Read Online Catastrophe: An Investigation Into the Origins of the Modern World by David Keys - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: David Keys
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double blow, one with both territorial and religious dimensions, when the Persian army captured Christianity’s most sacred city, Jerusalem.
With the loss of Jerusalem, the morale of the empire was irreparably damaged. Psychologically it was perhaps the single greatest blow of the Persian War. The Persian army slaughtered thousands of Jerusalem’s Christians and (according to the cleric Antiochus Strategus) took thousands more as captives to Mesopotamia, where “by the waters of Babylon” they “sat down and wept.” 7
Yet more Christians perished from heat and overcrowding in a makeshift prison established by the Persians, and age-old religious, ethnic, and cultural conflict reemerged between Jews and Christians, resulting in further Christian deaths. What’s more, the Persians seized and took back to Mesopotamia Christendom’s most holy relic, fragments of a wooden cross believed by the faithful to be the very one on which Christ had died. 8
From this point on, a dangerous spirit of defeatism seems to have taken root in the Roman Empire. Certainly the blame for the loss of Jerusalem was heaped not on the “evil Persians,” who were the “hated of God,” but on God himself, who had used the Persian army “as a rod of chastisement and as a medicine of rebuke” against the Romans. 9
What was happening to the empire was beginning to be seen as God’s will. Describing the scene as the Persian army moved in for the kill, Antiochus revealed the depths of Roman fatalism, which had by now reached almost apocalyptic levels.
“And as we knew not God nor observed His commandments, God delivered us into the hands of our enemies. The Lord has given over this Holy City to the enemy,” he wrote.
“The Persians perceived that God had forsaken the Christians and that they had no helper,” so with “increased wrath” they began to build in a circuit around the city great wooden towers “on which they placed catapults.
“The struggle lasted 20 days, shooting their catapults with such force that on the 21st day they broke down the city wall. At this, the evil enemy entered the city in great fury, like angry wild beasts and enraged serpents.
“The men defending the walls fled to hide in caverns, conduits and cisterns to save themselves; and the people fled in crowds to the churches and their altars and there they were slaughtered.
“For the enemy entered in great wrath, gnashing their teeth in violent fury; like evil beasts they roared, like lions they bellowed, like ferocious serpents they hissed, and slew all they found.
“Like mad dogs they tore with their teeth the flesh of the faithful, respecting no one, neither man nor woman, neither young nor old, neither child nor baby, neither priest nor monk, neither virgin nor widow.
“They destroyed persons of every age, slaughtering them like animals, cut them to pieces, mowed many down like cabbages, so that every individual had to drain the full cup of bitterness.”
After the city had fallen, Antiochus Strategus went on to describe what a group of fleeing Jerusalemites saw as they looked back at their city: “Once more, they raised up their eyes and gazed upon Jerusalem and its holy churches.
“A flame as from a furnace reached up to the clouds as it burnt.
“Then they fell to sobbing and lamenting loudly and all together. Some smote themselves on their face, others rubbed their faces in the dust, others strewed ashes on their heads, others tore their hair when they beheld the [Church of the] Holy Resurrection on fire. [The Church of] Sion [enveloped] in smoke and flames, and Jerusalem devastated.”
Soon the whole of Egypt and Libya as well as the Levant was in Persian hands, and in 616 a Persian army arrived on the eastern bank of the Bosphorus, less than a mile of water away from Constantinople.
Would the capital suffer the same fate as Jerusalem? Again the Romans saw what they believed to be their impending doom as the will of God—a punishment
With the loss of Jerusalem, the morale of the empire was irreparably damaged. Psychologically it was perhaps the single greatest blow of the Persian War. The Persian army slaughtered thousands of Jerusalem’s Christians and (according to the cleric Antiochus Strategus) took thousands more as captives to Mesopotamia, where “by the waters of Babylon” they “sat down and wept.” 7
Yet more Christians perished from heat and overcrowding in a makeshift prison established by the Persians, and age-old religious, ethnic, and cultural conflict reemerged between Jews and Christians, resulting in further Christian deaths. What’s more, the Persians seized and took back to Mesopotamia Christendom’s most holy relic, fragments of a wooden cross believed by the faithful to be the very one on which Christ had died. 8
From this point on, a dangerous spirit of defeatism seems to have taken root in the Roman Empire. Certainly the blame for the loss of Jerusalem was heaped not on the “evil Persians,” who were the “hated of God,” but on God himself, who had used the Persian army “as a rod of chastisement and as a medicine of rebuke” against the Romans. 9
What was happening to the empire was beginning to be seen as God’s will. Describing the scene as the Persian army moved in for the kill, Antiochus revealed the depths of Roman fatalism, which had by now reached almost apocalyptic levels.
“And as we knew not God nor observed His commandments, God delivered us into the hands of our enemies. The Lord has given over this Holy City to the enemy,” he wrote.
“The Persians perceived that God had forsaken the Christians and that they had no helper,” so with “increased wrath” they began to build in a circuit around the city great wooden towers “on which they placed catapults.
“The struggle lasted 20 days, shooting their catapults with such force that on the 21st day they broke down the city wall. At this, the evil enemy entered the city in great fury, like angry wild beasts and enraged serpents.
“The men defending the walls fled to hide in caverns, conduits and cisterns to save themselves; and the people fled in crowds to the churches and their altars and there they were slaughtered.
“For the enemy entered in great wrath, gnashing their teeth in violent fury; like evil beasts they roared, like lions they bellowed, like ferocious serpents they hissed, and slew all they found.
“Like mad dogs they tore with their teeth the flesh of the faithful, respecting no one, neither man nor woman, neither young nor old, neither child nor baby, neither priest nor monk, neither virgin nor widow.
“They destroyed persons of every age, slaughtering them like animals, cut them to pieces, mowed many down like cabbages, so that every individual had to drain the full cup of bitterness.”
After the city had fallen, Antiochus Strategus went on to describe what a group of fleeing Jerusalemites saw as they looked back at their city: “Once more, they raised up their eyes and gazed upon Jerusalem and its holy churches.
“A flame as from a furnace reached up to the clouds as it burnt.
“Then they fell to sobbing and lamenting loudly and all together. Some smote themselves on their face, others rubbed their faces in the dust, others strewed ashes on their heads, others tore their hair when they beheld the [Church of the] Holy Resurrection on fire. [The Church of] Sion [enveloped] in smoke and flames, and Jerusalem devastated.”
Soon the whole of Egypt and Libya as well as the Levant was in Persian hands, and in 616 a Persian army arrived on the eastern bank of the Bosphorus, less than a mile of water away from Constantinople.
Would the capital suffer the same fate as Jerusalem? Again the Romans saw what they believed to be their impending doom as the will of God—a punishment
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