The Darkening Age

The Christian Destruction of the Classical World

Catherine Nixey

• Publisher: HarperOne
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781328589286
• eBook ISBN: 9780544800939
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Greek Ancient History
• Index: History

A New York Times Notable Book, winner of the Jerwood Award from the Royal Society of Literature, a New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice, and named a Book of the Year by the Telegraph, Spectator, Observer, and BBC History Magazine, this bold new history of the rise of Christianity shows how its radical followers helped to annihilate Greek and Roman civilizations.

The Darkening Age is the largely unknown story of how a militant religion deliberately attacked and suppressed the teachings of the Classical world, ushering in centuries of unquestioning adherence to "one true faith."

Despite the long-held notion that the early Christians were meek and mild, going to their martyrs' deaths singing hymns of love and praise, the truth, as Catherine Nixey reveals, is very different. Far from being meek and mild, they were violent, ruthless, and fundamentally intolerant. Unlike the polytheistic world, in which the addition of one new religion made no fundamental difference to the old ones, this new ideology stated not only that it was the way, the truth, and the light but that, by extension, every single other way was wrong and had to be destroyed. From the first century to the sixth, those who didn't fall into step with its beliefs were pursued in every possible way: social, legal, financial, and physical. Their altars were upturned and their temples demolished, their statues hacked to pieces, and their priests killed. It was an annihilation.

Authoritative, vividly written, and utterly compelling, this is a remarkable debut from a brilliant young historian.

Notes

List of Abbreviations

ACM The Acts of the Christian Martyrs

AGT John Chrysostom, Against the Games and Theatres

Anth. Pal. Palladas, Anthologia Palatina

AP Apophthegmata Patrum, The Sayings of the Desert Fathers: The Alphabetical Collection

C. Just. Codex Justinianus

C. Th. Codex Theodosianus

CC Origen, Contra Celsum

EH Sozomen, The Ecclesiastical History

HC Eusebius, The History of the Church from Christ to Constantine

LC Eusebius, Life of Constantine

OAP Galen, On Anatomical Procedures

ONT Lucretius, On the Nature of Things

PH Damascius, Philosophical History

PROLOGUE: A BEGINNING

1. Coptic pilgrims’ chant, quoted in Kristensen (2013), 85.

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INTRODUCTION: AN ENDING

1. Athanassiadi (1993), 4; Marinus, Life of Proclus, 26.

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2. PH, 124.

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3. PH, 117C; Olympiodorus, Commentary on the First Alcibiades, quoted in Cameron (1969), 15.

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4. C. Th., 16.4.4.2, dated 16 June 388.

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5. AGT.

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6. PH, 119.

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7. PH, 42.

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8. Palladas, 10.90 and 10.82.

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9. The precise criteria for a triumph varied; the stipulation of thousands dead was, for a time, one of them. Deciding when a triumph had been won was usually more an art than a science. See Beard (2007).

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10. Greenblatt (2012), 43–44.

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11. For paganism as insanity, sickness, etc., see C. Th., 16.10.1–21 and C. Just., 1.11.10.

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12. Augustine, Sermon 24.6, quoted in MacMullen (1984), 95.

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13. AGT.

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14. Augustine, Sermon 279.4, quoted in Shaw (2011), 682.

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15. Eusebius, The History of the Church from Christ to Constantine, 10.9.7.

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16. Johnson, 15 April 1778, quoted in MacMullen (1997), 169 n. 37, to whom this paragraph is indebted.

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1. THE INVISIBLE ARMY

1. Chitty (1966) calls it a pigsty, though this may not be strictly accurate: the Greek refers to him moving “just outside his house”—presumably to some sort of simple structure there. Nonetheless, the idea of a pigsty confers well the idea of simplicity—even squalor—that would no doubt have been appropriate.

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2. Clement, The Instructor, 3.5.

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3. Matthew 19:21.

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4. Augustine, Confessions, 8.7–8.

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5. Life of Antony, 5.

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6. Life of Antony, 5–6.

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7. Life of Antony, 24.

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8. Cyprian, Bishop of Carthage, On the Mortality, 14.

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9. Dodds (1965), 133–34.

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10. Palladas, Palatine Anthology, 10.72, quoted in Dodds (1965), 11.

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2. THE BATTLEGROUND OF DEMONS

1. Augustine, Confessions, 8.7.

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2. Mark 5:9.

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Table of contents

• Title Page
• Contents
• Copyright
• Dedication
• List of Illustrations
• Map
• Prologue: A Beginning
• Introduction: An Ending
• The Invisible Army
• The Battleground of Demons
• Wisdom Is Foolishness
• “On the Small Number of Martyrs”
• Photos I
• These Deranged Men
• The Most Magnificent Building in the World
• To Despise the Temples
• How to Destroy a Demon
• The Reckless Ones
• To Drink from the Cup of Devils
• To Cleanse the Error of Demons
• Carpe Diem
• They That Forsake the Way of God
• Photos II
• To Obliterate the Tyranny of Joy
• “Merciful Savagery”
• “A Time of Tyranny and Crisis”
• Acknowledgments
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• About the Author
• Connect with HMH
• Footnotes