The Social and Historical Impact of Christianity

Originally posted by FMF
The style of writing is too different for you to get away with passing it off as your own.

http://www.carlicious.club/2016/08/10-truly-disgusting-facts-about-ancient.html
http://listverse.com/2016/08/23/10-truly-disgusting-facts-about-roman-life/

Have you got a list of similar weird stuff about culture after Christianity impacted it?

What we see in the culture cited is no sexual inhibitions whatsoever. Natural rights don't exist and people are seen as mere numbers, glorified animals treated as a herd, not individuals.

Men and women are using the bathrooms at the same time, sexual deviancy of every kind is seen as normal etc. As we see the West drift away from Christianity and towards secular humanism, it seems the same scenario is beginning to play out again.

Coincidence?

Originally posted by whodey
What we see in the culture cited is no sexual inhibitions whatsoever. Natural rights don't exist and people are seen as mere numbers, glorified animals treated as a herd, not individuals.

You seem to be claiming that under Roman law there was no concept like "natural law" and that citizens were "glorified animals" and "not individuals". Who told you this?

Originally posted by whodey
What we see in the culture cited is no sexual inhibitions whatsoever. Natural rights don't exist and people are seen as mere numbers, glorified animals treated as a herd, not individuals.

Men and women are using the bathrooms at the same time, sexual deviancy of every kind is seen as normal etc. As we see the West drift away from Christianity and towards secular humanism, it seems the same scenario is beginning to play out again.

Coincidence?

I didn't read your post in detail whodey, but a quick glance is enough to confirm that much of it is untrue. Furthermore, most of the positive changes attributed to the influence of christianity are actually consequent to other factors entirely. The morals and hygiene of Republican Rome were far preferable, from a modern viewpoint, to those of christian Mediaeval Europe.

Originally posted by FMF
You seem to be claiming that under Roman law there was no concept like "natural law" and that citizens were "glorified animals" and "not individuals". Who told you this?

The majority of people were slaves dingleberry.

Of course, you had gladiators who provided entertainment to the elitists and whose body parts they used once they were killed.

Now what was that about Romans embracing natural rights?

Originally posted by avalanchethecat
I didn't read your post in detail whodey, but a quick glance is enough to confirm that much of it is untrue. Furthermore, most of the positive changes attributed to the influence of christianity are actually consequent to other factors entirely. The morals and hygiene of Republican Rome were far preferable, from a modern viewpoint, to those of christian Mediaeval Europe.

You did not read my post but know enough to know it is al untrue?

Well thanks for that.

And no, the statists who ruled under the guise of Christianity were not picnic either. Constantine was not even a Christian and continued to worship pagan gods although it was rumored that he converted on his death bed.

But the Christian faith had a definite impact on society over the years that lifted the veil on how wicked society actually was.

Originally posted by whodey
You did not read my post but know enough to know it is al untrue?

Well thanks for that.

And no, the statists who ruled under the guise of Christianity were not picnic either. Constantine was not even a Christian and continued to worship pagan gods although it was rumored that he converted on his death bed.

But the Christian faith had a definite impact on society over the years that lifted the veil on how wicked society actually was.

I didn't say it was 'al' untrue, I said much of it was. And indeed it is. Should you take just a little time to research the majority of the points raised in your post you will find out for yourself. Feel free to thank me with a little more sincerity after you've done that.

There is no doubt that christianity has had a huge impact on society over the last two millenia. Whether that was to the benefit of society is another matter entirely. To believe that the christian faith itself has 'lifted the veil on how wicked society actually was' one would have to ignore a great many societal ills perpetrated by rulers and advocates of and in fact in the very name of said persuasion. One would also have to be ignorant of a great deal of pre-christian history.

Originally posted by whodey
The majority of people were slaves dingleberry.

Of course, you had gladiators who provided entertainment to the elitists and whose body parts they used once they were killed.

Please do dot fall into the predictable temptation of arguing this was all about the Catholic Church. As you may notice from the dates given above, the Reformation has exactly zero impact on the situation.

Now what was that about Romans embracing natural rights?

Now what was that about Romans embracing natural rights?

Many modern historians would agree with you that the end of the Roman Empire marked the removal of a tyranny and resulted in improved conditions for many people across the western empire. This was sadly brought to a close by the emergence of Church power.

I have been enjoying R.H.Tawney's classic study "Religion and the Rise of Capitalism" which discusses the Christian approach to economics.

The basis of the whole medieval economic system under which, except in Italy and Flanders, more than nine-tenths of the population consisted of agriculturalists, had been serfdom or villeinage. Confronted in the sixteenth century with the unfamiliar evils of competitive agriculture, conservative reformers were to sigh for the social harmonies of a vanished age … In reality … the golden age of peasant prosperity is …. a romantic myth. The very essence of feudal property was exploitation in its most shameless form, including, as it did, compulsory labour, additional corvées at the very moments when the peasant’s labour was most urgently needed on his own holding, innumerable dues and payments, the obligation to grind at the lord’s mill and bake at the lord’s oven, the private justice of the lord’s court… The Peasants’ Revolt in England, the Jacquerie in France, and the repeated risings of the German peasantry reveal a state of social exasperation which has been surpassed in bitterness by few subsequent movements.

[p69]

The canon law appears to have recognised and enforced serfdom. Few prominent ecclesiastics made any pronouncement against it. Aquinas explains it as the result of sin, but that does not prevent his justifying it on economic grounds. Almost all medieval writers appear to assume it or excuse it… It was not the Church, but revolting peasants in Germany and England, who appealed to the fact that ‘Christ made all men free;’ and in Germany at least, their ecclesiastical masters showed small mercy to them. The disappearance of serfdom – and after all, it did not disappear from France till late in the eighteenth century and from Germany in the nineteenth – was part of a general economic movement, with which the Church had little to do and which churchmen, as property owners, had sometimes resisted. … The truth was that the very triumph of the Church closed its mouth.

[p70,71]

Yes the Christians certainly embraced natural rights, provided you pause to wonder what was meant by that concept. It referred to the natural order of things, and serfdom was part of the natural order according to Christians. Natural Rights is a flexible concept and has been applied in many mutually conflicting ways to suit the convenience of the day.

Originally posted by avalanchethecat
I didn't say it was 'al' untrue, I said much of it was. And indeed it is. Should you take just a little time to research the majority of the points raised in your post you will find out for yourself. Feel free to thank me with a little more sincerity after you've done that.

There is no doubt that christianity has had a huge impact on society over ...[text shortened]... of said persuasion. One would also have to be ignorant of a great deal of pre-christian history.

Specifically what was untrue regarding my post about Roman decadence?

Originally posted by finnegan

Now what was that about Romans embracing natural rights?

Many modern historians would agree with you that the end of the Roman Empire marked the removal of a tyranny and resulted in improved conditions for many people across the western empire. This was sadly brought to a close by the emergence of Church power.

I have been enjoying R.H.T ...[text shortened]... ncept and has been applied in many mutually conflicting ways to suit the convenience of the day.

Change was not instant and overnight. Most of the population was left uneducated and unable to read the Bible. This was by design. The powers that be did their best to prevent a Martin Luther incident, which was bound to happen sooner or later.

Originally posted by whodey
Change was not instant and overnight. Most of the population was left uneducated and unable to read the Bible. This was by design. The powers that be did their best to prevent a Martin Luther incident, which was bound to happen sooner or later.

I am not sure which change you are referring to

I could guess this relates to your earlier sentence "But the Christian faith had a definite impact on society over the years that lifted the veil on how wicked society actually was."

I suggest that to the extent there was a veil, it was a Christian veil, but one that the peasants could see through very clearly indeed, with or without literacy. You might appreciate the reference to Luther in this quote from Tawney: btw the "company of Fuggers" refers to a bank.

Since the rising led by Hans Boheim in 1476, hardly a decade had passed without a peasants’ revolt. Usury, long a grievance with craftsman and peasant, had become a battle-cry. From city after city municipal authorities, terrified by popular demands for the repression of the extortioner, consulted universities and divines as to the legitimacy of interest, and universities and divines gave, as is their wont, a loud, but confused response. Melanchthon expounded a godly doctrine on the subject of money-lending and prices. Calvin wroote a famous letter on usury and delivered sermons on the same subject. Bucer sketched a scheme of social reconstruction for a Christian prince. Bullinger produced a classical exposition of social ethics in the Decades which he dedicated to Edward VI. Luther preached and pamphleteered against extortioners and said that it was time ‘to put a bit in the mouth of the holy company of Fuggers.’ Zwingli and Oecolampadius devised plans for the reorganization of poor relief. Above all, the Peasants War, with its touching appeal to the gospel and its frightful catastrophe, not only terrified Luther into his outburst: ‘Whose can, strike, smite, strangle, or stab, secretly or publicly … such wonderful times are these that a prince can better merit heaven with bloodshed than another with prayer;’ it also stamped on Lutheranism an almost servile reliance on the secular authorities. In England, there was less violence, but hardly less agitation, and a similar flood of writing and preaching. Latimer, Ponet, Crowley, Lever, Becon, Sandys and Jewel – to mention but the best known names – all contributed to the debate. Whatever the social practice of the sixteenth century may have been, it did not suffer for lack of teaching on the part of men of religion. If the world could be saved by sermons and pamphlets, it would have been paradise.

[Tawney, Religion and the Rise of Capitalism; pp90,91]

As you can see, far from lifting a veil, the job of Christianity - in all varieties including Lutheran and Calvinist - was to help the authorities come up with a veil (to put a veil in place) that might protect the interests of the wealthy against the angry protests of the peasants.

In the sixteenth century religious teachers of all shades of opinion still searched the Bible, the Fathers and the Corpus Juris Canonici for light on practical questions of social morality, and as far as the first generation of reformers was concerned, there was no intention, among either Lutherans, or Calvinists, or Anglicans, of relaxing the rules of good conscience, which were supposed to control economic transactions and social relations. If anything indeed, their tendency was to interpret them with a more rigorous severity, as a protest against the moral laxity of the Renaissance, and, in particular, against the avarice which was thought to be peculiarly the sin of Rome.

Originally posted by finnegan
I am not sure which change you are referring to

I could guess this relates to your earlier sentence "But the Christian faith had a definite impact on society over the years that lifted the veil on how wicked society actually was."

I suggest that to the extent there was a veil, it was a Christian veil, but one that the peasants could see through very ...[text shortened]... in particular, against the avarice which was thought to be peculiarly the sin of Rome. [/quote]

My attempt was not to put Luther on a pedestal as an all knowing light to mankind, rather, my attempt was to show that Luther could read and was educated to the point of being able to expose the heresy of the Catholic Church. After all, despite Luther's revelations he was still an ardent anti-Semite, much to his shame.

As for your preoccupation with the oppressive rich, how many bloody revolts have led to the demise of such people? You would clamor for government to take over all finances all so that you can shuffle the chairs on the Titanic so that another group of "rich" people can be dictatorial and oppressive.

If you read 1 Samuel chapter 8, you will see that the Bible indicates that the nature of man is oppressive, which is why having a king is a "bad" thing

Originally posted by finnegan

Now what was that about Romans embracing natural rights?

Many modern historians would agree with you that the end of the Roman Empire marked the removal of a tyranny and resulted in improved conditions for many people across the western empire. This was sadly brought to a close by the emergence of Church power.

I have been enjoying R.H.T ...[text shortened]... ncept and has been applied in many mutually conflicting ways to suit the convenience of the day.

I'm a little wary of drawing any conclusions from the first quote. You seem to want to connect the Catholic Church with ideological support for high feudalism. The Dark Ages and early medieval (~450 AD to ~1200 AD) societies had manorial production with chattel slavery - pretty much as was practiced in ancient Rome. The later 'high feudal' era had serfdom, the advantage and disadvantage of being one of the various types of serf was that one was not tradeable, counting more or less as fixtures and fittings. In the earlier era one's tradability depended on the agreement reached when enthralled - if one sold oneself into slavery to escape hunger the terms and conditions were generally better. There's a will from an Anglo-Saxon noble woman quoted on Wikipedia somewhere that freed "...those who gave me their head out of hunger" (the enthrallment ceremony involved placing one's head in the new master's lap). Those who were captured in raids or born into slavery had no safeguards other than the capturing societies customary rules regarding treatment of slaves. So the social relationship is different in different eras. For one thing one couldn't divest oneself of a lazy serf by selling them which was possible with thralls. So there isn't straightforward continuity between the collapsed Roman Empire and the Middle Ages and the recovery of the Catholic Church happened too early for them to have been ideologically committed to serfdom from the start unless there is evidence for a plan to change the nature of slavery. I also think that his statement about "exploitation in its most shameless form" is faulty. That there were excesses does not entail that any one payment or form of compulsory service is necessary to feudalism. The underlying relation in feudalism is access to common land and military protection in return for some form of rent which might be cash, part of ones own production, or work. What it is like for a given peasant is as varied as what it is like for a worker, for example in Essex they always had enclosed fields, which did not exist in the rest of England; a programmer working in an office with a degree of control over their own work has a somewhat different experience to someone working in one of Amazon's warehouses with managers sending them speed up messages every five minutes. The Peasant's Revolt was sparked by Parliament trying to make changes to the system to rake back gains that laborers had gained, rather than the peasants themselves. So claiming that it represents a "state of exasperation" needs some more justification. Interestingly, despite its name, the Peasant's revolt was more to do with them changing the rules (and adding new ones such as sumptuary laws), which seems to undermine his claim about "exasperation". If his purpose is to deromanticize the feudal era then it's fine, but if he's going further than that I think there's problems.

Regarding the second quote: the last serfs in England were freed during Elizabeth the First's reign. I do not doubt that this was driven by economics, rather than concerns over the Rights of Man. However, it's interesting that it should happen in a state that had broken from the Church of Rome before it happened in the Catholic countries. That seems to tend to confirm the thesis that the Catholic Church was ideologically wedded to feudalism.

Originally posted by whodey
Change was not instant and overnight. Most of the population was left uneducated and unable to read the Bible. This was by design. The powers that be did their best to prevent a Martin Luther incident, which was bound to happen sooner or later.

What is your evidence that: "Most of the population was left uneducated and unable to read the Bible." and which era are you talking about? I we're talking about 500 AD to 1500 (ish) AD then my impression is that literacy rates were fairly high and probably over 50%.

Originally posted by DeepThought
What is your evidence that: "Most of the population was left uneducated and unable to read the Bible." and which era are you talking about? I we're talking about 500 AD to 1500 (ish) AD then my impression is that literacy rates were fairly high and probably over 50%.

50%? Where did you get that? They conducted polls back then, eh?

http://www.sarahwoodbury.com/literacy-in-the-middle-ages/

What it means to be literate is not an absolute standard even now. This was even more true in the Middle Ages when the majority of the population couldn’t read at all, a certain percentage could read and not write, and the only way to be ‘literate’ at the time was if a person could read Latin. Literacy in other languages didn’t count.

Wales, as always, went its own way. Taliesin, writing in the 6th century, wrote in Welsh. His is the first of a long tradition of Welsh literature–in the Welsh language–outside the control of the Roman Church. “The professionalism of the poetic tradition was sustained by a Guild of Poets, or Order of Bards, with its own “rule book” emphasizing the making of poetry as a craft. Under its rules poets undertook an apprenticeship of nine years to become fully qualified. The rules also set out the payment a poet could expect for his work. These payments varied according to how long a poet had been in training and also the demand for poetry at particular times during the year.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_Welsh_literature

Still, this poetry was not, for the most part, written down. It was sung, and only at times or under certain conditions, put to paper (which has come to us, fortunately, through the ages).

Taliesin was working in the ‘Dark Ages’–when monasteries were the last bastion of an educated populace. Even there, however, literacy was limited: “A number of factors suggests that certain scribes who were engaged in copyist work in the first seven centuries or so of the Christian era were trained in a very mechanistic form of writing. The use of continuous script, without word breaks, suggests a very mechanical, letter by letter, approach to copying. Petrucci (Petrucci 1995) goes so far as to suggest that such works were copies for the sake of copying, rather than works for proper reading, and that some of the scribes selected for this work were actually the less intellectually able, who were trained in it as a mechanical skill.

The term writing was used by medieval authors, whether they were actually carrying out the process of putting the words to parchment themselves, or whether they were dictating. One imagines that scribes of this type must have been rather like 20th century typists who could not only render the words of the master in the appropriate medium of the day, but may have exerted a little influence over such matters as spelling, style and grammar; educated, undervalued and ultimately anonymous.”

http://medievalwriting.50megs.com/literacy/writing.htm

“A Companion to Britain in the Later Middle Ages” makes the argument that literacy in England began increasing starting in 1100, after which all the kings were literate in Latin and French, although there was again a difference between reading and writing. By 1500, he estimates the literacy among males still did not exceed 10-25%.

In Europe, which had always been much more under the influence of Latin, the first person to break through the Latin barrier was “Dante Alighieri (1265-1321), arguably the greatest medieval poet. Dante wrote in Latin but, more frequently, he used the Tuscan vernacular. His writings encompass a broad range of subjects but he is best known for the lyric poems to his beloved Beatrice and la Divina Commedia (The Divine Comedy). Packed with symbolism and allegory, The Divine Comedy conveys Dante’s judgments on the characters of history as he places them into the many levels of heaven, hell and purgatory. Dante’s ability to create literary masterpieces in Tuscan proved his own arguments against the scholars and writers who, scorning the use of vernacular as vulgar, insisted on Latin as the language of literature.”

Of course, literacy was only one of many obstacles for people to read the Bible. The church prohibited people from reading it themselves.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bernard-starr/why-christians-were-denied-access-to-their-bible-for-1000-years_b_3303545.html

Statists who wanted control had to make sure people did not read the word of God for themselves, or suffer the fate of a Martin Luther type event.