The Transition of the Old World to the New (Dark Ages)

The final century of the old world age of civilizations might be held to be the 6^th century. Benedict clears a vestigial sacred heathen grove and founds a monastery at Mount Cassino in 529-the same year Emperor Justinian ordered closure of the philosophy schools (e.g. The Academy) of Athens. There was a great controversy in Christology with Monophysite and Catholic opinions following the Council of Chalcedon (451) so far as to precipitate a schism between East and Western branches of the church. Nestorianism is also a problem for some theologians, the Western Roman Empire has finally fallen in 476 and Western European nations were only slowly developing as local imperial realms. Numerous local, secular wars arise. The Church itself sometimes becomes a partner of powerful rulers in the final century before Islam would sweep across North Africa and begin a theocratic assault on Africa, Europe and Asia Minor for more than a thousand years.

Greek was the lingua franca for the first five centuries of the Christian Church. It might be said that entry into the dark ages was a period of gestation, turmoil and transition to local languages and in the west the Latin language while savage yet nominally Christian kings led marauding armies and formed the trappings of feudal societies. Even so, the nascent conditions for reformation and the modern world were established.

The Emperor Justinian built up the physical structure of Byzantine civilization with splendor yet a famous monk visited his palace, got a look at him, turned and left saying that he had seen Satan. While Justinian was constructing great buildings a famine struck the Empire. People learned to hate the Evil Empire. Due to his maladministration tens of millions needlessly died. He married an Empress named Theodora who had once had sex in public with a legion of men during her career as a prostitute before marrying the Emperor. Historians have pointed out that the Byzantine civilization produced few good writers and was one of the most bureaucratic. It was a sort of coelacanth lasting until the 15^th century bridging much of the transition from the old world to the new. It gave Vikings somewhere so spend their loot. Muslims catapulted plague-invested rats over its walls.

The old world was aching for the new. Christianity would sort out its theological controversies amidst a simultaneous secular social chaos of civilization. When Attila the Hun visited Byzantium and Italy for war, when his ultra-fast horsemen made battle in France lassoing troops of a Roman legion under the direction of a rebel general there were consequences for believers as well.  When corrupt secular forces disorganize and destabilize civil order Christians also experience increased material stress. Secular wickedness is not invariably banal as Hannah Arendt described the bureaucrat Heinrich Himmler.

Jesus is the light in the darkness providing faith, hope and love through the midst of the troubles of the dark ages. The old civilizations and remaining heathenism withered with the end of Empire and/or the scourge of Islam. From Persia to Egypt and Asia Minor the deaths of infidels was to be profound.