"that all our knowledge is a knowledge of states of consciousness."

On Descartes' "Discourse Touching the Method of Using One's Reason Rightly and of Seeking Scientific Truth" (1870)
T.H. Huxley, Collected Essays I

It has been well said that "all the thoughts of men, from the beginning of the world until now, are linked together into one great chain;" but the conception of the intellectual filiation of mankind which is expressed in these words may, perhaps, be more fitting metaphor. The thoughts of men seem rather to be comparable to the leaves, flowers, and fruit upon the innumerable branches of a few great stems, fed by commingled and hidden roots. These stems bear the names of the half-a-dozen men, endowed with intellects of heroic force and clearness, to whom we are led, at whatever point of the world of thought the attempt to trace its history commences, just as certainly as the following up the small twigs of a tree to the branchlets which bear them, and tracing the branchlets to their supporting branches, brings us, sooner or later, to the bole.

It seems to me that the thinker who, more than any other, stands in the relation of such a stem towards the philosophy and the science of the modern world is Réné Descartes. I mean, that if you lay hold of any characteristic product of modern ways of thinking, either in the region of philosophy, or in that of science, you find the spirit of that thought, if not its form, to have been present in the mind of the great Frenchman.

There are some men who are counted great because they represent the actuality of their own age, and mirror it as it is. Such an one was Voltaire, of whom it was epigrammatically said, "he expressed everybody's thoughts better than anybody." But there are other men who attain greatness because they embody the potentiality of their own day, and magically reflect the future. They express the thoughts which will be everybody's two or three centuries after them. Such an one was Descartes.

Born in 1596, nearly three hundred years ago, of a noble family in Touraine, Réné Descartes grew up into a sickly and diminutive child, whose keen wit soon gained him that title of "the Philosopher," which, in the mouths of his noble kinsmen, was more than half a reproach. The best schoolmasters of the day, the Jesuits, educated him as well as a French boy of the seventeenth century could be educated. And they must have done their work honestly and well, for, before his schoolboy days were over, he had discovered that the most of what he had learned, except in mathematics, was devoid of solid and real value.

"Therefore," says he, in that 'Discourse' which I have taken for my text, "as soon as I was old enough to be set free from the government of my teachers, I entirely forsook the study of letters; and determining to seek no other knowledge than that which I could discover within myself, or in the great book of the world, I spent the remainder of my youth in travelling; in seeing courts and armies; in the society of people of different humours and conditions; in gathering varied experience; in testing myself by the chances of fortune; and in always trying to profit by my reflections on what happened. . . . And I always had an intense desire to learn how to distinguish truth from falsehood, in order to be clear about my actions, and to walk surefootedly in this life."

But "learn what is true, in order to do what is right," is the summing up of the whole duty of man, for all who are unable to satisfy their mental hunger with the east wind of authority; and to those of us moderns who are in this position, it is one of Descartes' great claims to our reverence as a spiritual ancestor, that, at three-and-twenty, he saw clearly that this was his duty, and acted up to his conviction. At two-and-thirty, in fact, finding all other occupations incompatible with the search after the knowledge which leads to action, and being possessed of a modest competence, he withdrew into Holland; where he spent nine years in learning and thinking, in such retirement that only one or two trusted friends knew of his whereabouts.

In 1637 the first-fruits of these long meditations were given to the world in the famous "Discourse touching the Method of using Reason rightly and of seeking Scientific Truth," which, at once an autobiography and a philosophy, clothes the deepest thought in language of exquisite harmony, simplicity, and clearness.

The central propositions of the whole "Discourse" are these. There is a path that leads to truth so surely, that any one who will follow it must needs reach the goal, whether his capacity be great or small. And there is one guiding rule by which a man may always find this path, and keep himself from straying when he has found it. This golden rule is–give unqualified assent to no propositions but those the truth of which is so clear and distinct that they cannot be doubted.

The enunciation of this great first commandment of science consecrated Doubt. It removed Doubt from the seat of penance among the grievous sins to which it had long been condemned, and enthroned it in that high place among the primary duties, which is assigned to it by the scientific conscience of these latter days. Descartes was the first among the moderns to obey this commandment deliberately; and, as a matter of religious duty, to strip off all his beliefs and reduce himself to a state of intellectual nakedness, until such time as he could satisfy himself which were fit to be worn. He thought a bare skin healthier than the most respectable and well-cut clothing of what might, possibly, be mere shoddy.

When I say that Descartes consecrated doubt, you must remember that it was that sort of doubt which Goethe has called "the active scepticism, whose whole aim is to conquer itself; " and not that other sort which is born of flippancy and ignorance, and whose aim is only to perpetuate itself, as an excuse for idleness and indifference. But it is impossible to define what is meant by scientific doubt better than in Descartes' own words. After describing the gradual progress of his negative criticism, he tells us:–

"For all that, I did not imitate the sceptics, who doubt only for doubting's sake, and pretend to be always undecided; on the contrary, my whole intention was to arrive at a certainty, and to dig away the drift and the sand until I reached the rock or the clay beneath."

And further, since no man of common sense when he pulls down his house for the purpose of rebuilding it, fails to provide himself with some shelter while the work is in progress; so, before demolishing the spacious, if not commodious, mansion of his old beliefs, Descartes thought it wise to equip himself with what he calls "une morale par provision," by which he resolved to govern his practical life until such time as he should be better instructed. The laws of this "provisional self-government" are embodied in four maxims, of which one binds our philosopher to submit himself to the laws and religion in which he was brought up; another, to act, on all those occasions which call for action, promptly and according to the best of his judgment, and to abide, without repining, by the result: a third rule is to seek happiness in limiting his desires, rather than in attempting to satisfy them; while the last is to make the search after truth the business of his life.

Thus prepared to go on living while he doubted, Descartes proceeded to face his doubts like a man. One thing was clear to him, he would not lie to himself–would, under no penalties, say, "I am sure" of that of which he was not sure; but would go on digging and delving until he came to the solid adamant or, at worst, made sure there was no adamant. As the record of his progress tells us, he was obliged to confess that life is full of delusions; that authority may err; that testimony may be false or mistaken; that reason lands us in endless fallacies; that memory is often as little trustworthy as hope; that the evidence of the very senses may be misunderstood; that dreams are real as long as they last, and that what we call reality may be a long and restless dream. Nay, it is conceivable that some powerful and malicious being may find his pleasure in deluding us, and in making us believe the thing which is not, every moment of our lives. What, then, is certain? What even, if such a being exists, is beyond the reach of his powers of delusion? Why, the fact that the thought, the present consciousness, exists. Our thoughts may be delusive, but they cannot be fictitious. As thoughts, they are real and existent, and the cleverest deceiver cannot make them otherwise.

Thus, thought is existence. More than that, so far as we are concerned, existence is thought, all our conceptions of existence being some kind or other of thought. Do not for a moment suppose that these are mere paradoxes or subtleties. A little reflection upon the commonest facts proves them to be irrefragable truths. For example, I take up a marble, and I find it to be a red, round, hard, single body. We call the redness, the roundness, the hardness, and the singleness, "qualities" of the marble; and it sounds, at first, the height of absurdity to say that all these qualities are modes of our own consciousness, which cannot even be conceived to exist in the marble. But consider the redness, to begin with. How does the sensation of redness arise? The waves of a certain very attenuated matter, the particles of which are vibrating with vast rapidity, but with very different velocities, strike upon the marble, and those which vibrate with one particular velocity are thrown off from its surface in all directions. The optical apparatus of the eye gathers some of these together, and gives them such a course that they impinge upon the surface of the retina, which is a singularly delicate apparatus connected with the termination of the fibres of the optic nerve. The impulses of the attenuated matter, or ether, affect this apparatus and the fibres of the optic nerve in a certain way; and the change in the fibres of the optic nerve produces yet other changes in the brain; and these, in some fashion unknown to us, give rise to the feeling, or consciousness of redness. If the marble could remain unchanged, and either the rate of vibration of the ether, or the nature of the retina, could be altered, the marble would seem not red, but some other colour. There are many people who are what are called colour-blind, being unable to distinguish one colour from another. Such an one might declare our marble to be green; and he would be quite as right in saying that it is green, as we are in declaring it to be red. But then, as the marble cannot, in itself, be both green and red, at the same time, this shows that the quality "redness" must be in our consciousness and not in the marble.

In like manner, it is easy to see that the roundness and the hardness are forms of our consciousness, belonging to the groups which we call sensations of sight and touch. If the surface of the cornea were cylindrical, we should have a very different notion of a round body from that which we possess now; and if the strength of the fabric, and the force of the muscles, of the body were increased a hundredfold, our marble would seem to be as soft as a pellet of bread crumbs.

Not only is it obvious that all these qualities are in us, but, if you will make the attempt, you will find it quite impossible to conceive of "blueness," "roundness," and "hardness" as existing without reference to some such consciousness as our own. It may seem strange to say that even the "singleness" of the marble is relative to us; but extremely simple experiments will show that such is veritably the case, and that our two most trustworthy senses may be made to contradict one another on this very point. Hold the marble between the finger and thumb, and look at it in the ordinary way. Sight and touch agree that it is single. Now squint, and sight tells you that there are two marbles, while touch asserts that there is only one. Next, return the eyes to their natural position, and, having crossed the forefinger and the middle finger, put the marble between their tips. Then touch will declare that there are two marbles, while sight says that there is only one; and touch claims our belief, when we attend to it, just as imperatively as sight does.

But it may be said, the marble takes up a certain space which could not be occupied, at the same time, by anything else. In other words, the marble has the primary quality of matter, extension. Surely this quality must be in the thing and not in our minds? But the reply must still be; whatever may, or may not, exist in the thing, all that we can know of these qualities is a state of consciousness. What we call extension is a consciousness of a relation between two, or more, affections of the sense of sight, or of touch. And it is wholly inconceivable that what we call extension should exist independently of such consciousness as our own. Whether, notwithstanding this inconceivability, it does so exist, or not, is a point on which I offer no opinion. Thus, whatever our marble may be in itself, all that we can know of it is under the shape of a bundle of our own consciousnesses.

Nor is our knowledge of anything we know or feel more, or less, than a knowledge of states of consciousness. And our whole life is made up of such states. Some of these states we refer to a cause we call "self;" others to a cause or causes which may be comprehended under the title of "not-self." But neither of the existence of "self," nor of that of "not-self," have we, or can we by any possibility have, any such unquestionable and immediate certainty as we have of the states of consciousness which we consider to be their effects. They are not immediately observed facts, but results of the application of the law of causation to those facts. Strictly speaking, the existence of a "self" and of a "not-self" are hypotheses by which we account for the facts of consciousness. They stand upon the same footing as the belief in the general trustworthiness of memory, and in the general constancy of the order of Nature–as hypothetical assumptions which cannot be proved, or known with that highest degree of certainty which is given by immediate consciousness; but which, nevertheless, are of the highest practical value, inasmuch as the conclusions logically drawn from them are always verified by experience.

This, in my judgment, is the ultimate issue of Descartes' argument; but it is proper for me to point out that we have left Descartes himself some way behind us. He stopped at the famous formula, "I think, therefore I am." Yet a little consideration will show this formula to be full of snares and verbal entanglements. In the first place, the "therefore" has no business there. The "I am" is assumed in the "I think," which is simply another way of saying "I am thinking." And, in the second place, "I think" is not one simple proposition, but three distinct assertions rolled into one. The first of these is, "something called I exists;" the second is, "something called thought exists;" and the third is, "the thought is the result of the action of the I."

Now, it will be obvious to you, that the only one of these three propositions which can stand the Cartesian test of certainty is the second. It cannot be doubted, for the very doubt is an existent thought. But the first and third, whether true or not, may be doubted, and have been doubted. For the assertor may be asked, How do you know that thought is not self-existent; or that a given thought is not the effect of its antecedent thought, or of some external power? And a diversity of other questions, much more easily put than answered. Descartes, determined as he was to strip off all the garments which the intellect weaves for itself, forgot this gossamer shirt of the "self"; to the great detriment, and indeed ruin of his toilet when he began to clothe himself again.

But it is beside my purpose to dwell upon the minor peculiarities of the Cartesian philosophy. All I wish to put clearly before your minds thus far, is that Descartes, having commenced by declaring doubt to be a duty, found certainty in consciousness alone; and that the necessary outcome of his views is what may properly be termed Idealism; namely, the doctrine that, whatever the universe may be, all we can know of it is the picture presented to us by consciousness. This picture may be a true likeness–though how this can be is inconceivable; or it may have no more resemblance to its cause than one of Bach's fugues has to the person who is playing it; or than a piece of poetry has to the mouth and lips of a reciter. It is enough for all the practical purposes of human existence if we find that our trust in the representations of consciousness is verified by results; and that, by their help, we are enabled "to walk surefootedly in this life."

Thus the method, or path which leads to truth, indicated by Descartes, takes us straight to the Critical Idealism of his great successor Kant. It is that Idealism which declares the ultimate fact of all knowledge to be consciousness, or, in other words, a mental phænomenon; and therefore affirms the highest of all certainties, and indeed the only absolute certainty, to be the existence of mind. But it is also that Idealism which refuses to make any assertions, either positive or negative, as to what lies beyond consciousness. It accuses the subtle Berkeley of stepping beyond the limits of knowledge when he declared that a substance of matter does not exist; and of illogicality, for not seeing that the arguments which he supposed demolished the existence of matter were equally destructive to the existence of soul. And it refuses to listen to the jargon of more recent days about the "Absolute" and all the other hypostatised adjectives, the initial letters of the names of which are generally printed in capital letters; just as you give a Grenadier a bearskin cap, to make him look more formidable than he is by nature.

I repeat, the path indicated and followed by Descartes, which we have hitherto been treading, leads through doubt to that critical Idealism which lies at the heart of modern metaphysical thought. But the "Discourse" shows us another, and apparently very different, path, which leads, quite as definitely, to that correlation of all the phænomena of the universe with matter and motion, which lies at the heart of modern physical thought, and which most people call Materialism.

The early part of the seventeenth century, when Descartes reached manhood, is one of the great epochs of the intellectual life of mankind. At that time, physical science suddenly strode into the arena of public and familiar thought, and openly challenged not only Philosophy and the Church, but that common ignorance which often passes by the name of Common Sense. The assertion of the motion of the earth was a defiance to all three, and Physical Science threw down her glove by the hand of Galileo.

It is not pleasant to think of the immediate result of the combat; to see the champion of science, old, worn, and on his knees before the Cardinal Inquisitor, signing his name to what he knew to be a lie. And, no doubt, the Cardinals rubbed their hands as they thought how well they had silenced and discredited their adversary. But two hundred years have passed, and however feeble or faulty her soldiers, Physical Science sits crowned and enthroned as one of the legitimate rulers of the world of thought. Charity children would be ashamed not to know that the earth moves; while the Schoolmen are forgotten; and the Cardinals–well, the Cardinals are at the Œcumenical Council, still at their old business of trying to stop the movement of the world.

As a ship, which having lain becalmed with every stitch of canvas set, bounds away before the breeze which springs up astern, so the mind of Descartes, poised in equilibrium of doubt, not only yielded to the full force of the impulse towards physical science and physical ways of thought, given by his great contemporaries, Galileo and Harvey, but shot beyond them; and anticipated, by bold speculation, the conclusions, which could only be placed upon a secure foundation by the labours of generations of workers.

Descartes saw that the discoveries of Galileo meant that the remotest parts of the universe were governed by mechanical laws; while those of Harvey meant that the same laws presided over the operations of that portion of the world which is nearest to us, namely, our own bodily frame. And crossing the interval between the centre and its vast circumference by one of the great strides of genius, Descartes sought to resolve all the phænomena of the universe into matter and motion, or forces operating according to law. This grand conception, which is sketched in the "Discours," and more fully developed in the "Principes" and in the "Traite de l'Homme," he worked out with extraordinary power and knowledge; and with the effect of arriving, in the last-named essay, at that purely mechanical view of vital phænomena towards which modern physiology is striving.

Let us try to understand how Descartes got into this path, and why it led him where it did. The mechanism of the circulation of the blood had evidently taken a great hold of his mind, as he describes it several times, at much length. After giving a full account of it in the "Discourse," and erroneously ascribing the motion of the blood, not to the contraction of the walls of the heart, but to the heat which he supposes to be generated there, he adds:–

"This motion, which I have just explained, is as much the necessary result of the structure of the parts which one can see in the heart, and of the heat which one may feel there with one's fingers, and of the nature of the blood, which may be experimentally ascertained; as is that of a clock of the force, the situation, and the figure, of its weight, and of its wheels."

But if this apparently vital operation were explicable as a simple mechanism, might not other vital operations be reducible to the same category? Descartes replies without hesitation in the affirmative.

"The animal spirits," says he, "resemble a very subtle fluid, or a very pure and vivid flame, and are continually generated in the heart, and ascend to the brain as to a sort of reservoir. Hence they pass into the nerves and are distributed to the muscles, causing contraction, or relaxation, according to their quantity."

Thus, according to Descartes, the animal body is an automaton, which is competent to perform all the animal functions in exactly the same way as a clock or any other piece of mechanism. As he puts the case himself:–

"In proportion as these spirits [the animal spirits] enter the cavities of the brain, they pass thence into the pores of its substance, and from these pores into the nerves; where, according as they enter, or even only tend to enter, more or less, into one than into another, they have the power of altering the figure of the muscles into which the nerves are inserted, and by this means of causing all the limbs to move. Thus, as you may have seen in the grottoes and the fountains in royal gardens, the force with which the water issues from its reservoir is sufficient to move various machines, and even to make them play instruments, or pronounce words according to the different disposition of the pipes which lead the water.

"And, in truth, the nerves of the machine which I am describing may very well be compared to the pipes of these waterworks; its muscles and its tendons to the other various engines and springs which seem to move them; its animal spirits to the water which impels them, of which the heart is the fountain; while the cavities of the brain are the central office. Moreover, respiration and other such actions as are natural and usual in the body, and which depend on the course of the spirits, are like the movements of a clock, or of a mill, which may be kept up by the ordinary flow of the water.

"The external objects which, by their mere presence, act upon the organs of the senses; and which, by this means, determine the corporal machine to move in many different ways, according as the parts of the brain are arranged, are like the strangers who, entering into some of the grottoes of these waterworks, unconsciously cause the movements which take place in their presence. For they cannot enter without treading upon certain planks so arranged that, for example, if they approach a bathing Diana, they cause her to hide among the reeds; and if they attempt to follow her, they see approaching a Neptune, who threatens them with his trident: or if they try some other way, they cause some other monster, who vomits water into their faces, to dart out; or like contrivances, according to the fancy of the engineers who have made them. And lastly, when the rational soul is lodged in this machine, it will have its principal seat in the brain, and will take the place of the engineer, who ought to be in that part of the works with which all the pipes are connected, when he wishes to increase, or to slacken, or in some way to alter their movements."

And again still more strongly:–

"All the functions which I have attributed to this machine (the body), as the digestion of food, the pulsation of the heart and of the arteries; the nutrition and the growth of the limbs; respiration, wakefulness, and sleep; the reception of light, sounds, colours, flavours, heat, and such like qualities, in the organs of the external senses; the impression of the ideas of these in the organ of common sense and in the imagination; the retention, or the impression, of these ideas on the memory; the internal movements of the appetites and the passions; and lastly, the external movements of all the limbs, which follow so aptly, as well the action of the objects which are presented to the senses, as the impressions which meet in the memory, that they imitate as nearly as possible those of a real man: I desire, I say, that you should consider that these functions in the machine naturally proceed from the mere arrangement of its organs, neither more nor less than do the movements of a clock, or other automation, from that of its weights and its wheels; so that, so far as these are concerned, it is not necessary to conceive any other vegetative or sensitive soul, nor any other principle of motion, or of life, than the blood and the spirits agitated by the fire which burns continually in the heart, and which is no wise essentially different from all the fires which exist in inanimate bodies."

The spirit of these passages is exactly that of the most advanced physiology of the present day; all that is necessary to make them coincide with our present physiology in form, is to represent the details of the working of the animal machinery in modern language, and by the aid of modern conceptions.

Most undoubtedly, the digestion of food in the human body is a purely chemical process; and the passage of the nutritive parts of that food into the blood, a physical operation. Beyond all question, the circulation of the blood is simply a matter of mechanism, and results from the structure and arrangement of the parts of the heart and vessels, from the contractility of those organs, and from the regulation of that contractility by an automatically acting nervous apparatus. The progress of physiology has further shown, that the contractility of the muscles and irritability of the nerves are purely the results of the molecular mechanism of those organs; and that the regular movements of the respiratory, alimentary, and other internal organs are governed and guided, as mechanically, by their appropriate nervous centres. The even rhythm of the breathing of every one of us depends upon the structural integrity of a particular region of the medulla oblongata, as much as the ticking of a clock depends upon the integrity of the escapement. You may take away the hands of a clock and break up its striking machinery, but it will still tick; and a man may be unable to feel, speak, or move, and yet he will breathe.

Again, in entire accordance with Descartes' affirmation, it is certain that the modes of motion which constitute the physical basis of light, sound, and heat, are transmuted into affections of nervous matter by the sensory organs. These affections are, so to speak, a kind of physical ideas, which are retained in the central organs, constituting what might be called physical memory, and may be combined in a manner which answers to association and imagination, or may give rise to muscular contractions, in those "reflex actions" which are the mechanical representatives of volition.

Consider what happens when a blow is aimed at the eye. Instantly, and without our knowledge or will, and even against the will, the eyelids close. What is it that happens? A picture of the rapidly advancing fist is made upon the retina at the back of the eye. The retina changes this picture into an affection of a number of the fibres of the optic nerve; the fibres of the optic nerve affect certain parts of the brain; the brain, in consequence, affects those particular fibres of the seventh nerve which go to the orbicular muscle of the eyelids; the change in these nerve-fibres causes the muscular fibres to alter their dimensions, so as to become shorter and broader; and the result is the closing of the slit between the two lids, round which these fibres are disposed. Here is a pure mechanism, giving rise to a purposive action, and strictly comparable to that by which Descartes supposes his waterwork Diana to be moved. But we may go further, and inquire whether our volition, in what we term voluntary action, ever plays any other part than that of Descartes' engineer, sitting in his office, and turning this tap or the other, as he wishes to set one or another machine in motion, but exercising no direct influence upon the movements of the whole.

Our voluntary acts consist of two parts: firstly, we desire to perform a certain action; and, secondly, we somehow set a-going a machinery which does what we desire. But so little do we directly influence that machinery, that nine-tenths of us do not even know of its existence. Suppose one wills to raise one's arm and whirl it round. Nothing is easier. But the majority of us do not know that nerves and muscles are concerned in this process; and the best anatomist among us would be amazingly perplexed, if he were called upon to direct the succession, and the relative strength, of the multitudinous nerve-changes, which are the actual causes of this very simple operation. So again in speaking. How many of us know that the voice is produced in the larynx, and modified by the mouth? How many among these instructed persons understand how the voice is produced and modified? And what living man, if he had unlimited control over all the nerves supplying the mouth and larynx of another person, could make him pronounce a sentence? Yet, if one has anything to say, what is easier than to say it? We desire the utterance of certain words: we touch the spring of the word-machine, and they are spoken. Just as Descartes' engineer, when he wanted a particular hydraulic machine to play, had only to turn a tap, and what he wished was done. It is because the body is a machine that education is possible. Education is the formation of habits, a superinducing of an artificial organisation upon the natural organisation of the body; so that acts, which at first required a conscious effort, eventually became unconscious and mechanical. If the act which primarily requires a distinct consciousness and volition of its details, always needed the same effort, education would be an impossibility.

According to Descartes, then, all the functions which are common to man and animals are performed by the body as a mere mechanism, and he looks upon consciousness as the peculiar distinction of the "chose pensante," of the "rational soul," which in man (and in man only, in Descartes' opinion) is superadded to the body. This rational soul he conceived to be lodged in the pineal gland, as in a sort of central office; and here, by the intermediation of the animal spirits, it became aware of what was going on in the body, or influenced the operations of the body. Modern physiologists do not ascribe so exalted a function to the little pineal gland, but, in a vague sort of way, they adopt Descartes' principle, and suppose that the soul is lodged in the cortical part of the brain–at least this is commonly regarded as the seat an instrument of consciousness.

Descartes has clearly stated what he conceived to be the difference between spirit and matter. Matter is substance which has extension, but does not think; spirit is substance which thinks, but has no extension. It is very hard to form a definite notion of what this phraseology means, when it is taken in connection with the location of the soul in the pineal gland; and I can only represent it to myself as signifying that the soul is a mathematical point, having place but not extension, within the limits of the pineal body. Not only has it place, but it must exert force; for, according to this hypothesis, it is competent, when it wills, to change the course of the animal spirits, which consist of matter in motion. Thus the soul becomes a centre of force. But, at the same time, the distinction between spirit and matter vanishes; inasmuch as matter, according to a tenable hypothesis, may be nothing but a multitude of centres of force. The case is worse if we adopt the modern vague notion that consciousness is seated in the grey matter of the cerebrum, generally; for, as the grey matter has extension, that which is lodged in it must also have extension. And thus we are led, in another way, to lose spirit in matter.

In truth, Descartes' physiology, like the modern physiology of which it anticipates the spirit, leads straight to Materialism, so far as that title is rightly applicable to the doctrine that we have no knowledge of any thinking substance, apart from extended substance; and that thought is as much a function of matter as motion is. Thus we arrive at the singular result that, of the two paths opened up to us in the "Discourse upon Method," the one leads, by way of Berkeley and Hume, to Kant and Idealism; while the other leads, by way of De La Mettrie and Priestley, to modern physiology and Materialism. Our stem divides into two main branches, which grow in opposite ways, and bear flowers which look as different as they can well be. But each branch is sound and healthy and has as much life and vigour as the other.

If a botanist found this state of things in a new plant, I imagine that he might be inclined to think that his tree was monœcious–that the flowers were of different sexes, and that, so far from setting up a barrier between the two branches of the tree, the only hope of fertility lay in bringing them together. I may be taking too much of a naturalist's view of the case, but I must confess that this is exactly my notion of what is to be done with metaphysics and physics. Their differences are complementary, not antagonistic; and thought will never be completely fruitful until the one unites with the other. Let me try to explain what I mean. I hold, with the Materialist, that the human body, like all living bodies, is a machine, all the operations of which will, sooner or later, be explained on physical principles. I believe that we shall, sooner or later, arrive at a mechanical equivalent of consciousness, just as we have arrived at a mechanical equivalent of heat. If a pound weight falling through a distance of a foot gives rise to a definite amount of heat, which may properly be said to be its equivalent; the same pound weight falling through a foot on a man's hand gives rise to a definite amount of feeling, which might with equal propriety be said to be its equivalent in consciousness. And as we already know that there is a certain parity between the intensity of a pain and the strength of one's desire to get rid of that pain; and, secondly, that there is a certain correspondence between the intensity of the heat, or mechanical violence, which gives rise to the pain, and the pain itself; the possibility of the establishment of a correlation between mechanical force and volition becomes apparent. And the same conclusion is suggested by the fact that, within certain limits, the intensity of the mechanical force we exert is proportioned to the intensity of our desire to exert it.

Thus I am prepared to go with the Materialists wherever the true pursuit of the path of Descartes may lead them; and I am glad, on all occasions, to declare my belief that their fearless development of the materialistic aspect of these matters has had an immense, and a most beneficial, influence upon physiology and psychology. Nay, more, when they go farther than I think they are entitled to do–when they introduce Calvinism into science and declare that man is nothing but a machine, I do not see any particular harm in their doctrines, so long as they admit that which is a matter of experimental fact–namely, that it is a machine capable of adjusting itself within certain limits.

I protest that if some great Power would agree to make me always think what is true and do what is right, on condition of being turned into a sort of clock and wound up every morning before I got out of bed, I should instantly close with the offer. The only freedom I care about is the freedom to do right; the freedom to do wrong I am ready to part with on the cheapest terms to any one who will take it of me. But when the Materialists stray beyond the borders of their path and begin to talk about there being nothing else in the universe but Matter and Force and Necessary Laws, and all the rest of their "grenadiers," I decline to follow them. I go back to the point from which we started, and to the other path of Descartes. I remind you that we have already seen clearly and distinctly, and in a manner which admits of no doubt, that all our knowledge is a knowledge of states of consciousness. "Matter" and "Force" are, as far as we can know, mere names for certain forms of consciousness. "Necessary" means that of which we cannot conceive the contrary. "Law" means a rule which we have always found to hold good, and which we expect always will hold good. Thus it is an indisputable truth that what we call the material world is only known to us under the forms of the ideal world; and, as Descartes tells us, our knowledge of the soul is more intimate and certain than our knowledge of the body. If I say that impenetrability is a property of matter, all that I can really mean is that the consciousness I call extension, and the consciousness I call resistance, constantly accompany one another. Why and how they are thus related is a mystery. And if I say that thought is a property of matter, all that I can mean is that actually or possibly, the consciousness of extension and that of resistance accompany all other sorts of consciousness. But, as in the former case, why they are thus associated is an insoluble mystery.

From all this it follows that what I may term legitimate materialism, that is, the extension of the conceptions and of the methods of physical science to the highest as well as the lowest phænomena of vitality, is neither more nor less than a sort of shorthand Idealism; and Descartes' two paths meet at the summit of the mountain, though they set out on opposite sides of it.

The reconciliation of physics and metaphysics lies in the acknowledgment of faults upon both sides; in the confession by physics that all the phænomena of Nature are, in their ultimate analysis, known to us only as facts of consciousness; in the admission by metaphysics, that the facts of consciousness are, practically, interpretable only by the methods and the formulæ of physics: and, finally, in the observance by both metaphysical and physical thinkers of Descartes' maxim–assent to no proposition the matter of which is not so clear and distinct that it cannot be doubted.

When you did me the honour to ask me to deliver this address, I confess I was perplexed what topic to select. For you are emphatically and distinctly a Christian body; while science and philosophy, within the range of which lie all the topics on which I could venture to speak, are neither Christian, nor Unchristian, but are Extra-christian, and have a world of their own, which to use language which will be very familiar to your ears just now, is not only "unsectarian," but is altogether "secular." The arguments which I have put before you tonight, for example, are not inconsistent, so far as I know, with any form of theology.

After much consideration, I thought that I might be most useful to you, if I attempted to give you some vision of this Extra-christian world, as it appears to a person who lives a good deal in it; and if I tried to show you by what methods the dwellers therein try to distinguish truth from falsehood, in regard to some of the deepest and most difficult problems that beset humanity, "in order to be clear about their actions, and to walk surefootedly in this life," as Descartes says.

It struck me that if the execution of my project came anywhere near the conception of it, you would become aware that the philosophers and the men of science are not exactly what they are sometimes represented to you to be; and that their methods and paths do not lead so perpendicularly downwards as you are occasionally told they do. And I must admit, also, that a particular and personal motive weighed with me,–namely, the desire to show that a certain discourse, which brought a great storm about my head some time ago, contained nothing but the ultimate development of the views of the father of modern philosophy. I do not know if I have been quite wise in allowing this last motive to weigh with me. They say that the most dangerous thing one can do in a thunderstorm is to shelter oneself under a great tree, and the history of Descartes' life shows how narrowly he escaped being riven by the lightnings, which were more destructive in his time than in ours.

Descartes lived and died a good Catholic, and prided himself upon having demonstrated the existence of God and of the soul of man. As a reward for his exertions, his old friends the Jesuits put his works upon the "Index," and called him an Atheist; while the Protestant divines of Holland declared him to be both a Jesuit and an Atheist. His books narrowly escaped being burned by the hangman; the fate of Vanini was dangled before his eyes; and the misfortunes of Galileo so alarmed him, that he well-nigh renounced the pursuits by which the world has so greatly benefited, and was driven into subterfuges and evasions which were not worthy of him.

"Very cowardly," you may say; and so it was. But you must make allowance for the fact that, in the seventeenth century, not only did heresy mean possible burning, or imprisonment, but the very suspicion of it destroyed a man's peace, and rendered the calm pursuit of truth difficult or impossible. I fancy that Descartes was a man to care more about being worried and disturbed, than about being burned outright; and, like many other men, sacrificed for the sake of peace and quietness, what he would have stubbornly maintained against downright violence. However this may be, let those who are sure they would have done better throw stones at him. I have no feelings but those of gratitude and reverence for the man who did what he did, when he did; and a sort of shame that any one should repine against taking a fair share of such treatment as the world thought good enough for him.

Finally, it occurs to me that, such being my feeling about the matter, it may be useful to all of us if I ask you, "What is yours? Do you think that the Christianity of the seventeenth century looks nobler and more attractive for such treatment of such a man?" You will hardly reply that it does. But if it does not, may it not be well if all of you do what lies within your power to prevent the Christianity of the nineteenth century from repeating the scandal?

There are one or two living men, who, a couple of centuries hence, will be remembered as Descartes is now, because they have produced great thoughts which will live and grow as long as mankind lasts.

If the twenty-first century studies their history, it will find that the Christianity of the middle of the nineteenth century recognised them only as objects of vilification. It is for you and such as you, Christian young men, to say whether this shall be as true of the Christianity of the future as it is of that of the present. I appeal to you to say "No," in your own interest, and in that of the Christianity you profess.

In the interest of Science, no appeal is needful; as Dante sings of Fortune–

"Quest' è colei, ch'è tanto posta in croce
Pur da color, cho le dovrian dar lode
Dandole biasmo a torto e mala voce.
Ma ella s' è beata, e ciò non ode:
Con l' altre prime creature lieta
Volve sua spera, e beata si gode:"*

so, whatever evil voices may rage, Science, secure among the powers that are eternal, will do her work and be blessed.

* "And this is she who's put on cross so much
Even by them who ought to give her praise,
Giving her wrongly ill repute and blame.
But she is blessed, and she hears not this:
She, with the other primal creatures, glad
Revolves her sphere, and blessed joys herself."
Inferno, vii. 90–96 (W. M. Rossetti's Translation).

[I highly recommend the online, annotated version of this essay found at The Huxley File website. Here is a direct link to this particular piece by Huxley at that site: http://aleph0.clarku.edu/huxley/CE1/DesDis.html]

Michael Psellos: An 11th Century Pagan?

According to Anthony Kaldellis, in his 2007 Hellenism in Byzantium:

[Michael] Psellos appeared almost out of nowhere and very self-consciously revolutionized intellectual life without regard for our categories and narratives. He is especially important for the revival of Byzantine Hellenism, which sprung from him like Athena from the head of Zeus, disrupting any notion of a gradual development. In fact, it took his intellectual and literary heirs long to absorb his thought, and few would go so far as he did in replacing the Christian component of Byzantine culture with Greek philosophical alternatives.
[p. 191]

Psellos was born in the year 1018 in Constantinople, the capitol of the Roman, aka, "Byzantine" Empire (aka "Romania", aka "Imperium Graecorum"). In 1045, under the Emperor Konstantinos IX Monomachos (reigned 1042-1055) Psellos was asked, along with his friend Ioannes Xiphilinos, to reform the higher educational system of the capitol city. Xiphilinos was put in charge of legal education and Psellos was put in charge philosophy. Psellos's title was "Consul of the Philosophers".

Psellos was a brilliant and ambitious young man, and for the moment it appeared as if the Fates were smiling on him. However, he had chosen not only to lead an active and very public life as a philosopher and teacher, but to aggressively pursue a political career, after the manner of the day, in order to maximize his influence. And Byzantine politics were, well, Byzantine:

By the early 1050's Psellos's circle was losing power at the court. His friends were fleeing the capital, some of them becoming monks. He himself was accused of harboring non-Christian beliefs, and was required to produce a confession of orthodoxy.
[p. 193]

Michael Psellos eventually fled the capital himself and was briefly a monk, living from 1054 to 1055 in a monastery situated on Mt. Olympos in Bythnia. He hated it. According to Kaldellis, he afterward "exchanged acerbic letters and poems" with some of his former monastic brothers, one of whom taunted him as follows: "Father Zeus, you could not endure Olympos even briefly, your Goddesses weren't there with you." [Hellenism in Byzantium, p. 213]

Psellos afterwards openly opposed and even ridiculed the institution of monasticism and called for the state to confiscate the bulk of the monasteries' property and wealth in order, Psellos claimed, to better assist the brothers in their quest to renounce the world. He also publicly exposed one of the monks on Olympos who was an especially heavy drinker. He was adamantly opposed to what he saw as the world-hating world-view of Christianity. According to Kaldellis, Psellos favored "the concept of the 'politcal man', a man educated enough to adorn the state with culture but discerning and morally flexible enough to do what the times demanded." [p. 213]

In his most famous work, Psellos explained his project of philosophical revival:

You who are reading my book today will confirm that I found philosophy only after it had breathed its last, at least as far as its own exponents were concerned, and I alone revived it with my own powers, having found no worthwhile teachers, nor even a seed of wisdom in Greece or the the barbarian lands, though I searched everywhere.
[Chronographia, 6.37, Kaldellis' translation]

Psellos made a point of insisting that "whatever small part of wisdom" he possessed came "from no living fount", while at the same time praising Plato, Plotinus, Poprhyry, Iamblichus, and, most especially, Proclus, each by by name. And he is just as explicit and specific in his claim that neither Constantinople nor Rome "nor any other city is flourishing in the logoi". [6.43]

As Kaldellis explains

What he [Psellos] has in mind once flourished in cities such as Athens and Alexandria, he tells us, but apparently does so no longer. It's 'living fount' and 'pure stream' have been 'choked up' -- for how long, one wonders? And who blocked them up? Its sources are Plato, Aristotle and Proklos. These thinkers form the basis of Psellos' philosophical revolution.
[p. 194]

In his earlier (1999) work, The Argument of Psellos' Chronographia, Anthony Kaldellis offers the opinion that in his writings Psellos was "not being entirely straightforward and honest." In particular, Kaldellis feels that Psellos' "most puzzling and obscure expressions are reserved for discussions of religion, especially his own personal beliefs. This would certainly not have been the case were his views entirely Orthodox, or, for that matter, Christian." [p. 116]

Kaldellis pays particular attention to Psellos' account (in Chronographia 6.168-168) of his own actions on behalf of "certain men [who] went so far as to malign the Lord Himself." These men were condemned by the Emperor to either exile, house arrest, or to be placed in chains. The Emperor also declared that these punishments would be permanent. Psellos describes how he gently but persistently advocated on behalf of these "most evil men", until Constantine relented and granted them clemency:

Significantly, Psellos did not propose that they should be released on condition that they repent, and, even though he undermined Constantine's resolution to punish them, he did not suggest an alternative deterrent for their attacks against the Lord. In effect, under the guise of clemency, he [Psellos] persuaded the Emperor to tolerate and pardon blasphemy .... One suspected blasphemer turns out to be the patron of blasphemers at court.
[p. 117]

The question of the religious identity of historical persons is often far from straightforward. Public figures such as Bob Dylan, Tony Blair, George Gemistos Plethon, and Marsilio Ficino have demonstrated that it is possible to keep people guessing for decades or even centuries about a person's real religious beliefs. At the very least, to the extent that there must remain a question mark at the end of any statement linking Michael Psellos to Paganism, the same is just as true of any statement linking Psellos to Christianity.

See also these other relevant posts on the question of religious identity, and whether or not there were Pagans during the Middle Ages and Renaissance:
"Gotta Serve Somebody"
The Varieties and Vagaries of Religious Adherence
A Gentlemen's Agreement
I have also written previously about Kaldellis' work here:
Which Plato and Which Platonism?
Seek and Ye Shall Find

We really need to work on those poker faces, people!!!!

When I saw the banner headline at the Huffington Post pronouncing "The Death of the Public Option" last week, I barely took notice. Only gradually did I realize what was going on. And it almost worked.

I only wish more liberals had attacked Obama for abandoning the Public Option. There should have been a loud and sustained weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth coming from the left. There should have been renewed interest in the "Obamican phenomenon", and people should have started digging up quotes from back during the primaries when Rupert Murdoch was saying nice things about Obama, and Paul Krugman was openly questioning his commitment to universal health care.

But instead too many of you just couldn't contain yourselves. When you heard that an expansion of Medicare was on the table you acted like a novice poker player who had just been dealt the ace that completes your royal flush.. "Oh Goodie!!!" you signaled, all too audibly, "THIS is EXACTLY what I was hoping for!!"

Remember, people, the next time there is a major legislative breakthrough that could move us significantly closer to genuine universal health care on the single payer model: be cool, dammit. Be cool. Especially as long as Joe Lieberman is still in the Senate.

Widukind and the Bielski Brothers

Gods, I love the Saxons. They put the Bad in Pagan Bad-Ass. They fought Charlemagne's father, Pepin, who struggled throughout his reign just to protect his own territories, never able to decisively defeat the Saxons on their own turf, beyond the Frankish frontier. And after Pepin was dead, the Saxons fought on. In 772, Charlemagne managed to penetrate deep into Saxon territory and destroy their most holy sanctuary, which contained "Irminsul", a sacred monument whose appearance, construction, and religious meaning is still almost a complete mystery. But the Saxons fought on.  In a single day in 782 Charlemagne slaughtered 4,500 unarmed, defeated Saxon warriors who had surrendered and laid down their weapons. But the Saxons fought on.

Eventually the leader of the Saxons, Widukind, surrendered and accepted baptism in 785. Charlemagne was as brutal in victory as he had been in war, and he forcibly imposed Christianity on his conquered Saxon subjects, knowing that this was absolutely necessary in order to break the will and spirit of this stubbornly Pagan people. The performance of any Pagan rituals, including funerals, was made punishable by death. Any Saxon who refused to be baptized was to be put to death.

But in 793 the Saxons launched yet another uprising. This time Charlemagne realized he could not simply crush the revolt, so he also bought off the Saxon upper nobility, that is, after killing all those who couldn't be bought off. Even after that, sporadic fighting continued until at least 804.

But even that wasn't the end of things. In 841, a full century after Pepin had risen to be "Mayor of the Palace and Duke of the Franks",  the Pagan Saxons rose up in revolt once again, this time taking on both the Franks and their own sell-out nobility! This was the celebrated Stellinga uprising. The wily Saxons had seen their chance when infighting among the Carolingian royal family escalated into an all-out civil war.

Eventually the Stellinga uprising was also drowned in Saxon blood. Was it all for nothing? No.

I admire the Saxons for the same reason that I (and many others!) admire the Bielski Brothers, Quanah Parker, Nat Turner, Tupac Amaru, and John Brown. They fought. It's as simple as that. They fought.

There are those who would have us believe that Christianization has been a smooth, peaceful process. That meek Christian missionaries went humbly among the barbarous Pagans to convert them through peaceful persuasion and the excellence of their superior Christian way of life. But that is not how 1/3 the human race became Christian.

The Roman empire was not converted peacefully, but by imperial coercion and mob violence. The "barbarian" peoples of Europe were not converted peacefully, but by the sword and the spear. The indios of the western hemisphere were not converted peacefully, but by conquest and genocide. Half the population of Africa was not converted peacefully, but by enslavement and colonization (most of the other half already having been converted by the sword of Islam). But at each step in this process there have been those who fought back. And that is a damned good thing.

More than anything else, it is the spirit of resistance to coercive Christianization that binds modern Pagans to other peoples who have also struggled to retain their ancient religious traditions. And it is that spirit of resistance that binds modern Pagans to our ancient Pagan ancestors. It is the heart and soul of what makes Paganism the Old Religion.

Charlemagne, Part Deux: "A substantialy new Church was allied with a new political system." (ABHRM, Part Six)

[This post is a continuation from the post: Charlemagne (A Brief History of Revolutionary Monotheism [ABHRM], Part Five)]

"Committed ... to the 'correction' and education of their subjects."

The generalized cultural collapse in Roman Italy and what had previously been the western Roman provinces severely weakened the Orthodox (Nicene) Church in the west during the fifth through eighth centuries AD. During this time various heresies (especially but not exclusively Arianism) and even Paganism had more breathing room. In some places, such as Britain, Christianity as a whole declined, at least for a while. But this was not in any way the result of a change of heart or any kind of "liberalization" on the part of the Church.

More than anything else, the somewhat greater religious diversity that is apparent in the west during the darkest of the Dark Ages reveals the extent to which the spread of Christianity (as well as the imposition of one and only one monolithic form of Christianity) had been and continued to be dependent on state sponsored violence. Without a strong, centralized and repressive state as an ally, Christianity in the west was in trouble. But a new saviour arrived late in the 8th century: Charlemagne.

As a direct result of the intervening Dark Age, the resurgent western Christianity that thrived in Charlegmagne's bloody wake was a fundamentally changed religion. For one thing, a Church whose bishops and most prestigious "theologians" and "philosophers", such as they were, could not read Greek (and had no interest in learning how) could make no serious claim of seamless continuity with the Christianity of the early "church fathers" who had styled themselves as the heirs and continuators of classical Hellenic culture and philosophy. Compare the Buddhists of Korea (2500 miles from India), who have maintained a strong continuous tradition of Sanskrit studies (because that is the language of the Mahayana Sutras) since soon after Buddhism was first introduced to the "hermit kingdom" in the 4th century AD up to the present day, with the new western Christendom whose "scholars" could not be bothered to learn the language in which the Gospels, the epistles of Paul, and the Nicene Creed had been written!

But what the new Christendom of the West lacked in intellectual curiosity and capacity it more than made up for in cruelty and ferocity, as becomes abundantly clear in the following extended excerpts from Alessandro Barbero's Charlemagne: Father of a Continent, and also Peter Brown's The Rise of Western Christendom.

Charles [Charlemagne] had not set himself the declared aim of converting the Saxons to Christianity right from the very beginning. Before him, his father and grandfather had fought against them, and on each occasion, after having defeated them, they were satisfied with the payment of tribute. Einhard [c.775-840, Frankish courtier and biographer of Charlemagne] who was writing when the wounds had had time to heal and could have easily attributed Charles's campaigns beyond the Rhine to reassuring predestinations, actually asserts in very pragmatic terms that 'there were too many reasons for disturbing the peace, for example the border between us and them crossed an open plain, except in a few places where great forests or mountain chains more clearly divided the two countries. Thus murder, raids, and arson were continuously committed by one side or the other.' In the chronicler's opinion, this insecurity of the frontier with the barbarians inevitably meant that 'in the end the exasperated Franks could no longer be contented with returning each blow with another and decided to wage full-scale war against them.'

It is clear that religious motivations were inextricably bound up with political ones, as since the time of Charles Martel I [c. 688-741], Frankish swords had sustained missionary work beyond the Rhine. One of the conditions that Pepin [714-768] imposed on the defeated Saxons was the guarantee that the Frankish and Anglo-Saxon clergy working in the area would be free to continue their apostolic tasks without hindrance. It must have appeared obvious to some of these missionaries that Charles's war had a religious justification. 'If you do not accept belief in God,' Saint Lebuin told the Saxons, 'there is a king in the next country who will enter your land, conquer it, and lay waste.' But the Saxons obstinately refused to believe, so in the end that king had to make his move.

It was a ferocious war in a country with little or no civilization, with neither roads nor cities, and entirely covered with forests and marshland. The Saxons sacrificed prisoners of war to their Gods, as Germans had aways done before converting to Christianity, and the Franks did not hesitate to put to death anyone who refused to be baptized. Time and again the Saxon chiefs, worn down by war with no quarter, sued for peace, offered hostages, accepted baptism, and undertook to allow missionaries to go about their work. But every time that vigilance slackened and Charles was engaged on some other front, rebellions broke out, Frankish garrisons were attacked and massacred, and monasteries were pillaged. Even the border regions of the Frankish kingdom were not safe. In 778, when Saxons found out that the king and his army were engaged on the other side of the Pyrenees, and would not be able to return before many weeks of forced marches, they appeared in the Rhine Valley. Local commanders had great difficulty in containing them, and then only after much devastation and plunder.

During the period of these rebellions, the figure of a single leader
emerged from among the Saxon ranks. His name was Prince Widukind, and his authority was acknowledged by all the tribes. Just at the time when Charles felt confident that he had pacified the region and gained the loyalty of the Saxon nobles, it was this leader who triggered the most spectacular rebellion by wiping out the Frankish forces hurriedly sent to confront him on the Suntel Mountains in 782. Beside himself with anger at the treachery that had also cost him the lives of two of his closest aides, his chamberlain Adalgisile and his constable Geilo, Charles bround in a new army and forced the rebels to capitulate, with the exception of Widukind, who took refuge with the Danes. The Saxons had to hand over their arms and then, when he had them in his power, he had 4,500 of them decapitated in a single day at the Verden on the Aller, a tributary of the Weser. This episode produced perhaps the greatest stain on his reputation.

Several historians have attempted to lessen Charle's responsibility for the massacre, by stressing that until a few months earlier the king thought he had pacified the country, the Saxon nobles had sworn allegiance, and many of them had been appointed counts. Thus the rebellion constituted an act of treason punishable with death, the same penalty that the extremely harsh Saxon law imposed with great facility, even for the most insignificant crimes. Others have attempted to twist the accounts provided by sources, arguing that the Saxons were killed in battle and not massacred in cold blood, or even that the verb decollare (decapitate) was a copyist's error in place of decolare (relocate), so ther prisoners were simply deported. None of these attempts has proved credible ....

In reality, the most likely inspiration for the mass execution of Verden was the Bible. Exasperated by the continual rebellions, Charlemagne wanted to act like a true king of Israel. The Amelkites had dared to raise their hand to betray God's people, and it was therefore right that every last one of them should be exterminated. Jericho was taken all those inside had to be put to the sword, including men, women, old people, and children, even the oxen, sheep, and donkeys, so that no trace would be left of them. After defeating the Moabites, David, with whom Charles liked to compare himself, had the prisoners stretched out on the and ground, and two out of three were killed. This, too, was part of the Old Testament from which teh king drew constant inspiration, and it is difficult not to discern a practical and cruelly coherent application of that model in the massacre of Verden. Besides, the royal chronicler wrote a few years later, the war against the Saxons had to be conducted in such a manner that 'either they were defeated and subjugated to the Christian religion of completely swept away.'

In the years that followed 782, Charles conducted a war of unparalleled ruthlessness. For the first time, he wintered in enemy territory and systematically laid the country to waste to starve the rebels. At the same time, he had published the most ferocious of all the laws enacted during his life, the Capitulare de partibus Saxonie, which imposed the death penalty on anyone who offended the Christian religion and its clergy, and in reality it constituted a program for the forced conversion of the Saxons. We can only shudder as we read the sections of this law that condemn to death those who fail to observe fasting on Friday, thus reflecting a harsh Christianity far removed from the original message of the New Testament [bollocks]. Yet we should be careful not to put the blame for this barbarity onto the times in general. The Capitulare de partibus Saxonie is one of those provisions by which an infuriated general attempts to break the resistance of an entire people through terror, and Charles must bear the moral responsibility, like the many twentieth-century generals responsible for equally inhuman measures. It is more important to emphasize that the edict provoked criticisms among Charles's entourage precisely because of its ruthlessness. Particularly severe criticisms came from Alcuin, the spiritual adviser he most listened to.

The policy of terror and scorched earth initially appeared to pay off. In 785, after the Franks has ravaged the country as far as the Elbe, Widukind was obliged to capitulate, and he presented himself at the palace of Attigny in France to be baptized. The king acted as godfather. Pope Adrian congratulated the victor and ordered thanks to be given in all the churches of Christendom for the new and magnificent victory for the faith. But the baptism imposed by force did not prove very effective. In 793 the harshness of Frankish government ferocity provoked another mass insurrection in the northern regions of Saxony, which had been more superficially Christianized. 'Once again breaking their faith,' according to the royal chronicler, the Saxons burned churches, massacred clergymen, and prepared yet again to resist in their forests.

Charles intervened with now customary ferocity, indeed with even more drastic and frighteningly modern measures. Rather than limit himself to devastating the rebel country and starving the population, he deported them en masse and planned the resettlement of those areas with Frankish and Slav colonists. However, he was an able politician and soon understood the need to modify his approach to the problem. He intensified his contacts with the Saxon aristocracy and sought out their collaboration. At a large assembly in Aachen in 797, he isssued on their advice a new version of the capitulary that was considerably more conciliatory than the previous one. This twin policy proved immediately effective, because it guaranteed almost definitively the collaboration of the Saxon nobles with the new regime. Eigil, the monk at Fulda monastery who wrote the account of Abbot Sturmi's life, stated during those very years that Charles had imposed Christ's yoke on the Saxons 'through war, persuasion, and also gifts,' demonstrating that he well understood how a new flexibility had made it possible to integrate those obstinate Pagans into the Christian empire.
[Charlemagne: Father of a Continent, Alessandro Barbero, pp. 44-48]

Compare the above passage from Barbero with the following from Peter Brown's The Rise of Western Christendom:

Charlemagne proved to be a man of truly "Napoleanic" energy and width of vision. He was constantly on the move and constantly planning. In one year alone (in 785) he covered 2,000 miles, pacing the frontiers of his new dominions. Such energy boded ill for the Old Saxons. The fate of the Pagan Saxons was crucial to Charles' new concept of Christian empire. Not only were Saxons Pagan, they were a surprisingly aggressive warrior confederacy whose raids affected precisely the areas in central Germany werhe Frankish settlement and a Frankish style of life had begun to be established.

As had once been the case along the Roman limes, so now in the eighth century, part of the danger posed by the Saxon challenge came from the fact that Franks and Saxons had drawn closer to each other. Saxon noblemen had already come to adopt a large measure of Frankish customs. Yet, like King Radbod [of Frisia], they clung all the more tenaciously to Paganism so as to differentiate themselves from the Franks. It was all the more essential for the prestige of the Carolingian family that the Saxons, who come to adopt so much of Franksih ways, should be declared to be outside the pale as Pagans, and that, as Pagans, they should be well and truly defeated.

In 772, Charlemagne led the Franks into Saxony. They were said to have desecrated the great intertribal sanctuary of the Irminsul, the giant tree which uphead the world. They rode home again, with much plunder, in time for the hunting season in the Ardennes. Next spring the Franks were in northern Italy. In 774, Charles became king, also, of the Lombards. He even made a short visit to Rome. It was the first time that a Frankish king had set foot in Rome. It was also the first time since the fifth century that a western ruler of such power had been greeted in Rome with the sort of elaborate ceremonies which the Romans know so well how to put on. Charles entered Saint Peter's and, next day, was led through the gigantic basilica churches of the city. In return, Charles proved to be a generous donor. An influx of Frankish silver marked a dramatic recovery in the fortunes of the popes, which was made plain by an unprecedented boom in buildings and repairs.

But it was in Germany, and not in Italy, that Charles showed himself to be a ruler as determined to be obeyed in all matters as any Roman emperor had been. The Saxon war was fought along the same routes into northern Germany as had been taken the legions of Augustus. But this time, unlike Augustus who lost his legions in the Teutoburger Wald, Charlemagne won. It was an unusually vehement war, characterized by the storming, one after another, of well-defended hill-forts. The very flexibility of the kingless society of the Old Saxons prolonged the misery. Total surrender of the Saxons as a whole was impossible. Fifteen treaties were made and broken in 13 years. One Saxon nobelman, Widukind, was able to avoid submission for decades on end. He fled to the Danes and involved even the Pagans of Frisia in his resistance.

For a decade, and entire Frankish order was challenged in the north. Charles found himself forced to take over more territory than he had, perhaps, at first intended to do. He pressed on from the Weser to the Elbe, entering the northern healthlands as far as the Danes. The populations of whole areas were forcibly relocated. In 782, he had 4,500 Saxon prisoners beheaded at Verden, southeast of Bremen....

In 785, Widukind finally submitted and accepted Christian baptism. In the same year, Charles issued his Capitulary on the Region of Saxony. A Capitulary was a set of administrative rulings "from the word of mouth of the king," grouped under capita, short headings. These were very different in their brusque clarity from the long-winded rhetoric of Roman imperial edicts. They registered, in writing, the invisible, purely oral shock wave of the royal will. The royal will was unambiguous. In theory at least, the frontier was now definitively closed. No other rituals but those of the Christian Church could be practiced in a Frankish province.

"If anyone follows pagan rites and causes the body of a dead man to be consumed by fire ... let him pay with his life.

"If there is anyone of the Saxon people lurking among them unbapitized, amd of he scorns to come to baptism and wishes to absent himself and stay a pagan, let him die."

A small body of clergymen (notably Alcuin, a Saxon from Boniface's Britain, who was himself connected with the family of Willibrod) were challenged by the brusqueness to restate, more forcibly than ever before, a view of Christian missions which emphasized preaching and persuasion. But, in fact, when it came to Charlemagne's treatment of the Saxons, most later writers took no notice of Alcuin's reservations. They accepted the fact that, as befitted a strong king, Charlemagne was entitled to preach to the Saxons 'with a tongue of iron' -- as a later Saxon writer put it without a hint of blame. Force was what was needed on a dangerous frontier. Education began, rather, at home. IN the reigns of Charlemagne and his successors, a substantially new Church was allied with a new political system, both of which were committed, to a quite unprecedented degree, to the "correction" and education of their subjects.
[The Rise of Western Christendom, Peter Brown, pp. 431-433]

See also (links NOT automatically generated):
Roman Catholicism (A brief history of Revolutionary Monotheism, Part Seven)
Charlemagne, Part Deux (A brief history of Revolutionary Monotheism, Part Six)
Charlemagne (A Brief History of Revolutionary Monotheism, Part Five)
Paganism is not a European Religion
Muhammad (A brief history of Revolutionary Monotheism, Part Four)
Constantine (A brief history of Revolutionary Monotheism, Part Three)
Moses (A Brief History of Revolutionary Monotheism, Part Two)
Akhenaten (A Brief History of Revolutionary Monotheism, Part One)
Monotheistic Robots of Doom, Part Deux
Monotheistic Robots of Doom
Lies, Damned Lies, and Pagan Monotheism
Hic Sunt Dracones

Everyone Already Knows What Paganism Is

It seems fair to infer from that universality, however, some set of broadly shared religious ideas and practices ... to put it in other words, the thing so arrogantly called Paganism, being in fact all the many hundreds of the Empire's religions save one, must really have shared certain widespread characteristics.
[Paganism in the Roman Empire by Ramsay MacMullen, p. xii]

Starting early in the 4th century AD a religious conflict unfolded in the Roman world between the followers of a new religious movement that declared theirs to be the one and only true faith and, well, everyone else.

Modern day Christians are the spiritual heirs of those who seized control of the Roman state apparatus and used that power to impose their belief in one and only one God on others by force and violence. Modern day Pagans are the spiritual heirs of those who actively resisted this process of coercive Christianization and who stubbornly persisted in worshiping their old, tolerant Gods and following their old, traditional ways.

The Roman world at the time, by the way, was not "European". The bulk of the Roman population, and the bulk of Rome's wealth, was in it's Asiatic and African provinces.

If long passage of time lends validity to religious observances, we ought to keep faith with so many centuries, we ought to follow our forefathers who followed their forefathers and were blessed in so doing.... let me continue to practice my ancient ceremonies, for I do not regret them. Let me live in my own way, for I am free.
[Symmachus (c.340 - c.402 AD)]

Paganism is Indigenous and very, very old -- but it is not limited to "Europe", and it is not "Ethnic"

The roots of modern Paganism long predate the modern conception of "Europe". It is true that the 2nd century (AD) Pagan polymath Ptolemy labeled part of his maps of the world "EVROPA" (well, something like that, but in Greek), and that this more or less corresponds to where we think of Europe being today. But it is also true that this famous "Greek" scientist was sitting at his desk in the great Library of Alexandria when he drew these maps. Alexandria, of course, was on the part of Ptolemy's map labeled "AFFRICA" (see map).

Those who wish to redefine Paganism as intrinsically European show their ignorance of both history and geography, and, much more importantly, of what it means to be Pagan. Precisely the same thing is true of those who want to redefine Paganism as a "New Religious Movement".

There are two things to be clear about: being a Pagan sure as hell doesn't mean being European, and being a Pagan has absolutely nothing to do with being a member of any particular "ethnic" group.

Modern Paganisms' roots are as wide as they are deep. No one can deny the strong influences of the pre-Christian religious traditions of Celts, Germans, Balts, Slavs and others on modern Paganism. But at the same time no one can with any justification deny the Egyptian, Phrygian, Semitic, Chaldean and other "non-European" influences that are an integral part of modern Paganism. Just as the influence of Greco-Roman Paganism, which straddled Asia, Africa and Europe, cannot be questioned.

We know for a fact that ancient Pagans did not recognize clear bright lines neatly separating the "pantheons" of one "people" from their neighbors, or even from those on other "continents". Greeks and Romans worshipped the Phrygian Great Goddess Cybele. Hellenized Romans spread the worship of Egyptian Isis to far flung Britain and Germania. Wandering priests of Dionysos spread the good news of the dying God who yet lives (and who is the son of God, and who promises eternal life) to Africa, Asia and throughout Europe.

At the very least ancient Pagans were tolerant and respectful of the Goddesses and Gods of "others". But often they went far beyond this and eagerly embraced new exotic cults and practices. Of course there were also always those whose mental and spiritual universe was much more narrowly confined, but even these did not question the validity of "foreign" Gods, if for no other reason than for the very good reason of fear of blasphemy.

Here is some suggested light reading:

The Rise and Fall of Alexandria, Birthplace of the Modern World by Justin Pollard and Howard Reid

Religions of the Hellenistic Roman Age by Antonia Tripolitis

Ancient Religions, edited by Sarah Iles Johnston

Babylon, Memphis, Persepolis: Eastern Contexts of Greek Culture by Walter Burkert

Religion in the Roman Empire by James B. Rives

And for extra credit:

Athenian Religion: A History by Robert Parker

In Search of God the Mother: The Cult of Anatolian Cybele by Lynn Roller

Black Athena: The Afro-Asiatic Roots of Classical Civilization by Martin Bernal

The East Face of Helicon: West Asiatic Elements in Greek Poetry and Myth by Martin Lichtfield West

The Orientalizing Revolution: Near Eastern Influence on Greek Culture in the Early Archaic Age by Walter Burkert

Polytheism and Society at Athens by Robert Parker

Hekate Soteira by Sarah Iles Johnston

Charlemagne (A Brief History of Revolutionary Monotheism, Part Five)

Father of a "Continent"?

[W]arfare accompanied him throughout almost every year of his life. The harshest war, and the one most fraught with complications, was the war against the Saxons, which lasted for more than twenty years, took the borders of Christendom to the banks of the Elbe, and incorporated the entire breadth of the German regions within the Frankish kingdom. Back in 772 Charles had already gathered his warriors and led them against the Pagans of the north to achieve a spectacular victory: they took the principle Saxon sanctuary, the Irminsul, where the sacred tree stood. The tree that according to the Saxons held up the heavens had been burned, and the Saxon idols destroyed. But these punitive expeditions had to be repeated every year, because the Saxons resisted with all their force a subjugation that implied both the loss of all their tribal independence and the abandonment of their ancestral beliefs.
[Charlemagne: Father of a Continent, by Alessandro Barbero, p. 44]

Alessandro Barbero's deservedly acclaimed biography of Charlemagne is subtitled Father of a Continent. But how can a political figure from 1200 years ago be the "father of a continent"? Isn't the formation of a continent a process governed by plate tectonics, not politics and human history, and doesn't it take hundreds of millions of years?

Well, it turns out that there are continents and then there are continents. In this case the "Continent" that Charlemagne gave birth to isn't really a "continent" at all, nor was it even "Europe" (whatever "Europe" might be). What Charlemagne gave birth to was what we today euphemistically refer to as "The West", and this "West" is, in fact, a handful of powerful nation-states that came into existence in Charlemagne's bloody wake and who, a thousand years later, found themselves ruling nearly the entire planet earth.

This same "West" is also the homeland for the two flavors of "western" Christianity: Catholicism and Protestantism. Prior to Charlemagne, Christianity was a distinctly eastern (and distinctly "Greek") religion, and proud of it (see for example the early chapters of Peter Brown's The Rise of Western Christendom, hereafter referred to as RWC). The strategic alliance of the Frankish barbarian king Charlemagne with the Bishop of Rome marks the true beginning of an independent western, "Latin" Christianity, and this eventually led to the Great Schism in which Latin Catholics and Greek Orthodox mutually excommunicated each other in 1054. And it was this distinctly western Christianity that gave us the Inquisition; the Witch-Hunts; the murderous religious wars also known as "the Reformation"; the theological justification for the African slave-trade; the cultural genocide that attempted, and largely succeeded, in annihilating every religious tradition on half of the planet (the western hemisphere); and European colonialism (which was always and everywhere carried out in the name of spreading the Gospel, and in which the Church was an eager and important participant).

Modern Christianity is overwhelmingly dominated by Catholicism and Protestantism, neither of which existed in the late 8th century AD when Charlemagne succeeded his father, King Pepin of the Franks. But even the vast majority of those Christians who are neither Catholic nor Protestant are European Christians who are members of the various Orthodox Churches of Russia, Greece, Bulgaria, etc. Charlemagne did not single handedly start, or bring to its culmination, the process by which Europe became Christian and Christianity became European. But his violent life and times are universally recognized as one of the key milestones along that road.

A Brief Prehistory of "The West"
The part of the earth in which the western nation-states (and western Christianity) eventually arose was on the furthest fringes of the great civilizations of the ancient world. What little cultural progress (measured in terms of things like writing, urbanization, engineering, science, trade and commerce) the peoples of western and northern Europe had made mostly (and quickly) disintegrated not long after the process of Christianization took root early in the fourth century (after Constantine's dream or vision or whatever it was). Two of the most dramatic and telling markers of this decline were (1) the rapid depopulation of urban centers (the city of Rome herself lost 90% of it's population in 100 years, going from 500,000 to 50,000 inhabitants from 450 to 550 AD [RWC, p. 21]), and (2) a comparable decline in the quantity and quality of the historical record (thus resulting directly in the great paucity of written sources documenting this time period).

Although the phrase Dark Ages is often misunderstood and sometimes misused, it nevertheless expresses a very real cultural collapse that begins (roughly speaking) with the sacking of Rome by Alaric and his (Christian) Visigoths in 410, and ends sometime between the year 800, when Charlemagne was crowned "Emperor", and the year 1000, when the "High Middle Ages" officially begin. As with all periodization schemes, the beginning and ending points of this Dark Age are somewhat arbitrary, but the historical process of cultural, economic, technological and demographic decline followed by a pronounced and sustained recovery in all of those areas is an objective reality and not merely some dreamed-up "social construct".

The center of gravity of the Greco-Roman world had always been in the East and the South. Culturally the city of Alexandria ruled supreme. This was where Euclid wrote his Elements, where Ptolemy wrote his Almagest and Geographia, and where Eratoshthenes calculated the circumference of the earth. It was also where Callimachus wrote his Hymns, where Apollonius wrote his Argonautica, and where Aristarchus produced his critical editions of the Iliad and the Odyssey. Alexandria was also an economic powerhouse, as one of the most important exporters of grain in the ancient world, and it was also among the most populous cities on earth (probably the second or third largest city in the world).

As all students of "Byzantine" history know, the eastern Roman Empire was far more resilient than Roman Italy and the western provinces. In fact, Byzantium continued on until the middle of the 15th century! By then it had been much reduced in power and glory for many centuries already, but culturally and intellectually it remained a truly great power until the bitter end. And in the final years before the Ottomans finally took Constantinople, many Byzantine scholars, seeing the writing clearly written on that city's ancient and once inviolable walls, set themselves to spreading their learning in the West, and many went so far as to resettle among the Latin barbarians. The Italian Renaissance was largely a result of this migration both of knowledge and the custodians of that knowledge, from the Greek East to Latin West.

So the Dark Ages were a distinctly "western" phenomenon. As already alluded to, and in sharp contrast to Byzantium, Roman political, military and economic power in the west eroded alarmingly (although perhaps "vanished" is the right word) during the 5th-7th centuries. Weak successor states (some of them admittedly less weak than others) arose where Roman provinces had previously been. Christianity remained as the official state religion in most places that had been under Roman rule, but it was increasingly difficult or even impossible to impose credal uniformity even among the Church hierarchy, let alone among the laity (both high and low born). Lombards, Saxons, Visigoths, Ostrogoths, Avars, etc, (and perhaps even the Franks, although these were the most Christian of them all) remained, at least in part, Pagan, and even when they converted they usually could not be counted on to be orthodox. When the Lombards ended up in Italy some had become Christian and some hadn't, and those that had converted tended to be Arian, or at least tended to be hostile to the Pope in Rome politically, militarily and theologically. When Saxons moved into Britain they brought their Germanic Paganism with them and for a time Christianity declined on the very island where Constantine had first been proclaimed Augustus in 306 (in York).

Where do "peoples" come from?
But who exactly were these barbarian peoples with the funky names? There are two very different answers to that question:

Essentialist approach: Saxons, Lombards, Goths, etc., were already ancient, or at least well established and well defined, "peoples" when they entered the historical record. In particular each of these groups (and subgroups like the Ostrogoths and Visigoths) had their own distinctive "culture", including religious traditions, concepts of kingship, social and family structure, etc. These groups were also ethnically/genetically distinct from each other.

Ethnogenesis approach: Saxons, Lombards, Goths, etc., are, to a great extent arbitrary designations ("cultural constructs") for extremely fluid groups of people who were not at all well defined either in terms of "ethnicity" or "culture" or in any other way either prior to their appearance in the historical record, or subsequently. Instead these labels refer to groups that enter the historical record while still in the process of "ethnogenesis", a process that creates the idea of ethnically (that is, racially or even genetically) well defined groups -- but which does not, in fact, create the objective referent of that idea, although it can be part of the process of creating powerful political entities.

There are some very serious problems with both approaches, but the "ethnogenesis" approach has the advantage of hindsight, by virtue of being the more recently articulated theory, and, therefore, it does address the most obvious shortcomings of previous "essentialist" approaches. One of the most serious problems with the ethnogenesis approach is that it tends to be over-utilized as a blunt instrument in the service of faddish ideological polemics. Postmodernist types especially adore the theory of "ethnogenesis" because it provides them yet more opportunities to say "cultural construct" over and over again. But Christian apologists also are attracted to the theory because it allows them to give the impression that Germanic, Baltic, Slavic, etc Pagans had no real religions of their own prior to their contact with Christianity (thus exonerating them of the responsibility for suppressing the religions of those peoples, since they had none).

Patrick Geary's book The Myth of Nations well illustrates both the strengths and weaknesses of the anti-essentialist ethnogenesis approach. Geary is relentles, but only ocassionally tiresome, in his earnest polemical deconstructionism. Geary intends this book for a wide audience, and, therefore, subtlety is often just not part of his agenda. But his painting, broad strokes and all, is often accurate and is quite helpful in understanding recent trends in the black art of historiography, and it gives a very nice view from 30,000 feet of how we got from the Fall of Rome to the Rise of Europe. A less ideological, but also less accessible and more narrowly focussed, application of the anti-essentialist approach is to be found in Herwig Wolfram's The Roman Empire and its Germanic Peoples. Another important (and even more narrowly focussed) work on Dark Age ethnogenesis is Patrick Amory's People and Identity in Ostrogothic Italy, 489-554.

From Clovis to Charlemagne
Without getting bogged down in speculative (and as often as not ideologically driven) theoretical postures about where "peoples" come from, we do have to get into at least some of the nitty gritty of this period which is not only called the Dark Ages but is also called the Age of Migration, or even "The Barbarian Invasion of Europe", or alternatively, "The Barbarian Conversion". In order to simplify and focus the discussion in the remainder of this post, I will concentrate now on the developments that eventually led to Charlemagne's coronation as Emperor on Christmans Day, 800 AD. First let's go all the way back to King Clovis. Here is Peter Brown, from his Rise of Western Christendom:

After the 460's, northern Gaul resembled Britain. It was a land without an empire. It's leading inhabitants had begun to accept this fact. This is shown by a significant change in local burial customs. Romani and barbarians alike, whether Christian or pagan, came to be buried bearing arms ....

In this increasingly militarized world, the Franks were by no means newcomers. Many had served in the high command of the imperial armies in the fourth century. To take one example: Bauto, a Frankish chieftain in imperial service became consul in 385 .... Franks such as Bauto were already honorary Romans. They claimed to be descended, like the Romans, from the Trojans. Priam had been their first king. They had only recently -- so Franks close to the Rhine frontier -- come to Germany from ancient Troy!

Not every Frank was like Bauto. The Franks who were led by king Childeric, in the 470's, were wilder men. Childeric was a Merovingian. Later legends made the Merovingians the descendants of a Frankish queen who had coupled with a sea monster when swimming in the North Sea, the legendary home of heroes....

Childeric's son, Clovis -- Hlodovech, "glorious warrior" -- inhereted the many strands of his father's authority in Gaul. He was a pagan; yet he received a letter from Remigius, the Catholic bishop of Rheims: "May justice proceed from your mouth." From the very beginning, Clovis wished to be king of the Franks in a new, more forceful style....

The Lex Salica, the Laws of the Salian Franks [issued by Clovis, possibly around 486 AD], took the paganism of the Frankish inhabitants of the Rhine estuary for granted. It protected with special penalties the great gelded boars who have been set apart for sacrificial banquets: for boars were the bristling, magical guarantors of the waving growth of the cornfields. The law was particularly concerned to regulate the legal status of humble Frankish farmers over against the neighboring Romani. As Franci (perhaps from Frekkr, "the fierce ones"), weapon-bearing Franks, even the poorest, could still stand high in Gaul. But they were told all this in a Latin text, issued by a king who used Latin advisers. Clovis intended to rule Romans and Franks alike as firmly as had any Romanus.
[pp. 133-136]

As Clovis' long reign continued on into the early sixth century, the Visigoths ruling southern Gaul developed an increasingly cozy relationship with the Orthodox (Nicene) Church, despite the fact that the Visigoths themselves were Arian heretics. Clovis viewed this pan-Christian alliance as a potential threat. In 506, the Visigoth king Alaric II issued his own abbreviated version of the Theodosian Code, with the strong approval of Orthodox bishops. Then Alaric summoned a Council of Bishops, the first ever in Gaul, and in return the bishops openly prayed for the expansion of Alaric's kingdom.

Clovis' response to the threat from south was to visit the Orthodox Christian shrine of Saint Martin of Tours, in search of a sign. As Clovis entered the church he heard these words being chanted aloud: "For thou hast girded me with strength unto battle; thou has subdued under me those who rose up against me." (That is from Psalms 18:39, which is one of those "prayers of imprecation" one sometimes hears about.)

Clovis (still not a Christian) praised God and invaded southern Gaul. By the summer of 507 he was the victorious ruler of all of Gaul. A year and a half later Clovis was baptized, along with 3,000 of his soldiers, by the Orthodox bishop of Rheims. (For more details see RWC pp. 136-138 and references therein.)

After Clovis' death his rule devolved to his sons and then to his grandsons, each of whom was a "king". The Frankish realms were once again united under a single ruler under Clothar II, whose reign, along with that of his heir, Dagobert I, from 584 to 639 AD (combined), was "the most peaceful, prosperous and significant period of Frankish history since the reign of Clovis," according to Patrick Geary in his Before France and Germany: The Creation and the Transformation of the Merovingian World (p. 51).

But Dagobert I was the last strong "Merovingian" ruler. In 751, Pepin the Short once again united the Frankish realms. His son was Charlemagne. Together Pepin and Charlemagne ruled from 751 - 814.

[To be continued .....]

See also (links NOT automatically generated):
Paganism is not a European Religion
Roman Catholicism (A brief history of Revolutionary Monotheism, Part Seven)
Charlemagne, Part Deux (A brief history of Revolutionary Monotheism, Part Six)
Charlemagne (A brief history of Revolutionary Monotheism, Part Five)
Muhammad (A brief history of Revolutionary Monotheism, Part Four)
Constantine (A brief history of Revolutionary Monotheism, Part Three)
Moses (A Brief History of Revolutionary Monotheism, Part Two)
Akhenaten (A Brief History of Revolutionary Monotheism, Part One)
Monotheistic Robots of Doom, Part Deux
Monotheistic Robots of Doom
Lies, Damned Lies, and Pagan Monotheism
Hic Sunt Dracones

Are the "Pagans at the Parliament" sleeping with the enemy?

This is just a very quick first response to news coming out of the Parliament of World Religions.

Apparently some of the "Pagans at the Parliament" are pushing to redefine Paganism as "The Indigenous Religion of White People". The blinding, base stupidity behind this is beyond words.

Paganism existed long before there was any such thing as Europe. Europe is not a "continent". Look at a fucking map. Europe is an idea, and the generation of the idea of Europe is tied directly to the formation of the two forms of Christianity that now dominate the world: Catholicism and Protestantism.

Why is it that so many Pagans still have their heads stuck in ethnic/racial conceptions of "identity" that literally date from a time when racism and anti-semitism were simply accepted and even widely approved of by "Europeans"??

My only source for this comes from this alarmingly titled post Is Paganism About To Be Redifined at the Parliament?

Also, here is a post I did a while back with the relevant title Paganism Is Not a European Religion.