Tussen hypes, heksen & huichelarij Re: 2-4-'04


THOUGH
the Latin-speaking Roman Empire died in the fifth century,
something else had been born within it that was to avail itself enormously
of its prestige and tradition,
and that was the Latin-speaking half of the Roman
Catholic Church?

THIS lived
while the empire died
because it appealed to the minds and wills of men,
because it had books and a great system of teachers and missionaries
to hold it together,
things stronger than any law
or legions?

Throughout
the forth and fifth centuries A.D.
while the empire was decaying,
Christianity was spreading to a universal domination
in Europe.

IT
conquered its conquerors,
the barbarians!

When Attila
seemed disposed to march on Rome,
the patriarch of Rome intercepted him and did what no armies could do,
turning him back by sheer
moral force ...

The Patriarch or Pope of Rome
claimed to be the head of the entire
Christian church .............

NOW
that there were no more emperors,
HE began to annex imperial titles
and claims.

HE took the title
of pontifex maximus , head sacrificial priest
of the Roman dominion,
the most ancient of all the titles that the emperors
had enjoyed!

The Greek-speaking
eastern half of the Roman Empire
showed much more political tenacity than
the western half?

IT
weathered the disasters of the fifth century A.D.,
which saw a complete and final breaking up of the original Latin Roman power .............

Attila bullied
the Emperor Theodosius II
and sacked and raided almost to the walls of Constantinople,
but that city remained
intact ...




The Nubians
came down the Nile and
looted upper Egypt,
but lower Egypt and Alexandria were left
fairly prosperous.

Most
of Asia Minor
was held against
the Sassanid
Persians ...

The sixth century,
which was an age of complete darkness for the West,
saw indeed a considerable revival
of the Greek power ...

JUSTINIAN I {527-565}
was a ruler of very great ambition and energy,
and he was married to the Empress Theodora,
a woman of quite equal capacity
who had begun life as
an actress!

Justinian reconquered
north Africa from the Vandals and most of Italy
from the
GOTHS ...

He even regained the south of Spain.
HE did not limit his energies to naval and military enterprises:
he founded a university,
built the great church of Saint {AYA} SOPHIA in Constantinople AND
codified the Roman law .............

BUT in order to destroy
a rival to HIS university foundation
he closed the schools of philosophy in ATHENS,
which had been going on in unbroken continuity from the days of PLATO,
that is to say for nearly
a thousand years!

From the third century onwards
the Persian Empire had been the steadfast rival of the Byzantine.
The two empires kept Asia Minor, Syria and Egypt in a state of
perpetual unrest and
waste!

In the first century A.D.
these lands were still at a high level of civilisation,
wealthy and with abundant population,
but the continual coming and going of armies, massacres,
looting and war taxation,
wore them down steadily until only shattered and ruinous cities remained
upon a countryside of
scattered peasants .......

In this melancholy process
of impoverishment and disorder
lower Egypt fared perhaps less badly than the rest
of the world?

Alexandria,
like Constantinople,
continued a dwindling trade between the east
and the west ........

SCIENCE &
POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY seemed dead now
in both these warring and
decaying empires?

The last philosophers of Athens,
under their suppression,
preserved the texts of the great literature of the past
with an infinite reverence and want of
understanding!

But there remained
no class of men in the world,
no free gentlemen with bold and independent habits of thought,
to carry on the tradition of frank statement and inquiry
embodied in these
writings?

The social
and political CHAOS
accounts largely for the disappearance of this class,
but there was also another reason why the human intelligence
was sterile and feverish during
THIS age?

IN BOTH
Persia and Byzantium it was
an age of INTOLERANCE!

BOTH empires
were religious empires in a new way,
in a way that greatly hampered the free activities of the
human MIND?!!

And what
about our
OWN myDi-freeway of
MIND?

Do WE have enough
independent SPIRIT of our own
to be able to escape from the drudgery of a boring every day life at home, school, work, holidays & whatever situation
we find ourselves in?

Is OUR
present understanding
of our past and own existence
STRONG enough to withstand the pressures of hypes,
idolatry and megalomania, depreciation and
other forms of 'social/individual'
madness?

ALL
we can do is try & share
in our own daily life and write/read about it
in myDi!


Time for
a cup of coffee.
Grey, white & blue sky with a little wind and sunshine.
And heart & mind overflowing with happiness
and curiosity
........

Salve & salute!

See you
later in myDi or
some other time somewhere
else
...

liefdesverdrietverliefd
gemeengaap!nahnahcool!knipoog
engel
11 jul 2004 - bewerkt op 13 jan 2008 - meld ongepast verhaal
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