Many were built on the sites of older and less impressive buildings.

Look...this thread is about religion.
It's not about art history. Or history.

It's about Christians' intolerance and disrespect towards Paganism. In the Late Ancient Age. Before Middle Ages.
So...I cannot go off topic...talking about architecture and the aesthetic sense across the centuries.
with all due respect...

 

[paarsurrey]

Christians' destructive rage against Paganism

The (Hellenist)Paulines aka Christians are not to have any rage against Paganism, after all both the Paulines and the Paganism people, one could rightly and undoubtedly say, believe DRG "dying rising god":

"Gods depicted as dying-and-rising deities, deities who die and are then resurrected." listed in the link below;-

Category:Life-death-rebirth gods - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Right?

Regards

 

[Bear Wild]

Christians' destructive rage against Paganism

The (Hellenist)Paulines aka Christians are not to have any rage against Paganism, after all both the Paulines and the Paganism people, one could rightly and undoubtedly say, believe DRG "dying rising god":

"Gods depicted as dying-and-rising deities, deities who die and are then resurrected." listed in the link below;-

Category:Life-death-rebirth gods - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Right?

Regards

It is a common theme throughout pagan religions. The idea of the sacrificing for something better is also common. The goddess Boann enters into the well of wisdom is torn apart only to become something greater that sustained people the Boyne River. Ymir is torn to pieces and his sacrificed body becomes our world. Sofie Strand in her book The Flowering Wand makes fascinating comparisons of Jesus and Dionysus.

 

[Coder]

I believe:

It is a common theme throughout pagan religions.

Christians can also be aware that the unleavened bread at church is the commonality with Judaism, and the eating of the sacrificed body is a commonality with prior polytheism. Both Jews and polytheists practiced ritual animal sacrifice.

The polytheists ate the animal that was sacrificed. This was adapted to Christianity in saying that the bread is also the body of the sacrifice. The difference is that the body is no longer an animal but a man declared to be the one God. If one reads Paul's letters one sees discussion about the idols, sacrifices, and eating the sacrificed meat and that the bread is the "body".
One example: 1 Corinthians 8:4 "So then, about eating food sacrificed to idols..."
By instituting this practice in church, polytheists would feel at home eating the sacrifice. Protestants would say "see they're re-doing the sacrifice" but really the goal was to make former polytheists feel at home.

(I have a post here in RF about the end of animal sacrifice in the new Roman religion, if anyone would like a link to it.)

PS: I believe in one God (not a trinity) and I view all humans as my brothers and sisters who of course have equal right to practice freely any religion. I would happily discuss with anyone, but never push my beliefs. The forceful mentality from Roman times unfortunately still lingers in Christianity but it's definitely improved.