The New Atheist Denial of History by Jr. Borden W. Painter

Author:Jr. Borden W. Painter [Borden W. Painter, Jr.]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: HIS000000 History / General
ISBN: 9781137477682
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Published: 2014-10-13T16:00:00+00:00

In the western church, Christian monasticism played a key role in medieval society. Benedict of Nursia (c. 480–c. 550), reacting to the licentiousness and fragmentation of Roman society, withdrew to the life of a hermit south of Rome. He attracted so many followers that he formed a community with a common way of life that became the Benedictine Rule. The Rule mixed a life of prayer and work. Monks took vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience in an austere way of life that avoided extreme forms of asceticism.

The western church grew through a mixture of missionary endeavor and conquest. The key to converting a Germanic tribe lay with the chief, who had earned his title primarily through military leadership. If he opted for Christianity, the whole tribe followed. Hence when Clovis decided on baptism at the end of the fifth century, his Frankish tribesmen followed him. In the eighth century, the Frankish descendants of Clovis conquered a series of tribes under the leadership of Pepin and his son Charlemagne. Charlemagne, pious Christian and fierce warrior, finally overcame his most stubborn enemies, the Saxons, slaughtering thousands and pushing the survivors into Christianity.

The stories of Benedict and Charlemagne underscore the ambiguities that took root in Christianity and have shaped so much of its history. The life of prayer, study, and work strove to preserve a core of Christian faith that stressed moderation and peace. The Christianity of Charlemagne paid homage to piety and learning, as evidenced in the illiterate leader’s support of learning and preserving texts of antiquity, both Christian and pagan, but it also included the traditional virtues and values of Germanic warriors. The New Atheists choose not to recognize this ambiguity, thus foreclosing any sense of nuance or context in their treatment of European history.

Charlemagne revived the imperial title by having himself crowned Roman Emperor in 800 by the pope. With the eastern empire, what we call the Byzantine Empire, under Greek control, and the Muslim conquest of the Holy Land and North Africa, Charlemagne established his headquarters in northern Europe in Aix-la-Chapelle, modern Aachen. The so-called Carolingian Empire constituted what historians commonly call the “First Europe”—the first distinctly Western European realm.

Charlemagne’s empire got divided among his descendants, and then new incursions from the outside further weakened it. The ferocious Vikings or Norsemen sallied forth from Scandinavia to loot, plunder, and pillage. Magyars swept in from the east and got as far as central Europe, while Muslim Saracens attacked Sicily and parts of Italy. The scene finally calmed down in the second half of the tenth century as Saracen raids ebbed, the Norsemen went home or settled in as Christians in Normandy, and the Magyars inhabited the neighborhood roughly of Hungary. A Saxon chief again revived the imperial title as Emperor Otto I in 962. The three strands—Roman, Christian, and Germanic—entwined again in the fabric of Western Europe.

The newly found stability set the stage for the period commonly known as the “High Middle Ages,” from c. 1000 to c. 1250.

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