The First Missionary War, Chapter 3
by Michael Routery
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The Destruction of the Temples
Shortly after 350 the repressive winds quickened into a storm that would bring a frenzy of destruction. Anti-pagan laws were enacted. Sacrifices in the temples11 were prohibited, punishable by the death penalty. The altar of the Goddess Victory was removed from the Senate in Rome, although, the senators, most of whom were pagan, were assured of their continued religious rights ... and the traditional priesthood of the city was left intact. Sorcery and divination was outlawed; soothsayers, diviners, astrologers, augurers and magicians were denied the right to practice. The law stated: "let the curiosity to know the future be silenced for all, forever". This was a shocking blow to a society where people were used to finding hope, guidance and some relief for life's troubles in portents, but now met with the church's dogma that only its God could know anything of the future and only its bible could interpret reality. A new instrument of torture was instituted for the unfortunates arrested under these new laws: the iron comb (probably imported from Persia) which ripped open the sides of its victims. Still the emperor couldn't eliminate Paganism in Rome when so many of the city's officials remained pagan but countless power struggles flared throughout the empire between the local Christians and the pagan populace.
After a decade of violence and destruction there was a brief respite starting in 360 when the visionary and pagan Julian, sometimes known as the Transgressor or to Christians as the Apostate came to the throne. Julian saw the destruction of Mediterranean civilization in the nihilistic forces of Christianity and valiantly attempted to reverse the Church's take-over. He had temples that had been forcibly abandoned repaired and returned to their communities, and the revenues that had been seized returned. Julian wanted no martyrs and didn't persecute the Christians but followed a policy of strengthening the badly assaulted pagan traditions. Unfortunately his life was short and he died in 363 to the rejoicing of the bishops.
In Alexandria, Egypt, a center of late pagan philosophy and a city justly famous for learning and culture (home to the archetypal Library/Museum), the local Christian bishop, George, received from the government a supposedly long unused Mithraeum, a temple of Mithra. He was a god of Iranian derivation, popular with Roman soldiers and his faith was considered a rival to that of the cross. The bishop's followers rushed into the temple to desecrate it, but, in reality, it was very much in use and its users rushed in to defend their sanctuary. The Christians ripped some skulls from the crypt used for initiations, and claimed that the Mithraists were using human sacrifice for divination, certainly a trumped up charge. The Mithraists started rioting in the streets as the Christians tried to make the place into a church and were able to gain the upper hand against their adversaries, managing to kill a few. Despite the power of the bishop the ruination of the temple was stopped. But George continued to misread the feelings and allegiance of the Alexandrian populace: late one afternoon, while passing in front of the Temple of the Good Genius, one of the patron spirits of the city, he proclaimed -- "How much longer will that tomb continue to stand"? The angered citizens, afraid that he would try to destroy this temple as well, rose up in a mob and lynched him. Theoderet, a Catholic himself, said of George: "a shepherd more cruel than a wolf, punished by his own sheep".12 It's likely that some of the Christians rose against him as well also caring about the Good Genius of their city. Many, of course, were not so lucky; for a decade, temples and shrines that had been focal points of communities for centuries, if not millennia, were destroyed or looted.
In Apamea, Syria, in 386, a bishop, named Marcellus, with political support in high places, carried out the destruction of the great Temple of Zeus (actually a Hellenized Semitic god). The prefect (civil official) arrived with his troops and told the crowd which had gathered in front of the temple to remain calm; soldiers were given orders to start tearing down the building. The people watched afraid of the army but the soldiers were also afraid of tearing down this sacred building and apparently hesitated to act. Then a Christian workman intervened and started to dig a tunnel under the columns in front and then tried to start a fire in the trench but it would not catch. The bishop had gotten tired and had gone home for a nap; someone went to awaken him and he returned with church holy water to sprinkle the trench. Finally the three front columns collapsed taking with them 12 more and then the whole front wall crashed down causing a terrible roar. The city awakened from the drowsiness of a hot summer afternoon and huge stunned crowds gathered in front of the ruined temple, staring in abject silence. The bishop, gloating, with this triumph over the populace, decided he could now destroy all of the other temples in the area but while attempting to destroy a temple in nearby Aulon with his private militia, which was partially composed of gladiators, the crowd was no longer passive in its shock. He was grabbed and thrown into a fire and died. His children demanded revenge but the regional assembly refused them. 13
Later in the decade, the Christians became more and more violent, taking the law into their own hands, harassing peasants suspected of sacrificing and making offerings to the gods, assaulting and robbing them much like the Nazi gangs that assaulted and robbed Jews in thirties Germany and Austria. The bishops, with their monks, formed gangs that traveled the Egyptian countryside ransacking and looting temples and pulling them down.
Around the same time, the Christian leader, Cynegius, demolished a temple-citadel on the Persian border. Scholars believe this was probably the temple of the Semitic Moon-god Sin at the citadel of Carrhae. It was said to contain statues made of iron which were kept in darkness, and presumably melted down by the Christians. Another temple that was attacked in this area was that of the Great Goddess of Syria (Dea Syria) at Hierapolis, a city, on the western bank of the Euphrates. It also was said to have contained an iron statue of bearded Apollo -- (another Hellenized local deity) -- and when the priests carried it inside, it pulled upward, drawn towards a powerful magnet, surely dramatic in a non-mechanical world.14 Throughout Syria (and Lebanon) the monks were particularly thuggish, believing they could simply beat Christianity into the peasant populations, and certainly innumerable acts of violence must have occurred against the agricultural population. In Alexandria, by 390, the monks had become so violent, threatening the public order with their harassments on city streets that the government ordered them to depart for the desert.
The emperor Theodosius rose to power at the end of the 380's and became increasingly fanatical as he fell under the influence of the Christian 'father', Ambrose. The monks in the east were ransacking synagogues as well as pagan temples, and had burned an important synagogue and a Gnostic sanctuary on the Euphrates. The emperor ordered the bishop to rebuild the Jewish sanctuary but Ambrose ranted that the earlier emperor Maximus had fallen from public esteem because he had punished the Christian arsonist who had burned a synagogue in Rome.
Notes to this chapter
11. The traditional Greek and Roman religions made offerings to the Deities with animal sacrifice, much like contemporary Santeria, as well as wine and incense.
12. see Chuvin
13. Ibid, p.60
14. ibid, p.62
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