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The last few posts have looked at the transformation of the Classical world into Christianity - the second of our three pillars of Western art and culture with the European nations yet to come. We're approaching this through art because it lets us see the changes directly while undoing globalist subversion and reconnecting us with a central part of out cultural heritage. But it quickly became clear that there are much deeper metaphysical issues to deal with as well. There is a lot of nonsense discourse between you and the cultural patrimony of your ancestors. The art of the West lets us tear down the lies and lay the groundwork for a more positive future where techne and beauty express the best in us.
Elina Brotherus, Der Wanderer 5, 2003
Start asking what art means, and you quickly get into fundamentals like epistemology, ontology, theology, historiography, morality, and so forth. Which is fine, because dismantling the Postmodern lies that globohomo is built on has to happen at the bedrock level of what we can know and how we can know it.
This post turned into a bit of a beast. There were several related issues around the transition from the Classical to the Christian world that had to be covered and the easiest way is to just lay them out. We start with a recap and the point of looking for the foundations of the West before returning to the problem of secular transcendence in the writing of history. This brings us to the distortions in modern historiography around the emergence of Christianity in the empire, vertical logos and historiography, and then some facts on the ground. Early Christian symbolism raises the problem of representing a new metaphysics with old tools from a marginal social position. The rest of the post looks at religion in the empire and why the cult of the divine emperor looks a lot like the secular morality of civic nationalism.
Its a long ride, but it's been a while since last time - short occult temple post notwithstanding - and there is a lot to share with you all.
The plan hasn't changed. The journey has proven to be lengthy, but we are still on the same course that launched from Armory Show in New York in 1913.
That heading is the arrival of Modernism in American art and, more importantly, what that means for the larger culture. In recent occult posts, the Band has been looking at the fake mass-media monoculture that inverted American morality a half-century later, and it is clear that it is all connected. We've also observed how secular transcendence piles up in layers - the geology of self-idolization to put it figuratively. Here's the graphic - we call it de-moralization:
Modernism was when accumulating self-deification went mainstream, moving out of elite circles to shape policy and institutional intellectual culture. After World War Two, secularist materialism domunated popular culture with unprecedented media and mass consumerism. It's all one process, just layers or strata in the march of Progress!.
The occult posts don't go as deeply into the deeper intellectual substructure because they focus on images and how they lead or trick the public. But if there seems to be parallel themes in the occult and regular Band posts it's because there are. Two rungs on the ladder from truth to materialism and self-worship.
Looking at the arrival of Modernism in America has two goals.
Museum of Modern Art, New York
The first is to show how the culture of the West became increasingly disconnected from its people before being inverted into the dyscivic mess that still festers in galleries today.
When you actually look at it, it is absurd almost beyond belief. Modernism actively mocks the lost souls that profess to like it.
Gill Bustamante, The Angel of Spring Rises, oil on canvas
The second, and more important, is to step out of the illusion and consider what the art of the West actually is. Modernism and its metastases are atavists - they tear down but build nothing. Evil can't create, only pervert, invert, and destroy. The Band tears down lies to uncover the real cultural heritage hidden beneath - the backbone of truth that allows to artists to actually create again.
Western art earned its place in society by at least professing to serve the Beautiful, the True, and the Good, whether defined by Church or by some secular transcendence. It isn't a question of whether a particular artist was moral, but what art was understood to be. The notion that it is worthwhile to have the most talented creators visualize society's ideals. Clear away the inversion and people can reconnect with the intellectual, emotional, and aesthetic richness of their heritage - the precondition to rejuvenating the West as a living culture.
Woodbridge Waterfront Park Restoration, New Jersey
It's less a tear-down than a brownfield restoration.
To quickly recap, we went back to the roots of the West, starting with the Greeks since they were the first to write about art in a theoretical way. We found some terms that gave a much more organic, culturally-connected concept of art than the fake "autonomy" of the modern perverters. Techne introduces the concept of ordered skill while episteme speaks to the metaphysical beliefs that provide the deeper truth-value.
Lawrence Alma-Tadema, A Sculpture Gallery in Rome at the Time of Agrippa, 1867, oil on wood, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts
The aesthetics are subjective cultural preference, but art as a concept fits into an integrated ontological hierarchy tied together by the vertical concept of logos. Click for the first and second posts. A culturally-determined, skill-based practice that can visualize abstract principles in an appealing form is a better working definition than anything spat out post-Enlightenment.
Moving into Christianity meant addressing the transformation in metaphysics before applying the Greek terms to this new context. This introduced a completely different Old Testament theology, where man was separated from ultimate reality by the Fall. For readers who find the theology of the Fall difficult to fathom, remember that it is an allegory - a textual representation of some aspect of reality that we have no direct ontological access to any more. So ask whether the story of the Fall describes a condition that we can observe directly. Click for a post.
Empirically, we live in a world with origins and limits that are beyond comprehension. All life dies, all structure collapses, all memory fades, and the absolute precision of mathematics is physically impossible to make or measure. Human perspectives are physically and psychologically subjective, our nature is observably corruptible, morality drifts, and people fail over and over in repetitive and predictable ways.
We can think of the metaphysical divide in the Old Testament in mathematical terms with the metaphor of the infinite stream in the bucket. We're the bucket. You can't put the limitless in the finite. Another post looking into the Fall/finitude analogy if you're interested in reading further.
The Incarnation connects the finite and infinite to make ultimate reality accessible on human terms to limited human discernment. The foundations of the West come into view when St. John uses the term "Logos" to describe Jesus in terms of Greek metaphysics.
Greek metaphysics gave us a thought structure and the necessity of ultimate reality but no sense of what it was like - conceptual pathways but no content. It could identify the logical necessity of an ontological hierarchy, but had no idea what or how it is. The Old Testament gave us the content but no conceptual pathway to take us to it.
John tells us that the Incarnation is the light casting the shadow that logic could detect. The eminent reason in the world that we can see is given moral direction and God's law makes sense conceptually. Truth is "correct" in material and metaphysical terms. It's all connected.
Christianity presented two major issues for the Greek understanding of art.
Frantisek Kupka, The Black Idol (Resistance), 1903, aquatint on paper, Georges Pompidou Center, Paris
The first is idolatry - the tension between the Old Testament prohibition on images and the visible humanity of Christ.
Myron, Discobolos, Roman copy of original from around 450 BC, Museo Nazionale Palazzo Massimo alle Terme
Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, The Nativity, around 1670, oil on obsidian, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
The second is the different relationship between material and ultimate reality in Christian metaphysics.
To this point, we've been considering these in an theoretical way - how abstract thought structures fit together. But to understand how these issues actually work out means shifting from the philosophical to the historical. The information that we have about the situation on the ground rather than ontological relationships that are clear in hindsight. The Greek terms remain useful, but what they refer to changes.
This brings up historiography - the processes of constructing historical knowledge and another big topic from some older posts [links if you're interested: part 1, part 2, part 3, coda]. What's important for our purposes is that "history" isn't simply the recounting of objective facts. We do have pieces of historical data that are more or less reliable, but historians organize these into narratives, and the narratives pile up into a general understanding of the past and our relationship to it. Historiography is the process of telling the stories - the assumptions and ideologies that our histories express. The problem is that stories clarify the past but also distort it in inevitable ways.
Pierre Leroy, cover to The Story of Man by Michel Lacre, Grossett & Dunlap, 1960
Stories reflect the perspective of the storyteller, so the narrative direction will always conform to the assumptions of a certain person in a particular time and place. This means that the dates and events considered "important" will be selected based on how well they fit the narrative.
This "panorama of human life and works" gives us Progress! as a kind of naturally occurring process. Note what is once again missing. De-moralized timelines precede Postmodernism, but historical narratives are cumulative.
Charles Payzant, illustration for Wheels Across America by Terry Shannon, Aladdin Books, 1954
New historians work off old ones, meaning that the stories are reinforced one way or another. National histories tend to build over time into sets of iconic narratives and timelines that develop into a sort of national mythology, only based on reality to some degree. Critical histories look to debunk and reinterpret the older stories, but wind up emphasizing the same points and trends, just from a different angle.
Ideally, the stories try to hew as closely to the truth as possible, but there is nothing forcing the story to do so other than the judgments of the historians. If the storytellers prioritize accuracy, then the stories approximate the truth within the limits of human perception. But if they don't, history becomes History! - a converged academic discourse spewing false secular transcendence in lockstep. Then the "fact-checkers" actually serve a lie and will selectively misread, distort, and invert the past to further their corrosive phantasy.
Historiography is a subset of epistemology - how we construct knowledge. Here is a graphic from the first historiography post contrasting the difference in the Classical and Christian perspectives. Classical historians were worldly in focus, Christians more metaphysical.
Like all branches of Western epistemology, historiography assumes an inwardly-motivated desire to represent the facts as accurately as possible. Predictably, this became a place for the Satanic inversions of post-Enlightenment secular transcendence, also like all the other epistemological branches. We saw this came up when we started thinking about Christian art and noticed the weird distortions and even elimination of the Middle Ages and Christianity in general.
This connects to one of the central fake dogmas of the globohomo materialists - the notion of endless Progress! towards human perfection in every field. Worldly events are given a metaphysical direction or telos, creating the logical impossibility of making moral judgments in a materialist, ontologically relativistic value system. It could be papered over with debt for a long time, but the cracks have been spreading for a while now. Here's a contrast between fake globalist progress and the notion of Christian teleology that it inverts:
We can see how the layering of fake secular transcendences works by looking at an older iteration of a familiar set of myths. Pay attention to how the civnat mythology of equalism is very the same, but the arguments and justifications completely inverted from what we hear today:
Thomas Kelly, The Fifteenth Amendment, 1870, lithograph with watercolor, Library of Congress, Washington, DC
This print commemorating the Fifteenth Amendment is relevant to the present day because the events and the spin are fundamental to American civic nationalist mythology. Lies and wizardry around the War of Northern Aggression are a key backbone of the endless pushing of empirically-false universalist delusion. But look more closely at how the myth is sold. Then consider how it is packaged today. The rationales have completely changed, but somehow the myth remains the same, independent of facts or arguments. This is how you know its fake - a narrative with no interest in historical truth.
Portrait of Ulysses Grant; 1. Reading Emancipation Proclamation; 2. Life, Liberty, and Independence, symbolized by sword and olive wreath.
The underlying assumption is the magical power of Progress! - worship Progress! on the higher level of secular transcendence or Enlightenment fake metaphysics, and Progress! on the human level follows. The War of Northern Aggression was an imperialist war that ended the free union of states that the country was based on. Freeing the slaves was the moral fig leaf for the beginnings of the centralized, corruptible state than we're confronting today.
Start with the connection between freedom and government power. This whole celebration of "freedom" is made possible by the head of state, a piece of paper issued by that state, and symbols of earthly authority from pagan antiquity.
Empirically, Black Americans were culturally, ethnically, and intellectually different from Heritage Americans. They weren't invaders - they have a legitimate American history of their own - but it is a separate national history. The Band doesn't have a solution to this dilemma, but pretending that these aren't different peoples with fundamental differences in how they want to live is fake Enlightenment equalism - the wishing away of empirical cultural differences. Proclaimed in a salon, it is just nonsense. As a philosophy of government, it's like building on a foundation made of dynamite.
3. "We Unite the Bonds of Fellowship" represented by men in the regalia of fraternal organizations with their Masonic aprons - pure projection of secular transcendence and fake equalism. Where self-idolaters pretend 18th century social customs are universal human nature. See? The Progress! of "freedom" magically transforms foreign peoples into model faux-Euro gentry.
4. "Our charter of Rights - The Holy Scriptures"; 5. "Education will prove the Equality of the Races"
Here's where it get's interesting. The classroom scene is like the Masonic types - fake metaphysical Progress! of "freedom" magically transforms completely foreign peoples into model faux-Euro schoolchildren. How did that work out?
But consider the "rights" - the "charter" is Christian scripture. There is secular hagiography - it isn't a coincidence that Saint! Lincoln is next to the Bible. But the assertion is that this is "right" on Christian moral grounds. We can see the deception - the fundamental principles that this is based on are diametrically opposed to the ontology of logos.
10. "The Holy Ordinances of Religion are free"; 11. "Freedom unites the Family Circle"
The fake metaphysical Progress! of "freedom" is conducive to strong families and churches. We have the advantage of hindsight to judge that claim. The reality is that black faith and families were strong, but "freedom" had nothing to do with it. The opposite is proved true.
This is where we see pure inversion laid bare. The epistemology and ontology of the post-Enlightenment secular transcendence notion of freedom is directly opposed to the Christian morality of faith and family. But they are shown as complimentary.
Ditto for 6. "Liberty Protects the Marriage Altar"
It is so absurd in hindsight that it would be comical were it not tragic.
12. "We will protect our Country as it defends our Rights"; 13. "We till our own Fields"
Anyone will work when they have to, but more freedom, that is, creeping socialism and institutionalized dependence, put an end to that pressure. And lots of individual blacks have served with honor, but reality has dismissed the idea that their nation would reorient itself to worship post-Enlightenment civic nationalism.
What jumps out isn't the persistence of the myth - but how clearly the facts and arguments put forward to justify it change. Christian values and social order were pitched as the reason for the Fifteenth Amendment. Now, the argument is that Christian values and social order are oppressive obstacles to freedom. This is how we can see the actual goal - the destruction of the American nation. The commitment to the obvious falsehoods of secular transcendence is so strong because actually reaching "equality" isn't the point.
This is secular transcendence - the falsehood that transcendent things - abstracts, metaphysicals, ultimate reality, etc. - are attainable by human minds in the material world. This is something the Band keeps hammering at because it is such a fundamental part of the decline of our culture and is so obviously absurd with a moment's thought. Infinite anything, finite vessel. Progress! is self-evidently impossible, but no reader should be surprised that the erasure of the Christian West serves a lie.
Historiography is easy to see through because it doesn't require access to primary source material the way that catching out fraud in the historical record does. The distortions are so obvious because the liars are twisting established official chronologies that are very easy to look into. Globalist history relies on the compliant laziness of the people and censorship in converged institutions to prevent people from critically assessing it. Because the Band has made it pretty obvious how quickly the tales unravel with even a passing glance.
Winslow Homer, The Veteran in a New Field, 1865, oil on canvas, Metropolitan Museum of Art
From the time the Band started , it has relied on publicly-available historical facts. We've not delved into alternative chronologies or things outside of the historical record as generally understood.
Victor Bregeda, Scholars Quest
There are deeper uncertainties, but so what? We're finite buckets. Pure truth is an absolute.
Recognizing our limited discernment prevents false faith in secular transcendence. We always see through subjective filters. Do the best with what we have, and when better facts come up, rethink the story. Anything more is self-delusion. All we have is the historical record. We weren't there.
Keeping to the same "information" that everyone else has lets us focus on the storytelling - how the available facts are organized to define who we are and where we came from. And there are few places where the fog of distortion swirls thicker than around the emergence of Christianity. And this brings us back to logos and inversion.
Victor Bregeda, On Top of the World, oil on canvas
The Band is not going over this stuff as a thought experiment - vertical Logos is both logically and empirically consistent with what and how we can know. There is an immanent reason in creation and we can only grasp it imperfectly. Ignoring this for obvious human deceptions is the road to oblivion, both for oneself and society, no matter how certain they seem.
The point is to show that this whole illusory web of centralized networks is based on false assumptions that are at or near the end of their shelf lives. Not just to help people see the way out of the snares before they unravel, but also to show that there is a magnificent, organic, rationally-consistent reality outside the deception.
Bregeda is a contemporary Christian meta-realist painter with an very insightful eye.
We've seen how logos expresses itself in the appropriate way on each level of the ontological hierarchy for art, morality, and logic. History belongs on the same level as other human behaviors because it is dependent on abstractions to align with truth.
History is supposed to align with the truth, but as we have too often seen, there is nothing to stop the historian from lying or being deceived by the lies of others. We can judge human arts by their alignment with truth as we can perceive it.
Perfect knowledge is a transcendental - it is beyond us. So all histories are inaccurate or incomplete in some fashion. The question is whether the historian is attempting to understand what he can of the past as truthfully as possible. By applying higher principles - morality and logic, the integrity of the history, like any representation, can be assessed.
Here is another modified graphic from a recent post that captures the ontological fit with what we can know and how can we know it.
Western historiography is an extension of Western culture, meaning it is a product of a high-trust, internally-driven morality. The assumption is that the historian is doing their honest best - they may be wrong but they aren't serving a lie. A historiography based on falsehood like secular transcendence is diametrically opposite to one based on logos or truth within human limits.
Placing false claims about human discernment and ontology on a pedestal makes secular transcendence vanity, but it is also a form of idolatry. The same repetitive self-idolatry at the root of every Satanic moral inversion for as long as there have been humans - vain lies in the place of sincere truth-seeking. From the beginning, the Band has referred to post-Enlightenment dogmas as a form of faith in empirical falsehoods. The dogmatic belief in something fake.
Recognizing this makes it clear why secular materialist historiography has to be hostile to the Christian West. The idol takes the place of logos and its connection to Truth that provides the internal motivation to reflect reality as truthfully as possible. Any idolatrous History! that wants to ensconce a lie is by definition opposed to any methods that align with truth.
Jeaurat De Bertry, Nicolas Henri, Allegory of the Revolution with a portrait of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 1794, oil on canvas, Musee Carnavalet, Paris
Like this. The idolization of Rousseau above the all-seeing eye and next to the moon is like a self-parody. Or something for an occult post.
We can see it over and over. The Renaissance brought the first wave of self-idolatry - the "ancients" are a source of metaphysical truth - and introduced the idea of the Middle Ages as "dark". The Enlightenment brought rationalism as an article of fake faith and introduced the ironic charge that Christianity was "superstition". Unlike Rousseau worship and the all-seeing eye.
Today we see timelines that repeat the old Renaissance canard that a secularized notion of Classicism is the historical taproot of the West and the Christian aspects something to gloss over on the way to Modernity.
The solution is to look back at what actually happened historically without losing sight of Christian logos and the ontology of truth. From here we can consider how the West developed ways to represent their its relationship with the truth in appealing visual forms. Episteme and techne but with a clear moral path.
The first fact is that we have no distinctly Christian art from before the 2nd century for several reasons besides the toll of time. We saw in the last post that the religion of the Old Testament defined itself as aniconic, in opposition to the image-using peoples that surrounded it.
Replica of the Ark of the Covenant in the Royal Arch Room of the George Washington Masonic National Memorial; James Jacques Joseph Tissot, Moses and Joshua in the Tabernacle, 1896-1902, gouache on board, The Jewish Museum, New York; Juan Montero de Rojas, The Ark of the Covenant Crosses the River Jordan, 1667, oil on canvas, Museo del Prado
Apart from the description of the carvings on the Ark of the Covenant and the dimensions of the Temple of Solomon, there really is no Old Testament image culture to build out of.
Konstantin Flavitsky, Christian Martyrs in the Colosseum, 1862, oil on canvas, Russian Museum.
The earliest Christians were outside of the imperial elites, meaning that they had fewer resources to spend on art. Then there were the persecutions, sometimes ordered by the emperor . While these were sporadic, they were a real disincentive to broadcasting your identity too aggressively.
A note on the persecutions, because they nicely illustrate the storytelling aspect of history and the issues around early Christianity in particular. Globalist historians make it a point of emphasis to downgrade the severity of the persecutions based on scanty and ambiguous source material. Consider this entry from Wikipedia:
Let's break this down, because it is an excellent example of how fake history is built by ideologues and charlatans. It starts with an admission that the "source" material is so sketchy that any further attempts at statistical extrapolation should be dropped. Once it is clear that there is no available basis to build an estimate off of, any projection reveals nothing more than the preconceptions of the person making it.
British Library, Add. 12150, early Syriac manuscript with early Christian texts including Eusebius' Theophaneia (On Divine Manifestation) of 324, dated 411, parchment
1. Start with the source. Eusebius of Caesarea (263-339) was a prolific author and 4th-century bishop whose Church History (Historia Ecclesiastica) is one of the most important sources for the history of early Christianity. Historians have debated how to interpret Eusebius' account, with globalist mouthpieces attempting to conflate early Christian persecution and official records. This is absurd enough at a glance to call the motives of any proponent into question. The point is we don't have the evidence to make an empirically-defensible estimate. This means that any estimate is not empirically defensible. It is purely a projection of pre-existing assumptions. The persecutions happened, but these statistical conclusions aren't history. They're a litmus test for the historian.
2. The Wikipedia source for the total number is William Hugh Clifford Frend, an establishment shill with a laundry list of globalist credentials - Anglican priest, decorated academic, and holder of endless posts and awards during the great cultural inversion of the 1960s and '70s. He seems to be affiliated with just about every converged and corrupted "learned society" that transformed institutional scholarship into the globohomo house of deception that it is today. His commitment to the sincere, pre-institutional history of the early Church is apparent in his support of women's ordination. Not exactly the second coming of St. Athanasius.
Frend had the credentials, but he is operating from as much a position of faith as the counter-Reformation historians who claimed that every body in the catacombs was a holy martyr. Only his faith was in the secular transcendence of globalist Progress!.
Giovanni Niccolo Servandoni, Capriccio of Classical Ruins with Alexander the Great Opening the Tomb of Achilles, oil on canvas, private collection
The problem isn't the individual shill - they are in endless supply. It's that the entire structure of modern institutional scholarship is founded on false epistemological assumptions. Globalists prancing around the ruins is a fine metaphor, just with more diversity and non-racist statues. The only fix is a rebuild from the ground up.
3. The credentials launder the shill's projection into Facts! - empirically unverifiable assertions ranging from epistemologically-blind projections to outright lies. The beauty of Facts! is that unlike facts, they aren't limited by objective reality. What matters is that a sufficiently-credentialed talking head penned them, meaning subsequent shills can build more cloud-castles on top of them. They're treated as if they are true, but are only meaningful within the inverted self-idolatry of fake Postmodern discourse.
Dancing muppets like Yuval Noah Harari, a globalist darling whose Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, is the sort of book a "bright" will display next to Malcolm Gladwell. He shows no understanding of historiography or even evidentary standards in his use of Frend. Just another box-ticking self-idolater trying to retcon history to legitimate zit's own rejection of logos. The post-Enlightenment establishment is full of them.
SJW self-parodies like this "professor of New Testament and Early Christianity" at Notre Dame" disseminate inverted Facts! through the corpses of converged institutions. She's aggressive because she's functionally stupid - a blind follower of the imaginary oppressions of Postmodern delusion. Her "thesis" - Christians are evil because myths of persecution make them fearful and vengeful - is so inverted and projected that only a credentialed pet from "prestigious" schools could offer it up. Quick check of the bio and... Yale and Oxford.
Some patterns are so obvious that a single data point is predictive.
Now you can blame Christians for the destruction of the Renaissance caricature of Classical antiquity.
According to globalist clubhouse The New York Times this "searingly passionate book" is by "the daughter of an ex-nun and an ex-monk, who "wears her righteous fury on her sleeve. This is scholarship as polemic". Notice that there is no historiography, just the existentially lost vomiting emotion in a vain effort to soothe an inner void.
Her parents will never love her.
The direct line from the inherent anti-Christian bias in fake Enlightenment equalism to overt Satanic inversion is so transparent it can be irritating. The Band has just laid out the ontological and epistemological transition from antiquity and the distortions of globalist historiography in a few posts, with the most conventional information and simple diagrams. Broad strokes, but with links, names, and references for a reason. We want readers to look more closely, and to dig deeper. You will see that the patterns hold up, because we don't have any preconceptions that we need to get to.
This isn't just advice. It is what we are doing ourselves. The Band has already rethought previously held assumptions because we are following what is possible to know - wherever it leads.
That's what following the truth means.
Once you are aware of a) the limits on human discernment and representation, b) the inevitable catastrophe at the end of Progress!, and c) what this means for out relationship with objective truth, the liars' narratives are so hollow that they evaporate into a fog of vanity before the end of page one. Once you know their idols, you can predict their conclusions from the outset. What success they have comes from exploiting the stupidity and vanity of their readers - globohomo soy creatures whose weird blend of worldly posturing and abject ignorance might be historically unprecedented.
These doomed creatures lack the knowledge or cognitive ability to even understand what something like ontology is, let alone why it determines what is real. Instead, they live like blobs of hedonistic protoplasm, twitching in response to stimuli. Anything that makes them feel better in their vacuous materialism and comes with the trappings that they associate with "smart" gets them tingling. Even as the bottom is falling out.
Once you are aware of what we can know and how we can know it, there is no way to even engage with lies this obviously empty. They evaporate at a glance. It's the historical equivalent of an intricate mathematical theorum that begin by presuming 1 + 1 = 3. You don't need to bother checking the 126th line. You don't need to check any of it. Start with what you can claim to be true and the liars fall away like dust.
The actual circumstances on the ground are lost to us, and the Band has no deceptive aims to foist on the public. Obviously the topics we look at are subjective, but we begin in a way that this bloated, parasitic, official culture never does - by asking what we can know and how we can know it. Sincere consideration of the available data and logic. That's it. There is no other path to understanding the material world with what objective certainty we are capable of. When we encounter truth claims that begin with unknowables, we don't bother going further, because no matter how elaborate the discourse that follows, it's built on nothing. It's phantasy.
If an argument rests on something that can't be known, look hard at the person making it.
The Band's take on the persecutions is that they happened, and fell somewhere between the claims of the most strident Catholic polemicists and the hollow globalist marionettes. But the actual numbers are unknowable and therefore irrelevant to anything other than victim narratives. What matters is that the recurring mention of persecution and martyrdom in early Christian sources indicates that the perception of persecution was a formative aspect of the evolving Christian identity. A perception that logically disincentivizes showy art projects.
John Pettie, Fixing the Site of an Early Christian Altar, 1884, Leeds Art Gallery
What makes the earliest Christian art different from other ancient traditions is that the dominant styles weren't set by the most elite levels of society. A celebrated Greek artist like Phidias who was responsible for the Parthenon sculpture including the Elgin Marbles and the Athena Parthenos worked for the richest clients in the most expensive materials - only the wealthiest could afford him. But this placed his work in the center of the art world, meaning that less talented artists and less affluent buyers would produce and acquire work that tried to emulate Phidias, or Polykleitos, or another big name.
Alexandros of Antioch, Venus de Milo, between 130 and 100 BC, marble, Louvre Museum, Paris
Art was always based on taste-makers - what has changed is how those are chosen. The Classical Greeks judged art by techne and logos, meaning that artistic prominence tended to correlate with technical skill.
Jean-Baptiste Mauzaisse, Time Showing the Ruins He Brings and the Masterpieces He then Reveals, 1822, oil on canvas, ceiling of the jewelry room, Louvre Musuem, Paris
Artists could reference back to this with techne and episteme of their own. Mauzaisse uses the Venus de Milo in its ruined state as a metaphor for his Romantic notions of time and culture.
Henry Peters Gray, The Birth of Our Flag, (aka Origin of the American Flag), 1874, oil on canvas, National Academy of Design
Academic artists like Gray used iconic sculptures like the Venus de Milo as a models for original pictures. Like this bit of de-moralized civnattery. It's part of the fabrication of a fake secular mythology in the 19th century that gave the magic dirt its power. In hindsight it was downright prophetic to personify the fake nation with the goddess of sexual love and worldly pleasure. The eagle is fierce, but hedonistic self-idolatry the core. Because there is nothing to build on but an empty symbol. The techne isn't bad, but the logos is sorely lacking.
Then again, who needs logos when the empty modern culture of superficial spectacle turns it into an "attraction". Look at the crowd. How many know why they're there?
Jim Dine, Painted Venus de Milo, 2006, bronze and paint
Now skill is racist, so artists rise based on commitment to an anti-Western narratives and the ability to schmooze luciferian sociopaths. This lets Postmodern hacks like lingering Pop-Art filament Dine debase and degrade the original design in the name of problematizing tradition. Or calling it into question. Or something.
It's a litmus test.
The communities that produced the oldest surviving Christian art didn't have taste-making creators. They lacked social power, felt threatened for their beliefs, and came from a tradition without religious images, and where the legitimacy of imagery at all was an open question. This means we don't have the elite client class to fund an economy where elite trend-setters rise to the top of a hierarchy and their example can trickle down into a period style. Christian art develops somewhat under the radar, with individual artists with a great range of skill trying to express a radically new worldview with the artistic concepts of late Imperial Rome.
Caravaggio, The Crucifixion of St. Peter, 1601, oil and canvas, Santa Maria del Popolo, Rome
Christianity came to Rome in the 1st century, and while the exact details are lost in time, the apostles St. Peter and St. Paul loom largest in the Biblical and historical record. The chronology of Peter's movements is unclear, but he is known to have spent his post-Gospel years in Asia Minor before coming to Rome (click for a good historical overview of Peter's life).
It was here that he was martyred - by upside-down crucifixion according to early Christian tradition - most likely in the Circus of Nero during the Neronian persecution, or between the years 65 and 67. Seriously.
St. Paul was the most significant Biblical writer on mystical theology and drove the spread Christianity beyond the original Old Testament base. His Epistles appealed directly to pagans, and his declaration that gentile converts were not subject to Jewish law and custom universalized the theological fulfillment of the Law by Logos. According to early Christian tradition, Paul appears to have ended up in Rome as well, where he was also martyred during the Neronian persecution.
Enrique Simonet, The Beheading of Saint Paul, 1887, oil on canvas, Málaga Cathedral
Note the date. Don't see this one on the art timelines.
Peter assumed a leading role among the apostles after the Crucifixion, and is counted as first pope in Catholic tradition. Paul spearheaded the spread of the new faith to the wider world. So if we use them as an approximate marker for the arrival of Christianity in the city, it puts it in the early 2nd half of the 1st century.
The Annunciation, late 2nd century, Catacombs of Priscilla, Rome.
It's over a century before we see any signs of a distinctly Christian art. The earliest pictures and symbols come from the late 2nd century and pick up steam after Constantine ended the Diocletianic Persecutions for good in 313. The main sources are literally underground - the oldest come from the the catacombs outside the city that Christians and other groups used for burials and meetings. This is the earliest known image of the Annunciation to Mary
The carved sarcophagi that late Imperial Romans produced in large numbers provide another important resource.
It may be that the first Christian images were just symbols - recognizable pictograms to mark an identity or a place. This is consistent with human behavior and doesn't require any complicated artistry.
Funerary stele of Licinia Amias, early 3rd century, Baths of Diocletian, Rome
Early Christian tombstone with well-preserved inscriptions. IΧΘΥC ΖΩΝΤΩΝ (fish of the living) is a reference to the Biblical reference to Jesus as fisher of men. The pictures refer to this too - the fish is still a common Christian symbol. The Latin bottom line LICINIAE AMIATI BE/ NEMERENTI VIXIT (Licinia Amias well-deserving lived ...) is the dedication.
Both the IΧΘΥC and the fish are symbols - one's a word, one's a pictogram, but both use a generalized piscine allusion to indicate Christian identity.
Earyy Christian inscription with the Greek letters ΙΧΘΥΣ and circular diagram based on them, Ephesus
ΙΧΘΥΣ (Ichthus) is an acronym. Iota, Chi, Theta, Upsilon, and Sigma are the first letters in Ίησοῦς Χριστός, Θεοῦ Υἱός, Σωτήρ [Iēsous Christos, Theou Yios, Sōtēr] or Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior.
Epitaph of Atimetus, 3rd century, Catacombs of San Sebastiano, Rome
Jesus Fish (Ichthys), iPad Scripture Christian Wallpaper
Pictograms are a cross between words and pictures because you recognize them like a image rather than read them like a text. But they are more schematic and abstract than the mimetic resemblance of Classical art. The goal isn't to recreate the appearance of a real fish but to provide a piece of data that calls the concept of fish to mind. They are pictures, but not made for artistic purposes. They're pictograms - pictures that transmit information in the manner of words, but add variety, visual interest, and instant recognizability.
The Icthus is a symbol with very deep roots - a connection between present and antique past.
Floor mosaics from the House of Eustolios, a 4th century Roman bath in Kourion, Cyprus
The line between pictograms and art is blurry. Here, the mosaicist is striving for what we would call aesthetic rather than purely symbolic effects. This does conform more to the notion of an artwork, but it still has the symbolic dimension.
This is iconography - using symbolic elements to add a discursive component to mimetic or otherwise "artistic" images.
The last bit of our inscription needs a closer look as well. This is the top line, with the Latin initials D M and another pictogram - the crown of laurel. This is interesting, because it is using traditional pagan symbols to deliver a Christian message.
One of the advantages of switching range to the historical specifics is that we can see the actual transition between Classical and Christian culture. Adapting pagan symbols to a Christian context is a kind of cultural transitional species.
Agrippina Crowns her Son Nero with a Laurel Wreath, between 54 and 59 AD, Aphrodisias Museum, Turkey
The laurel was an ancient Greek symbol of triumph that was adopted by the Romans and made its way into the West. Early Christians used this common association to refer to the triumph over death that came with salvation. The pagan idea of triumph over death meant fame - your name lived on through monuments. Christian immortality was metaphysical and logos-based. Vertical rather than flatly material. Whether Licinia's memory fades is irrelevant - her laurel is a move up the ontological hierarchy.
Urn for the ashes of Tiberius Claudius Chryseros and Iulia Theonoes and Claudia Dorcas, probably his wife and daughter, Museo delle Terme di Diocleziano, Rome, CIL VI 5318
The inscription reads: Dis Manib(us) / Ti(beri) Claudi Aug(usti) l(iberti) / Chryserotis / et Iuliae Theo / noes et Claudiae / Dorcadis
The D M is an abbreviation for Dis Manibus (to the Manes) - a reference to the spirits of the dead. The idea is that the deceased has been divinized or become one of the countless minor ancestrial deities or spirits that were part of mainstream Roman paganism.
Estela Funeraria of a Centurion from Legion XXII Primigenia T. Terentio Tullo. CIL VI, 3634
Funerary stela dedicated to 6 year old Claudia Victoria, by her mother Claudia Severina, Musée gallo-romain de Fourvière, Lyon
Latin inscription on a sarcophagus in the Vatican Museum
It could be written out in full, or more commonly abbrviated
One other thing - notice how the Jesus acronym in written in Greek while the rest of the text is Latin. This tells us that there was a symbolic connection between that Greek word and the concept of Jesus to Latin-speaking Roman Christians.
This is not surprising considering that the Gospels were written in Greek, and in the last post, we saw St. John describe the Incarnation in terms of Greek metaphysics. The stela lets us see in in concrete terms.
The stela got a long look because is a great example of the difficulty in talking about Christian art and symbolism in a systematic way. We have words, pictograms, and the Greek ΙΧΘΥΣ on a Latin monument acting as a kind of lexical symbol - its a word that communicates through pictorial recognition rather than reading. Even more interestingly, as a Christian monument with a pagan dedication to the Manes, it is a transitional item. We can see Romans trying to express the Christian concept of the afterlife with the language and concepts that are available to them. They are literally inventing a symbolic vocabulary to express their new metaphysics.
Cubiculum of Leonsis, Bust of Christ with the Alpha and Omega on ceiling, 4th century, Catacomb of Commodilla, Rome
Greek metaphysics.
It is important to be aware of the strangeness of Christianity on the late Roman religious landscape. The old civic religion of the republic had dissolved into a polyglot blend of cults and gods from all over the empire, with the cult of the divine emperor as the link between what we would define as church and state today. It's the polytheist version of civic nationalism, where just about any set of beliefs is acceptable, so long as you express faith in a literal secular transcendence - that a dynast is divine. Look more closely at the pieces.
Altar of the Roman pantheon, 1st century AD, Louvre Museum, Paris
Roman paganism was a complicated mix of supernatural beings and ritual practices that tied religion and society together. Start with the Dii Consentes, the twelve main deities based on the Greek Olympian pantheon that in turn appears to have older roots still.
As, 209-208 BC or later, with laureate head of bearded Janus
Roman temple of Vic, 2nd century AD, Osona, Catalonia, Spain
Roman relief of a bull sacrifice, Antiques Museum in the Royal Palace, Stockholm
Julio-Claudian funerary altar, between 14–68 AD, marble, Metropolitan Museum, New York
Access to temples was restricted, so public religious rituals took place outside - in front of temples and at shrines and other sacred sites. Animal sacrifice was common and took place at altars like the one shown here. This one was dedicated by an affluent Roman couple to commemorate 47 years together.
Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin, The Vestal Virgins, 1760-70, marble, Art Institute of Chicago
Temple of Vesta, rebuilt 2nd century AD, Rome and reconstruction
Public religious observance had a socio-political component. Proper observances were seen as necessary to maintaining the favor of the gods. Public orders of priesthoods like the Vestal Virgins - servants of Vesta - who were formalized in law and salaried by the state show how closely connected secular and sacred were.
Temples dedicated to Vesta tended to be round, rather than the usual rectangle.
Temples dedicated to Vesta tended to be round, rather than the usual rectangle.
Alessandro Marchesini, The Dedication of a Vestal, 1710s, oil on canvas, Hermitage Museum
This picture is dramatic, but it visualizes the link - priestly offerings connect with the gods while the people look on.
Lararium, Casa degli Amorini Dorati, Pompeii; Recreation of a Lararium; Roman family gathered in front of the lararium to make offerings
There were also numerous minor deities and spirits connected to different places, organizations and families, all with their own patterns of observance. Every Roman household had an altar/shrine called a lararium for dedications to the lares - protective deities with likely agrarian roots, ancestral spirits, genii, and so forth. The home was a microcosm of the state, with proper observances connected to supernatural favor on the household level.
The paterfamilias was the high priest of the family which is consistent with his authority over the household in other domains.
Symmachi-Nicomachi Diptych, around 400, ivory, left panel: woman offering to Cybele, National Museum of the Middle Ages, Cluny, France; right panel: woman offering to Jupiter or Bacchus, Victoria and Albert Museum, London
But the other members of the family also had designated ritual roles and responsibilities. Note the child assisting the matron on the right. What mattered was order and structure - harmonizing order in family, ritual, and socio-political structure brought man and society in line with the gods.
The late date of this ivory plaque shows that paganism lingered among the Roman elites until quite late.
Osiris and Isis, 19th Dynasty (1292-1189 BC), Temple of Seti I at Abydos
Roman statue of Isis, 1st century AD, Capitoline Museum, Rome
As the empire swallowed new territory, the new gods and rituals came onto the scene. This wasn't an immediate problem because polytheistic systems can add new gods or reinterpret them under familiar names.
Over time, proliferating cults erode the religious unity of empire.
Villa of the Mysteries, north. east, and west wall, before 79 AD, Pompeii
Mystery cults required initiation to join. These were secret and are impossible to recreate today. Modern paganism is LARPing - fantasies of what the spiritually empty wished the past was.
The Villa of the Mysteries is named for paintings of what appears to be initiation into a Bacchic mystery cult. They probably show stages of initiation, but this is impossible to decode further. We don't know.
Double-sided Mithraic altarpiece with Mithras slaying the bull and the banquet scene, 2nd-3rd century, Louvre Museum, Paris
Lion-headed figure from the Sidon Mithraeum, around 500 AD, Louvre Museum, PAris
The Mithraic mysteries or Mithraism was one of the most popular mystery cults int he late empire. Little is known about devotion to Mithras, an eastern deity loosely based on Zoroastrian sources from Iran, since no texts survive. A number of Mithraea have been excavated, giving some sense of the symbolism, but the meaning is unknown. Mithras killing a bull in a cosmic setting, a banquet scene with the sun god Sol, and a strange lion-headed figure of unknown identity are common.
Ancient Roman paganism revolved around statues, like Greek and other ancient religions. The exact rituals are lost in history, and they come in all shapes and sizes. The common idea seems to be that the statue makes a connection to the god on the basis of physical resemblance. In the hylomorphic metaphysics developed by Aristotle, objects have a two-part nature - form and matter. Think of it as material substance with an abstract formative principle. A statue is an analogy for a human body - the body is matter shaped by divine soul, the statue is matter shaped by artistic creation.
Jupiter, late 1st century, marble and bronzed plaster, Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg
Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus or Temple of Jupiter Capitolinus, 1838, intaglio print
Zeus Serapis, 2nd century AD, gold statuette, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Statues of the major gods came in all sizes, from the colossal cult statue of Jupiter on the Capitoline to little personal figurines like this Ptolemaic fusion of Osiris and Apis worshiped by Romans with Jupiter or Hades.
Roman genius as a pater familias, between 1 and 50 AD, bronze, National Archaeological Museum of Spain
Dancing Lar, 1st century AD, bronze, Gäubodenmuseum, Straubing, Germany
Minor supernatural beings got statues too - genii were personal guardian spirits and lares were protective household deities.
Torlonia head 535, 1st century AD copy of original from 80-70 BC, marble, Torlonia Collection, Rome
The raw realism of Roman Republican art is Etruscan in origin rather than Greek and seems tied to ancestor worship. The memory of the venerated ancestors was preserved in busts that were kept in the family home and sometimes placed on the lararium. The lifelikeness fixes the memory of a specific individual as he actually was alive.
Marcus Aurelius offering sacrifice in gratitude for military success against Germanic tribes in front of the Temple of Jupiter on the Capitolium, 161-180, Capitoline Museum, Rome.
The emperors imposed a degree of unity with the Imperial cult - a bit of a cross between the god-kings of the ancient East and the ritual structure of old Roman custom, with the emperor as a paterfamilias to the entire empire and a future god himself.
Here we see the emperor performing a ritual on the behalf of Roman "family".
Apotheosis of Claudius, around 54 AD, sardonyx cameo in three layers with enameled gold, Department of Coins, Medals and Antiquities, Paris
Apotheosis images show deification - the emperor carried to heaven to join the gods. He wears the breastplate of Jupiter and is carried by heavenward by Jupiter's eagle, where a Winged Victory will crown him with laurel.
The Colossus of Nero, recreation of the emperor's 100 foot bronze statue in the vestibule of the Domus Aurea or Golden House, designed and built by Zenodorus between 64 and 68 AD
And the Imperial cult used statues to show the power and glory of the emperor's presence.
Augustus as Jupiter Capitolinus, 45-50 AD, modern, National Archaeological Museum, Naples
It isn't subtle.
The idea of apotheosis or divination raises the subject of the afterlife. This is something that seems to have gotten little attention in ancient paganism, but became more of an issue in the late Imperial period. There was a lot of overlap between what we would call philosophy, magic, and religion, and the various offshoots of Hermeticism, Neoplatonism, Gnosticism, and other schools of thought focused on the fate of the soul.
Anonymous, Aeneas and the Sibyl, around 1800, oil on canvas, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT
The Greek and Roman afterlives were ill-defined places. The shades of the dead were flittering, insubstantial afterimages of their former selves, not their best part. Here, the Cumaean Sibyl leads Aeaneas into the underworld, and the contrast in substance between the living hero and the dead is clear.
William Blake, The Spirit of Plato unfolds his Worlds to Milton in Contemplationo, from Milton's L'Allegro and Il Penseroso, 1816-1820, water color, with pen and ink drawing on wove paper. Morgan Library, New York
The various magical and philosophical schools and cults were much more ontologically developed than the traditional polytheism and considered metempsychosis or the movements of the soul. This led to notions of power in this world through alchemy, theurgy, and other occult sciences, and also to speculation on the fate of the soul after death.
This is the context where our logos hierarchy comes in. We can see the basic ontological push-pull with creation emanating from the One through the nous and created souls drawn back to the source. This sort of dualism with the soul representing the higher part of the person is a real change from the palid shades of Homer and Virgil.
In this arrangement the world is more of a prison than a place of glory. Unlike Christians, however, these philosophical mysticisms were compatable with the cult of the emperor and other aspects of public religion. They could accept the gods as higher on the ontological hierarchy without being ultimate reality, and could accept the idea of propitiating them for favor. The early Christians utterly rejected paganism and its observances and came into conflict with the Roman mainstream in ways that the Neoplatonists and Hermeticists didn't.
The Roman Jewish community represented yet another religious relationship with Roman society that likewise differed from the Early Christian one. Jews had been in Rome since at least the 2nd century BC, and in the 1st century BC were granted the status of a religio licita or permitted religion in the empire by Julius Caesar and then Augustus. This allowed the Jews to follow their own religious practices, including dietary laws and abstention from the rituals of civic paganism.
Partial text of the Edict of Augustus on Jewish Rights, 1 BC
Augustus followed the example of his uncle Julius Caesar in extending tolerance to the Jews.
Francesco Hayez, Destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem, 1867, oil on canvas, Gallerie dell’Accademia, Venice
Conditions obviously deteriorated - the history is not well documented. Josephus blames the Jewish Revolt of 66-70 AD that started the Jewish-Roman wars on corruption and decline in the imperial government under Nero and political instability and messianic nationalism among the Jews.
Here's is a passage from the Emperor Claudius that suggests a larger conflict beyond the usual facile reductive persecution/freedom narratives. The source of the quote is well-researched look into the religious conflicts in a murky period of history. Before the spread of Christianity in the gentile population, authorities weren't even always clear on the distinction between Christian and Jew.
Imperial bust of Emperor Claudius, before 50 AD, bronze, National Archaeological Museum of Spain; Colossal marble statue of Claudius in the guise of Jupiter, 1st century AD, Vatican Museums, Rome; Letter from Claudius to the people of Alexandria.
Note the Classical idealism in the statue of the divine emperor.
Recognizing the complexity of the situation helps reconcile how Claudius could issue his Edict on Jewish Rights in 41 then expel Jews and Christians from the city in 49. Increasing tension also makes sense in the build-up to the Jewish-Roman wars from 66 to 135 and led to the temporary expulsion of the Jews from Jerusalem. They in turn went on to collaborate with the empire's Persian, than Muslim, enemies.
The lesson is that imperialism always ends badly.
Bowl Base with Christ Giving Martyrs’ Crowns to Saints Peter and Paul,ca. 350 Roman or Byzantine, glass, gold leaf, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
This piece of Roman glass is shown in the piece of mortar it was found in.
It's understandable that the Romans confused the Jews and the first Christians in the city, because they originated from the same place. But it meant that their critiques missed the essential differences between the groups. There wasn't much in common between the Hellenized Jews who thrived in the cities and Christian arrivals like Peter and Paul who lacked the social position and religio licita tradition to make their alien metaphysics tolerable.
But the big threat posed by Christianity was its expansionist nature. The Jews were set apart by their closed nature of their religion and tribal culture - they weren't open to new members, one couldn't just join in the manner of a mystery cult. Claudius was concerned about their growing numbers in some cities, but this was from immigration and large families. This was different from the Christians who aggressively evangelized and rapidly gained new converts among the pagans of Rome.
Paul Delaroche, Young Christian Martyr, 1853, oil on canvas, Hermitage Museum
Combine this rapid growth with the rejection of all aspects of Roman paganism, including the Cult of the Divine Emperor and relatively low social status and it is easy to see how Christianity appeared threatening in the city in ways that the philosophical schools and even Judaism didn't. It is worth noting that the threat to install a statue of the emperor in the Temple in Jerusalem.
What information we do have on official persecutions reflects a conflict over the relationship between religion and society. This dispute is actually of fundamental both to the formation of the West and an insight into the cultural problem facing America today. The Western notion of separation of church and state begins here - in the famous Biblical passages about rendering what is Caesar's to Caesar. Given the importance of this to the history of the West, it is worth quoting in full:
Tiberius "Tribute Penny" from the Mint of Lugdunum, between 14 and 37 AD
Gustave Doré, Dispute of Jesus and the Pharisees over Tribute Money, from his engraved Bible, 1866
Details from the Four Evangelists page from the Aachen Gospels, around 820, Cathedral Treasury, Aachen, German
And excerpts from the other Gospels:
The charge is to respect authority in the appropriate area - the basic idea of "church" and "state" as distinct things originates here. The problem is when one of them claims primacy in the domain of the other. This is actually one of the under-recognized aspects of the Christian dimension of the West and needs to be sketched out. Quickly, because this is getting long.
Before Christianity, political and spiritual authority were deeply entwined in the ancient world. It went hand in hand with empire-building, as the small-scale earliest societies coalesced into nations then forcibly subjugated their neighbors. While it is true that the average person in antiquity had a much smaller frame of geographic reference than modern globalist media world, the thing most have in common with us is total separation from utterly remote leaders. A random provincial entering the imperial court seemed as plausible as strolling into closed door meeting of the Illuminati would today.
Relief image on the Tablet of Shamash found in the 9th century Babylonian town of Sippar, British Museum, London
The Babylonian king Nabu-apla-iddina (888-855 BC) faces the god Shamesh behind two minor deities as a sign of his divine favor.
Then as now, a remote, centralized system is hierarchical, and success requires the people to comply. This is much easier in an organic national culture where people share the same unconscious baseline assumptions and values as a starting point. It is also easier when there is an obvious benefit to the new arrangement. Where is becomes difficult is when the it comes at a cost - the ancient imperial model where life in the provinces was relatively unchanged apart from the imposition of new taxes and levies. Money for nothing.
Americans have lived under the modern version of this since the Modern era - where an increasingly globalist and disconnected ruling caste imposes mounting burdens on the country to exfiltrate wealth abroad and facilitate invasion. In any imperium, the national interests of subjugated peoples take a back seat to imperial ones.
So how do you encourage voluntary buy-in to a disadvantageous system? Secular transcendence of course. Fake spirituality or mythology. By pretending that the ruling structure reflects some supernatural imperative way makes allegiance to the political order an objective moral necessity. To defy the emperor is to defy the gods. Or God, as the lie evolves.
Stele with the Egyptian divine triad of Pharaoh Ramses II between the deities Amon-Ra and Hathor, around 1279-1213 BC, Museo Egizio, Turin
It goes back as far as we can reliably trace historically. Time is a harsh mistress and there is so little known about the origins of human civilization. We do have decent archaeological records going back to Sumeria in the 4th millennium BC and we already see rulership by the priests.
Egypt can be traced back reliably nearly as far, and here the pharaohs took it to the next level by claiming to be gods themselves. The notion of the god-king or divinized emperor became the norm in the ancient world - Assyrians, Persians, Greeks, Romans all adopt some form.
From a historical perspective it seems absurd, considering the continual overthrows, assassinations, and invasions that make up ancient history. It makes more sense as a sort of founding assumption upon which the polity is based. People don't really look outside of their formative context, especially when there are no major calamities affecting daily life. Turn-over in the palace has little tangible impact, so long as the magistrate shows up on time and the forum is swept out. Even after conquest, someone restores order and the survivors get on with life. Basically, there is a status quo - a "system" that everyone knows and lives under with laws that keep order that is declared the will of the gods by default. Authority is hierarchical with a remote emperor at the top - that''s the way it is.
Constantino Brumidi, Freedom tramples Tyranny and Kingly Power, detail from The Apotheosis of Washington, 1865, fresco, United States Capitol Building, Washington
The contemporary American state makes it clearer by comparison. It is obvious that the civic nationalism and other secular transcendences that the state is based on are ontologically, epistemologically, and empirically false.
Peter Crawford, American Dream III - Winter Wonderland
But at the same time, the country built on these as articles of fake faith attained unprecedented levels of prosperity. The point is that if the laws are benign and the culture productive, the mythological foundation doesn't have to be true. At least not in the short run. People just have to believe and buy in.
In America's case, the laws and assumptions were based on the intrinsically Christian values of the founders. From a societal perspective, so long as people more or less followed these moral customs, the reasons were secondary. The problem is that Enlightenment mythology is ultimately as oppositional to Christian ethics as it is to empirical observation, so the cultural values were gradually eroded by magical thinking and debt.
Then as now, faith in fake metaphysics was a means of encouraging people to accept and even defend their subjugation under an exploitative imperial system.
Michael Radford paraphrasing George Orwell in his movie version of 1984.
Now consider the render unto Caesar message. Jesus is drawing a distinction between two levels of power - secular and sacred - that had been effectively blended throughout almost all of antiquity. This probably doesn't sound too radical to our ears, but that's because the baseline morality in the West is Christian, and Christianity framed this issue in a way that was unique.
Secularism is a wisp of Enlightenment smoke, and the Enlightenment brand of secular transcendence was to declare all favorable aspects of Western Christian culture "reasonable" while wishing away all implications and necessities that come with them. Think it through. There is no "rational" imperative to separate church and state without the underlying Biblical morality.
All the ancient empires around the emergence of Christianity claimed the king was divine:
Ramesses, 13th century BC, Luxor temple, Egypt; Statue of Ashurnasirpal II, ca. 883–859 BC, magnesite and dolomite, from the Temple of Ishtar, Nimrud, Assyria, British Museum; The Emperor Darius recieving, detail from the Apadana Audience relief, 6th century BC, Persepolis, Iran; Alexander the Great, 3rd century BC, marble, Istanbul Archaeological Museum; Hellenistic ruler, 2nd-1st century BC, bronze, Walters Art Museum, Baltimore; Emperor Augustus as Jove, first half of the 1st century AD, marble, Capitoline Museums, Rome; Apotheosis of Sabina, relief from the Arch of Portugal, 2nd century AD, marble, Capitoline Museums, Rome, Via del Corso; Bust of a Sassanian King, 5th-7th Century AD, Louvre Museum
There is no room for god-kings in the Platonic tradition, but the ideal ruler still has a metaphysical dimension - just cast in terms of this perspective.
Arch of Titus, Triumph of Titus relief; Inscription; Jerusalem Treasure relief, around 81 AD, Rome
The inscription:
SENATUS
POPOLUS QUE ROMANUS
DIVO TITO DIVI VESPASIANI F
VISPASIANO AUGUSTO
The Senate and People of Rome, to Divus Titus, son of Divus Vespasian, Vespasian Augustus
The monument celebrated the defeat of the Jewish revolt, sack of Jerusalem, and destruction of the Second Temple.
James Tissot, The Pharisees and the Saduccees Come to Tempt Jesus, 1886-1894, watercolor over graphite on paper, Brooklyn Museum
Jewish authority was divided - the Saducees were Torah literalists and priestly traditionalists whose activity centered on the Temple. The destruction of the Temple created massive upheaval.
James Tissot, The Pharisees Question Jesus, between 1886 and 1894, watercolor over graphite on paper, Brooklyn Museum
This ultimately led to rabbinical authority and the production of the Talmud to interpret Old Testament Law. This is very different from a god-king, but it does base social authority on metaphysical grounds in a more priestly way.
It doesn't matter what ancient culture or tradition we look at - the idea that rulership is connected to higher reality - the gods, the Forms, God - is universal. This is what made the render unto Caesar so radical. Nobody argued that a nation should disregard metaphysics and morality in governance. But Jesus upended the entire metaphysical framework of the divine emperor by declaring the sacred and secular as distinct domains, each with its appropriate order. If this seems familiar, it is because we are back to vertical ontology, only with the Logos affirming the level-specific expression of Logos in person.
Fra Angelico, Christ Glorified in the Court of Heaven, 1430, National Gallery, London
Cole, Thomas, The Course of Empire: The Consummation, 1836, New York Historical Society
Our ontological hierarchy diagram visualizes this distinction. Caesar's is worldly life. All the material attractions and appetites that Ecclesiastes calls vanities. These things are impediments to a life of Christian values when they become idols or ends in themselves, but it is necessary to make ends meet and be a productive citizen.
Accepting logos on the material level
Jean-Jacques Lagrenée, The fall of Idols and the Rest During the Flight into Egypt, around 1775, oil on canvas, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rennes
Meeting legal responsibilities and obligations of good citizenship. But the material is a moral testing ground and a distraction. Salvation is the reunion of the soul with God, and this is purely God's province. All the deities, demigods, and divinized kings are just vanity and/or Satanic deception.
Marina Petro, Heaven's Garden, oil on canvas
St. Augustine's Neoplatonic allegory of Earthly City and City of God captures this - where one refers to the Fallen, imperfect material world that we inhabit, and the other a higher ontological state. The two domains are completely incompatible - Caesar can no more rule the City of God than we can stroll into the Empyrean Rose.
Accepting logos on the metaphysical level through Christian morality
Gustave Doré, The Triumph Of Christianity Over Paganism, 1868, oil on canvas, Art Gallery of Hamilton, Canada
The charge is not radical because it affirms the emperor's power to tax and legislate. It's radical because it erases the entire mythical ontology that that power was based on.
According to the existing sources and subsequent tradition, the big catalyst for official persecution of Christians was failure to venerate or make offerings to the cult of the divine emperor. This was a litmus test to weed out the "disloyal" Christians, since that sort of idolatry was unacceptable. It's giving Caesar God's.
Marcus Aurelius and members of the Imperial family offer sacrifice to Jupiter in gratitude for success against Germanic tribes, 177-180 AD, marble, Capitoline Museums, Rome
Remember - in the imperial Roman state religion, the emperor is treated as divine and the health of society depended on making the right observences to the right gods and spirits. Even the philosophers managed to fit traditional supernatural entities into their ontological hierarchies. But Christians rejected this outright, often calling it demonic idolatry while heir pagan critics condemned them for atheism and impiety. Dividing the sacred and secular completely reoriented human politics. It's an understatement to call it underrated as a paradigm shift.
This reflects back onto the present. Here's the pattern: Render unto Caesar brought a notion of separation of secular and sacred spheres not found in any other tradition into the West. The idea that Church and King/Government/civic law are deeply embedded in Western thought and attitudes from the beginning. In the Middle Ages, they even had their own legal codes.
Cartoon from another "clever" bright. An arbitrary line between human constructs with no space for the nation or Truth is indicative of the level of understanding.
Render unto Caesar separates moral and civil authority on the most fundamental level. And it aligns with reality by placing the authorities on the appropriate ontological level. The legitimacy of moral codes comes from their basis in Truth - known by faith on the metaphysical plane. All this drawing shows us is competition between different institutions on the material level.
Governmental structures are human creations and intrinsically flawed and limited in the way that all subjective human projects are. And they reflect cultures, which are themselves organic expressions of the history and experiences of the people that make them up. Empirically real and perfectly understandable cumulative responses to environmental and social contexts over time, but subjective and temporal. Ontologically, this is material-level stuff, with no connection to any sort of Truth on a metaphysical level. It can't be "moral" in itself because it is an extension of shifting, entropic material conditions and fallen, finite human desires. It may make sense contextually or have some internal logic, but from a metaphysical perspective it is literally subjective, in that bubbles up from individual subjects rather than shining down from the absolute.
Pat Pauley, Turkey Heaven, oil painting
Societies evolve in response to material circumstances. Their only higher "purpose" is the same as any organic evolution - survive and ideally thrive. The morality comes from somewhere else.
Lee Lufkin Kaula, Mother Reading with Two Girls, around 1910, private collection
Some can be relatively respectful of the integrity of the person
Anonymous American, Aztec Priest Performing Sacrifice, 1889, engraving, private collection
Others can be less so...
The success of a society - how well it is optimized for its context - is not an inherently moral consideration. They are are on completely different levels. They don't touch. Morality beyond brute survival has to align with the transcendent level of ontology, which can only be known by faith. In practice, the relationship between morality and society is symbiotic and so always drifting.
Jon McNaughton, Separation of Church and State
Moral drift is entropy on the socio-behavioral level. Responsibility, self-discipline, and virtue require maintenance of structured order, within and without, often against what you want to do. Let things slide and they keep sliding. Yesterday's shocking is today's edgy is tomorrow's boring.
The whole point of operating as generally and basically as the Band does - always cycling back to what we can know and how we can know it - is to counter subjectivity and moral drift. The Anglo-Colonial culture of the American nation was a subset of the West defined by Christianity and empirical problem solving. "Yankee ingenuity" + Christian morality and metaphysics = prosperous orderly society is just a high-performance version of techne + episteme = phronesis.
Eastman Johnson, What the Shell Says, 1875, oil on canvas, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
Christian morality is rooted in metaphysical Truth and is internally driven to meet this personal standard [click for a post breaking down the difference between internal and external moral systems]. Obviously, this stays constant as circumstances change. This is diametrically opposite to externally-imposed human value systems like aquisitionism, prestige, or any other ontologically fake secular transcendence.
Inter-generational relationships within stable communities are the arteries of organic cultural transmission in the West. Progress!, whether on the "left" or the "right" devalues the old by defining value as fetishizing the latest vanity.
Chimerical secular transcendences like Progress! tie moral values to subjective material conditions. This is the idiocy of modern conservativism - if you accept this impossibility, you've managed to base a core morality on perpetual change. Your anchor is movement. If Progress! is your idol - whether perpetual "revolution" towards absolute global totalitarianism and cultural genocide or endless "improvement" in material comfort and civility - conservatism is ontologically retardaire. It's anti-teleological antiquarianism.
The Rag-picker, 1870, wood engraving from Harper's weekly, May 7, 1870, p. 301
Any morality based on Progress! is intrinsically incapable of defining a moral position because it is by definition resistance to positive movement. Hence insults like backwards, troglodyte, luddite, etc. from idolaters on both "sides".
Thomas Attardi, The Rag Pickers, oil on canvas, private collection
It can't be anything more than the subjective desire to retain personally-appealing elements of an admittedly less advanced time. Or "reset" aspects of society to sepia-tinged childhood memory while maintaining the larger mythologies that brought us here. Picking through the remains.
Now think about the ontology of secular transcendence - where we pretend metaphysical absolutes can be seen by finite, fallen human discernment and encoded in subjective human responses to environmental circumstances. The elegant beauty of vertical logos is smashed into an ontological Flatland where everything is placed on the material plane, whether it belongs there or not. As if morality and shopping involve the same processes.
How is pretending that material human creations are metaphysical today any more logically coherent that burning incense to divine emperors or praying to idols for help?
Ken Corbett, Eminent Spirits Appear to Wilford Woodruff, 1877, oil on canvas, St. George Temple
Little-known vision of the Founding Fathers by a 19th-century Mormon elder. The story is that they decried America's drift from the Christian principles of the founding, but the combination of human politicians and divine will is ontological and theological nonsense.
Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, The Vow of Louis XIII, 1824, oil on canvas, Cathedral of Notre-Dame, Montauban, France
The idea in the West is that morality is transcendent and rulership subjective. Virtuous governance comes from the rulers aligning their personal subjectivities with these external values. Secular transcendence turns the subjectivities into the morality.
The problem is that empirically, they aren't. Woodruff is an extreme example for clarity's sake, but the underlying issue is the same. Human structures can't meet this objective standard of Truth, meaning that the myths founded on them are easily deconstructed. Then the inability of politicians to measure up to the Incarnate Logos is used as an excuse to reject the legitimacy of America.
Ever wonder why Americans get held to unfair and hypocritical moral standards?
Our Heaven Born Banner, print
Could be that people find pretending secular materialism and imperialist self-interest are divinely-sanctioned transcendent morality irritating?
The idolatries of civic nationalism are as incoherent and contrary to the human experience of reality as any other secular transcendence. They conflate the metaphysical and material in ways that are self-evidently false. And when morality becomes founded on subjective desire in a purely human creation, we are no longer rendering unto Caesar what is Caesar's. "Secular morality" renders unto Caesar what is God's with "religion" relegated a to "private" matter to be kept out of the public sphere.
John Pettie, The Vigil, 1884, oil on canvas, Tate London
One more reason why Satanic globalist control freaks so hate Christianity. It isn't just an oppositional force - globalism is the complete inversion of moral ontology for human self-deification.
Certain humans, anyhow.
Now, some images to visualize the essence of render unto Caesar and its relevance to America and the West.
Alessandro Pigna, Paying Homage To The Emperor, around 1900, oil on canvas, private collection
Render unto Caesar introduces the radical split between secular and spiritual authority. This is consistent with the ontological nature of Christian logos.
Glen S. Hopkinson, That We May be Redeemed, oil on canvas, St. George Temple
Venerating human politicians and pretending that their works are sanctified reverts back to secular trancendance. Back to ontological Flatland where every level of reality is materially visible.
Think how this applies to globalism, materialism, and inward vs. outward morality.
The separation of church and state makes a lot more historical sense when you recognize it as render unto Caesar in legalistic form. The notion of a society built on atheistic moral relativism would have seemed retarded to eighteenth-century sensibilities as it should seem to us. The early Christians were even accused of "atheism" for refusing to kneel at the altars of secular transcendence and human self-deification. This hasn't changed.
So what does this socio-metaphysical revolution look like?
Jesus healing the bleeding woman, 300–350 AD, Catacombs of Marcellinus and Peter, Rome
The early Christians rejected the religious uses of ancient sculpture and the metaphysics of the Classical ideal but quickly developed an art of their own. In hindsight, the humanity of Jesus plus the centrality of the visual arts in Roman culture made it inevitable that Roman Christians would attempt to express their faith pictorially. So how does an art based on classical aesthetics and pagan worship communicate such a radically different notion of God, reality, and man's place in it? The next post will wrap the ancient legacy of the art of the West and introduce our third main input: the cultures of the European nations.
One thing that makes the origin of Christian art interesting is that for a very brief time, the images were produced by people outside of the politico-religious system of Roman society on every level. This changes quickly - once the empire became Christian, Christianity was co-opted by the imperial elites - but for a brief period, we see the organic appearance of a new art out of old materials in response to changing circumstances.
Christ and the Apostles in the Heavenly Jerusalem, early 5th century, apse mosaic, Santa Pudenziana, Rome
Once the empire takes over, Christian art begins to visualize abstract theological and epistemological issues in way that support imperial authority.
Others will follow suit, filtering Christianity through their own frames of reference, and the history of Western art and culture ensues. At least until modernity ditched ontological and epistemological coherence for debt, unaccountable webs of state power, and the worship of paper and feel good stories.
It not only isn't surprising that the West went into decline. It was inevitable. Let's see how to bring it back.
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