The final century of the old
world age of civilizations might be held to be the 6th 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 15th
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.