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Famous Catherine Nixey Quotes

“[T]here is another side to this Christian story, one that is worlds away from the bookish monks and careful copyists of legend. It is a far less glorious tale of how some philosophers were beaten, tortured, interrogated and exiled and their beliefs forbidden; it is a story of how intellectuals set light to their own libraries in fear. And it is above all a story that is told by absences: of how literature lost its liberty; how certain topics dropped from philosophical debate – and then started to vanish from the pages of history. It is a story of silence.”

PhilosophyFearFreedomSilenceChristianityDestructionCensorshipMonotheism
Book:The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction of the Classical World
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“The philosophy they had lived for starts to die itself. Some strands of ancient philosophy live on, preserved by the hands of some Christian philosophers – but it is not the same. Works that have to agree with the pre-ordained doctrines of a church are theology, not philosophy. Free philosophy has gone. The great destruction of classical texts gathers pace. The writings of the Greeks ‘have all perished and are obliterated’: that was what John Chrysostom had said. He hadn’t been quite right, then: but time would bring greater truth to his boast. Undefended by pagan philosophers or institutions, and disliked by many of the monks who were copying them out, these texts start to disappear. Monasteries start to erase the works of Aristotle, Cicero, Seneca and Archimedes. ‘Heretical’ – and brilliant – ideas crumble into dust. Pliny is scraped from the page. Cicero and Seneca are overwritten. Archimedes is covered over. Every single work of Democritus and his heretical ‘atomism’ vanishes. Ninety per cent of all classical literature fades away. Centuries later, an Arab traveller would visit a town on the edge of Europe and reflect on what had happened in the Roman Empire. ‘During the early days of the empire of the Rum,’ he wrote – meaning the Roman and Byzantine Empire – ‘the sciences were honoured and enjoyed universal respect. From an already solid and grandiose foundation, they were raised to greater heights every day, until the Christian religion made its appearance among the Rum; this was a fatal blow to the edifice of learning; its traces disappeared and its pathways were effaced.”

PhilosophyChristianityKnowledgeLearningIgnoranceDestructionTheologyMonotheismAtomism
Book:The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction of the Classical World
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“[W]hat befell the philosophers in AD 529 was not just one single law but a staccato burst of legal aggression issued by Justinian. ‘Your Clemency . . . the Glorious and Indulgent’ Justinian is how laws of this period referred to him. Justinian’s reverence, the legal code of the time announced, shone out ‘as a specially pure light, like that of a star’, while Justinian himself was referred to as ‘Your Holiness’; the ‘Glorious emperor’. There was little glorious or indulgent about what was coming. And there was certainly nothing that was clement. This was the end. The ‘impious and wicked pagans’ were to be allowed to continue in their ‘insane error’ no longer. Anyone who refused salvation in the next life would, from now on, be all but damned in this one. A series of legal hammer blows fell: anyone who offered sacrifice would be executed. Anyone who worshipped statues would be executed. Anyone who was baptized – but who then continued to sacrifice – they, too, would be executed. The laws went further. This was no longer mere prohibition of other religious practices. It was the active enforcement of Christianity on every single, sinful pagan in the empire. The roads to error were being closed, forcefully. Everyone now had to become Christian. Every single person in the empire who had not yet been baptized now had to come forward immediately, go to the holy churches and ‘entirely abandon the former error [and] receive saving baptism’. Those who refused would be stripped of all their property, movable and immovable, lose their civil rights, be left in penury and, ‘in addition’ – as if what had gone before was not punishment but mere preamble, they would be ‘subject to the proper punishment’. If any man did not immediately hurry to the ‘holy churches’ with his family and force them also to be baptized, then he would suffer all of the above – and then he would be exiled. The ‘insane error’ of paganism was to be wiped from the face of the earth.”

PhilosophyChristianityWorshipPunishmentLawsMonotheismClemency
Book:The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction of the Classical World
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“It was Hypatia’s fault, said the Christians, that the governor was being so stubborn. It was she, they murmured, who was standing between Orestes and Cyril, preventing them from reconciling. Fanned by the parabalani, the rumours started to catch, and flame. Hypatia was not merely a difficult woman, they said. Hadn’t everyone seen her use symbols in her work, and astrolabes? The illiterate parabalani (‘bestial men – truly abominable’ as one philosopher would later call them) knew what these instruments were. They were not the tools of mathematics and philosophy, no: they were the work of the Devil. Hypatia was not a philosopher: she was a creature of Hell. It was she who was turning the entire city against God with her trickery and her spells. She was ‘atheizing’ Alexandria. Naturally, she seemed appealing enough – but that was how the Evil One worked. Hypatia, they said, had ‘beguiled many people through satanic wiles’. Worst of all, she had even beguiled Orestes. Hadn’t he stopped going to church? It was clear: she had ‘beguiled him through her magic’. This could not be allowed to continue. One day in March AD 415, Hypatia set out from her home to go for her daily ride through the city. Suddenly, she found her way blocked by a ‘multitude of believers in God’. They ordered her to get down from her chariot. Knowing what had recently happened to her friend Orestes, she must have realized as she climbed down that her situation was a serious one. She cannot possibly have realized quite how serious. As soon as she stood on the street, the parabalani, under the guidance of a Church magistrate called Peter – ‘a perfect believer in all respects in Jesus Christ’ – surged round and seized ‘the pagan woman’. They then dragged Alexandria’s greatest living mathematician through the streets to a church. Once inside, they ripped the clothes from her body then, using broken pieces of pottery as blades, flayed her skin from her flesh. Some say that, while she still gasped for breath, they gouged out her eyes. Once she was dead, they tore her body into pieces and threw what was left of the ‘luminous child of reason’ onto a pyre and burned her.”

PhilosophyChristianityMurderDisgraceBarbarismMonotheism
Book:The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction of the Classical World
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“Out of all the froth and fury that was being issued from the government at the time, one law would become infamous for the next 1,500 years. Read this law and, in comparison to some of Justinian’s other edicts, it sounds almost underwhelming. Filed under the usual dull bureaucratic subheading, it is now known as ‘Law 1.11.10.2’. ‘Moreover,’ it reads, ‘we forbid the teaching of any doctrine by those who labour under the insanity of paganism’ so that they might not ‘corrupt the souls of their disciples.’ The law goes on, adding a finicky detail or two about pay, but largely that is it. Its consequences were formidable. This was this law that forced Damascius and his followers to leave Athens. It was this law that caused the Academy to close. It was this law that led the English scholar Edward Gibbon to declare that the entirety of the barbarian invasions had been less damaging to Athenian philosophy than Christianity was. This law’s consequences were described more simply by later historians. It was from this moment, they said, that a Dark Age began to descend upon Europe.”

PhilosophyChristianityHistoryPunishmentRepressionDark AgesBarbarismLawsMonotheism
Book:The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction of the Classical World
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