The Age of Faith

by Will Durant

dead men, as you know, tell no tales.

Moslem thinkers into three groups—theists, deists or naturalists, and materialists—and denounced all three groups alike as infidels.

Tahafut al-Filasifa

“the Sufis were a fraternity dispersed in the flesh but united in the spirit; now they are a body well clothed carnally, and ragged in divine mystery.”

Mohammedanism, like Christianity, was a developing and adjustable religion, which would have startled a reborn Mohammed or Christ.

The wise man will live in quiet seclusion, shunning doctors, lawyers, and the people; or perhaps a few philosophers will form a community where they may pursue knowledge in tolerant companionship, far from the maddened crowd.

checkmate is from the Persian shah mat—“the king is dead.”

Behind this borrowing smoldered an undying hate. Nothing, save bread, is so precious to mankind as its religious beliefs;

Christianity sought unity through uniform belief, Judaism through uniform ritual.

Here Christianity diverged, Mohammedanism stemmed, from Judaism; the Semites developed a somber piety, the Christians a somber art.

They frowned upon asceticism, and counseled their people to enjoy the good things of life where no sin was involved.

A long tractate discussed with head-splitting hair-splitting just what might and what might not be done on the Sabbath.

“He who dispenses charity in private is greater than Moses.”80

“Descend a step in choosing a wife, ascend a step in choosing a friend”;

Ten measures of speech descended to the world; women took nine, men one”

Let men beware of causing women to weep; God counts their tears.”

the Pelion on Ossa of argument crowning a web of fantasy, the consolatory vanity forever healing frustrated hope.

and the rabbis winked on every other page at the gap between their counsels of perfection and the stealthy frailties of men.

the ritual was a mark of identity, a bond of unity and continuity, a badge of defiance to a never-forgiving world.

The result was a sharpness of intellect, a retentiveness of memory, that gave the Jew an advantage in many spheres requiring clarity, concentration, persistence, and exactitude, while at the same time it tended to narrow the range and freedom of the Jewish mind.

The Talmud can never be understood except in terms of history, as an organ of survival for a people exiled, destitute, oppressed, and in danger of utter disintegration.

Through this heroic discipline, this rerooting of the uprooted Jew in his own tradition—stability and unity were restored through continents of wandering and centuries of grief.

The Talmud, as Heine said, was a portable Fatherland; wherever Jews were, even as fearful enclaves in alien lands, they could put themselves again into their own world, and live with their Prophets and rabbis, by bathing their minds and hearts in the ocean of the Law.

The Spanish Jews called themselves Sephardim, and traced their origin to the royal tribe of Judah.II

Usually, however, the Jews lived in a voluntary isolation for social convenience, physical security, and religious unity.

In 1463 Albrecht III, Margrave of Brandenburg, declared that every new German king “may, according to old usage, either burn all the Jews, or show them his mercy, and, to save their lives, take the third penny” (i.e., one third) “of their property.”

“A Jew cannot have anything of his own, because whatever he acquires he acquires not for himself but for the king.”41

“Trade with a hundred florins, and you will afford meat and wine; put the same sum into agriculture, and at most you may have bread and salt.”

They did not denounce riches, but they succeeded in giving to learning a prestige equal to that of wealth. They branded monopoly and “corners” as sins;72 they forbade the retailer to profit by more than a sixth of the wholesale price;

the law of supply and demand of goods and services found a way around all legislation.

For that one death on the cross how many crucifixions!

haunted with theological terrors and an encompassing enmity, buried itself in mysticism and piety.

The isles of science and philosophy are everywhere washed by mystic seas. Intellect narrows hope, and only the fortunate can bear it gladly.

When he made his will the Jew left not only worldly goods to his offspring, but spiritual counsel.

The mourners did not despair. They knew that though the individual might die, Israel would carry on.

Justinian’s successors were men of ability, but only a century of Napoleons could have coped with their problems.

Fathers and councils of the Church repeatedly explained that the images were not deities, but only reminders thereof;4 the people did not care to make such distinctions.

Copronymus—“named from dung.”

In 797 she had him imprisoned and blinded, and thereafter reigned under the title of emperor—not basilissa but basileus.

In other aspects it is a sorry spectacle of generals climbing over slain rivals to imperial power, to be slain in their turn; of pomp and luxury, eye-gouging and nose-cutting, incense and piety and treachery; of emperor and patriarch unscrupulously struggling to determine whether the empire should be ruled by might or myth, by sword or word.

Constantine VII (912—58) was called Porphyrogenitus—“born in the purple”—i.e., in the porphyry-lined apartment reserved for the use of expecting empresses.

As regent, and with the help of her sister Theodora, Zoë governed the state through the reigns of Romanus III (1028-34), Michael IV (1034-42), Michael V (1042), and Constantine IX (1042—55); and seldom had the Empire been better ruled.

The Macedonian dynasty had come to an end after 190 years of violence, war, adultery, piety, and excellent administration.

Constantinople was at the crest of its curve, surpassing ancient Rome and Alexandria, contemporary Baghdad and Cordova, in trade, wealth, luxury, beauty, refinement, and art.

Beliefs make history, especially when they are wrong; it is for errors that men have most nobly died.

England found it a simple matter to conquer—another matter to rule—the “Island of Doctors and Saints.”

English in speech, Christian in religion, as fiery as the Irish, as practical as the English, as subtle and imaginative as any Celt.

It was a violent age of bitter struggle for food and water, freedom and power.

In all three countries the fertility of women, or the imagination of men, outran the fertility of the soil; the young or discontent took to their boats and prowled about the coasts for food, slaves, wives, or gold; and their hunger acknowledged no laws and no frontiers.

Life’s brevity forbids the enumeration of gods or kings.