The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction of the Classical World

by Catherine Nixey

For before it preserved, the Church destroyed. In a spasm of destruction never seen before—and one that appalled many non-Christians watching it—during the fourth and fifth centuries, the Christian Church demolished, vandalized and melted down a simply staggering quantity of art.

A last copy of Cicero’s De re publica was written over by Augustine on the Psalms. A biographical work by Seneca disappeared beneath yet another Old Testament. A codex of Sallust’s histories was scrubbed away to make room for more St. Jerome. Other ancient texts were lost through ignorance. Despised and ignored, over the years, they simply crumbled into dust, food for bookworms but not for thought. The work of Democritus, one of the greatest Greek philosophers and the father of atomic theory, was entirely lost. Only one percent of Latin literature survived the centuries. Ninety-nine percent was lost. One can achieve a great deal by the blunt weapons of indifference and sheer stupidity.

The attacks didn’t stop at culture. Everything from the food on one’s plate (which should be plain and certainly not involve spices), through to what one got up to in bed (which should be likewise plain, and unspicy), began, for the first time, to come under the control of religion. Male homosexuality was outlawed; hair-plucking was despised, as too were makeup, music, suggestive dancing, rich food, purple bedsheets, silk clothes . . . The list went on.

This is a book about the Christian destruction of the classical world.

Many converted happily to Christianity, it is true. But many did not. Many Romans and Greeks did not smile as they saw their religious liberties removed, their books burned, their temples destroyed and their ancient statues shattered by thugs with hammers. This book tells their story; it is a book that unashamedly mourns the largest destruction of art that human history had ever seen. It is a book about the tragedies behind the “triumph” of Christianity.

before Christianity’s ascendancy few people would have thought to describe themselves by their religion at all. After Christianity, the world became split, forevermore, along religious boundaries; and words appeared to demarcate these divisions. One of the most common was “pagan.”

“In an age of anxiety any ‘totalist’ creed exerts a powerful attraction:

Sisyphus spent his days rolling a stone uphill only to have it roll back down again.

So do you...