The Triumph of Christianity (23 page)

Traditional pagan ways for celebrating holidays also were quickly assimilated by the church and in this way a great deal of festive dancing, bell-ringing, candle-lighting, and especially singing became “Christian.” As MacMullen noted, “Among Christians, singing was at first limited to psalms, as had always been the custom among Jews. After the mid-fourth century, however, more is heard of a different sort of music not only at private parties... but in the very churches as well.... The intrusion of music into a sacred setting must obviously be credited to the old cults.”
⁷⁰

The early church fathers also were careful to assimilate the primary pagan festivals by Christianizing them. This was noted by Augustine (354–430): “[when] crowds of pagans wishing to become Christians were prevented from doing this because of their habits of celebrating feast days to their idols with banquets and carousing... our ancestors thought it would be good to make a concession... and permit them to celebrate other feasts.”
⁷¹
May Day became the feast day for Saints Philip and James; Midsummer Eve became the Nativity of St. John.
⁷²
Easter occurs at the time of the Spring Equinox and the name itself may have come from the Saxon goddess Eostre.
⁷³
All Saints Eve seems to have been introduced to overlie the traditional harvest festival. It also has been generally accepted that some minor local saints are overlays of equally minor, local pagan deities.

Thus several respected historians insist that “pre-Christian ceremonial,” and a “persistent pagan mentality”
⁷⁴
have lived on among rural and small-town Europeans, among whom “pagan antiquity... never disappeared.”
⁷⁵
“Many pre-Christian practices intended to ensure good harvests or safe childbirth, to predict the weather, or to ward off evil [were]... not abandoned until well into the modern period.”
⁷⁶
As a report written by the leader of an official Lutheran visitation to the district of Wiesbaden in 1594 put it: “The use of spells is so widespread among the people here that not a man or a woman begins, undertakes, does or refrains from doing anything... without employing some particular blessing, incantation, spell or other such heathenish means.”
⁷⁷
Other Lutheran visitation reports from the sixteenth century report the same thing and all stress that very, very few people ever went to church (see chapter 15). Finally, a remarkable amount of paganism lingers in modern forms of New Age and esoteric spiritualism.
⁷⁸

Conclusion

I
N ONE OF HIS
thousands of letters, this one written around 420, the Christian monk Isidore of Pelusium remarked: “The pagan faith, made dominant for so many years, by such pains, such expenditure of wealth, such feats of arms, has vanished from the earth.”
⁷⁹
More than fifteen hundred years later, the prominent Oxford historian E. R. Dodds (1893–1973) agreed: “In the fourth century paganism appears as a kind of living corpse, which begins to collapse from the moment when the supporting hand of the State is withdrawn.”
⁸⁰

But it wasn’t true. In the fourth and early fifth centuries, paganism was still quite robust. But to recognize that fact it is necessary, as Peter Brown put it, to attend to “tantalizing fragments” of historical evidence that can be “glimpsed through the chinks in a body of evidence which claims to tell a very different story.” That false story being that “this one short period of time (under a century) witnessed the ‘death of paganism’... as a succession of Christian emperors... played out their God-given role in abolishing... the old gods.”
⁸¹

Granted that the early church fathers were certain that theirs was the Only True Faith, and therefore they could not, and did not, commit themselves to ideals of religious freedom. Nevertheless, the church did not exploit its official standing to quickly stamp out paganism, nor did the emperors accomplish this on behalf of the new faith. Instead, paganism survived relatively unmolested for centuries after the conversion of Constantine, only slowly sinking into obscurity, meanwhile managing to create niches for some of its traditions within Christianity and to live on among the only slightly Christianized European masses.

Chapter Twelve
Islam and the Destruction of Eastern and North African Christianity

C
HRISTIANITY DID NOT START OUT
as a European religious movement; in early days far more missionary activity was devoted to the East than to the West. Thus, following his conversion, Paul devoted his initial missionary efforts to Arabia
¹
(Gal. 1:17). Subsequently, when the Great Revolt brought Roman vengeance unto Israel, the leaders of the church in Jerusalem appear to have taken shelter in the East. Although we know precious little about how Christianity was spread in the East, we know that it was extremely successful there, soon becoming a major presence in Syria, Persia, parts of Arabia, Mesopotamia, Turkestan, Armenia, and on into India and even with several outposts in China.
²
As for North Africa, it was “the most Christianized region of the Western empire,”
³
home to “such great early leaders as Tertullian, Cyprian, and Augustine.”
⁴
By the year 300, it is plausible that more than half of all Christians lived in the East and Africa; in 325, 55 percent of the bishops invited to the Council of Nicaea were from the East and this did not, of course, include Montanists, Marcionites, Manichaeists, or other Eastern “heretical” Christians. By the year 500, probably more than two-thirds of Christians were outside of Europe,
⁵
and if we can identify “a Christian center of gravity” at this time, it would be in “Syria rather than Italy.”
⁶

Christianity became a predominately European faith “by default”
⁷
when it was destroyed in Asia and North Africa. The destruction began in the seventh and early eighth century when these areas were overrun by Islam. The number of Eastern bishops (as measured by council attendance) fell from 338 in 754 to 110 in 896.
⁸
However, following the initial Muslim conquests, for centuries Christians persisted as a large, if repressed, majority. Then, in the fourteenth century came a relentless and violent Muslim campaign of extermination and forced conversions. After centuries of gradual decline, the number of Christians in the East and North Africa suddenly was reduced to less than 2 percent of the population by 1400.
⁹
With the fall of Constantinople in 1453, Christianity had been essentially restricted to Europe. That is the story to be told in this chapter.

Muslim Conquests

T
HERE WERE MANY CHRISTIAN
and Jewish tribes and communities in Arabia in 570 when Muhammad was born. A large area in northern Arabia was fully Christianized, and there also were a number of Christian towns in the south (modern Yemen). As for Jews, in addition to several large communities within Mecca and Medina, there were at least six Jewish towns on the Arabian Peninsula.
¹⁰

Initially, Muhammad expected that Jews and Christians would accept him as the prophet who fulfilled both faiths. Frustrated when they rejected him, as soon as he possessed sufficient means to do so, Muhammad attacked the Jews in Mecca and Medina; and eventually he forced the male members of the last Jewish clan in Medina to dig their own mass grave, whereupon all six to nine hundred of them were beheaded and the women and children were sold into slavery.
¹¹
Then Muhammad also sent his army to seize the Jewish towns.

Most of the Christians in Arabia were Nestorians, named for Nestorius, the archbishop of Constantinople, who was condemned as a heretic in 431, but whose followers soon dominated the entire Christian movement in the East. For a time, the Christian communities in Arabia were too strong to be easily overcome, so Muhammad allowed them to exist so long as they paid an annual protection fee. However, Caliph Umar (
caliph
means successor and Umar was Muhammad’s second successor) possessed overwhelming military power and easily expelled all non-Muslims from the Arabian Peninsula.

Shortly before his death in 632, Muhammad’s forces began probing attacks into Byzantine Syria as well as into Persia. These attacks were in keeping with what came to be known as Muhammad’s farewell address, during which he said: “I was ordered to fight all men until they say ‘There is no god but Allah.’ ”
¹²
That was entirely consistent with the Qur’an (9:5): “slay the idolaters wherever ye find them, and take them (captive), and besiege them, and prepare for them each ambush.” In this spirit, Muslim armies launched a century of successful conquests.

First to fall was Syria, in 636 after three years of fighting. The defeat of the Byzantine force in Syria was ensured by the defection of its Arab mercenaries—sometimes they changed sides during an actual battle. Meanwhile, other Arab forces had moved against the Persian area of Mesopotamia, known today as Iraq. The problem of unreliable Arab troops also beset the Persians just as it had the Byzantines: in several key battles whole units of Persian cavalry, which consisted exclusively of Arab mercenaries, joined the Muslim side, leading to an overwhelming defeat of the Persians in the Battle of al-Qādisyyah in 636. Subsequently, Caliph al-Mansur built his capital city on the Tigris River. Its official name was Madina al-Salam (City of Peace), but everyone called it Baghdad (Gift of God). Eastern Persia, the area that is today Iran, soon fell to Muslim invaders as well.

Having conquered Persia, Muslim forces ventured north to conquer Armenia and also moved east, eventually occupying the Indus Valley (modern Pakistan). From this base, over many centuries the Muslims eventually expanded far into India. Meanwhile, Muslim forces also moved west.

First up was the Holy Land, at that time the most western part of Byzantine Syria. Muslim forces entered it in 636 and in 638, after a long siege, Jerusalem surrendered to Caliph Umar. In 639 Caliph Umar began the invasion of Egypt, a major center of Christianity and also a Byzantine colony. Because the major Egyptian cities were strongly fortified, the Arabs could only resort to massacres of the villages and rural areas in hopes that Christian forces would be drawn into open battles. That occurred from time to time, but following each engagement, the Christians were able to withdraw to their fortifications in good order. Moreover, since Alexandria (the second largest city in Christendom) and several other major Egyptian cities were seaports and easily supplied and reinforced by sea, sieges were ineffective. In 641 a new Byzantine governor of Egypt was appointed. For reasons that remain unknown, a month after his arrival by sea in Alexandria he arranged to meet the Muslim commander and surrendered the city and all of Egypt to him.

But this wasn’t the end. Four years later a Byzantine fleet of about three hundred vessels suddenly arrived in the harbor at Alexandria and disembarked a substantial army that quickly dispatched the Muslim garrison of about a thousand. Once again the Greeks had an impregnable position behind the great walls of the city, but their arrogant and foolish commander led his forces out to meet the Arabs and was routed. Even so, enough Byzantine troops made it back to Alexandria to adequately man the fortifications and once again they were secure against attack—but for the treachery of an officer who opened a gate to the Arabs. Some reports say he was bribed; others claim he was a Coptic Christian who was getting even with the Byzantines for having persecuted people of his faith (the Orthodox Byzantines were militantly intolerant). In any event, having burst into the city, the Muslims engaged in “massacre, plunder, and arson... [until] half the city was destroyed.”
¹³
They also tore down the city walls to prevent any repetition of the problem.

The need to take Alexandria twice made the Muslims fully aware of the need to offset Byzantine sea power. Turning to the still-functioning Egyptian shipyards they commissioned the construction of a fleet and then hired Coptic and Greek mercenaries to do the navigation and sailing. In 649 this new fleet was adequate to sustain an invasion of Cypress, and Sicily and Rhodes were pillaged soon after. A major Muslim Empire now ruled most of the Middle East and was free to continue spreading along the North African Coast.

But at this moment the Muslim conquests halted because a brutal civil war broke out within Islam and lasted for years. At issue were conflicting claims to be the true successor to Muhammad, which pitted Muhammad’s cousin and son-in-law Ali against Muawiyah, cousin of Caliph Uthman, who had just been murdered. After much bloodshed, Ali was also murdered and Muawiyah became Caliph, with the result that Islam was forever divided into the Sunnis and the Shiites (who had backed Ali). It was not until 670 that a Muslim army advanced further along the North African coast.

As Egypt had been, the entire north coast of Africa also was under Byzantine rule. Since all the major cities were ports and well garrisoned, the Arab commander moved west over desert routes, established an inland base, and built a huge mosque in what became the city of Kairouan—now regarded as the third holiest Muslim city (after Mecca and Medina).
¹⁴
From this base in the Maghreb (as the Arabs called North Africa), the Muslim force first made war on the desert-dwelling Berbers, many of whom had long ago converted to Judaism.
¹⁵
Despite bitter resistance, especially by tribes from the Atlas Mountain area led by a charismatic Jewish woman named Kahina, the Muslims eventually prevailed and then succeeded in enlisting the Berbers as allies.
¹⁶
Meanwhile, a new Muslim army of perhaps forty thousand swept over the coastal cities, taking Carthage in 698. But, as had happened with Alexandria, the Byzantines managed to land troops in the Carthage harbor and retake the city. In response, the Muslims assembled a fleet and another army, including large numbers of Berbers, and in 705 Carthage was “razed to the ground and most of its inhabitants killed.”
¹⁷
Possession of an adequate fleet by the Muslims sealed the fate of all the remaining African coastal towns.
¹⁸

All of Christian Africa was now under Muslim rule as was all of the Middle East and the Christian portions of Asia, except for the area that now is modern Turkey, which still was ruled from Constantinople. Then, in 711 Muslim forces from Morocco invaded Spain and soon pushed the Christian defenders into a small area in the North, from which they never could be dislodged. A century later Sicily and Southern Italy fell to Muslim forces.

Conversion

I
T WAS A VERY
long time before the conquered areas were truly Muslim in anything but name. The reality was that very small Muslim elites long ruled over non-Muslim (mostly Christian) populations in the conquered areas. This runs contrary to the widespread belief that Muslim conquests were quickly followed by mass conversions to Islam.

In part this belief in rapid mass conversions is rooted in the failure to distinguish “conversions by treaty” from changes in individual beliefs and practices. Tribes that took arms for Muhammad often did so on the basis of a treaty that expressed acceptance of Muhammad’s religious claims, but these pacts had no individual religious implications—as demonstrated by the many defections of these tribes following the prophet’s death. Similar “conversions by treaty” continued during the Muslim conquests, the Berbers being a notable case. When attacked by the Muslim invaders of North Africa, some of the Berber tribes were pagans, some were Jews, and some were Christians. But after the defeat of Kahina and her forces, the Berbers signed a treaty declaring themselves to be Muslims. Perhaps some of them were. But even though Marshall Hodgson wrote that the Berbers “converted en mass,”
¹⁹
theirs was mainly a conversion by treaty that qualified them to participate in subsequent campaigns of conquest and share in the booty and tribute that resulted. The actual conversion of the Berbers in terms of individual beliefs was a slow process that took many centuries.

The second source of mistaken belief in mass conversions is the failure to recognize compelled or opportunistic conversions as opposed to those involving an authentic change of heart. Muslims sometimes confronted nonbelievers with the choice between conversion on the one hand, and death or slavery on the other. Thus, in 1292 the Coptic Christian scribes serving the Mamlūk sultan in Cairo were given the option of conversion or death. Not too surprisingly, they chose to convert although even the sultan knew their conversions “were not taken very seriously.”
²⁰
In addition, non-Muslims living in Muslim societies had to endure many humiliations and hardships, including far higher tax rates. Moreover, just as many pagans embraced Christianity because of the financial and social benefits, so too did many embrace Islam for similar motives. The more surprising fact is not that many such conversions resulted, but that so many people chose to remain steadfast Christians or Jews (pagans usually not being tolerated at all).

Aside from confusing these varieties of conversions for the real thing, historians also have erred by assuming that once a people came under Muslim occupation, there “must have been” mass conversions. As previously noted, “must have been” is one of the most untrustworthy phrases in the scholarly vocabulary. In this case, social scientists who have studied conversion would respond that there “must not have been” mass conversions, since it is very doubtful that a mass conversion has ever occurred, anywhere! All observed instances of conversion have revealed them to be individual acts that occur relatively gradually as people are drawn to a particular faith by a network of family and friends who already have converted.
²¹
In the instances at hand, the network model gains credibility from the fact that it took centuries for as many as half of the population of conquered societies to become Muslims.