The Western mind

One seminal title, if not text, of our generation was Charles Freeman's The Closing of the Western Mind. This was its American title, which title the publisher chose to ape Allan Bloom's classic; it bears a different title in the UK, perhaps a better one.

The first chapters retell Gibbon about how THE CHURCH squelched philosophy so as to become parabasilevic: the bishops would let kings rule over the Western body as long as the bishops ruled the Western mind.

I think I had bought this book in the middle 2000s and I know I read a little of it, but I didn't take it with me. By 2007 I was already primed to distinguish between the Dark Ages and the Middle Ages, from Peter Heather's work. I was regularly attending Catholic services over 2008.

By Freeman's American title, his American reviewers judged its content. Publishers Weekly (hardly Inquisition-approved) put out a warning that the argument was basic-bitchery and a slander. Bookstores smelled a market and stocked the book anyway. Besides providing more spank material to the likes of Dawkins, its main legacy was to inspire Robert Reilly's me-too title against Hanbali Muslims.

So here we are in the days of Rodney Stark, Charlemagne bios, Tom Holland, the History for Atheists blog (its prototype reviewed Freeman), and HBDChick. New Atheists who sneer at the Church get flooded with aaaacshually ratio in their Twitter comments. Into this fray comes Joe Henrich with The WEIRDest People Of The World. Freeman has had enough and is two-starring the thing.

Razib Khan is moderating the debate. He agrees on points. He does, however, think Henrich is right on the overall argument. Freeman had argued that the Church was powerful and used the power for evil. Henrich agrees on the Church's power but says this was used for good - banning cousin marriage, especially. Freeman now says there was diversity. So the Church wasn't so powerful after all. GOOOAAALL! - own goal...

When I look at the Late Antique Church, frankly it's about as depressing as the rest of Late Antiquity. Especially if you look at the ostensible leader of it, in Rome. At first it was a Byzantine outpost. Rome took orders from Ravenna; the Exarch there, from the Emperor across the Balkans. Vigilius and Martin resisted the worst of it but, still, couldn't resist that the Spirit came from Father through the Son. In between Gregory I "the Great" finagled some meaningless title from false emperor Phocas. Then in AD 800 came Charlemagne, whom Pope Leo III crowned emperor, instead of deferring to the real empire under Constantine V and successors. Here's the "fun" part - this last change was not for the better. The Papacy crumbled into the Theophylact Pornocracy.

What this amounts to, is that for hundreds of years European Christians may or may not have known who the Roman Bishop even was, and they certainly knew enough not to care. For some time the Irish couldn't even synchronise the date of Easter with the Continent; Britain being rather stuck in the middle. In this context when THE CHURCH could barely control itself, we are supposed to believe that THE CHURCH had the most power over the people. Naw, dawg. Pull the other one.

There certainly was a decay in living-standards in the West - and not even only there, it was bad in Byzantium and arguably worst in Iran. I've been arguing that point for fifteen years. There are reasons for this, including "religious" reasons. I don't see those reasons in Christianity. Especially not Catholic Christianity. That's the religion which, when Pope Gregory VII got its act together, brought us back.