The First Missionary War, Chapter 9
by Michael Routery
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The Repressions of Justinian and Tiberius
Justinian (527-565), one of history's greatest politico-religious murderers, dealt the finishing blows to the old ways in the remaining Eastern empire, amplifying laws against all non-orthodox Christians: heretics, Pagans, Jews, Manichaeans, Samaritans etc. One of his laws stated: "With regard to heretics, and also Hellenes who try to introduce polytheism, as well as Jews and Samaritans, we have resolved not only to restore the regulations of existing laws and to reinforce them with this present law, but also to enforce other measures which will provide those who share our shining faith with greater security, order and honor".37 Later he proclaimed, "one finds persons possessed by the error of the unclean and abominable Hellenes, and performing their practices, and this arouses in God, in his love for mankind, a righteous anger." The statement is striking in how profound the sense of disconnection with his cultural past; Christians now thought of themselves as a new type of people, unrelated to their ancestors. He also commanded, "all those who have not become baptized must come forward, whether they reside in the capital or in the provinces, and go to the very holy churches with their wives, their children, and their households, to be instructed in the true faith of the Christians. And once thus instructed and having sincerely renounced their former error, let them be judged worthy of redemptive baptism. Should they disobey, let them know that they will be reduced to penury, without prejudice, to the appropriate punishments that will be imposed on them."38 If they were landowners their land would be seized, if in the capital they would be banished. Those found actually practicing pagan worship would be executed. Teachers and professors who were accused of being tainted with pagan philosophy were forbidden to teach and lost their pensions. Pagans lost any remaining civil rights and their children were taken from them and baptized. Of heretics, Justinian said "it is more than enough [for them] to be alive."39 An age of complete intolerance now reigned. The laws of 529 hauled in a large catch and led to trials of prominent figures in the capital and to executions plus a few acquittals. There was an attempt on Justinian's life but he had 30,000 to 50,000 people massacred at the Hippodrome (a horse-racing stadium) in retaliation. In 545, intense persecution erupted again with many scholars, doctors and others tortured and their property seized.
Justinian reserved his deepest hatred for worshipers of the 'Great Goddesses', gender-variants, and people engaging in homosexuality. People who fell within these groups or practices were to have their property confiscated, were condemned to torture, and then either forced to commit suicide or be burned alive. No cruelty was horrible enough for this fanatical tyrant. Justinian was a believer in the evils of the biblical tale of Sodom and Gomorrah (and had no doubt as to what was being condemned unlike certain current Christian apologists) and declared that men who engaged in homosexuality were responsible for "famines, plagues and earthquakes".40 Men who were convicted were horribly mutilated and tortured and then paraded through the streets of Constantinople on their way to the execution grounds. An enemy of Cybele, he had her remaining temples torn down, the galli and the priestesses murdered and their sacred writings tossed to the flames. And yet somehow her worship survived in the wild mountains, in caves and groves and amid certain rocks and lonely plains; the surviving galli are believed to have hidden out in the rugged Anatolian mountains and pilgrims still risked vicious punishments to have their dreams interpreted at the site of the former Plutonium at Hierapolis in the sixth century. Some scholars believe that the practices of the galli who retreated into the mountains gave rise to the later medieval mystical sufis who also celebrated spiritually by means of whirling 'dervish' dances.41
Another crucial assault by Justinian was on the School of Athens, the Academy, which even at this time, remained well-funded (by former students). Around 531 or 532, the emperor confiscated the Academy's endowment. The philosophers emigrated to Persia, seeking more hospitable climes. Disappointed by the corruption of the Persian court, after a few years they migrated again to the western bank of the Euphrates where a center was set up that lasted well into Moslem times. It was to last till the 11th century but according to the historian Pierre Chuvin, its influence surprisingly didn't vanish under Moslem dominance, but was involved with the spread of ancient philosophy back to Europe at the beginning of the Renaissance.
In Egypt, another temple of Isis, still, remained in use on the island of Philae, even though it had been hemmed in by surrounding churches. Oddly enough, a desert tribe, called the Blemyes, came every year from the Sudan to 'borrow' the statue of Isis: they took her home where she made prophecies for them and then they returned her until the next year. But in 537, the duke Narses, commander of Justinian's troops in Egypt, ordered the temple closed and statues of Isis, Osiris and Min were sent to Constantinople while the priests were imprisoned. The hieroglyph covered walls were plastered over and it was remodeled into a church. Justinian was determined to evangelize and forcibly convert the 'ends of the earth' and even ordered expeditions deep into the Sahara to remote Libyan oases destroying the local places of worship of the Berber tribes (whom his Christian armies allegedly found worshiping Alexander the Great!) and raising churches atop their shrines.
Much closer to the capital, John of Ephesus, Inquisitor, began a campaign of forced conversion in 542. The government appointed him charge d'affaires for pagans, specifically responsible for rooting them out in Asia Minor. He destroyed what he called a "house of idols" and built 24 churches and four monasteries in the Turkish mountains and near the city of Ephesus. The great temple of Artemis/Diana at Ephesus, considered one of the seven wonders of the ancient world had already been burned down by Christians a century and a half earlier (405). In 558 John became bishop of Ephesus, and started a new round of persecutions and pogroms. Holy groves and woods were axed, altars overturned and as usual, statues broken and temples pulled down; converts who helped out were paid with a coin, the expenses divided between the government and the Church.42 70,000 people were forced to convert.
In the Lebanon, particularly in the Bekaa valley with its dense farming population, paganism hung on with great tenacity. The great temple of Baal endured as a sacred site. At Baalbek the Christians had arrogantly built a church right in the courtyard of the gigantic temple of 'Jupiter Heliopolitan', yet, had been unable to stop his worship. Here Syrians had long worshiped a god, Baal with a mermaid-like goddess, Atargatis. After the Roman conquest, a colonia, a Roman town was built and the local Baal blended with Jupiter and acquired solar attributes. The new temple was colossal, a platform reached by sweeping flights of stairs, measured 170 by 30 feet, upon which sat the temple, itself, which had 19 columns on each side and 10 at each end. The worship of Jupiter Heliopolitanus spread throughout the empire, and a temple was built in Rome which was pulled down by Christians in 341. But the church built in the entrance was just a thorn in the god's side; the peasants observed that the river still ran red every rainy season with the ancient Semitic god's blood -- the red silt.
Justinian's successor, Tiberius (580-582), continued the campaign to stamp out surviving pagans and became the terrorist of the Bekaa valley. The Jews and the Samaritans had rebelled and while giving instructions to the general, he was sending south to deal with them, Tiberius ordered him to exterminate the pagans of Heliopolis (Baalbek) on the way down. A reign of terror descended on the fertile valley. Multitudes were arrested, large numbers were crucified, the landscape turned into a nightmarish spectacle of horror; the population was humiliated. The cities, particularly Antioch, were put under the boot. Torture brought forth denunciations of prominent citizens including the governor of the province, Anatolius, who had been planning to attend a secret rite in Edessa. The police surrounded the priest's house; he committed suicide with his razor. The elderly wife and servants were arrested and probably subjected to torture; they revealed more names in their abjection. The governor, realizing what was happening, rode to the bishop's in the pretense of wanting to discuss Christian matters; but the ploy didn't fool the authorities and he was promptly arrested. It was all over for him when a crucifix was discovered in his house which hid an image of Apollo. Trials took place behind closed doors in the capital. Resentment against the government erupted into riots along the main avenues of Constantinople. The rioters threatened the bishop and invaded the courtroom. They found a bail room filled with gold. Eventually Tiberius placated the rioters with games and promises of new hearings. In the meantime he directed his troops to massacre them if riots broke out again; they didn't. He ordered a new round of tortures to turn up scapegoats for the civil unrest, supposedly Jews, Samaritans and heretics were responsible, so he ordered crucifixions, whippings and exiling. The Christians who'd been arrested weren't punished, their backs were painted with red paint to simulate floggings and they were released.43
Anatolius was eventually tortured , clawed by wild animals and then crucified, his corpse dragged through the capital's streets and thrown onto a garbage heap outside the walls; Christian mercy we can suppose. A witch hunt continued in the capital city, itself, ferreting out the shaky converts who still practiced a few secret rites in their homes: people were thrown to wild animals and burned; an atmosphere of extreme paranoia reigned. The inquisitions continued, under his successor, Maurice, in 582, still finding victims. John of Ephesus wrote, "every day more are denounced and they receive the just desserts of their actions, in this world and the next".44 Christianity had established itself as a religion of unparalleled fanaticism and intolerance. Pogrom after pogrom ran its blood drenched course followed by the temporary relief of torture and executions spasming spectacles of spent and broken bodies. Nevertheless, in Syria, Islamic conquerors a century later would still find pagans stubbornly practicing in Baalbek who would have to be converted to a different version of the Father god.
Here and there, pockets of paganism remained but they were retreating, either deeply underground, among educated urban people, or fading from historical view into the realms of folklore in remote rural areas. The Laconians provide an example, they were remote Greeks on the Mani peninsula, olive raisers, who escaped conversion until the ninth century.45 The frontiers of the missionary wars now shifted to the west and the north, to the Celtic and Germanic worlds. Its imperative to remember that the missionaries of the time were armed. In the West the Empire crumbled away but Roman imperialism survived in the guise of the Roman Catholic Church. As Nietzsche wrote, over a hundred years ago, Christianity spread and flourished in the exhausted soil of late classical nihilism, further leaching away the nutrients of life, spreading like root rot throughout the Mediterranean heritage. It's hard to conceive of the enormity of the cultural/spiritual loss that occurred, the destruction of books, art and of even such basic material aspects of life as bathing facilities and plumbing by morose world-hating monks, who saw, all such, as seductions of a contaminated world cursed by the serpent from the beginning. A view whose far-reaching legacy has played a considerable part in shaping the attitudes and practices that have actually led to the present contamination of our planet.
Notes to this chapter
37. Chuvin, p.132
38. ibid. p 133-4
39. ibid
40. Conner p.125
41. see Conner, Blossom of Bone, p.131
42. Chuvin pp143-44
43. Chuvin, p.146
44. quoted in Chuvin, p.147
45. Chuvin, p.148
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