Maiorianus Lamenting the Fall of Paganism

Maiorianus Lamenting the Fall of Paganism · Maiorianus revalorised Roman Antiquity at the Expense of the Middle Ages

Or admiring the persistence of attempting to bring it back:

The surprisingly persistent attempts to revive Paganism under the new Christian Roman Emperors.
6th Jan. 2022 | Maiorianus
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1P7DOAB8Cw

7:02 Constantius II was not a Catholic Christian. He was an Arian. He was as persecuting of St. Athanasius as of Pagans.

8:56 I suppose Flavius Julianus = Julian the Apostate?

Because, while there was suddenly more freedom for Pagans, there was equally less freedom for Christians. He forbade Christians to be teachers, much as a Creationist would not be the most welcome candidate even in most schools in the US and in some countries would be positively banned from teaching ...

There were also at least some Christian martyrs in his time, like St. Bibiana.

9:10 "one could go to the old sanctuary of Delphi"

Which had made Orestes the murderer of his mother and both Laios and Oidipous involved in what eventually became a fatherkilling and an incest with the mother.

I'm as happy that thing closed down as I am for the ending of the Jim Jones' sect!

12:50 - or rather a minute or two before ... you mentioned you were going to make a video about Flavius Julianus?

[This video is from January 6th this year, he has had more than half a year to do so]

15:12 Please note, while Theodosius targetted the temples, he was (unlike Constantius II) tolerant of pagans practising at home.

A bit like in Poland, statues of Lenin are torn down after 1990, but if you like being a Commie, no one can prosecute you for having one at home.

Have you considered that to Christians, seeing Pagan temples in public was perhaps as exasperating, even after Constantine's tolerance, as it's to Jews to see a swastika exposed?

I mean, persecutions from 33 to 313 (except you said 312?) would be a somewhat longer time for a community to be traumatised than 1933 to 1945 - or the latter half of it.

18:14 First of all, St. Augustine ruled as bishop in Hippo Regia, not in Carthage.

Second, the rioters in Carthage would seem (after a very quick check on wikipedia) to have been Donatists, his enemies.

21:06 "understandably most pagans didn't show their religion"

Meaning most of them that were left by then would be in classes aspiring to imperial service or being a judge?

"crypto-pagans would pretend to be Christians"

The picture of a Christian bishop at this point is a somewhat broad innuendo of a point made by certain Protestants that Catholicism became paganised.

I don't think this was the case, being Catholic I am obviously partial.

I felt a need to doublecheck, at least you have wikipedia on your side:

435 AD, a linea Roman Empire

• Roman general (magister militum) Flavius Aetius begins, in Gaul, a campaign against the Burgundians, following their raids into neighbouring Gallia Belgica by King Gunther.
• November 14 – Emperor Theodosius II orders a new edict for the death penalty of all heretics and pagans in the Empire. Judaism is considered a legal non-Christian religion.

23:10 I think I can see a connexion to your screen name in an Emperor who ruled 457 to 461.

He had probably seen the futility of persecuting pagans out of existence.

So, what happened after Maiorianus?

[It seems he was going to attribute the final démise of paganism to Barbarian invasions destroying basically all of Roman Infrastructure, as can be seen from my comment at 29:56, where I state this was not the case.]

29:40 "but they were Christian kingdoms from the beginning"

• The Franks were so, the Burgundians on the Rhine had been so,
• but the Burgundians on the Rhone and the rest of these were actually Arian

Speaking of Burgundians of the Rhine, prior to Attila killing Gundicarius, what is your view of the historicity of the Niblung story?

[He is, from the accent, German, and knows what my question is about]

29:56 In fact, very little of the Roman structures actually fell.

A basically meritocratic nobility was replaced by a hereditary one, hailing from the conquerors, but also partly from the conquered. But the rest of the structures, at least among the Franks, remained pretty intact.

Jeremiah Blake

Arianism is a form of Christianity, so you're post is misguided.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@Jeremiah Blake Arianism is Parachristianity.

Jeremiah Blake

@Hans-Georg Lundahl it's just another Christian sect, just because you think it's heretical doesn't mean that it's not Christian.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@Jeremiah Blake Christian means Orthodox Christian.

Jeremiah Blake

@Hans-Georg Lundahl Christian means a religious belief centered on Jesus Christ. It's a simple word with a simple definition

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@Jeremiah Blake So, a Hindu who thought that Jesus was a more relevant Reincarnation of Vishnu than Krishna and Buddha, by now, would be a Christian?

A Christian is a man who believes the teachings of Christ, which include His Divinity : John 8:58. The "I am" implies an identification with Adonai.

Jeremiah Blake

@Hans-Georg Lundahl that man wouldn't be a Hindu if he thought that Jesus was his primary God. He'd be a Christian.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@Jeremiah Blake Ah, to be a Christian, Jesus has to be your primary God - neither the Hindu nor the Arian qualify then!

30:59 "the coming darkness of the middle ages"

Your camera has parts held together by screws, right?

Unlike other uses of the mechanic principle called screw, these screws were invented by the Middle Ages.

Your camera also marks time in hours, and more importantly for many of your videos, minutes and seconds?

The sun dials of Rome and Greece could not measure minutes and seconds, and the clepsydra which accurately did measure a certain set of minutes, its time was considered "a clepsydra" because whether it was half an hour or some other part of the hour, depended on what day of the year it was. A clepsydra measuring what we call thirty minutes would only have been measuring "half an hour" at equinoxes, vernal and autumnal.

When did we get a mechanism capable of - by sinking pendulum - measure minutes, later extended by a spiral spring drawn up to one measuring seconds? Well, the Middle Ages.

And when was slavery abolished in the Frankish kingdom? In the wording, I have already betrayed the answer : the Early Middle Ages. Queen St. Bathilde outlawed the selling of Christians as slaves and from then slavery declined. She died on 30 January 680.

Jeremiah Blake

And life expectancy fell by 10 years from mid 40s to mid 30s. Feudalism got entrenched and economic and social mobility, never great, became even more restricted.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@Jeremiah Blake "from mid 40s to mid 30s"

Source, please?

If it's a book, can you look up the page and check if the author uses the word "estimate" and mentions what it is based on?

For social mobility, I just mentioned that it was restricted so you could no longer be degraded into a slave. In my book, that's a good thing.