[...]
Having reviewed the origin and progress of the Christian creed and seen that it owes its eminence to the favor of the Imperial Despots we may better understand its association with Charlemagne, who with fire and sword and extraordinary personal cruelties implanted his banner and the Christian religion in Old Saxony.
Prior to the time of Charlemagne the Franks had conquered much territory. Charlemagne now plans to annex Old Saxony in northwestern Germany and extending into the Danish Peninsula, a land area of approximately 50,000 square miles, a portion of which adjoined the Frank domain.
Had Charlemagne foreseen that his plan to subjugate Old Saxony would require the mightiest effort that the Frank Empire had known, would necessitate eighteen military expeditions into that country, would bring the Northmen against him, and would aid mightily in the disruption of the Frank Empire, it does not seem probable that he would have assayed the task of subduing and Christianizing the Saxons.
Tacitus, writing 100 years after the battle of the Teutoberger Forest, says that Herman was being sung in tribal lays. Creasy, in his Fifteen Decisive Battles, says, "As time passed on, the gratitude of ancient Germany to her great deliverer grew into adoration, and divine honors were paid for centuries to Arminius (Herman) by every tribe of the Low German division of the Teutonic races."
Charlemagne knew the people he was to assault. He knew that the veneration of Herman had grown into a racial religion. He sensed that spiritually the Saxon struggle for liberty would center on the veneration of Herman, their god of liberty, and in his first expedition into Saxony he destroyed the great Heathen Sanctuary near the site of the battlefield in the Teutoberger Forest where Herman had destroyed the legions of Varus.
The war to subjugate Saxony began in 772. It lasted for 33 years during which period there were intervals of peace only to be followed by renewed desperate efforts to drive out the hated Frank army and the New Religion which accompanied it. In the intervals of peace Christian priests covered much of the country in trying to soften the resistance of the Saxons to the Franks and to the New Religion. Hopeless, the greater number of Saxons submitted; a heathen remnant continued to resist.
Charlemagne had accepted the crown of Empire from the Pope, Christmas Day, 800. The debates, below, between the Priests of Herman and the Priests of Jesus would be, let us say, in the year 801 or 802; after Charlemagne had accepted the crown from the Pope and shortly before the dying gasp of Old Saxony in titanic struggle to maintain her liberty. Historical support for various propositions in the text of the debates and a following sub-head will be found summarized in notes below. It would be better, I believe, if the full text of the debates should be read before consulting the notes, which deal with only a portion of the text.
THE PRIESTS OF HERMAN vs. THE PRIESTS OF JESUS
The priests of Jesus (Christianized Franks) set forth the ethics of the Christian religion, its supernatural sanctions in support of moral conduct, and the value of papal Christianity as an agency of social control in the Frank Empire.
The priests of Herman (Heathen Saxons) recited their knowledge of the alien religion which the Franks had espoused. That it had been 800 years since its founder, Jesus, had lived; the same time since Herman had lived. That Christianity had origin in a Jewish sect.[1] That 300 years after its founding Roman Emperors, ruling as tyrants, had directed that the Christian Religion be the State Religion of the Roman Empire,[2] and that for more than 400 years the Christian faith had been held by the Romanized peoples west of the Rhine. That the Franks while engaged in subduing these peoples had adopted their religion.
That the Christian faith was not new to the Saxons, but known to them, and rejected by them as a philosophy inasmuch as its sanctions for ethical conduct and its promise of a future life is based on the assumption that the God of the universe had been born of mortal woman, had masqueraded on earth in the form of a Jew, and that the mother of this Jew was in fact the "Mother of God", a proposition unworthy of the human intellect.[3]
The Franks know full well that when Christianity had become the State Religion of the Roman Empire it had expelled from Gaul the worship of other Savior-Gods that had been long established there. Gaul was filled with Savior-God cults of Persian, Egyptian, and Greek origin and their agents could circulate freely in Germany but they did not gain many adherents for we do not believe the myth that God appears in human form, and we feel that it is a degrading superstition unworthy of the majesty of God to assume that He begets from a mortal woman. We, ourselves, have the myth of a virgin birth of a god, but it is only a myth. We rejected the Persian Savior-God, the Egyptian Savior-God, and the Greek Savior-Gods of our own free will; but we stand under penalty of death at the stake or by the battle-axe if we reject the Jew Savior-God.[4] Your Jew Christ advancing with the slogan—baptism or death—expelled the Gentile Christs from the Roman Empire. Giving to us the same alternatives, he is now expelling our native religion from our native land.
All these Christ religions seem to be woven of the same mythology; with stars, shepherds, and wise men attesting the birth of the Savior-God; who teaches, suffers death, is buried, and rises from the grave.[5] They vary in a minor way it is true as to the holy agent which effects the conception in the mother of the God. You tell us that a ghost was the agent in the impregnation of the mother of your God. In this matter you have made improvement over the more ancient theories relating to the conception of Buddha. Your theology devises a ghost, a holy one. The Buddhist agent of impregnation, we hear, was a sacred animal, a hippopotamus. As between a Holy Ghost and a Holy Hippopotamus, we believe the ghost concept is more refined; and possibly more plausible, for it is certain that a ghost would have a better chance of entering and leaving a bed-chamber unobserved, than would a hippopotamus.[6]
The claim of the Pope that he holds sway over Saxony is sheer effrontery, the babbling of a deluded witch-doctor. The Franks will rue the day that Karl (Charlemagne) accepted the crown from this imposter, for the nature of his pretensions are such that if he has the power to crown he will have also the power to remove the crown.[7] The Saxons expressly deny that Simon, or Saul, or any other Jews, held authority in Saxony at any time, and it followed that they were without capacity to transfer to the Pope jurisdiction in any form whatsoever over the lands and the peoples of Saxony; and the pretensions of the Pope that certain Jews have given him rights over Saxony is treated with the contempt that it deserves.[8]
Let the papal priests prate that the Pope holds the "Keys"[9] to the present and the future, that he can lock and un-lock, bind and loosen, in this world and the next. When Saxons depart this life they will go to their own Heaven or to their own Hell: a Valhalla for the good and the glorious, a Netherworld for the base and the cowardly. They will not appear at the gates of the Jewish Heaven or Hell, and it matters not to them whether the Pope keeps these gates locked or un-locked.
As to the Ten Commandments, the Saxons were not concerned with those of the Ten which relate to an alien god. They would not admit that the Commandments relating to human conduct, of man's relation to man, came by revelation from the God of the Jews as claimed by the new religion which the Franks had espoused. The Franks, themselves, know that the code of ethics of their own race forbade murder, lies, thefts, perjury, adultery, coveting, and required that children obey their parents. That these rules of conduct are self-evident requirements of social control and they probably are held by all the races of mankind. Nor will we debase our own race in the eyes of posterity nor give to mankind a belief that Saxons knew not a distinction between right and wrong until they had been brought under Jewish religious instruction. For this reason alone we would reject the Ten Commandments as a code, a portion of it being no concern of the Saxons, the remainder of it we have held from ancient days.[10]
It was a matter of grave concern that Germanic peoples, as well as all other races, do not practice the high ideals of the Social Code embodied in the Ten Commandments. But Saxons could not accept the Frank claim that by assuming these Social Commandments to have been penned by the mysterious finger of a god they would be more effective in the matter of social control.[11]
The Franks would bear witness that they, themselves, after they had aspired to Empire and adopted Christianity as their State Religion, had obeyed these Commandments not more, but instead they had departed more from the ancient and simple virtues of their own race.[12] That the New Religion had not increased the piety of the family of Clovis who had imposed it upon the Franks any more than it had increased the piety of the family of Constantine who had imposed it on the Roman Empire, for the depravity of Clovis and his family possibly could not be equaled save in the records of Constantine and his family.[13] Had not Clovis waged unjust war on the Goths and deprived them of their best lands solely on the pretext that the Goths did not admit that a Jew woman had been the "Mother of God" and that her son was co-equal with God?[14]
Responding, the Priests of Jesus advanced the concept of race and that of the power of the Frank Empire. They called upon the people of Saxony to witness that in appearance and in blood the Saxons were not distinguishable from the Franks. The two were of common racial origin and it was the purpose of Karl to give them common political destiny. The Franks, they affirmed, notwithstanding the destruction of the Sanctuary,[15] venerated Herman as much as did the Saxons, for Herman had preserved the race and the freedom of German peoples and all Germans had enshrined him as the soul of the race.
As the Franks were not disloyal to Herman their racial savior, neither were they disloyal to the Teutonic gods. Were not the sun, the moon, Tew, Woden, Thor, Frigg, forever remembered in the days of the week?[16] That, following the urge of Teutonic destiny, the Franks had entered Gaul and conquered it, and had conquered many lands beyond Gaul. That it was the destiny of the Teuton to hold sway over Europe and that the gods of the Teuton had favored the Franks with the mission of consolidating the Teutonic tribes that had overrun the Roman Empire, a mission that had been well-nigh accomplished.
That Christianity was the established religion in the conquered regions, that the peoples who held this religion were far more numerous than the Teutons who had conquered them, and having taken possession of their lands it was inexpedient to despoil them of their faith. That Karl had made many overtures to his kinsmen, the Saxons, that his empire might reach the Baltic as it had already reached outlet on the North Sea, the Atlantic Ocean, and the Mediterranean Sea. That from the Saxons there would come kings and emperors of the empire he was establishing, an empire that would be secure, and would be even more powerful than had been the empire of Augustus Caesar.
The Priests of Herman, seizing upon the reference to the greatness of Augustus Caesar, replied to the Priests of Jesus. They called upon all to consider that Augustus Caesar, like Karl der Grosse (Charlemagne) had entered Saxony for the purpose of depriving its people of their age-long liberties. That Augustus Caesar, in his system of Emperor Worship, had sought to have Saxons worship a Roman,[17] and that Karl now sought to have them worship a Jew. That Saxons had not bowed to Caesar nor would they now bow to Karl. Had not all of them been taught that Herman's brother had begged him to submit to Rome[18] because of the power of the Roman Empire and that Herman had replied that liberty was more to be desired than the power of empire, and even as Herman had replied to his brother so would the Saxons reply to the Franks.
Herman and Jesus had lived in the same age and generation.[19] When the armies of Caesar had encompassed Palestine, Jesus had said, "Give unto Caesar that which is Caesar's", but when the armies of Caesar had entered Germany, Herman had preformed no miracle to extract from fish a gift for Caesar,[20] but put Caesar to the sword. That under the example of Jesus his race was subdued and scattered, and that under the example of Herman his race retained freedom and increased in strength.
The Priests of Jesus replied. They again called the people to witness that no Frank had abandoned the veneration of Herman, their racial deliverer; and, that they, though presenting the new religion of the Frank Empire, swelled with pride when Herman was praised. But that the Franks ruled over many peoples whom they had subjugated and could not offer the adoration of Herman to subjugated peoples, nor could they openly profess it themselves among these peoples, for it was a worship of racial liberty defended by the sword. That freedom was the soul of the adoration of Herman, while Christianity had been nurtured by subdued peoples, and it gives the injunctions, "servants obey your master", "submit yourselves to every ordinance of man", and taught the dispossessed to be content with their lot and seek not to lay up treasures on earth.[21] That Christianity was admirably fitted for an empire and was already established in all the lands conquered by the Franks. Though hegemony rightfully belonged to the Franks because of their numbers and their achievements yet the Saxons by reason of ties of blood would in actuality add to Frank numbers, and from Saxony there would come rulers of the empire. That it was the destiny of the Franks to consolidate the Continental Germans under one rule, and that if the Saxons did not peacefully adjust themselves to this ideal the war would continue and though Karl was generous to those who cooperated with him he was invincible and terrible in measures against those who opposed him.
The Priests of Herman responded, saying that if liberty should be wrested from men of Saxon blood it would be wrested from them on the field of battle and not at the council table. It was true that the Saxons were wholly outnumbered but they would continue to force the issue in battle. And it would be well for the Franks to consider that to the North lay the Angles, the Danes, the Norse, and the Swedes; men of Teutonic stock, like the Saxons untainted with alien blood,[22] who would not bow to Karl nor to the alien god whom Karl required his subjects to worship.
[SPOILER=Notes]1. (The teachings of a Jewish sect established as the state Religion of the Roman Empire). "The first fifteen bishops of Jerusalem were all circumcised Jews; and the congregation over which they presided united the law of Moses with the doctrine of Christ" (Gibbon, Ch. 15). Jews from the Old Dispensation were raised from the dead to be with Jesus at his transfiguration and ancient saints of the Jewish race left their graves and walked the streets of Jerusalem when Jesus had arisen from the dead, clearly indicating that Christianity had issued from Judaism (Matt. 17:1-8; Mark 9:2-8; Luke 9:28-36); Matt. 27:52-53). The early Church Fathers appropriated the Old Jewish Scriptures as their own. Saint Ambrose, in his lauditory funeral oration of the life and work of the Emperor Theodosius who by imperial decrees expelled the great Gentile religions from the Roman Empire, makes 90 quotations from the Scriptures, 60 of them being from the Old Testament (Mannix).
2. (Roman Emperors ruling as tyrants). Tacitus makes the comment that Augustus Caesar consulted the Senate only in matters concerning the army. Diocletain (who preceded Constantine) assumed the diadem and ruled in the spirit and power of an Asiatic despot. He was cruel in his dealing with the Roman Senate, and, objecting to the familiarity of the Roman people remained away from Rome during the most of his resign. Constantine perfected the policy initiated by Diocletian by abandoning Rome and establishing his seat of government at Constantinople, a city which he built. Here he appears as an absolute monarch, cut off entirely from republican memories in the Rome he had abandoned and severed as well from the ancient religious ties associated with the Roman republic
through his having set up the Christian creed as his official religion. "The republican traditions of the Eternal City, the jealous feeling of the great Roman Houses, the whole spirit of Rome, were antagonistic to the new imperial policy" (Cutts, p. 22).
3. (Unworthy of the human intellect). "... they deem it incompatible with the majesty of the heavenly host to confine the gods within walls, or to mould them into a likeness of the human face; they consecrate groves and coppices, and they give the divine names to that mysterious something which is visable only to the eyes of faith." (Tacitus, Germania, Ch. 9, speaking of the religion of the German peoples). "The Normans and the Saxons held odious the superstition to which the Franks and the English had descended" (Hume, Vol. I, p. 52). A similar objection to the theology of Christianity was set forth by educated Romans when that religion was being advanced by imperial decrees upon the peoples of the Roman Empire. They were familiar with the myths of savior-gods and considered them as fantastic speculations of the various sects with the view of enhancing the power of their several founders by attributing to them a divine genealogy. But the Roman people were not permitted to consider the Christological concepts as a myth. These concepts had to be accepted as a fact, without question, and no other form of religious worship was allowed. "In 392 the practice of pagan worship was forbidden under the same penalties which were inflicted for treason and sacrilege. When Honorius ascended the throne as Emperor of the West (395), he too issued edicts against the public worship of the pagan gods, and the revenues of the temples were confiscated and the temples themselves were destroyed". (Madden, p. 3).
4. (Savior-God cults in Gaul). Among the religions following the Romans into Gaul was the cult of Cybele, that of Isis, and that of Mithra. "These were personal religions, preaching sin, purification, salvation, and immortality" (Sedgwick, France, p. 11).
5. (Savior-God theologies derived from similar myth). There were many Gentile Savior-God religions, all older than the Christian faith, with their respective theologies differing only in minor detail. Sixteen, or more, of these Savior-Gods had been crucified. Graves, Ch. XVI, gives a list of them. Brooks, Ch. XIX, gives a list of Gods born of mortal woman, all virgins. The Christian theology has closer kinship to the Greek theologies save that it is strikingly alike that of the Hindu Savior-God, Krishna, who was born of a virgin, 600 B. C. A star shone at Krishna's birth, which was in a cave; he was adored by shepherds, performed miracles, was crucified, and is to come again to judge the earth. (See also Robertson, pp. 97, 181, 189-190). The early Church Fathers recognized the similarity of Christian and Pagan theologies and held that true divinity issued from heaven to earth only through Jewish channels, and for that reason the Christian theology was the only true one.
6. (A holy ghost and a sacred hippopotamus as divine agents impregnating mortal woman and creating a Savior-God). There was error in the assertion that Buddhist theology held that a hippopotamus was the divine agent in impregnating the Buddhist Mary some 500 years before the Christian era. It was not a hippopotamus but an elephant, a white one, sent from Heaven, which effected the impregnation. Buddha, the God-man, was born on December 25th. His birth was announced in the heavens by a star. The angels sang. He was visited by wise men. He stood upon his feet and spoke at the moment of his birth. When he was converted he was at tacked by demons. He was baptised, transfigured, performed miracles, and left a foot-print on a mountain in Ceylon as he stepped off in his ascension through the air to heaven. Speaking of Buddha, Cushing, pp. 88-89, says, "The myth of his incarnation was devised to enhance his glory .... These stories are too crude and material to be compared in any way with those which attend the birth of Christ".
7. (Charlemagne accepts crown from Pope). At the end of a religious service and while Charlemagne was still kneeling before the altar in silent prayer, Pope Leo III advanced with a diadem in his hand, placed it upon the head of Charlemagne and pronounced him "Emperor of the Romans". This crowning was at Rome, Christmas day, 800. Charlemagne later stated that he had not requested the crown from the hands of the Pope, that the item of the crowning was a surprise to him. He considered himself the head of both the State and the Church and shortly before his death, 814, he crowned his son co-Emperor with his own hands and without the aid of Pope or priest.
8. (The Pope as the spiritual and temporal ruler of the world). Gregory VII said, "The Roman Church was founded by God alone; she never has erred and never will err, and no man is a Catholic who is not at peace with her. The Roman bishop alone is universal. He may depose bishops and reinstate them, he may transfer them from one See to another, he may depose emperors, and may absolve the subjects of the unjust from their allegiance. No synod without his consent is general; no episcopal chapter, no book, canonical without his authority. No man may sit in judgment on his decrees, but he may judge the decrees of all" (Sedgwick, Italy, pp. 91-92). It was this Pope, who, having gained the political support of the opponents of Henry IV, excommunicated that Emperor and absolved his subjects from allegiance to him. Henry was forced to accept his crown from Gregory. Innocent III, Pope from 1198-1216, a master at the game of politics, placed the papal yoke on most of the nations of Europe. John, the King of England, yielded "to our lord the Pope Innocent and his successors, all our kingdom of England and all our kingdom of Ireland to be held as fief of the Holy See" (Sedgwick, Italy, Ch. 12). This universal and unlimited power possessed by the Popes over the governments of mankind was conferred upon the Roman Church by two Jews; principally by one Symeon or Simon, who had taken the Gentile name of Peter; but also reinforced by one, Saul, who had taken the Gentile name of Paul. Simon had been selected by Jesus as the disciple on whom he would build his church. Among the places visited by Simon was Rome. Simon had been given much power by Jesus, and the papacy held that Simon had conferred his authority upon the Roman Church. The Roman Church, however, from time to time, had difficulty in enforcing the powers of Simon and Saul on the nations of Europe and in several such instances the Pope would cite other Jews as well as Simon and Saul as the source of his power, quoting from Jeremiah and Isaiah, but always affirming that it was certain Jews who had given him authority over the peoples and the governments of earth.
9. ("The Keys"). Simon had the power of the Keys, and the Pope held that he was Simon's agent with full authority to act for him. Jesus, speaking to Simon, had said, "And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and that whatsoever thou shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven". (Matthew 16:18-19). The heathen Saxons, not being thoroughly schooled in the doctrine of "The Keys", had assumed that the Pope carried keys to Hell as well as to Heaven and earth. By derivitive doctrine and by oft asserted papal directives the Popes seemed to have the power to send people to Hell, but I know of no instance in which a Pope boasted that he carried the keys to Hell and could send people there and lock the door. Though he does not carry the keys to Hell and cannot lock the door, yet he does have such authority as to enable him to keep a lost soul under control if it should escape from Hell and appear on earth or in Heaven, for he can "bind" it in either place. While the underlying theory of papal power was based upon the claim of apostolic descent from Peter, yet it would be incorrect to assume that the papal yoke was fastened on the neck of Europe solely by "Peter". Papal ascendency during the Dark Ages was attained, in large measure, by forgeries of political and ecclesiastical documents, many of them. Papal political ascendency rested principally on the forged "Donation of Constantine": its ecclesiastical ascendency rested principally on the "False Decretals of Isadore." These forged documents were used by the papacy to impose upon the ignorant and credulous Frank kings. They were exposed as forgeries by intellectual Catholic laymen during the early phases of the Renaissance. (See Wheless, particularly his chapter The Church Forgery Mill). Bryce (p. 100), says, the "... most stupendous of all the mediaeval forgeries, which under the name of the Donation of Constantine commanded for seven centuries the almost unquestioning belief of mankind." The same author, speaking of the value of the forged Decretals to the Roman Church, says, "By the invention or the adoption of the False Decretals it had provided itself with a legal system suited to any emergency," (p. 156).
10. The Ten Commandments are composed of the Commandments which concern the relation between the Jews and their God; and those which relate to the conduct of man toward his fellow man. In the first group God announces to the Jews that He is their God. (1) That they should have no other God. (2) That they are not to bow down to any graven image under penalty of punishment to the third and fourth generation. (3) That they should not take His name in vain. (4) That they keep the seventh day of the week a holy day in commemoration of His rest on that day from the labor of creating the universe. The conduct Commandments which follow the four above are, (5) Honor should be given to their fathers and their mothers. (6) "Thou shall not kill". (7) "Thou shall not commit adultery". (8) "Thou shall not steal", (9) "Thou shall not bear false witness against thy neighbour". (10) "Thou shall not covet anything that is thy neighbour's" (Exodus 20: 1-17). The Jews, themselves, doubtless held the latter six of the Commandments long prior to God's conversation with Moses on Mount Sinai, for He had selected them as His chosen people and had made His covenants with them centuries before the lime of Moses. We may assume that God would not make such commitments to a people who did not know the difference between right and wrong. In any case the latter six of the Commandments are found in essence in the Egyptian moral code which antedated the migration of the Jews from that country; and in the Babylonian code long prior to the exile of the Jews in Babylon. Speaking of the Hebrew creed, Robertson (p. 76) states, "There is no ethical principle in its whole literature that is not to be found in the sacerdotal literature of Egypt, Persia, India, or in the non-sacerdotal literature of China and Greece. And with the Hebrew ethic there is almost constantly bound up the ethic-destroying concept of the One God as the patron of one people, who only through them consents to recognize the rest of the human race".
11. (A revealed religion presented as more effective in social control). "Greek and Roman history had not given evidence of what might be done by a revealed religion, issuing from supreme deity and enforced by sanctions of eternal reward or eternal punishment". (Gibbon, Vol. II, p. 254). That Christianity as a revealed religion, in its form as a State Religion, was inadequate to maintain high moral standards is demonstrated in the history of Constantinople, a city built by Constantine as a capital for his new Christian Empire. The first bloodshed in this new city was that of priests fighting each other over doctrinal views. Numerous riots ensued and large numbers of people were killed, particularly over the formation of the doctrine of the Trinity, the placing of three Gods in one Head.
Lecky, speaking of the moral history of Constantinople, says: "The first Christian emperor transferred his capital to a new city, uncontaminated by the traditions and glories of Paganism; and there he founded an empire which derived its ethics from Christian sources, and which continued in existence for about eleven hundred years. Of that Byzantine Empire the universal verdict of history is that it constitutes, without a single exception, the most thoroughly debased and the most despicable form that civilization has yet assumed .... A boundless intolerance of all divergence of opinion was united with an equally boundless toleration of all falsehood and deliberate fraud that could favor received opinions. Credulity being taught as a virtue, and all conclusions dictated by authority, a deadly torpor sank over the human mind, which for many centuries almost suspended its action, and was broken only by the scrutinizing, innovating, and free-thinking habits that accompanied the rise of the industrial republics in Italy". (Lecky, pp. 15, 16). In western Europe the depressing influence of Christianity as a State Religion was to continue for about seven hundred years and was but gradually broken by the Teuton's developing secular states independent of Church authority. The brutality of the Inquisition in opposition to modern learning shows the hatred that a revealed religion can generate when its tenets are questioned. Gibbons, Ch. IV, refers to the pure and austere morals of the early Christians. Lecky, p. 17, says, "In the first two centuries of the Christian Church the moral elevation was extremely high, and was continually appealed to as a proof of the divinity of the creed".
12. (The morality of the Christian Franks). Lewis, p. 69, speaking of the morality of the Christian Franks, says, "Whose morality was really lower than that of the ancient Germans in their heathen days".
13. (Depravity of the house of Clovis and that of Constantine. The
Christian religion was imposed on the Franks by Clovis (Louis),
496, who was the first Christian king of the Franks; and imposed on
non-Christian peoples in the Frank Empire by Karl der Grosse (Charlemagne).
Clovis—He united all Franks under his crown. Sigbert, another Frank king, had long been a friend and ally of Clovis. Clovis sent a message to Sigbert's son, "Your father is lame, and too old to remain king". The son had his father assassinated. Clovis then had the son slain and he, himself, made king. He bribed certain noblemen to dethrone another prince. He then struck down this prince with a battle axe. "When he had put all his kindred out of the way he was often heard to lament that he was left friendless and alone; but this, too, was out of cunning, in order that any of his relatives that might have escaped him should be induced to reveal himself, and so fall into his power. There is scarcely a record of peoples richer in cruelty than the Franks, or any royal house more abundant in crimes and blood than the Merovingians". (Lewis, p. 60). Clovis had allowed religious liberty to his subjects as long as he was pagan. "His ambitious reign was a perpetual violation of moral and Christian duties; his hands were stained with blood in peace as well as in war; and as soon as Clovis had dismissed a synod of the Gallican church, he calmly assassinated all the princes of the Merovingian race". (Gibbon, Vol. Ill, p. 175). "Few men have ever been further from what Christ called 'The Kingdom of Heaven' than this grasping and brutual Frankish chief, to whom robbery, falsehood, murder were, after his baptism, as much as before it (perhaps even more than before it), the ordinary steps in the ladder of his elevation". (Thomas Hodgkin, p. 193).
The Sons of Clovis—The four sons of Clovis inherited their father's bloody and violent disposition. "The four brother kings were all worthy sons of their wicked father—daring unscrupulous men of war, destitute of natural affection, cruel, lustful, and treacherous". (Oman, p. 113). Three of them defeated the ruler of Burgundy and had this ruler and his wife thrown into a well. One of them was killed in this struggle, the other two killed the infant sons of their dead brother and took his possessions. One of them bound his own son, his son's wife, and their young sons to the pillars of a wooden house and burned them to death by firing the building. (Oman, p. 121).
Karl der Grosse (Charlemagne) and his brother inherited the throne of the Franks. The brother died, leaving two young sons. Karl tried to get possession of them but their mother fled with them to the King of the Lombards. Draper, p. 374, says, "The private life of Charlemagne was stained with great immoralities and crimes. He indulged in a polygamy scarcely inferior to that of the khalifs, solacing himself with not less than nine wives and many concubines". Hallam, p. 13, says that Karl divorced nine wives. Lewis states that Charlemagne not wishing sons-in-law with heirs that might claim inheritance, encouraged his daughters to seek sex relations out of wedlock. Charlemagne, as we have seen, beheaded four thousand five hundred helpless Saxon prisoners of war because of their imputed part in throwing off Christianity and opposing the Frank conquest of Saxony. His near descendants maintained the bloody record of their family.
The Christian religion was imposed on the Roman Empire by Constantine and his sons.
Constantine—Gibbon states that the last years of Constantine were characterized by weakness, meanness, fraud, and exactions from his representatives. He put his wife, Fausta, to death by scalding. He executed his oldest son, Crispus, an amiable youth of great military ability (who probably had excited the jealousy of his father). The inhumanity shown by Constantine in killing his brilliant young son, and of his having scalded his wife to death, produced a wide public condemnation of his acts which was said to have led to his conversion to Christianity. Zosimus, a Pagan historian, says that Constantine, tormented by remorse, applied to the great Gentile religions and was sternly told that there was no expiation of such crimes, and that an Egyptian magician told Constantine that the Christian religion had lustrations for the forgiveness of all sins. Sozoman, a Christian writer, says that it was a philosopher, Sopater, who referred the distressed Constantine to Christianity. (See Cults, p. 345).
Sons of Constantine—The eldest of the three sought to take the possessions of the second and was slain in the attempt. The second son obtained the possessions of the eldest and did not divide them with the third—Constantius. The second son was killed in an insurrection and Constantius became sole emperor. Constantius enforced "a promiscuous massacre which involved the death of two uncles of Constantius, seven of his cousins, of whom Dalmatius and Hannibalanius were the most illustrious, the patrician Optatus who had married a sister of the late emperor, and the prefect Ablavius, whose power and riches had inspired him with some hope of obtaining the purple. If it were necessary to aggravate the horrors of this bloody scene we might add that Constantius himself had expoused the daughter of his Uncle Julius, and that he had bestowed his sister in marriage on his cousin, Hannibalanius". (Gibbon, Vol. II, p. 176).
14. (Mary as the "Mother of God" and her Son as co-equal with God). The Goths at this time held the southern portion of Gaul (France). Goths, Vandals, Burgunds, and Lombards when conquering portions of the Roman Empire had adopted the Christian faith of their subjects. They were "Arians", a sect deemed heretical by the Roman Church which the Franks represented. The Arian theology grew out of the speculations concerning the relation of Jesus, as God's Son, to God, Himself. Arius, a noted divine, held that a son could not be co-equal with his father in the matter of time, that a son could not be as old as his father; and that God's Son both in His status in Heaven and in His status on earth should be considered as the first and the holiest of all things that had been created. The Arian concept prevailed over a great portion of the Christian world. Athanasius, also a noted divine, opposed the creed of Arius, and held that God's Son was as old as His Father, uncreated, and that when He chose to take on human form through the womb of Mary, that Mary had become God's Mother.
The Christian priests were divided on this question; a division which led to many violent personal struggles. The pages of Theodoret, a historian of the Church of the years 322 to 427, are filled with the Arian and related heresies. Theodoret was a follower of Athanasius and when the Emperor Constantine had restored Arius to office, Theodoret says that God "burst the bowels" of Arius and prevented him from administering the office. No phase of Christian theology has given more concern to the Church than the speculations over the nature of the divine conception. God's covenants had been made with Jews, and the Messiah's descent was to be through the lineage of David. In the matter of conception it is the function of the female to supply the ovum and the function of the male to supply the sperm from which the child develops. If the ovum was from the Virgin and the sperm from the Holy Ghost, the child would be half-Jew and half-God according to the known laws of heredity. If, in the divine conception, the Holy Ghost supplied both sperm and ovum the divine child truly would not be of Jewish descent, for in this instance the mother had performed only the functions of a "wet nurse", extended into the prenatal stage.
15. (That Karl had destroyed the Sanctuary). Charlemagne, being a German, would be aware that the spiritual center of Saxon resistance to subjugation would center in their adoration of Herman. In his first campaign into Saxony, A. D., 772 he laid waste the country and "desolated the great heathen sanctuary of the people, the Irmansaule, at Stadbergen, on the Diemel, a monument supposed to stand where Arminius (Herman) had destroyed the legions of Varus", in the battle of the Teutoberger Forest, 9 A. D. (Lewis, p. 83; see also Oman, p. 346).
16. (Teutonic gods commemorated in the names of the days of the week). Sunday (day of the sun); Monday (day of the moon); Tuesday (day of the war-god, Tew); Wednesday (day of the supreme god, Woden); Thursday (day of Thor, the god of thunder); Friday (Frigg's day, in commemoration of the mother-god, Frigg); Saturday (day of Saturn), one of the oldest deities, son of heaven and earth, and with different names in many countries. The name is not of Teutonic origin.
17. (Men deemed to be gods). The first altar to Augustus Caesar in Gaul was at Lugdunum (now Lyons, France). "The altar stood before a colossal statue of the emperor. A nobleman of the Gauls accepted the office of pontiff, assisted by a ministry of Gaulish flamens. The worship of Caesar Augustus thus inaugurated in the province, became extended throughout it." (Merivale, Vol. IV, p. 175). Emperor worship spread from Gaul to Spain. (Tacitus, Annals, Bk. I, 78).
Julius Caesar was the first of the Roman rulers to be classed with the gods, but he was not officially deified in Rome until after his death. Augustus Caesar while yet alive was worshipped as a god in the provinces of the empire, but he too was not officially deified in Rome until after his death. To officially place Augustus among the gods it was necessary to get testimony to the effect that his body's image had been seen rising from the earth and ascending to the sky, and such testimony was given by a retired government official, an "eye witness" of the event. (Grenier, p. 280).
18. (Herman's brother. Herman's brother had become a Roman citizen, was an officer in the Roman army and had taken the Roman name, Flavus. The attempt of the Roman Empire to reestablish authority in Germany continued for more than five years after Herman had destroyed the legions of Varus in the Teutoberger Forest, 9 A. D. Toward the close of the this war Herman's brother was with the armies of Germanicus Caesar. A small river, the Weser, ran between the two armies. Herman called out to the Romans to have his brother brought to the river bank that he might talk with him. The escorts which accompanied the two brothers were dismissed and they were left to greet each other. "Arminius (Herman) asked his brother whence the disfigurement of his face? (He had lost an eye). On being told the place and battle, he inquired what reward he had received. Flavus mentioned his increased pay, the chain, the crown, and other military decorations; Arminius scoffed at the cheap rewards of servitude.
"They now began to argue from their opposite points of view. Flavus insisted on 'Roman greatness, the power of the Caesars; the heavy penalties for the vanquished; the mercy always waiting for him who submitted himself ... Herman 'urged the sacred call of their country; their ancestral liberty; the gods of the German hearths; and their mother, who prayed, with himself, that he would not choose the title of renegade and traitor to his kindred, to the kindred of his wife, to the whole of his race in fact, before that of their liberator'. From this point they drifted, little by little into recriminations; and not even the intervening river would have prevented a duel, had not Stertinius run up and laid a restraining hand on Flavus, who in the fullness of his anger was calling for his weapons and his horse. On the other side Herman was visable, shouting threats and challenging to battle; for he kept injecting much in Latin, as he had seen service in the Roman camp as a captain of native auxiliaries". (Tacitus, Annals, Book II, Ch. 9-10).
19. (Herman and Jesus of the same age and generation). We know that Herman was 25 years old when he destroyed the legions of Varus in the Teutoberger Forest. This battle was fought 9 A. D. Herman was born, then, 16 B. C. It has long been known that there is an error of as much as 4 years in the Christian calendar. It is certain that Jesus was born at least 4 years prior to the accredited date, and that the date of the crucifixion should be moved back to 30 A. D.
Astronomical calculations in Sky and Telescope, discussed by Howard W. Blakeslee, Associated Press Science Editor, December 27, 1943, states that it is known that an error of as much as 4 years exists in the calendar and possibly an error of as much as 11 years. He accredits the error to a Roman Abbott in the 6th century.
Dr. Albert T. Olmstead, of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, in Current Religious Thought, published by Oberlin College, January 1941, believes that date of Jesus' birth was probably between 20 B.C. and 15 B.C. His estimate was based on the known fact that the Jews when in their Babylonian exile adopted the Babylonian calendar, and that late discoveries of Babylonian astronomical tablets give data with scarcely the probability of error of as much as one day. According to this calculation Jesus was approximately 50 years old at his death. Bishop Irenius, an early Church Father, who was born 120 A. D. says that Jesus lived to be about 50 years old and that he obtained this information from a man who knew the Apostle John. (See Graves, p. 130; and Wheless, who gives a quote from Irenius, p. 143).
State documents were not dated in the Christian chronology until the time of Charlemagne, 800 A. D. But it was known that Jesus, Herman, and Augustus Caesar had lived in the same generation; for Augustus Caesar had died 14 A. D., Herman had died 21 A. D., and the death of Jesus was accredited to 33 A. D. The Priests of Herman, had they chosen to do so, could have said to the Priests of Jesus that the chronology of one of the cults could he interchanged with the chronology of the other and that it would be more seemly for German documents to he dated from the birth of Herman than from the birth of Jesus.
20. (Tribute money from the mouth of a fish). The Bible, Matthew 17:27.
21. (Christianity nurtured by a subdued people). At the time of Jesus there were approximately 100,000,000 people in the Roman Empire, about half of whom were slaves. The conditions of the slaves had been greatly improved by a number of laws instituted by pagan emperors prior to Christianity becoming the Roman State Religion in the fourth century. Lecky, page 45, points out that the golden age of Roman law was under pagan emperors, particularly Hadrian (117-138) and Alexander Severus (222-235) who instituted almost all the important measures for redressing injustices, elevating oppressed classes, "and making the doctrine of natural equality and fraternity of mankind the basis of legal enactments".
The institution of slavery was in full flower when the New Testament was written with its spiritual promises to the oppressed. These promises and instructions, however, were of such nature and in such terms as to commend themselves to government officials operating under an Absolute Monarch, nor would they be overlooked by those engaged in economically exploiting the mass of the people, as will be seen in the following extracts: "Honour the king" (I Peter 2:17). "Submit yourselves to every ordnance of man for the Lord's sake', whether it be the king or his governors (I Peter 2:13). "Servants, be subject to your master with all fear; not only to the good and gentle, but also to the froward" (I Peter 2:18). "Servants, be obedient to them that are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in singleness of your heart as unto Christ; not with eyeservice, as menpleasers; but as the servants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart" (Ephesians 6:5-6). "That ye resist not evil; but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also" Matthew 5:39). "Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth ... but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven" (Matthew 6:19-20). "Christianity for the first time gave the servile virtues the foremost place in the moral type. Humility, obedience, gentleness, patience, resignation, are all cardinal or rudiamentary virtues in the Christian character; they were all neglected or underrated by the pagans, they can all expand and flourish in a servile position" (Lecky).
22. (Untainted with alien blood). "Personally I associate myself with the opinion of those who hold that in the peoples of Germany there has been given to the world a race untainted by inter-marriage with other races, a peculiar people and pure, like no one but themselves; whence it comes that their physique, in spite of their vast numbers, is identical; fiery blue eyes, red hair, tall frame, ..." (Tacitus, Germania).[/SPOILER]
Cox, Earnest Sevier. Teutonic Unity, Ch. 3. Richmond, Virginia, 1951.
The whole book can be read here.
