"The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church."
So said Tertullian.
During the fourth century, the converted Christian emperors made it their business to destroy competing cults. In particular, they razed the academies and temples of the gentler, more open Neoplatonic religion and killed its teachers. Almost completely removed them from history.
Religious zealots were a large reason for the failure of Ancient Rome. They eroded it from the inside out.
Here's a contemporary letter written by the Emperor Julian the Apostate - the last non-Christian emperor - who opened the doors of Rome to the Christian zealots (the Galilaeans as he knew them) of his era: "I had imagined that the prelates of the Galilaeans were under greater obligations to me than to my predecessor. For in his reign many of them were banished, persecuted, and imprisoned, and many of the so-called heretics were executed … all of this has been reversed in my reign; the banished are allowed to return, and confiscated goods have been returned to the owners. But such is their folly and madness that, just because they can no longer be despots, … or carry out their designs first against their brethren, and then against us, the worshippers of the gods, they are inflamed with fury and stop at nothing in their unprincipled attempts to alarm and enrage the people."
We find ourselves in a similar place. Wondering if we can outsmart a fundamentalist religion that knows only one way to behave. That values death over life.
And that led to the destruction of civilisation for a thousand years.
And we worry about sensitivities.
| 