Chapter 39 Chapter 5 The Fifth and Sixth Centuries A.D.

The fifth century AD was a period of barbarian invasion and the decline of the Western Roman Empire.After the death of Augustine in AD 430, nothing survived philosophy; it was a century of destructive action, but it nonetheless largely determined the direction in which Europe developed thereafter.During this century the English invaded Britain, turning it into England; at the same time the Franks invaded Gaul into France, and the Vandals invaded Spain, adding their name to Andalusia.St. Patrick converted the Irish to Christianity in the middle of the century.Throughout the Western European world, barbaric Germanic kingdoms inherited the centralized bureaucracy of the Roman Empire.The post-post traffic in the empire stopped, the roads collapsed, and large-scale commerce was prevented by war.Life, politically and economically, was re-localized.The central authority resides only in the Church, which presents many difficulties.

Among the Germanic tribes that invaded the Roman Empire in the fifth century AD, the Goths were the most important.The Huns attacked them from the east, so they were driven to the west.At first they tried to conquer the Eastern Roman Empire, but were defeated by the Eastern Roman Empire; since then they have turned to Italy.From the time of Diocletian they had been mercenaries of Rome; this taught them many tactics unknown to ordinary barbarians.Alaric, the Gothic king, sacked Rome in 410 AD, but died that same year.Oduwak, king of the Ostrogoths, destroyed the Western Roman Empire in 476 AD and ruled Rome until 493 AD, when he was murdered by another Ostrogothic, Dioderic.Diodoric was king of Italy until 526 A.D., of whom I shall have more to say shortly.He is important both in history and in legends; in the Nibelungen he appears as Dietrich the Berne ("Berne" means Verona).

At that time the Vandals settled in Africa, and the Visigoths settled in southern France.The Franks settled in northern France. In the middle of the Germanic invasion, the Huns led by Attila invaded again.The Huns were originally Mongols, but they often allied themselves with the Goths.Nevertheless, at the critical moment of their invasion of Gaul in 451 AD, they had a dispute with the Goths; so the Goths joined the Romans and defeated the Huns at Saron in the same year.Attila then turned to Italy and wanted to march on Rome, but Pope Leo dissuaded him by the fact that Alaric died after sacking Rome.But his restraint did him no good, for he too died the following year.After his death, the power of the Huns also declined.

During this time of turmoil, the Church suffered from a dispute concerning the Incarnation.The protagonists in the dispute were two bishops, Cyrele and Nestorius, who, by more or less accident, were canonized while the former were condemned as heretics.St. Cyril was Archbishop of Alexandria from about AD 412 until his death in 444; Nestorius was Archbishop of Constantinople.The point of contention is the relationship between the divinity and humanity of Christ.Did Christ have two "persons"—one man, one God?This is the view held by Nestorius.If not, is there only one nature, or are there two natures in one man, one human and one divine?These questions had generated incredible passion and fanaticism in the fifth century. "A secret and irreconcilable hostility arose between the two factions, which feared a mixture of, and feared the separation of, the divinity and humanity of Christ."

St. Cyril, a proponent of anthropomorphism, was a fanatic.He had used his position as archbishop to instigate several massacres of the Jewish people living in the large Jewish diaspora in Alexandria.He gained fame mainly by lynching a distinguished lady, Hippasa.In a dull age, she zealously adhered to Neoplatonic philosophy and devoted her talents to the study of mathematics.She was "dragged from the two-wheeled carriage, stripped naked, and pulled into the church, where she was mercilessly murdered by Peter the Bible reader and a group of wild and cruel fanatics. They sliced ​​her flesh into pieces with sharp oyster shells." Then she threw her trembling limbs into the blazing fire. Just trials and punishments were finally wiped out by timely bribes." From then on, Alexandria was no longer subject to philosophy. The family has been harassed.

St. Cyril was saddened to hear that Constantinople had gone astray under the teachings of Archbishop Nestorius.Nestorius maintained that in Christ there are two persons, one man and one God.Accordingly, Nestorius objected to the new conception of the virgin as the "Mother of God"; without a mother.On this question the Church was divided into two factions: in general, the bishops east of Suez were in favor of Nestorius, and those west of Suez were in favor of Cyril.A council was held in Ephesus in 431 AD to resolve this issue.The Western bishops were the first to arrive at the meeting and then closed the door tightly, refusing latecomers to go out, and quickly passed a resolution to support Saint Cyrelli under the auspices of Saint Cyrelli. "This episcopal commotion, after a duration of thirteen centuries, took on the respectable aspect of the so-called Third Synod of Nations.

As a result of this meeting, Nestorius was convicted of heresy.Instead of withdrawing his claim, he became the founder of the Nestorians.The sect has many adherents in Syria and throughout the East.In the centuries since then, the Nestorians have prevailed in China, and seem to have had a chance to become an official religion.In the sixteenth century Spanish and Portuguese missionaries discovered Nestorius in India.The persecution of the Nestorians by the Catholic government in Constantinople aroused political discontent that facilitated the Muslim conquest of Syria. Nestorius was eloquent and seduced many, but it is affirmed that worms devoured his eloquence.

Although the Ephesians had learned to substitute the Virgin Mary for the goddess Artemis, they still had the same strong affection for Artemis as they had in St. Paul's day.It is said that the Virgin Mary was buried here.After the death of St. Cyril in AD 449, the Ephesian Synod tried to gain further victories, and thus fell into another heresy in the opposite direction of Nestorius; it is known as the monophysite heresy.They maintain that Christ has only one nature.Had St. Cyril been alive, I am afraid he would have supported this view and would have become heresy.The emperor supported the Synod of Ephesus, but the pope refused to recognize it.Finally, Pope Leo—the same Pope who dissuaded Attila from attacking Rome—convened the Synod of All Nations at Calesiton in AD 451, the year of the Saron War.After the Council cursed the Monophysites of Christ, it established the orthodoxy of the Incarnation of Christ.The Council of Ephesus affirmed that there is only one Christ, but the Council of Caestheon affirmed that Christ exists in two natures, one human and one divine.The influence of the Pope is primary in obtaining this decision.

Followers of the Monophysites, like the Nestorians, do not submit.This heresy was adopted almost unanimously in Egypt.The heresy spread throughout the upper Nile and as far as Abyssinia.The heresy of Abyssinia later became one of the excuses Mussolini used to conquer Abyssinia.Egyptian heresy, like its counterpart in Syria, facilitated the Arab conquest. In the history of culture during the sixth century AD there are four prominent figures: Boiseus, Justinian, Benedict, and Gregory the Great.I will focus on them throughout the remainder of this chapter, and in the next one. The Gothic conquest of Italy did not mean the end of Roman civilization.Under Theodoric, king of the Italians and Goths, the civil government of Italy was entirely Roman; peace, and freedom of religion (until the king's death); he was a wise and capable prince.He appointed consuls, preserved Roman law and continued the senate system: when he went to Rome, the first place he visited was the senate.

Although he was an Arian, he remained friendly with the church until his later years.In 523 A.D. Emperor Justin announced the banning of the Arius sect, which troubled Theodoric very much.His fears were not without reason, for Italy, being a Catholic country, was naturally guided by theological sympathies to the emperor's side.He believed, rightly or wrongly, that there had been a conspiracy involving members of his own government.This prompted him to imprison and execute his minister, Senator Boethius.Boiseus's book, The Consolation of Philosophy was written while he was in prison.

Boiseus was a curious figure, told and admired throughout the Middle Ages.He is often admired as a devout Christian.He was revered, almost as a godfather.Yet his Consolation of Philosophy, written while awaiting his sentence in 524 A.D., is a purely Platonic book; it does not prove that he is not a Christian, but it shows that pagan philosophy is more important than Christian theology. affected him profoundly.Some of his theological works, especially the one attributed to him on the Trinity, have been affirmed by many authorities to be false; A great deal of Platonism was drawn from him.Otherwise, people will view Platonism with suspicion. The book is written alternately in verse and prose: Boiseus answers in prose when he calls himself, and philosophy answers in verse.There is a strong resemblance to Dante, who was undoubtedly influenced by Dante in his Vita Nuova. The book, which Gibbon rightly calls "The Canon," begins by claiming that Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle were the true philosophers; The Gepai, Epicureans, and others were impostors.Boethius claimed he was following Pythagoras' command to "follow God" (rather than Christ's).Happiness is as good as being blessed; joy is not.Friendship is an extremely "sacred thing." There are many ethical ideas in the book that are consistent with the teachings of the Stoics, and in fact are mostly drawn from Seneca.There is also a summary of the beginning of the Timaeus written in verse.Then came a great deal of purely Platonic metaphysics.He told us that imperfection is a kind of lack, which means the existence of a perfect original form.With regard to evil he adopts a lack of doctrine, and he proceeds to a pantheism, which should have appalled Christians, but which for some reason did not.He says that both blessing and God are the first good, and are therefore equal. "Man enjoys happiness by obtaining divinity." "Everyone who obtains divinity becomes a god. Therefore, every happy person is a god. However, there is only one God, but due to people's participation, there may be Many bits." "The sum total, source and cause, of what the world desires should be rightly understood as the good." "The essence of God lies in goodness and nothing else." Can God do evil?cannot!So evil doesn't exist because God can do everything.The good are always strong, and the wicked are always weak; for both desire good, and only the good can attain it.It is more unfortunate for a wicked man to escape punishment than to receive it. " "There is no hatred in the heart of the wise. " In terms of the style of the book, there are more resemblances to Plato than to Plotinus.There is nothing in it of the superstitions and pathologies of our time, the haunting of sin, the tendency to demand too much of the unattainable.There is a purely philosophical serenity in the book—so serene that, had the book been written in good times, it might have been regarded as narcissistic.But the book was written in prison after the author was sentenced to death.It is as admirable as the last moments of Plato's Socrates, except that after Newton we cannot find a worldview like it.I shall now quote in full a poem from the book which is very similar in philosophical meaning to Popper's Essay on Man. If you behold the law of God with the purest heart, your eyes must be fixed upon space, whose fixed course sustains and moves the stars.The sun's flame did not hinder his sister's party, and even the bear star in the northern sky did not want the waves of the ocean to obscure her light.Although she saw the stars lying there, she was spinning alone, far away from the ocean, high in space.The reflection at twilight heralds the coming of the dark night with its established course, but the morning star fades away before the day.This mutual love creates the eternal way to remove from the firmament of the stars all causes of strife, all causes of war.This sweet harmony binds the natures of all the elements with a bond of equality and makes that which is wet subject to that which is dry.Bitter cold kindled the flames of friendship that rose to the heights, and left the great land sunk in the deep abyss.The colorful Wuhua emits fragrant flowers in Yangchun, produces ripe grains in hot summer, and brings fruitful branches in cool autumn.The warm rain from the sky added to the humidity for the severe winter.All living beings living on earth are nourished and nurtured by these laws.When they are once dead, these laws carry them to their respective spheres.At that time, the Creator was sitting high in the sky, as if he was holding the reins to control the world.He reigns over them all with great power as their King.They were born, multiplied, and animated by him and ruled over them as their law and judge.Those that gallop through the course of the product at top speed are often led back by his power, and sometimes force their progress to a halt more suddenly.Had it not been for his power to restrain their fury, and to bring the scurrying one into this circular course, the awe-inspiring laws which hitherto adorn all things would have been destroyed, and all things would have been far from what they were in the beginning.This powerful love reaches out to all, and all things return to beings who seek the highest good.Nothing in the world would last long were it not for love that brings things back to the source that first gave them their essence. Boiseus was always Diodoric's friend.Boethius' father was a consul, he himself was a consul, his two sons also were consuls, his father-in-law Symachus (probably because of the incident with the statue of Victory and St. Ambrose grandson of Symachus the one in dispute) had been a prominent figure at the court of the Gothic king.Diodoric appointed Boethius to reform the currency system, and appointed him to surprise the less literary barbarian kings with instruments such as the sundial and hourglass.His freedom from superstition was perhaps not so peculiar in the Roman aristocratic family as elsewhere; but his combined learning and zeal for the public good made him a unique figure in our time.Between the two centuries before Boiseus's lifetime and the ten centuries after his death I cannot think of a single European scholar who was free from superstition and fanaticism.His virtues are not only in the negative aspects; he is far-sighted, just, and spiritual, and even in any age, he must be regarded as an extraordinary character; therefore, considering his age, he is even more amazing. Boethius' medieval prestige was due in part to his being considered a martyr of Arius persecution. ——This view began two or three hundred years after his death. Although he was regarded as a saint in Pavia, he was not actually officially canonized by the Church.Although Cyrelli was a saint, Boiseus was not. Theodoric died a year after Boiseus' execution.Justinian ascended the throne the following year.He reigned until 565 AD.During his long reign he managed to do many bad things and some good things.Of course he is primarily known for his codes.But I don't want to venture into this subject, because it is a question for lawyers.He is a very religious man.In order to show his piety, he closed all the schools of philosophy in Athens, which was still under pagan rule, in the second year of his accession.The exiled philosophers fled to Persia, where they were received by the King of Persia.But the Persian practices of polygamy and incest—as Gibbon says—shocked them more than philosophers should have.So they returned to their homeland, and have since disappeared into oblivion and obscurity.In the third year (532) after Justinian established this great feat, he started another, more commendable event, the construction of the Hagia Sophia.I have not seen Hagia Sophia, but I have seen beautiful mosaics of the same generation in Ravenna, including portraits of Justinian and Empress Theodora, both of whom were devout in their service to God , but the queen is a flirtatious woman selected by the emperor from the circus.But what was worse was her inclination to Monophysiteism. Enough scandals have been said here.As for the emperor himself, I can say with pleasure that even on the question of the "Three Prohibitions" he was of unquestionable orthodox sect.It's a tiresome argument.The council of Calesidon declared orthodox three church fathers suspected of being Nestorians; Theodora and many others accepted all the other resolutions of the council but this one.Because the Western Church unreservedly supports all the resolutions of the meeting.So the queen was provoked to persecute the pope.Justinian was so fond of her that she died in 548 AD.Thereafter, he remembered her as Queen Victoria remembered her late queen's son-in-law.From then on he finally fell into the heresy of the immortality of the body of Christ.Evagorius, a historian contemporary with Justinian, wrote: "He received the retribution for his evil deeds after death, so he went to the judge of hell to seek his due. Righteousness." Justinian was eager to regain as much territory as possible in the Western Roman Empire.In 535 AD he invaded Italy and initially achieved a swift victory over the Goths.The Catholic population welcomed him; and he represented Rome against the barbarians.During this time the Goths returned, and the war lasted eighteen years.At this time, Rome and most of Italy were robbed far more than the period of barbarian invasion. Rome fell five times, three times to Byzantium, and twice to the Goths and was reduced to a small town.The same happened to Africa, once more or less recovered by Justinian.At first his troops were popular; later people perceived the corruption of Byzantine administration and the dangers of exorbitant taxes.In the end many would have preferred the Goths or Vandals to come back.However, the Roman Church, because of Justinian's orthodoxy, supported him firmly until his later years.He made no attempt to reconquer Gaul, partly because of the distance and partly because the Franks belonged to the orthodox sect. In 568 AD, three years after Justinian's death, Italy was invaded by a fierce new Germanic tribe, the Lombards.Their war with Byzantium went on and on for two hundred years, and came to an end almost at the time of Charlemagne.Byzantium lost Italy city by city; in the south they had to hold off the Saracens.Rome still nominally belonged to Byzantium, and the popes treated the emperors of the Eastern Roman Empire with subservience.After the Lombard invasion, however, the emperors had little or no authority over most of Italy.The destruction of Italian civilization coincided with this period, and Venice was founded by refugees from the Lombards, not as legend supposed: the city was founded by refugees from Attila.