UNITED TO MODERN TECHNOLOGY, THE SICKNESS OF RELIGION
IS LEADING TO ECOLOGICAL SUICIDE, HAPPINESS AND GLORIFICATION ARE ENGAGED
IN THEIR PRIMORDIAL COMBAT, AND THE SCIENCE OF FALSIFYING HISTORY FOR CONTROLLING
OTHERS IS STILL QUITE BUSY.
© John S. Romanides
|Part-1| — |Part-2| — |Part-3|
|Part-4|
18. Charlemagne’s strategy required that real Romans be Latin speaking.
a ) Frankish defensive needs
It is a fact that the Carolingian Franks wanted and decided to believe that the Romans were only an Italo-Latin speaking race. They had inherited Latin as their official language which they continued from Gregory of Tours. Their own language was a Teutonic Dialect. The tradition that the Romans were Latin and Latin speaking was invented within the Carolingian circles and became manifest in the year 794. In his Libri Carolini composed just before 794 Charlemagne continued the Frankish tradition of calling the Empire of New Rome the Imperium Romanum. But since 794 this same Charlemagne began calling the Eastern part of this Empire the “Imperium Grecorum.” It must be emphasized that when this change took place the Franks were ignorant barbarians. Since Charlemagne himself was illiterate it is probable that the Saxon Alcuin, the director of his Palatine School, perhaps did some kind of research which convinced him that the Romans were a people who spoke Latin only or mainly. This would mean that the Greek language became a Roman language only because so many Greeks had become Romans in the course of Roman conquests. The Franks knew very well that the Romans in Southern Spain, Southern Gaul, Southern Italy were Greek speaking. Even Rome itself had been a Greek speaking city until Constantine moved the Roman Capital to Constantinople-New Rome. The void left by the so many Romans who moved to New Rome was filled mostly by Latin speaking Romans. This obliged Pope Damasus to introduce Latin into the services of Rome. Italy had two Synods of bishops: the Northern Synod centered in Milan and the Synod of Rome whose members were all the bishops not only of the rest of Italy but the whole of the Balkans excepting Thrace which had been transferred to the Patriarchate of Constantinople.
The reason for this falsification was the Frankish need to convince
their West Romans serfs and vilains that their Emperor and fellow Romans
in the East were nothing but a bunch of “Greeks” and “heretics.” His purpose
was to cut off the West Romans from the East Romans who were still trying
to help their fellow-Romans in the West now enslaved to the Franco-Latins.
The West Romans hoped for, and the Franco-Latins feared, a repetition of
the liberation of West Romans from the Vandals and Goths by the East Roman
armies of Emperor Justinian (527-565). But what about modern historians
today? Why are they not better historians of Rome than their barbarian
ancestors of the Dark Ages? Because some of them have the ability of trying
to present such East Romans liberators as non-existing Byzantine conquerors
of West Roman provinces. The reason for this is that they either belong
to a group who have serious defensive reasons for distorting historical
facts or else they are not real historians. In the first case history becomes
part of either an offensive or defensive strategy. From such a point of
view one may sympathize with the Franco-Latins and their problems. One
may thus understand their need for hiding the real identity of the East
Romans from enslaved West Romans as part of those measures being taken
for controlling such an immense Roman population which even as late as
1789 totaled 85% of the population of France.
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b) Real Latins and Franco-Latins.
As we have seen the First Latins of official Roman history resulted from a union of Greek speaking Pelasgians, Aborigines and Trojans, having adopted their name from King Latinus. They were joined by the Greek speaking Sabines who began joining this group at the time of the founding of Rome.
The last group of Latins of Roman history were created as part of the settlement between Rome and those Italians who revolted between 91-83 BC demanding Roman citizenship. A second group of Italians also revolted at the same time and fought for their complete independence from Rome. The first group won the right to become semi-citizens with the “Latin name,” but without the complete Roman franchise. The second group was simply defeated. This distinction between Roman and Latin citizens of Rome, which resulted from this revolt, was abolished by Emperor Caracala in 212 AD when he gave these Italian Latins the “Roman name.” Legally there were no Latins after this.
It is possible that the Merovingian Franks may have been given the “Latin name” as indicated by the fact that their gold coins bore the effigy of the Roman Emperors of Constantinople-New Rome from Anastasius I (491-518) through the reign of Heraclius (610-641). The latter’s rule coincided with his ally the Frankish King Dagobert I (d. 639). Together they fought the Bulgarians and Slavs. The title of the Merovingian kings was simply “King of the Franks” because the Emperor of the Romans was in New Rome ruling the Romans in Gaul by means of the Frankish Kings, especially after the West Roman Emperor disappeared in 476. Dagobert’s reign was followed by the “do nothing kings,” evidently made that way by their Carolingian Mayors of the Palace who after the reign of Dagobert become the real rulers of the Roman Province of Gaul. It is significant that the name Francia is not once mentioned in Gregory of Tours’ “History of the Franks” since it remained the Roman Province named Gallia. In other words the Frankish King was the King of the Franks, not the King of the Romans, but their governor. Evidently it was this precedent was followed by Charlemagne who never called himself Emperor of the Romans, but Augustus who administers or governs the Roman Empire.[93]
It is also possible that the Carolingian Franks may have been given the “Latin” name in conjunction with Pope Leo III’s (795-816) crowning Charlemagne “Emperor of the Romans” in 800. In any case we call the Teutonic Latins of the Middle Ages Franco-Latins in order to distinguish them from the Greek Latins who were Romans and the Italian Latins who became Romans in 212 AD. The Franks never became Romans, but rulers of the Romans. In sharp contrast to the Merovingian Franks, who were allies of New Rome, the Carolingian Franks literally hated the Romans. This is clear from the Libri Carolini, the Carolingian preface to Salic Law and Otto I’s Ambassador to New Rome Luitbrand of Cremona who revealed this same reality in his tirade against the very name “Roman,” which, according to him, all Franco-Latins use to insult their enemies.[94] Frankish hatred for Romans, and not dogma, was the basis of Charlemagne’s condemnation of Romans as “heretics” and “Greeks” at his Councils of Frankfurt in 794 and Aachen in 809. The main purpose of these titles, “heretic” and “Greek” was to teach the enslaved West Romans that the only Romania left was Papal Romania and their prayers for Romania and its Emperor should stop there.[95] The Franks began brainwashing their now subjected Roman revolutionaries into believing that this Romania of their Pope is all that exists since the rest of the Empire was a “heretical Grecia” somewhere in the East.
We use the term Franco-Latin in order to clearly distinguish these Teutonic
Latins from the real Latins of Roman History. These Germanic peoples looked
upon Charlemagne as the founder of their Latin Empire and Civilization
which its leaders believed was destined to rule the world. They call Charlemagne’s
Empire the First Reich, Emperor Otto I’s (912-973) “Roman” Empire the Second
Reich, while some of the Franco-Latin royalty and nobility considered Hitler’s
(1889-1945) candidate Empire the “Third Reich.” In any case Charlemagne
is considered the primary Father of today’s United Europe whose real purpose
seems to be survival against the United States dollar and compete for control
of the world’s wealth.
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c) More about the Frankish need to falsify history.
We already touched upon the phenomenon of deliberate falsification of history as part of the enslavement of others. It is generally agreed, even by the Franco-Latin nobility, that the civilization of the Roman Empire was Hellenic in its inception. But this same nobility claims that this Romano-Hellenic Civilization changed into a Western Civilization in the 8-9th centuries in Western Europe and into a Byzantine Civilization in the East at about the same time. But what had really happened was that the Franco-Latins had reverted to a period of sheer barbarity under the leadership of the Carolingian Franks which up until recently was still being called the “Dark Ages.” How else can one describe France, for example, in 1789 when 85% of her population were still serfs and vilains guarded from escape by 40,000 castles.[96] How can such a France be better described than part of the Dark Ages. It can, of course, be made to look like a civilized society only when history is controlled by the aristocracy and the middle class of 13% which still keep this so-called “free” 85% in abject slavery to history as written by themselves.[97]
So that we may not be accused of exaggerations we quote a description of the condition of the serfs of France before the French Revolution written by Germaine de Stael, the daughter of Jacques Necker (1732-1804) the finance minister of Louis XVI. She writes, “Young people and strangers who had not known France before the revolution, and today see the people enriched by the division of properties and the suppression of the tithe and the feudal regime, can have no idea of the condition of this country, when the nation was carrying the weight of all the privileges. The supporters of slavery in the colonies have often said that a peasant in France was more unfortunate than an Negro. This was an argument to comfort the whites, but not to harden them against the blacks.”[98]
From this viewpoint the real beginning of Western Civilization is the American Revolution of 1775-81 which was completed by the abolition of slavery in 1865. The French Revolution of 1789 was also a beginning of Western Civilization since it immediately liberated the serfs and vilains from their captivity to the 40,000 castles which the peasants enjoyed burning together with their castellani inhabitants. But democracy itself was squelched by Napoleon in 1800. After he fell from power the rest of the nobility returned from mostly self-imposed exile. Both the Napoleonists and the other royalists got down to work and re-enslaved the 85% of Gallo-Romans. Of course they were no longer called serfs and vilains. However, they are still called “peasants” (paysan) which had been the collective name for the “serfs” and “vilains” before the revolution. Now all Gallo-Roman children are being brainwashed by the comic figure “Asterix” into believing that they are the “Celts” who were enslaved to the Romans as though they were not Gallo-Roman citizens during Imperial and Merovingian times. It was the ancestors of these children now being brainwashed by “Asterix” who are the descendants of the 85% of Gallo-Roman serfs and vilains liberated in 1789.
The leaders of the falsification of history today are the nobilities of France, England and Russia. What these nobilities had been losing in battle and politics has been gradually recouped by their progressive re-writing of history. One of their greatest successes has been creating a partnership between the Encyclopaedia Britannica and na?ve Chicago University in order to put it into every American home. It has been transforming the way Americans think about so many aspects of historical reality into conformity with the interests of European nobility. The basic reason for their success is that it is easier for Americans doing historical research to copy English scholars rather than learn the sources themselves which are in a wide range of languages. Americans in general could never suspect that scholars of such prestigious Universities as Oxford and Cambridge and British professors teaching in American Universities are capable of deliberately shading or even falsifying historical reality in support of their class interests. After all isn’t Charlemagne still their Great Father?
Being misled, as it seems, by their first teacher, the Anglo-Saxon Alcuin, the Carolingians came to believe that the ancient Romans spoke Latin and were therefore Latins. As we already saw it was the Latins who were absorbed into the Roman nation. Also the first language of the Romans was Greek because they were simply Greeks who came to Italy as a result of the War between Trojan Greeks and the Achaean Greeks. What is even more interesting is that the basic reason the Latins refused to become Romans before they were conquered by King Ancus Marcius is that the Latins considered the Romans impure Greeks because they had intermarried with the Sabines who were also Greeks, but not pure Greeks. The Latin General Mettius Fufetius argues with the Roman King Tullus Hostius that “...if we should yield the command to you, the base born will rule over the true born, the barbarians over Greeks, and immigrants over the native born.”[99]
In sharp contrast to this historical reality the Franks believed that
the Roman Emperor Constantine the Great (306-337) had abandoned the Latin
language and tradition in favor of the Greek language and tradition when
he moved his capital from Rome to New Rome officially in 330. This nonsense
was clearly argued by Emperor Louis II (855-875 ) against Emperor Basil
I (867-886) in 871.[100] The falsification of
Roman history in question has become the power base of the Franco-Latin
nobility’s ability of ruling so many millions of Romans by means of their
ignorance of their true identity and why they are not really members of
the ruling class.
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19. Because of their complete slavery to Augustine the Franks and their descendants never understood the Roman Fathers and still do not understand them.
Since religion had been one of the determining factors in this change we shall concentrate a bit here. Under the weight of Augustine Franco-Latin Christianity became one of the barbaric forms of religion and one of the clearest manifestations of the sickness of religion. At the very same time the Roman Empire in the East had continued to promote this cure of the sickness of religion. The very foundation of the Dark Ages was the cultivation of the short-circuit between the brain and the heart which is the basis of the sickness of religion. At this very same time the Roman Empire in the East was still concentrating on the cure of this short circuit between the brain and the heart among its citizens, being guided by monasticism which had become the center of this cure. In sharp contrast Franco-Latin monasticism was mere Augustinian Neo-Platonic mysticism in Christian dress. This is exactly what much of Protestantism rejected during the Reformation. A basic reason why many Orthodox do not see this any more is that they follow the Franco-Latin translation of the Patristic term Secret Theology by Mystical Theology. Secret Theology simply means that the uncreated glory of God seen in glorification has no similarity whatsoever to anything created and therefore cannot be described or expressed in words or concepts. Mystical Theology means union with the so-called archetypes of creation in God which is an “invention of demons” according to the Orthodox Fathers, as we shall see. Words and concepts may lead to glorification in which one sees in not seeing since it is the uncreated glory which sees itself by means of the glorified. There is here no liberation of a soul from a body since the individual, body and soul, and everything in sight is saturated by uncreated glory of God dividing itself without division and is everywhere present.
In order to make the function of this short-circuited “spirit” in the heart more intelligible to the Hellenic mind the Fathers of the early Church called it also by the Greek term noera energeia which we translate noetic energy or noetic faculty. Of the three Greek terms for rational activity, i.e. nous, dianoia and logos, the Fathers used nous to designate the “spirit” of man which prays in the heart without ceasing when restored to normal. In this way they accorded this spirit in the heart a reality equal to the brain. The original use of this praying spirit is to be found in St. Paul. “I will pray with the spirit, but I will also pray with the intellect. I will recite psalms with the spirit, but I will also recite psalms with the intellect (nous)” 1 Cor. 14:14. These are the Old Testament psalms being recited quietly in the heart and not the strange sounds being passed off today as “speaking in tongues” by the aid of a translator.
The cure of this short-circuit which causes the sickness of religion is the key to both the Old and New Testaments. Within this context such titles as Christian, Jew, Moslem, heretic, Orthodox, Catholic, Protestant, atheist, infallible Pope, etc., are in reality meaningless when this sickness of religion and its cure is ignored and sometimes accompanied with phenomenal pretensions and even with barbaric conduct. The center stage in the cure of this sickness is held by the prophets of both the Old and the New Testaments and their successors, who having been cured themselves guide others in this same process of cure. If one does not know this cure, yet fancies himself, or is fancied by others, to be inspired by God, he is indeed inspired, but only by his own short-circuit.
That quite a few religions have been historically dangerous to the liberty
of the individual and to the proper functioning of society is obvious enough
and must be handled accordingly. More recently the communists had handled
religion as a psychological and social problem and tried to uproot it by
means not very democratic. In contrast to such approaches the prophets
of the Old and New Testaments practiced a concrete cure of the sickness
of religion which the Roman Empire espoused in order to produce normal
citizens who would put the common good and neighbor over self at the center
of individual efforts. Most Jews and Christians are no longer aware of
this short-circuit let alone its cure. In contrast the leaders of the Roman
Empire had become very much aware of this sickness and cure and incorporated
it into its administration, exactly as modern medicine is being supported
by governments today.
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20. Augustine (354-430) and Ambrose (340-397)
However, Augustine, in sharp contrast to Ambrose who had baptized him, was not aware of this sickness and cure and passed on his ignorance to his followers. The Carolingian Franks, their allies, the Vatican and most Protestants have been and continue to be his followers. Add to this all Orthodox victims of Peter the Great’s Westernization of Russian Orthodoxy.
Augustine himself tells us how he came to first believe that Christianity and Platonism were two sides of the same coin and how he later came to see some basic differences. He tells us in his Confessions how he yearned to discuss his problems of faith with Ambrose, the bishop of Milan, but ended up speaking about them only with Simplicianus, (VIII.ii) the presbyter who was to succeed Ambrose as bishop of Milan. As soon as Augustine mentioned that he was studying the Platonists, Simplicianus reacted by rejoicing “over me, that I had not fallen upon any other philosophers’ writings…” Then Simplicianus recounted how, when he was a priest in Rome, he had received Victorinus into the Church. He was the very same translator of the Platonists whose writings Augustine was studying. Augustine left this meeting with Simplicianus with the impression that Platonism and the Bible are both two sides of the same coin. Had Augustine paid closer attention to Ambrose’s sermons he would seen how the bishop of Milan saw no identity in doctrine between Platonism and Christianity. In answer to Augustine’s query about what to study in preparation for his baptism, Ambrose wrote back that he should study the book of Isaiah.
Augustine tells us that he did not understand this Book of Isaiah. So he and his friends engaged in philosophical discussions in their preparation for baptism. Minutes of these discussions were kept and later published. One of the basic conclusions of these discussions was the following statement of Augustine: “Meanwhile, I am confident that I shall find among the Platonists what is not in opposition to our Sacred Scriptures.”[101] He later corrected himself in his Confessions by pointing out those Biblical teachings which he claims to have found in the Platonists and those which he did not find there.[102] This became the Franco-Latin distinction between natural revelation to the pagan philosophers and supernatural revelation in the Bible. According to Augustine the doctrine of the Holy Trinity belongs to natural revelation and the incarnation and related matters to supernatural revelation, a position rejected by all Fathers including Ambrose.
For the Fathers of the Nine Roman Ecumenical Councils there is no such distinction between natural and supernatural revelation since there is no similarity between the created and the uncreated. There is only the cure of the sickness of religion by means of the stages of the purification and illumination of the heart which leads to glorification during which one sees that there is no similarity whatsoever between the created and the uncreated.
Augustine did not have the slightest suspicion of the existence of these fundamental presuppositions for understanding the Old and New Testaments from the viewpoint of those who had reached glorification and which ordains prophets. Therefore, he never understood “that there is no similarity whatsoever between the created and the uncreated and that, therefore, it is impossible to express God and even more impossible to conceive God.” On the contrary he writes “I will not be slow to search out the substance of God, whether through His Scripture or through the creature. For both of these are set forth for our contemplation to this end, that He may Himself be loved, who inspired the one, and created the other.” The technical term for this division between supernatural and natural revelation is analogia fide and analogia entis which are both rejected by the Fathers of the Church as the fundamental basis of heresy.
The Carolingian Franks started their theological tradition in the latter
part of the 9th century knowing only Augustine. These Franks
had not yet become acquainted with at least a second Father of the Church
when Charlemagne went ahead with condemning the Roman Empire as “pagan”
and “heretical” in his Libri Carolini. This is the first time in
history that a whole nation was condemned as pagan and heretical and indeed
by illiterate barbarians who knew only the text of the Bible and Augustine.
Up until this time individual leaders and their followers were considered
pagan or heretical, but not a whole nation. What is most amazing is that
at this time the first Frankish theologian in history, Rabanus Maurus,
was an 18 year old student of the Saxon Alcuin, the director of Charlemagne’s
Palatine school, who himself knew only Augustine. Then Charlemagne’s Council
of Frankfurt (794) re-confirmed the heretical and pagan nature of the Roman
Empire. It was at Frankfurt that Charlemagne started the tradition of calling
the Roman Empire by the name “Greek Empire.” However, he kept the name
“Roman Empire” for the “Papal States.” In this way all enslaved West Romans,
including the Irish after 1066,[103] would now
be praying only for the “Papal Roman Empire” and no longer for the now
supposedly heretical and pagan “Greek Empire.”
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21. The Rise of the Lie of Byzantine History and Balkanization
Being a “commoner,” and therefore not privy to the reasons for the Franco-Latin nobility’s falsification of Roman history, Edward Gibbons (1737-1794) used the name “Roman Empire” in his “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire” right up to its fall in 1453. He read history out of the Roman sources and not as a scheming member of a conspiracy. This is what he found in all the sources of Roman history. The keepers of the Carolingian tradition reacted by transforming the Roman Empire into a “Byzantine Empire” which supposedly appeared in about 717AD. This date comes quite close to Charlemagne’s date whereby he transformed the Roman Empire of his Libri Carolini into the Greek Empire of his Council of Frankfurt in 794. However, the real reason for the transformation of Charlemagne’s Greek Empire into a Byzantine Empire was avoid the ridiculous reality of what was becoming reality in, for example, the London Protocol No.59 of January 30, 1836. There the “Greeks” who fought in their revolution to break away from Turkey and establish their own state, but were left outside of its borders, are depicted as becoming “Hellenes” by virtue of the right that they are being given to leave Turkey and immigrate to Hellas. In other words they are being liberated not only from the Ottoman Empire, but also from Charlemagne’s “Greek” Empire which had survived as a Church within the Ottoman Empire. This is reality from the linguistic Franco-Latin and Russian viewpoints. However, from the viewpoint of the linguistic tradition of these “Greeks” and of the Turks these “Greeks” are called Romans in Greek, Turkish, Arabic, Coptic, Syrian, Armenian, Ethiopian, etc. In other words Charlemagne’s “Greek” was at this time limited to the confines of the Franco-Latins. This Protocol was signed upon the occasion of the settlement of the final maps which had been drawn up showing the boundaries between Hellas and the Ottoman Empire and to permit those “Greek” or Roman revolutionaries, who ended up in Turkey, now that the maps between the two countries had settled, to go to the new State of Hellas as being now already “Hellenes.”
We translate from the original “Lingua Franca.”: “Always understood that, those who will be considered Hellenes from now on, and will take their place in the category of those who will profit with the right of emigration are: - 1st All the native Greeks of the Ottoman territory, who had emigrated before June 16, 1830, and who did not return to Turkey to re-settle there: 2nd. The Greeks to whom the right of emigration had been accorded by the Protocol of June 16, 1830, and who emigrated between the date of said Protocol and December 9, 1835, the day that the Map of the frontier had been delivered to the Port; on condition that they have fulfilled the conditions in regard to this present Act.” Here we have a distinction between Greek Hellenes and Greeks who are not Greek Hellenes which we find in a Declaration of the Three Courts (Britain, France and Russia) “On the occasion of the election of Prince Othon to throne of Greece” dated August 30, 1832 which opens with the salutation “Hellenes!” and goes on to call these Hellenes “Greek” also. So here we have a distinction between Greek Hellenes of Greece and those simply Greeks within the Ottoman Empire.
But the British, French and Russians had also set the trap for the eventual disappearance of the Roman name. After we deal with how they almost finished the job, we will turn our attention to the reason Why! One may have a clue by asking oneself whether one is a member of the Franco-Latin royalty or nobility or not. If the answer is no, then one is a Roman or a descendent of Romans or of ancestors who migrated to, or were taken by force, to former Roman Provinces.
During the French Revolution the Gallo-Roman serfs and vilains made up 85% of the population and were being guarded from escape by 40,000 castles. The mostly former Gallo-Romans and now the Middle Class made up the 13% of the population. This means that the Gallo-Romans made up 98% of the population of France in 1789. In other words the nobility comprised only 2% of the population. Napoleon destroyed the power of the Gallo-Romans and saved France and Noble Europe and Russia from a general takeover of Europe by the sub-strata of society which at the time was not educated enough to make profit on their overwhelming numbers.
But the greater danger facing the royalties and nobilities of Europe lay in Edward Gibbons’ revelation that the so-called “Greek Empire” is really the Roman Empire Itself. This history was translated into French in time to have an impact on the French Revolution. This intensified the awareness of the Roman unity between East and West Romans which had been distorted by Charlemagne’s “Greek Empire” which was hidden from the enslaved West Romans. Because of Gibbon the Gallo-Romans produced their revolutionary song called the CHANSON DE BELISAIRE (The Song of Belisarius) the great Roman general who was sent by Emperor Justinian to liberate the West Romans from their Teutonic conquerors. Napoleon finally suppressed the overwhelming power of the Gallo-Roman element and restored the power of the Frankish nobility. He himself belonged to that part of the Franco-Tuscan nobility which had remained faithful to the Carolingians and for this reason supported the French Revolution against the descendants of King Hugh Capet (987-996) who had terminated the Carolingian line in France. By means of Napoleon’s victory over the Gallo-Romans and his suppression of their revolution, he personally transformed the Robespierian plans to support an East Roman Revolution against the Ottomans into an Ancient Greek Revolution against both the Romans and the Turks of the Ottoman Empire. Napoleon and Tsar Alexander I agreed on this plan in 1806. Their successors continued the effort and were joined by Great Britain.
The foundation of the plan for the destruction and the dividing up of the Ottoman Empire between Britain, France and Russia became the Balkanization of Ottoman Rumeli (land of the Romans) and the Westernization of both the Orthodox Christians and the Moslems. But this process required the use of a new term in order to cover up the falsification in progress. What had to be solved was a problem inherited from the Franco-Latin tradition which came into existence in 794. Since this year the Franco-Latins had been calling the East Romans by the name “Greeks.” But these so-called “Greeks” were still calling themselves Romans while the Turks, Arabs and other non Franco-Latin peoples were calling them Romans also. So to claim that Hellenes are being liberated from Romans made sense in these languages, but not within the Franco-Latin tradition. To say in the Franco-Latin tradition that “Hellenes” are being liberated from “Greeks” is a nonsensical contradiction in terms. The name “Greek” is the Latin word for Greek and “Hellene” is the Greek word for Greek. So the term “Byzantine” was finally chosen by Britain, Russia and France to make it possible to depict the Hellenic Greeks as being liberated from the Byzantines. This position was first made public in George Finlay’s “History of Greece”. But before Finlay’s “History” appeared, we come across decisions whereby Greeks are being legally transformed into Hellenes. Thus, in the London Protocol of 1/30/1836 signed by Britain, France and Russia, we come across “Greeks” being legally transformed into “Hellenes” in the French language. In Turkish we have “Romans” being legally transformed into “Hellenes.” Because Greek diplomats at the time knew French they therefore felt that they did not require translations. But in Hellenic translations subsequently made we find “Hellenes” being transformed into “Hellenes” instead of “Greeks” being transformed into “Hellenes.” In other words they did not know that the Franco-Latin use of the name “Greek” had become a substitute for the name “Roman” since 794 .
In order to hammer more nails into the coffin he was building for the eventual demise of the Roman Empire, Charlemagne added the Filioque to the Roman Creed of the Second Ecumenical Council of 381 and condemned all who disagreed with him as heretics at his Council of Aachen in 809. Charlemagne accomplished all the above when his specialists knew only Augustine. Franco-Latins who could read and write were a rarity.
When these Franks realized that they could not quote only Augustine when debating with free Romans, as had happened in Bari in 1088, they began their peculiar tradition of collecting isolated sections of the Fathers which they found in collections of canons (Church laws) and scholia on the Bible and enslaved them all to Augustinian categories. They continued to do the same with complete books of the Fathers as they became available. In this way the whole Franco-Latin tradition got bogged down into trying to understand texts of the Bible, Fathers and Councils out of context in an Augustinian mindset. This tradition was followed by all the allies of the Franks.
Even in this age of so-called dialogue the nobility of the Vatican and that of the Protestants, in their new cooperation via the World Council of Churches, is still searching for those Orthodox who use their own Augustinian categories to negotiate with.[104] What comprises the core of the last part of this paper was adopted by the Central Committee of the World Council of Churches meeting in Moscow as part of the material to be studied at its General Assembly of the World Council of Churches in Canberra. In other words the Central Committee which is the legislative body of the Council was circumvented by those who really run the WCC’s show.
What is left is to translate the biblical “spirit of man” and the patristic “noetic energy” into the categories of neurobiological sickness due to the short-circuit between the heart and the brain and its cure. And indeed the whole of Vaticanian, Protestant and Peter the Great Orthodox theology is indeed nothing else than the result of this short-circuit between the heart and the brain.
What one must realize is that terms which belong to metaphysical categories were and are used only by heretics in support of their positions. The Fathers were forced to use these terms and categories against the heretics themselves, but never with the intention of using these terms and categories as parts of definitions of God. This Augustine never understood.
In sharp contrast to the Augustinian metaphysical tradition all decisions of the Nine Ecumenical Councils of the Roman Empire are founded on the following three axioms:
1) There is no similarity whatsoever between the uncreated and the created.
2) It is impossible to express God and even more impossible to conceive God.
The second key to this study is the historical context within which the sickness and cure in question was sidestepped by the Teutonic conquerors of the West Romans who fell in love with Augustine’s doctrine of predestination which coincided with their tradition of settling questions of truth by trial by fire. According to Augustine everyone has inherited the guilt of Adam and Eve and is worthy of eternal damnation. But God has predestined that number of humans to replace the fallen angels regardless of their inherited guilt and worthiness for eternal damnation. Therefore, the salvation of those predestined does not depend on their personal worthiness, but solely on God’s choice. Because many French revolutionaries of 1789 assumed that Augustine’s version of the teachings of St. Paul and the Bible were correct they blamed their many centuries of enslavement under the Franco-Latin royalty and nobility on Christianity itself.[105]
The most important of the Teutons were the Goths, Franks, Burgundians, Lombards, Normans and West Saxons. Most of the East Saxons of England were enslaved by the Normans and remained part of European Roman society and found it normal to join the Varangian army of New Rome. The Franco-Latins conquered the whole of West Roman society and reduced it the status of serfs and vilains. By about the 11th-12th century some Roman serfs and vilains began the process of becoming the middle class of the Franco-Latin feudal system. They began to appear in walled towns defending themselves from their former owners, i.e. the castellani (the dwellers in fortresses with their families) who guarded the slave camps from which these Romans had been escaping.
The castellani in question had become virtually independent of their emperor and kings during the 10th and 11th centuries. This was because of the power they had acquired as the ones who had become mainly responsible for enslaving the revolutionary Romans in turmoil during the period that the Franks were fighting to take over the Roman Papacy. Otto II (973-983) forcefully placed the first non Roman, the Lombard Peter of Pavia, on the papal throne as John XIX (983-984) and provoked a revolution of the Romans in Rome aided by the Roman Emperor in Constantinople New Rome. Then Otto III (983-1002) placed Bruno of Carinthia on the papal throne as Gregory V (996-999) and Gerbert de Aurillac to succeed him as Silvester II (991-1003). These efforts having failed the German Emperors devised an interim plan of putting Tusculan Roman Popes on the papal throne between 1012-1046 in exchange of adding the Filioque to the Creed of Papal Romania. Then the Franco-Latins dropped this facade with their outright takeover of the Papacy in 1046.
The Franco-Latins had been forced to take over the Papacy because the Roman Popes had been using the Pseudo-Isidorean Decretals, which appeared about 850 AD, to take control of all Franco-Latin bishops in order to either bring the Franco-Latin leadership under the rule of law and order and Roman Orthodoxy or even under Roman rule.[106]
Having lost any real control over the castellani the Rex Francorum (King of the Franks) in West Francia retaliated by taking the rebel Roman towns in question under his protection. He placed his military within the citadels of these Roman towns and franchised their citizens. At the time the name Frank meant not only a member of the Frankish race but also a free person. This gave rise to the distinction between middle class Franks, who descended from serfs and vilains, and “noble” Franks, who descended from the race of the conquerors. The taxes paid by these middle class Franchised Romans made the Rex Francorum (Roy des Francois), the richest and most powerful monarch of Western Europe.
The Gallo-Roman serfs and vilains called the middle class Romans “Francimander,” apers of the Franks, especially because they spoke the Frankish language. They called the Franks “Franciman,” evidently because the Franks at the time of the conquest called themselves so in their own Germanic language. This name Franciman survived in Gallo-Roman patois right up the revolution of 1789 and in popular poetry and songs.
We remind ourselves once more that when the French Revolution broke
out in 1789 the population of France had just been counted for the convocation
of the Estates General. The total was about 26 million broken down into
2% nobility, 13% middle class and 85% serfs and vilains. The position of
historians[107] that the Romans and Franks had
become one people even in the time of the Merovingian Franks needs a bit
more proof than is usually provided. In any case it is highly unlikely
that more than 20 million Gallo-Roman serfs and vilains in 1789 had descended
from ancestors who had volunteered to become the serfs and vilains of the
ancestors of the Castellani (Chatelaine) of 1789 who were still living
in 40,000 castles and guarding more than 20 million serfs and vilains from
escape. William the Conqueror’s “Book of Winchester” (Doomsday Book) seems
to also corroborate the plight of the conquered medieval West Romans. At
the time of the conquest even the Irish were praying for the Imperium
Romanum not realizing that Charlemagne had restricted the name to the
Papal States and had begun the Franco-Latin tradition of calling the Empire
of New Rome, the Irish were praying for, the heretical “Imperium Graecorum.”
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22. Roman and Franco-Latin Popes of Rome.
The key to the transition of the Orthodox Catholic Tradition from an illegal to legal religion and then to an established Church lies in the fact that the Roman Nation realized that it was not confronted simply by another form of religion, but by a well organized system of neurobiological clinics which cured the noetic energy in one's heart and its happiness seeking sickness. It is this cure which produced normal citizens with selfless love dedicated to the radical cure of personal and social ills.
In sharp contrast the Carolingian Franco-Latin tradition incorporated Augustine's Neo-Platonic search for happiness as the core of its civilization. The incorporation of the military into the episcopate of Carolingian Francia, whose duty was to pacify the revolutionary Gallo-Roman population, is the key to understanding the so-called Great Schism between Roman and Latin Christendoms. These Frankish bishops and their successors never understood the meaning of apostolic tradition and succession which they reduced to Episcopal power over a system of sacramental magic which sends people either to heaven or hell. This they transferred to the papacy when they forcefully took it over.
This break in apostolic tradition and succession was provoked and sustained
for centuries by military and political power as a normal function within
Latin Christendom. Considered just as normal was the distortion of both
the reality of the East Roman Empire and its Church and Civilization which
continues today under modified “Byzantine” guise. Following a weak Gothic
lead Charlemagne was the first to generally impose the names “Greek” and
“heretical” on the free parts of the Roman Empire.
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23. Local and Ecumenical Councils
Canon Law makes specific provisions for the regular convocation of the Synods of bishops presided over by a Metropolitan, Archbishop, or Patriarch at regular intervals for dealing with the proper execution of the Church's mission of cure within society. There are no such provisions for Ecumenical Councils. The reason for this is that the local synods were part of the original structure of the Church, whereas the Ecumenical Synod was of an extraordinary and imperial nature. One may draw a parallel between Ecumenical Councils and the Apostolic Council convoked in Jerusalem (Acts 15, 6:6-29). Ecumenical Councils, however, were convoked by the Roman Emperor for the purpose of signing into Roman Law what the synods of Autocephalous and Autonomous Churches believed and practiced in common.
Arius, Nestorius and Eutyches were first condemned by local Councils
and then by Ecumenical Councils. Paul of Samosata was condemned by a local
council whose decision was accepted by all other synods. The same was the
case with Sabbelius. Even at Ecumenical Councils bishops participated as
members of their own synods whose spokesmen were their Metropolitans, Archbishops,
and Patriarchs, or their legates. It should be clear that neither can an
Ecumenical Council become a substitute for local synods, nor can local
synods take precedence over an Ecumenical Council, unless the one or the
other strays from the faith. The reason for this is that authority resides
neither in the Ecumenical nor Local Council, but in the glorified prophets,
apostles and Fathers who participate in Councils or whose teachings the
Councils follow. The reason for this is that the only thing which is at
stake is the cure of a neurobiological sickness and not metaphysical concepts
about God. The Fathers used the metaphysical terms of heretics in order
to make clear the teaching of the prophetic tradition as opposed to them,
not as part of an effort to understand intellectually or philosophically
the uncreated. We repeat that for the Fathers who condemned heretics at
Roman Ecumenical and local Councils, as opposed to Augustinian Franco-Latin
Councils, there is no similarity whatsoever between the created and the
uncreated and therefore “it is not possible to express God and even more
impossible to conceive God.”
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24. The method underlying this part of the paper.
The difference between the cure of the neurobiological sickness of religion and the resulting Neo-Hellenic civilization of the Roman Empire, and the return to this sickness of religion by Augustine of Hippo and all his followers, is the underlying outline of this study. The difference is between the cure of a neurobiological sickness residing in a short-circuit between the heart and the brain and no cure. Since this sickness and its cure is an historical reality and not part of the histories of philosophy and religion, this study, in intention at least, is part of history and in this sense part of tradition. For this reason nominal “Orthodox” belong to the history of religion.
The New Testament writers and the Fathers read back into history their own experience of purification and illumination of the heart and glorification which they identify with that of both the Old and New Testament prophets beginning at least with Abraham. One
with the current sickness of religion steming from the short-circuit between the heart and the brain and its cure. Then one reads its cure back into the past as the key to understanding the Old and New Testament prophets and the Fathers and into the future. This is parallel to repetition of the cure of sickness in medical science passed on from doctors to doctors. In this case Christ, the Lord (Yahweh) of Glory Himself is the doctor who personally cures and perfects his doctors in both the Old and New Testaments by the unceasing prayer in the hearts which repairs the short-circuit between the heart and the brain. This historical succession of cure and perfection in the Lord of Glory, both before and after his incarnation, is the heart and core of the Biblical and Patristic Tradition and the Synodical System.
We divide the remainder of this study into 1) Historical Context,
2) the sickness of religion, 3) Synods as Associations of Neurological
Clinics, 4) Synods and Civilizations and 5) Conclusions.
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25. Historical Context
Biblical Faith is one's cooperation/operation with the Holy Spirit Who initiates the cure of the sickness of possessive love caused by the short-circuit in the heart and transforms it into love which does not seek its own. This cure is consummated in glorification (theosis) and constitutes the heart of the Orthodox Catholic Church which replaced paganism as the core of the Hellenic Civilization of the Roman Empire.
Noble Architects, whose historians report history within the context of their plans for the future, claim that the world is being Westernized by means of technology and economics. Orthodox Civilization is listed among those which are supposed to be in a state of arrested development.
Their claim that the Hellenic Civilization of the Roman Empire disappeared in the 8th century[108] and was replaced in the East by a "Byzantine Civilization and Empire” and in the West by a “European Civilization” is a Franco-Latin, i.e. noble modification of Charlemagne's theory of history. Charlemagne (768-814) fabricated this disappearance of the Roman Empire and its Civilization in order to solve a family problem. His grandfather, Charles Martel (715-741), had finally suppressed Gallo-Roman Revolutions in the battles of Poitiers[109] and Provence in 732 and 739 which were supported by Arabs and Numidian Romans who, together with the Spanish Romans, had recently overthrown the Goths in Spain (711-719). The Numidian Romans were under the command of Constantinople's governor of Mauritania in Ceuta. Another Gallo-Roman Revolution was suppressed by Charlemagne's father and uncle the year he was born in 742.
Charlemagne had to find a way to break the religious and cultural unity between his own enslaved Romans and the Roman Empire which now extended from parts of Italy to the frontiers of Persia. Led by their great father the Franks decided at their Council of Frankfurt (794) to give the names Graeci to the free Romans and Graecia to free Romania. This became Franco-Latin customary law.
The modern guardians of this law replaced "Greek" with "Byzantine," and "heresy" with "change of Civilization." Following Napoleon's plans for the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire and of the ecclesiastical remains of the Roman Empire within it, these same guardians destroyed the legal identity of the citizens of Greece with the Romans of Constantinople by presenting them as having been under the yoke of this so-called "Byzantine Empire." They used this fabrication as the core for Balkanizing the "Roman Milet"[110] and destroy its Ecumenical Patriarchate of New Rome Constantinople in the process.
Turning to 8th century Western Europe we are indeed confronted by real and radical changes. Europe is dominated in its center by the Empire of Charlemagne. Gothic Spain is overrun by Arabs and Numidian Romans who together had fought as liberators of the Spanish Romans but ended up as their masters. These Numidians were converted to Islam several times according to Ibn Khaldoun.
The birth of Frankish Civilization is described in a letter of St. Boniface to Pope Zacharias (Natione Graecus[111]) in 741. The Franks had rid the Church in Francia of all Roman bishops by 661 AD and had made themselves its bishops and clerical administrators. They had divided up the Church's property into fiefs which had been doled out as benefices according to rank within the pyramid of military vassalage. These Frankish bishops had no Archbishop and had not met in Synod for eighty years. They had been meeting as army officers with their fellow war-lords. They are, in the words of St. Boniface, "voracious laymen, adulterous clergy and drunkards, who fight in the army fully armed and who with their own hands kill both Christians and pagans."[112]
Fifty three years later the successors to these illiterate barbarians condemned the East Roman Empire as "heretical" and "Greek" on Icons at their Council of Frankfurt in 794 and then on the Filioque at their Council of Aachen in 809. For 215 years the Roman Popes refused to conform to their Frankish masters on Icons and the Filioque.
These Frankish bishops were neither familiar with the Fathers of the Seven Ecumenical Councils, nor were they aware of nor interested in learning anything about the cure of illumination and glorification which were the presuppositions of these Councils. Between the end of the 8th and the 12th centuries the Franks were familiar only with Augustine who was not a Father of an Ecumenical Council, nor did he understand Biblical illumination and glorification which he confounded with Neo-Platonic mysticism. He therefore did not understand apostolic tradition and succession and deviated sharply from St. Ambrose who had baptized him. What the Franks finally accepted from the Eastern and Western fathers they forced into Augustinian categories and so created the myth of Platonising Eastern fathers which is still dominant.
The Frankish bishops encountered by St. Boniface understood apostolic succession as a magical power which allowed them to make it the property of their race and use it as the prime means of keeping their subjugated populations pacified by fear of their religious and military powers. Augustine's theories about original sin and predestination helped them in this direction.
This schism between Franks and Romans expanded into a schism between Franco-Latin and Roman Christendom with their diametrically opposed understandings of the mission of bishops and their synods within the Church and in society. The Franks literally captured a medical association and transformed it into a quack medical association. The East Franks completed the job when they took over the Papacy definitively between 1012-1046.
While the Norman Franks were in the process of expelling the Roman army
from Southern Italy and of helping the Italo-Franks wrest the papacy from
the Franconian emperors, their Duke William of Normandy, invaded England
with Pope Alexander’s II blessing in 1066. He had his Lombard friend the
"Blessed Saint" Lanfranc, the pope's teacher, installed as the first non
Roman/Saxon Archbishop of Canterbury in 1070 and together they replaced
all native bishops with Franco-Latins. All Celtic and Saxon bishops and
abbots were dismissed en masse[113] and sentenced
to prison to die premature deaths by torture and starvation.[114]
The new noblemen bishops from the Frankish Empire were in turn killed by
the people whenever opportunity presented itself.[115]
Indeed the Saxons and Celts celebrated the death of Lanfranc in 1089 by
launching a third and most severe revolt against the foreign intruders.[116]
These revolts continued until the 13th century.
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26. Robin Hood - Orthodox Martyr?
The most famous of the Saxon revolutionary leaders against the Normans was Robin Hood. He had become ill and was taken by Little John to a nunnery where someone recognized him. The Norman nun who was curing him by bloodletting converted this cure into an assassination by letting him bleed to death. Little John and his men escaped to Ireland to continue their war against the Normans.[117]
So many Saxons made their way to Constantinople New Rome after the Norman conquest to join the Roman Emperor's Varangian army that they displaced the Scandinavians as the majority.[118] One of the great generals of this Varangian army had been King Harald III Hadrada of Norway (1015-1066). This means that Norway was still Orthodox. He had become the head of the Varangian army under Emperor[119] Zoe (1042-1056). General Harald led his Varangians “to frequent victory in Italy, Sicily and North Africa, also penetrating to Jerusalem. In Italy and Sicily he was fighting Franks and Normans at the time they were getting ready to rid themselves of the facade of Tusculan Roman Popes (1014-1056) in favor of real Franco-Latin Popes. It is very probable that his attention had been turned for some time to the beginnings of the penetration of the Carolingian heresy into Scandinavia which may explain his frequent attempts to subjugate Denmark. In 1064 he gave up this attempt and made peace with Denmark. His invasion of England in 1066 at Eburacum was evidently an attempt to defeat the Pro-Franco-Norman party which was trying to get the upper hand among the Saxons. Evidently it was not only at the instigation of the Pro-Roman Orthodox Saxon Earl of Tostig that he undertook the invasion of England since he also had Orthodox Scots, Irish and Ebor (Yorkshire in Norman) allies who supported his invasion of England.
There can be no doubt that the Orthodox Christians of England knew very well that their Roman Papacy had been struggling against a Frankish takeover in 983-984, in 996-999, in 999-1003 and finally in 1009-1046 when turncoat Tusculanum Romans were forced upon the Papacy by the German Emperors until it became finally Franco-Latin by 1046. It is within this context that the Norman invasion of England took place with the blessings of the Lombard Pope Alexander II (1061-1073).
In any case the Saxon King Harold of West Essex met the Norwegian army at Eburacum (the Norman York) and in the ensuing battle the King of Norway was killed. However, while celebrating his victory Saxon King Harold learned that an Norman army had just landed. Without waiting for his observers to get a good look at this Norman foe, King Harold rushed with his army, fresh from his victory over the Norwegians, to meet the Normans only to be confronted with the new type of heavily armored horse and men. A phenomenon which they had yet not heard of nor could imagine.
William landed on the shores of Britain carrying the papal banner at the head of what was essentially the army of the first Crusade. Francophile Harold was quite stunned when he learned that the Lombard Pope Alexander II had given his papal blessing to William’s invasion. He took very little and very poor defensive action in the field at Hastings that day and he and his men were completely crushed.[120]
Surely Norwegian Harald was never aware that he was fighting for a so-called “Greek” or “Byzantine” emperor. He had been living and working for the Roman Empire and its Roman Emperor Zoe knowing that she and her people were Romans. With the battle of Hastings it was the turn of the Saxon, Welsh, Irish and Scot Romans to become the slaves of the Franco-Latin noblemen who were now plundering their land. All these real “Roman Catholic” Christians of England had still been praying in their Churches for the Imperium Romanum whose Roman Emperor and capital were in Constantinople-New Rome which was also the headquarters of the Varangian Army in which their boys were serving.
The name “Greek” for the Eastern part of the Roman empire was inaugurated by Charlemagne in 794, as already noted. But the term “Byzantine” was established by Great Britain, France and Russia as part of their plans to break up and divide up the Ottoman Empire among them. The first plan was evidently drawn up during the meeting between Emperors Napoleon I and Alexander I floating on a raft in the river at Tilsit, Germany in 1806. The core of Napoleon’s plan was the liberation of the ancient Hellenes, now called Romans, from both their Roman conquerors and from their Turkish conquerors with one cannon shot. In other words the Neo-Hellenes will end up being slaves from the time they were conquered by the Romans and liberated by the Turks. The very same plan would be multiplied to convert all Balkan peoples who called themselves Romans.
Part of this same plan was to convince Orthodox peasants that the ancient Romans did not speak Greek, like the Romans of Patriarchate of Constantinople, but Latin. Therefore the Church of New Rome cannot be Roman. So it is in reality a Greek Church and nation just like Great Father Charlemagne always said.
In this way the agents of Russia, Britain and France swarmed over the
European part of the Ottoman Empire, called the “Land of the Romans” (the
Balkans), telling all who for centuries have been calling themselves Romans
and getting their education in Greek, that their ethnic enemies are those
from the Phanar who also call themselves Romans, but are in reality a bunch
of Greeks.
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27. Roman Christians and Roman Greeks
Many or most of the people now occupying the area of ancient Greece were Roman citizens since before the time of Christ. With the arrival of Christianity Roman citizens began to be divided into Roman Christians and Roman Greeks. The term “Greek” here simply meant pagan. Charlemagne’s so-called “Greek Empire” continued to call itself the Roman Empire right down to 1453 when New Rome fell to the Ottoman Turks in spite of the so-called “Greek Empire” of the illiterate Franco-Latin barbarians. So the inhabitants of Greece, as well as most Orthodox Christians of the Balkans, still were calling themselves Romans .
What is especially interesting is the fact that the Ottoman Empire continued
to call the whole European part of itself Romania/Roumeli,
i.e. the land of the Romans. Between 1821-36 the British, French and Russian
Empires caused a small Southern tip of this Ottoman Romania to revolt and
become the State of Hellas. The most basic condition for helping these
Romans to revolt against the Turks was that they must also legally revolt
against the Romans, i.e. against themselves and become only ancient Greeks
still enslaved to Romans. In this way these Neo-Hellenes legally liberated
themselves not only from the Turks but also from their Roman selves. The
same was caused to happen to the rest of the Orthodox Christians within
the Ottoman Empire during the process of their Balkanization. British,
French and Russian propaganda caused Charlemagne's imaginary "Greek Empire"
to replace the “Roman Empire” in each linguistic identity which was obliged
to accept that it had been enslaved to a “Greek Empire.” This worked fine
in the case of Serbs, Bulgarians and Romanians, but not in the case of
the “Neo-Hellenes.” How could one explain how “Hellenes” could be enslaved
to “Greeks” when these names historically mean the same thing since they
are Latin and Greek terms for the same Greek speaking people. So the problem
was solved by inventing a “Byzantine Empire” and a “Byzantine people” which
never existed and to which “Neo-Hellenes” had been enslaved “until liberated
by the Turks.”
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28. The West Romans in bondage to the Franco-Latins.
What happened to apostolic succession?
a) Killer Bishops
We have already seen the tradition of Killer bishops which had made its appearance with the rise of the Carolingian Franks as described in the letter of St. Boniface to Pope Zacharias written in 741 AD. Evidently this tradition seems to have remained dormant, as far as this writer knows, until it was awakened again in the aftermath of the results which the Pseudo-Isidorean Decretals produced.
At about 850 AD the so-called Pseudo-Isidorean Decretals appeared. These forged documents very quickly became popular, not only among the Romans, but also among the Franks. These Decretals gave the Roman Pope the power to intervene at any point of the Feudal pyramidal system to place Frankish society under the rule of law and order. They were used by the Franks even to sabotage each other. We have described the situation elsewhere.[121] This Roman attempt to put Frankish society under the rule of law and order by giving the Roman Pope the power of accepting appeals from all levels of Frankish society and even to intervene by bringing cases before his court for Judgment backfired. It created a reaction from Frankish leaders which obliged them to take over the Papacy in order to save their feudal social structures. Archbishop Hincmar of Rheims (845-882) warned Pope Hadrian II (867-872) not to try “to make slaves of us Franks," since the pope's "predecessors laid no such yoke on our predecessors, and we could not bear it...so we must fight to the death for our freedom and birthright.”[122]
"The Decretals were an attack on the very heart of the Frankish feudal system, since they uprooted its most important administrative officials, i.e., the bishops responsible for the "piety" of the Roman population, and put them under the direct control, of all things, of a Roman head of State, the Pope of Rome. The Frankish counterattack was decisive and reached its climax between 1009 and 1046 with the complete takeover of the Papacy by the Franco-Latins.
It is no accident that the rise of the power of the castellani coincided with the fall of the Roman Papacy. The castellani were the heads of fighting men who lived in castles with their families. Usually in the tradition of walled towns and cities the military families lived in homes within the city walls while the soldiers were quartered on the walls while on duty. In sharp contrast the castellani who appear in the 10th century lived in their castles with their families. The obvious reason for this was the fact that the castellani were now supervising an immense Roman population of slaves. So their families could not live among these Roman slaves. At the time of the French Revolution in 1789 there were 40,000 castles guarding 85% of the population of France organized into slave camps isolated from each other. After so many centuries of isolation each group's language, called patois, developed differently so that they could no longer understand each other. There are 32 patois recorded. At this time 13% of France’s population were the bourgeois living within walled towns since about the 12th century. The nobility constituted only 2% of the population and lived mostly in castles. These Francois were almost all descendants of the Frankish conquerors of the Gallo-Romans.
Francis I, King of France (1494-1547), caused Latin to be replaced by the French language in government administration. Rex Francorum became Roy des Francois and Francos/Franci became Francois. The Legislative Assembly of 1789 dropped these titles together with Roy de France. All citizens whatever their origin became Francais and the King became Roi des Francais. All this happened over the vigorous protest of Louis XVI who became citizen king Mr. Capet. In modern French dictionaries Francois is now simply a name of a boy or girl. Also the name Francos/Franci in Frankish sources are translated interchangeably one time Franc then next time Francais. This is all part of an effort to change the real history of France. This is evidently part of a frantic effort to create the impression that all Frenchmen were always equal.
In any case these Franco-Latin reforms by military might became crusades in both East and West. They ultimately provoked the Protestant Reformation and met with little success among the East Romans and some among the Slavs.
This tradition of killer bishops, clergy and monks was given its near
final theological foundation by "Saint" Bernard of Clairvaux in his sermons
"De Laude novae militiae ad milites Templi"[123]
in which he argues that the religious Knight Templer "who kills for religion
commits no evil but rather does good, for his people and himself. If he
dies in battle, he gains heaven; if he kills his opponents, he avenges
Christ. Either way, God is pleased”.[124] Its
final form was given by the Episcopal courts and the Inquisition wherein
the bishops passed death sentences executed by their soldiers. The fear
of the bishops' confessor priests and the machines of torture of the Episcopal
castle indeed provoked piety among the serfs and vilains. But most reacted
violently against the king's clergy and nobility who did not have the sense
to emigrate in time during the French revolution.
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a) What happened to Apostolic Succession ?
In no way can apostolic succession mean that one receives this gift by participating in the murder of one’s Orthodox predecessors. The usual biblical way to receive apostolic succession is to arrive at the cure of illumination after having passed through purification and on the way to or having tasted the state of glorification. That the charisma of the presbyterate presupposed the state of prophecy, i.e. glorification, is stated clearly by St. Paul: "...do not neglect the charisma within you which was given to you by means of prophecy with the laying on of hands of the presbyterate. (1 Tim. 4:14)."
One can see current examples of how Orthodox scholars deal with Anglican apostolic succession. Orthodox scholars are generally in the dark about Western Medieval history and even more so about this writer’s publications about said killer bishops since 1992. In a book first published 1982 with several reprints since because a university text book, the Orthodox scholar in question takes a positive position on the question of whether or not Archbishop of Canterbury Matthew Parker (1559-1575) has apostolic succession which the Vatican had been denying and which has been resulting in its rejection of Anglican Orders.[125] The position of this professor in question has been quite correct had Anglican ordinations derived from the Synod of St. Augustine, the first Archbishop of Canterbury (597-604), appointed by Pope Gregory the Great (590-604) and if the Anglicans accept ordination as one of the traditional seven sacraments. Then they would have apostolic succession. If not, then no!
But this otherwise very correct position would presuppose that the Norman
bishops of 1070 and the Vatican itself would have had apostolic succession
in spite of the fact that they sentenced all Saxon, Welsh, Irish and Scottish
Orthodox bishops of England in 1070 to life in prison for schism and heresy
where they died by torture and starvation. Hardly the usual way that one
receives apostolic succession.
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29. What is Western Civilization?
Is the Franco-Latin tradition of the enslavement of the West and East Romans part of what is now being called Western Civilization? If one is not a member of Franco-Latin royalty and nobility then one is descended from Roman ancestors. This means that the United States of Europe, as well as North and South America, Australia and New Zealand are parts of this overwhelming ancestral Roman reality.
Orthodox Civilization may indeed become arrested, not, however, because of Westernization, but because of strong doses of Franco-Latinisation introduced by Peter the Great (1682-1725) whose religious policies became the law of the Neo-Hellenic Nation in 1827.
Western Europe had been in a long process of De-Franco-Latinisation by means of powerful elements of Re-Greco-Romanization, but not in its apostolic form. Its embryo appeared in the 12th century with the rise of the middle class and went into labor during the Renaissance and the Protestant Reformation. It was born in the Enlightenment and matured during the American and French Revolutions. American and French Democracies, based on human rights and the equality of all citizens, began the progressive destruction of the class distinctions which had been imposed by the Franks and their allies who had brought Latin Christendom into existence on the ruins of those parts of Roman Christendom they conquered, including the Papacy. Franco-Latin metaphysics, cosmology and psychology were made past history by parallel developments in modern science.
But this has neither all happened everywhere, nor all at the same time. Royalties, nobilities, the Papacy, and those Reformation Churches which still serve as props for the remnants of Teutonic royalty and nobility, badly need the identification of Franco-Latin and Western Civilizations for their own survival.
It is exactly this identity which parts of the Reformation and the American and French Revolutions rejected.
Return [94] Ibid, p. 27.
Return [95] All Orthodox Christians, including the Irish, praying for their Imperium Romanum. G. Every, "The Byzantine Patriarchate, 451-1204," London 1947, p.114.
Return [96] Louis Madelin, La Revolution, Deuxieme Edition, Paris 1912, p. 74.
Return [97] For these population figures see the edition of Germaine de Stael's book, Considerations sur La Revolution Francaise, par Tallandier, Paris 1881, p. 610. Jacques Godechot who prepared the reedition of this book cites J. Dupaquier, La population francais aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siecles, Paris (Que sais-Je?) 1979.
Return [98] Ibid, p. 96.
Return [99] Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities, III, 10, 3-5.
Return [100] Ibid, pp. 17-18.
Return [101] Contra Academicos, III, 43.n
Return [102] VII, IX.
Return [103] George Every S.S.M., The Byzantine Patriarchate, London 1947, p.114.
Return [104] Both the Vatican and the World Council of Churches are using every means to make this old Franco-Latin tradition work in the 20th century and will indeed continue, unless the behind the scene Protestant nobility decides otherwise.
Return [105] See e.g. Jule Michle, HISTOIRE DE LA REVOLUTION FRANCAISE, part one DE LA RELIGION DU MOYEN AGE, Paris 1868.
Return [106] See my "Franks, Romans, Feudalism and Doctrine, an interplay between theology and doctrine," Holy Cross Orthodox Press 1981.
Return [107] E.g. Sir Samuel Dill, "Roman Society in Gaul in the Merovingian Age," London 1926. For a popular version of this same position supported by the editors of Time-Life Books see Gerald Simons, "Barbarian Europe," 1968. It seems that this position is strongly supported by some European nobilities while others claim that they are "nobles of the sword" because of their decent directly from the Teutonic conquerors of Western Europe.
Return [108] The exact date has been shifting from time to time.
Return [109] This is what the Franks themselves report in their own source as follows: "...when Duke Eudo saw that he was beaten and an object of scorn, he summoned to his assistance against Prince Charles and his Franks the unbelieving Saracen people. So they rose up…and crossed the Garonne…From thence they advanced on Poitiers…" Fredegarii, Chronica Continuationes 13, trans. J.M. Wallace Hadril (London, 1960), page 90. That Eudo was a Roman and not a Frank is clear from the fact this same Frankish source calls his son Chunoald "a beaten Roman." Ibid chapter. 25.
Return [110] Islamic Law provided for the self rule of each of the Jewish and Christian societies called a Milet.
Return [111] I.e. a native of the Roman province Magna Graecia in Southern Italy
Return [112] Migne P L, 89, 744; Mansi 12, 313-314.
Return [113] For documented sources of the details of murder of the Celtic and Saxon bishops and abbots and their replacement by nobles from the Frankish realms of Francia, i.e. Gallia, Germany and Italia see August Thierry "Histoire de la conquete de l' Angleterre par les Normandes" Paris 1843, vol 2 p 147 (1071-1072), 215-219 (1075-1076), 284, 313-314, 318, (1087-1094); vol. 3. p. 35, (1110-1138), 214-215 (1203)
Return [114] Ibid., vol. 2, pp.55, 66 (1068), 111, 145, 184 (1070-1072), 215 (1075-1076), 240-242 (1082), 313-316 (1088-1089); vol. 3, pp. 35, 44, 47 (1110-1140).
Return [115] Ibid., vol. 2, pp. 232, 236 (1080); vol. 3, pp. 27, 36-37, 39 (1110-1138), 55 (1141-1142); vol. 4, p. 349 (1387).
Return [116] Ibid., vol. 2, p. 315
Return
[117] 1189-1194. Accuse des ballades qui nous ont ete conservees ne
raconte la mort de Robin Hood; la tradition vulgaire est qu'il perit dans
un convent de femmes; ou un jour, se sentant malade, il etait alle demander
des secours. On devait lui tirer du sang, et la nonne qui savait faire
cette operation, ayant reconnu Robin Hood, la pratiqua sur lui de maniere
a le tuer. (Percy's Reliquides of ancient english poetry, vol. I, p.198,
6e cdd.)
Ce recit, qu'on ne peut ni affirmer ni contester, est assez conforme
aux moeurs du XIIe siecle; beaucoup de femmes dans les riches monasteres,
s' occupaient alors a etudier la medicine, et a composer des remedes qu'elles
offraient gratuitement aux pauvres. De plus, en Angleterre, depuis la conquete,
les superieures des abbayes et la plus grande partie des religieuses etaient
d' extraction normande, ainsi que le prouvent leurs statuts, rediges en
vieux francais (Regula monialium Beatae Mariae de Sopwell, in auctuario,
additamentor, ad Matth. Paris, t I,p. 261) : cette circonstance explique
peut-etre comment le chef des bandits saxons, que les ordonnances royals
avait mis hors la loi, trouva des ennemis dans le couvent ou il etait alle
chercher assistance. Apres sa mort, la troupe dont il etait le chef et
l'ame se dispersa; et Petit-Jean, son fidele compagnon, desesperant de
se maintenir en Angleterre, et pousse par l'envie de continuer la guerre
contre les Normands, se rendit en Irlande, ou il prit part aux revoltes
des indigenes Ainsi fut dissoute la derniere troupe de brigands anglais
qui ait eu un objet et un caractere politique, et qui merite par la une
mention dans l'histoire.
Return [118] See G. Ostrogorsky, History of the Byzantine State, New Brunswick, New Jersey 1957, p. 293.
Return [119] Roman women rulers bore the title "Emperor" never Empress.
Return [120] David Howarth, "1066 The Year Of Conquest," 1978 Viking Press
Return [121] John S. Romanides, "Franks, Romans, Feudalism and Doctrine, an interplay between Theology and Society," Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 1981, pp. 20-25.
Return [122] "...nos Francos non jubeat servire, quia istud jugam sui antecessores nostris antecessoribus non imposuerunt, et nos illud portare non possumus, qui scriptum esse in sanctis libris audimus, ut pro libertate et haereditate nostra usque ad mortatem certare debeamus." Migne, PL 126:181.
Return [123] Migne, P.L. 182, 921-940. Preached between 1128 and May 1136.
Return [124] "As summarized in The History of Feudalism," edited by David Herlihy, 1970, p.282-283.
Return [125] Constantine Scouteris, "The 39 Articles of the Anglican Church under the light of Orthodox Symbolic Theology (in Greek) Athens 1982 reprinted without change since as a university textbook. See pp. 419, 420- 423.
