MARCH OF THE TITANS - A HISTORY OF THE WHITE RACE
Chapter Forty One
The Dark Ages
The Dark Ages was a period in European history which has been arbitrarily set at between approximately 800 AD and lasting until the Renaissance: although this is by no means a fixed definition, the common thread throughout this period of history was the total dominance of Christianity and the repression of all art, science and progress that was not Christian in nature.
In this way the great scientific, philosophical and cultural works of the thousands of years of pre-Christian civilization were suppressed, all being ascribed to the work of pagans and therefore of virtual devil authorship: in many places even the possession of classical works was taken to be proof of the possessor being a witch or a necromancer. More often than not such unfortunates would end up being burnt at the stake by zealous Christians.
The Dark Ages then were marked by the dominance of Christianity. The era became known as the Dark Ages because the introduction of theocracy as the only guideline in all fields of endeavor.
This created a halt to all progress and centuries of cultural stagnation, which marked the time between the glory of classical antiquity and the rebirth of that glory in the renaissance and the beginnings of the modern world.
Suppression of Scientific Thought
At the center of the Dark Ages stood the Christian bible. All scientific thought which contradicted the bible was suppressed, with the most famous example being the ancient knowledge that the earth revolved around the sun.
The Christian bible states very clearly that the sun revolves around the earth. The result was that for centuries the important astronomical discovery that the sun was the center of the universe was deliberately suppressed by the church, with proponents of the non-Christian theory being persecuted for their endeavors.
Another famous suppression of scientific advance created by the church was the belief that the earth was round: the Bible talks very clearly of the four corners of the earth, therefore, the church argued, it must be square. This dogmatic belief was quietly dropped only when the voyages of discovery finally proved beyond debate that the earth was round: despite this fact having been known by the non-Christian Classical Greeks since the time of Alexander.
The Effect on the Study of History
In the field of the study of history, the dominance of the Church had a massive effect: the Lux Ex Orient (the Light Comes from the East) doctrine was established which said that all civilization originated in the Middle East, as this was where the events of the bible had supposedly been played out.
This belief that all civilization started in the Middle East held sway right until the middle of the 20th century, when scientific advances such radiocarbon dating and other methods finally established that the oldest great buildings and structures had in fact been built in Europe, with the Megalith structures predating the Middle Eastern civilizations by sometimes thousands of years.
The Lux Ex Orient doctrine is still to this day the "popular" interpretation of history, with most people having been taught that "civilization originated in the fertile river valleys".
The Christianization of Art
During this period, all art forms became Christianized: in any review of European art, the shift in subject matter from the Classical Age to the Dark ages, is noticeable and obvious to even the passing onlooker.
The only art works of note of the Dark Ages are all scenes from the Bible, or those depicting great Christian events of the time: non Christian events were ignored unless they had direct relevance to the Church. In this way even the figure of Jesus Christ became European.
As discussed earlier, although there is no proof of the existence of the biblical person known as Jesus Christ, even if he had existed, the bible makes if very clear that he was descended from Semitic Hebrews (the first chapter of each of the New Testament Gospels all spend their first chapters detailing Christ's Jewish ancestry): nonetheless the Christian dominated artists of the Dark Ages portrayed Christ as a Nordic racial type, with blonde hair and blue eyes, an image which has lasted to the present day in the minds of many Christians the world over. Even if Christ had existed, given his ancestry as detailed in the bible, the chances of him looking like a Nordic would be very remote indeed.
The miracle of the loaves and the fishes, mosaic, Ravenna, Italy. Christian themed art was a trademark of the Dark Ages. Typically for the Christians, Christ is portrayed as a Nordic - even if he had existed, his ancestry as claimed in the bible would most certainly have made him a dark Semitic type.
Genocidal Evangelism
The early Christians propagated their new religion amongst the White tribes of Europe with a fanaticism unseen in those lands until then: the murderous activities of Charlemagne in Germany and the Teutonic Knights in the Baltic states stand out as good examples and have already been discussed in detail in earlier chapters.
This practice was however widespread throughout Europe and it is no exaggeration to say that without this initial spurt of violence and savagery - which was justified by quoting selected Old Testament scripts which in turn quoted the Christian God exhorting the Hebrews to kill his enemies - it is unlikely that Christianity would ever have displaced the original White Indo-European religions.
Certainly none of these original White religions ever contemplated converting nonbelievers upon pain of death, and were culturally and physically unprepared for the fanaticism engendered by a Middle Eastern religion such as Christianity.
It is always worth bearing in mind that the original White religions - be they Odinism, or any of the Sumerian, Egyptian, Greek or Roman Gods - ever had a war fought in their names, or ever tried to convert adherents upon threat of death.
The Power of the Pope
The Age of Theocracy saw the head of the Catholic Church, the Pope, becoming the single most important political figure in Europe: elected by a small band of bishops who in their turn were appointed by the Pope - a neat trick of self perpetuation - the Pope's permission was required for the appointment of kings, territorial annexations and a host of other political matters.
Very often, as was the case with the Teutonic Knights and the Baltic states, whole nations and peoples, who had probably never even heard of the Pope, had their futures decided by the latter (in the Baltic, the Pope "gave" the lands of these pagans to the Teutonic Knights to Christianize).
It was therefore little surprise that the political power of the pope was one of the first great Dark Age institutions to crumble: eventually this would develop into a fully fledged political revolt which would combine with a division within the church itself, and lead to the establishment of the Protestant states who rejected the power of the Pope in Rome.
Feudalism
The institution of feudalism - where society was organized on a strictly class basis and where office was inherited, also took on its most virulent form during the Dark Ages. Nobles were allocated tracts of land and held accountable to only the king of their territory and the Pope himself.
All inhabitants of these lands so allocated became vassals of that particular noble, supposedly giving their labor in return for the provision of shelter from attack if the lands were ever invaded by outsiders. In reality this led to a system of serfdom and virtual slavery, and many of the cruelest class systems emerged from this time which were to scar Europe right into the 20th century and beyond, resulting in the creation of a massive peasant underclass who were always ripe for exploitation by revolutionaries of all ilks.
Although much of the feudal system has been romanticized with tales of knights in armor, princesses and courtly love; the harsh reality, for the vast majority of the population of medieval Europe, was a miserable existence consisting of virtual slave labor with almost no opportunity of escape.
The existence of this oppressive system and its successors in later centuries would prove to be one of the greatest drivers of White settlers fleeing Europe to settle in the new lands of America and elsewhere.
The Inquisition
The last great innovation of the Age of Theocracy was the Inquisition, which started out as a measure designed to suppress all non-Christian thought, but which developed two specific arms: that outside of Spain and that in Spain. Outside of Spain, mainly non-Jews were targeted; in Spain it became primarily an anti-Jewish campaign, and the latter then became the most famous part of the Inquisition, although in real terms it was far less vicious than the Inquisition imposed on non-Jews (Gentiles) in the rest of Europe.
The Inquisition was an institution formally established by the Christian Church, in the person of Pope Gregory IX, in 1321, and was charged with seeking out, trying and sentencing persons guilty of the broadly defined crime of "heresy". The inquisition quite openly used torture to obtain evidence for a wide range of alleged charges, including heresy, witchcraft, bigamy, and, a special one just for the Jews, usury.
Counter Reformation
The Inquisition was then harnessed by Pope Pius V, who reigned from 1566 to 1572, against all sorts of dissenters at the time of the Protestant revolt in the Catholic Church. Pius V in this way temporarily bolstered the Roman Catholic church at the time of the Counter Reformation. As pope, he aided French Roman Catholics in their persecution of the Huguenots; and expelled many Jews from the Papal States, using the Inquisition to persecute non Christians of all ilks. His use of the inquisition was the primary reason why the reformation never took proper hold in Italy.
Torture
The individual inquisitors, most of whom were personally appointed by the pope, enjoyed a large amount of power, with the ability to arrest even members of royal families. Establishing courts at various places, the inquisitors themselves brought charges against persons suspected of heresy - which could include falsely professing Christianity, atheism, belonging to some other religion except Christianity, or disputing the Church's interpretation of the Christian bible.
Lesser penalties were imposed on those who came forward and confessed their heresy than on those who had to be tried and convicted. A period of grace of a month was allowed for these self confessions.
If a person was tried for heresy, the testimony of two witnesses was generally considered proof of guilt. The inquisitors also had the right to imprison people who they thought might be lying.
This outrage was however to be quickly followed by something worse: in 1252, Pope Innocent IV, officially sanctioned the use of torture on suspects. Not surprisingly, the flow of confessions of witchcraft, paganism, satan worship and any other heresy the Inquisitors managed to dream up, began to flow like rivers from the unfortunate victims of the rack, thumb screws, burning irons and literally dozens of other fiendish torture items used in the process.
In a perverted twist to the injunction not to kill, the inquisitors did not have the right to execute anybody, only imprison and torture them. The church neatly sidestepped this restriction by handing a convicted person over to the local authorities for suitable punishment - when this did happen, it was tantamount to a demand from the church to execute that person.
This was usually carried out either by public burning at the stake or by public strangulation. The inquisition went on for over 300 years, in varying forms and with differing degrees of cruelty. By the time of the Protestant split away from the Catholic Church, the inquisition had in most places dropped the instruments of torture, but still persecuted the new Protestants with a passion, virtually stamping them out in Italy. In Spain, where the inquisition was developed into a fine form of state suppression, the Protestant revolution was hardly felt.
The Inquisition at work: a large crowd gathers in front of the waterfront palace in Lisbon to watch three "heretics" be burned to death after being found guilty by the Inquisitors.
The Spanish Inquisition
In 1476, Ferdinand, husband of Isabella, and joint ruler of Castile and ultimately all of Spain, organized the Santa Hermandad, or Holy Brotherhood, a kind of national military police as a measure to crack down on internal dissent.
The Holy Brotherhood also had as one of their primary aims the creation of complete religious subservience - to the Catholic Church. In 1478, a decree issued by Pope Sixtus IV empowered Ferdinand and Isabella to appoint three inquisitors to deal with heretics and other offenders against the church; this marked the beginning of the Spanish Inquisition.
In 1487, a leading Spanish catholic theologian, one Torquemada, was made grand inquisitor for all Spain by Pope Innocent VIII.
Although initially founded to further religious ends, the Inquisition in Spain quickly became a way of exacting revenge upon Spain's Jews, who were held responsible for not only all manner of unsavory financial practices, but also stood accused of actively aiding in the Muslim occupation of Spain.
A thirteenth century Spaniard, Lucas de Tuy, claimed to have found proof that Jewish spies had delivered the city of Toledo to the Muslim armies. Although never conclusively proven (although it possibly had a slight basis in truth, given the close co-operation between the Spanish Jews and the Moors), this allegation was an example of the accusation leveled against the Spanish Jews, and they became natural targets for the Christians.
Torquemada used the Inquisition for eleven years to investigate and punish Marranos (secret Jews professing Christianity), Moors, atheists and others on an unprecedented scale. About 2000 people were burned at the stake during Torquemada's term of office. He was also instrumental in propagating the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492.
The Spanish anti-Jewish wave reached a crescendo in 1492, when the very last Moorish stronghold in Spain, Grenada, was conquered. This discovery of several Jews amongst the very highest members of the Moorish government, including Viziers (or top advisors) to the Muslim Caliph, sent the Spaniards into a frenzy: then and there some 150,000 Jews were forcibly deported from Spain.
After 1520, the Spanish inquisition also turned its hand to Protestants in Spain: they were quickly stamped out and Spain remained ever after a catholic country. Later the Spanish inquisition spread to the colonies in the new world which Spain had seized: although there it was involved more in the suppression of the native heathen practices, a job it virtually successfully completed.
Due to Ferdinand of Castile's kingship of Sicily, the Spanish inquisition was also implemented on the unfortunate inhabitants of that island as well. The Inquisition was finally abolished in Spain in 1834.
The Italian Inquisition
In 1542, Pope Paul III established the Roman Inquisition in Italy to counter Protestantism in that country. At first the Roman Inquisition restricted itself to persecuting intellectuals who questioned either interpretations of the Bible or parts of the Bible itself, and in 1559, it produced an Index of Forbidden Books - a list of mainly pagan works which contradicted the Christian world view (many of these were scientific treaties, but the index went on to include the work of scientists such as Galileo in 1633, who dared to publish a work saying that the earth was not the center of the universe and was only a planet rotating round the sun.)
The Nordic Galileo Galilei: his astronomical discoveries were suppressed by the Christians as heretical because they contradicted the bible.
Galileo's work contradicted the Biblical Old Testament story of a battle which lasted so long that the Israelites had asked God to make the day longer so they could kill all their foes, and, according to the scriptures, God has duly "stopped the sun" to prolong the daylight hours - proof, the church held, that the sun revolved around the earth and not vice versa.
Joshua 10, (v12, 13) states ".. Sun stand thou still upon Gibeon . . . . And the sun stood still in the midst of heaven . . "
The Index of Forbidden Books - called the Index Liborurm Prohibitorum - was continuously published by the Catholics until 1966, when it was quietly dropped.
The Netherlands
The Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V, ordered the introduction of the Inquisition into the area which later became known as the Netherlands in 1522 to try and counteract the spread of Protestantism in that country. The Dutch Inquisition was a notable failure in this regard and in a short while most of that country was firmly Protestant.
Switzerland
The Inquisition in Switzerland at Geneva in Switzerland was every bit as severe as the Spanish version, and continuously threatened the reformer John Calvin. It too however ultimately failed in its objective of squashing all dissent.
Racial Effects of the Age of Theocracy
The spread of Christianity and its more extreme variants unquestionably affected the growth of the European peoples: particularly in the policy, still held in the Catholic Church to this day, of celibacy for leading church officials.
Although this policy of enforced celibacy amongst the priesthood, monks and nuns only ever applied to a relatively small number of Whites, it was nonetheless almost always the most intelligent members of society who became monks or nuns. This was so because during the Dark Ages, only the cleverest candidates were allowed to enter the priesthood: as the keepers of the arts and writing, the only way to gain any sort of education was to join the priesthood.
Although there can be little doubt that, given human nature, the celibacy rule was broken, it must also be so that the policy of deliberate celibacy saw many thousands of Europe's cleverest people dying childless, their genes lost forever.
The imposition of the Inquisition was also severe: many of the "dissenters" targeted by the Church were in fact some of the brightest scientists of the time, whose only crime was to look for scientific explanations for natural phenomena not explained in the bible.
Many scientists were forced to either abandon their work or if they dared to continue, had to do so in great secrecy. This was one of the primary reasons why the great Leonardo Da Vinci produced so many of his manuscripts in mirror writing, to prevent others from reading the results of his research and thus avoiding persecution, even though he worked at the time when the Inquisition was tapering off in its power.
The persecution of these great minds with the accusation of paganism also unquestionably stripped Europe of many of its cleverest people: the cumulative effect of the Dark Ages was to set Europe back centuries in development.
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