Collins and Christian-Catholic Culture in the West

Australian historian Paul Collins in his work The Birth of The West makes the claim that the 10^th century formed European identity and was based upon the firm foundation of both Christianity and Romanic-Gallic culture. There is little to dispute this claim. The antecedents of the 10^th century European expansion, in which by 1000 AD Europe was supreme in every aspect of world affairs, was of course laid much earlier. Yet the 10^th century was crucial to the creation of the modern world – a fact which by itself destroys the idea that Islam or any other pagan-totalitarian culture created much of anything.

Between the takeover of the Roman empire by Germanic groups [there was no fall], and the Moslem invasions [which led to a contraction absurdly called by Marxist-Enlightenment theologians as a Dark Age]; European culture became an admixture of the old [Roman-Greek] and the new [Christian-Rational]. As Collins relates:

“Boethius (ca. 475–ca. 526), a brilliant philosopher, politician, and translator of Aristotle, who exercised the strongest influence on medieval education. He was interested in the Quadrivium, and his translations of Aristotle’s logical and mathematical works and his own theological works were used for the next millennium. The final influence on medieval education was Bishop Isidore of Seville (ca. 560–636), who studied at the cathedral school of Seville in the Visigothic period a century before the Muslim invasion. Like Gerbert, [Pope Sylvester II], he was fascinated by knowledge and compiled the Etymologiae... “

In the 10^th century a Pope and polymath born in poverty became a standard bearer for European success and progress. Pope Sylvester II was an inventor, musician, astronomer, writer, mathematician and a reforming theologian. Men like Sylvester are not formed in 'dark ages'. It might be remarked that weak Popes like the current Francis, are. Sylvester and other well educated clergy knew all about Aristotle [who was usually wrong] and ancient learning, some of it useful, much of it not.

“...influenced by Boethius’s De arithmatica is clear from his correspondence with his friend Constantine of Fleury concerning superparticular numbers, the arithmetic relationship of two sequential numbers where the dividend equals the divisor plus one. [Pope Sylvester II] Gerbert’s interest here was derived from music; such calculations are useful in understanding harmony.”

“Gerbert also taught logic and rhetoric, introducing students to “the poets with whom he thought they ought to be made acquainted, expounding and teaching the poets Virgil, Statius and Terence, the satirists Juvenal, Persius and Horace, and the historian Lucan. When the students had been familiarized with these authors and trained in the modes of expression, he promoted them to the study of rhetoric.” Gerbert wrote a commentary on Aristotle and was very much influenced by Cicero, who linked rhetoric to integrity of character.”

What does Collins say about Christianity and the modern world today? He correctly surmises that a post-Christian world will lead to decline, but that we are not yet there. The reason is that Christianity is so embedded into reason, science, culture, laws and mores; that it is difficult to expunge from the Western consciousness.

“Our culture was born in the tenth century. The driving force of that birth was Western Christianity, more specifically Catholicism. The church was the cohesive driver that bound together the disparate elements that make up our cultural inheritance and was the energy that drove the process forward. Today we stand at a crossroads in Western culture, caught up as we are in a seemingly inexorable movement toward globalism, multiculturalism, and internationalism. There is a strong impetus today to deny our cultural roots altogether, or at least to pretend that we live in a kind of “post-Christian [world]”.

Collins is right, even if he is a little optimistic. Cultural Marxism, multiculturalism, the fetishes of relativity, sexual confusion, militant ascientific Atheism [from nothing there is everything], Islam-Is-Peace [so too was Communism and Nazism]; amongst other cult doctrines [plant food causes weather so save us almighty state]; have the ability to create a post-Christian world. Looking around at reality it is rather evident that this anti-Western culture is in the ascendant. It does not bode well for the future.