Why Christianity Thrived During The Dark Ages | Testament | Parable

this channel is part of the history hit Network [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] I'm standing in the middle of a dream I lost stream really a dream of a Christian Roman Empire a dream based on the books of the Holy Bible the dream was made about 1500 years ago around 450 A.D the Roman Empire's under attack for safety its Christian Emperors would move the capital here to the north Italian city of Ravenna deep in the malarial marshes of the river Pole this dream of paradise far away from such Earthly torments is in the tiny Chapel the last great Emperors of the West empire were laid to rest this is a funeral [Music] foreign [Music] she lives an amazing life this woman she was taken in shackles across the Pyrenees she went to Constantinople she invaded Italy and she ruled the empire for 25 years but there's not a name on Mr Godless and there's nothing about her Deeds on her little niche just a picture of some Lawrence it's a bit of a legend but Lawrence was a deacon of the early Church in the time of persecution He was ordered by his persecutors to produce the Treasures of the church and Lawrence took some poor families long term and got grilled for his travel you can see his grill up there it's that act of humility of Christian love you might say a demonstration of Christian love that these Mighty people wanted in their tomb it's a really rather moving a sort of profound change from the old classical temples of course it's still in a classical tradition it's a Christian world now but this sort of Christianity was really important is this is his aim it's one songs [Music] Christianity was changed really because the barbarism were followed it was an age when the Bible stopped being used by clever people in clever ways and changed to being used as a book full of images those books over there that are firmly sharp in the bookcase it's on a little bibliographic Monument almost we're now opened up and their images flooded over the west and it was these images that people sees they were simple people and they seized the pictures and the stories of the Bible and they not only used it for eternal life but the promise of eternal life but they also used it to buttress the ideas of Earthly power and the Emperors are over the images of the Bible that's what the next 1500 years of this story is all about well this monster was built about 520 A.D that's about 75 years after galaplachia's beautiful mausoleum was built to house the Mortal remains of a king an emperor called theodoric The Goth of course the ottery was a goth was a barbarian he was one of the members of Prince indeed of the tribes that were coming down from Asia into Europe they destroyed the Empire of the West like children would destroy a watch but ignorance and barber isn't basically Roman Empire wasn't like a thought it didn't fall overnight it was Slowly infiltrated by these big barbarous hordes I can't help thinking the theodorex tomb is a bit like the emperor himself it's not a terrible mix of classicism and barbarism theodoric took over Italy after bumping off his predecessor at a particularly heavy banquet he ruled the country from Ravenna Gala placidious elegant old Palace that these weren't Romans these were barbarians we didn't know how to behave they didn't know how to frame laws and they didn't know how to appear Imperial they got some Senators up from Rome to teach them the rules of the game and I can't think they'd have approved of this much theodoric was actually buried in a bath one of them actually said you are like Orpheus trying to tame the wild beasts but it really didn't work one by one they got caught up in the sort of suspicious tribal courtly politics of Ravenna one was clumped to death another was strangled but one of them cassiodorus managed to get away to the South and with him he took the most precious thing he could find in the whole world the ancient text the seed of the ancient world all the ancient books he had a great plan he started up a monastery in the south of Italy and there he got a lot of scribes to copy these texts out again in their most perfect versions correcting all the grammar correcting all the punctuation and spelling to preserve the old now for our point of view the most important text he took were the Bible text the different books of the Bible which have been translated by Jerome hundreds of years earlier the Pope that have been used in all the Western Services these cassia doors actually gathered together and put in one book The First Western Bible book that we know of is called a pandemic to Bible book His Marvelous Bible as marvelous mythical Bible you might say because now it's quite gone it's called the Codex Grand deal God know it is there's actually the ancestor of all our modern Western Bibles but the dream of a Western Christian Empire had gone almost as soon as the Empire itself had been split into the Eastern Empire though its old Imperial cities embattled and besieged but kept The Barbarians at Bay [Music] foreign [Music] slowly descended into a terrible Anonymous Dark Age the Old Eastern Empire the Greek Empire the Empire really founded by Constantine the Great continued on its way it's Capital Constantinople kept back foreign mostly Pagan armies looked over the battlements at that time you might have seen the silk tense of the Persians beneath black tents are the Arabs the Goths the bulgarians all sorts and none of these armies took him not that is until 1453 when the ottoman Turks came over these walls and destroyed the Christian civilization inside that was an extraordinary civilization think of it in the West those Dark Ages produce a sort of dislocation with the past people are After the Dark Ages wanting to think about classical Antiquity or the age in which the Bible was written or even his language Greek which practically nobody knew they had to sort of reinvent it was a gone a different age but here that pass was part of the present the old classical World continued people still kept talking Greek we went to chariot races they knew all about the classical gods they read Greek philosophers they were able to read the new testimony in Greek the language in which it had been written Constantino may have been founded by a Western Empire but it always looked towards the east the city spanned Europe and Asia here it was the Roman culture met and mixed with the east made a form of Christianity Jesus of Nazareth himself and Easter could have recognized and understood and as the Western Empire dissolved this city became the heart of the Roman Empire an exotic impenetrable part legendary city called sometimes by its old Greek name of Byzantium Constantinople was the greatest city in the world the Greeks that lived here said it was the eye of all cities in fact it took most of the Eastern Empire just as supporters it's a very violent city it was a city a huge marble palaces of circuses of lethal Court politics very violent crowds that used to rush around killing and destroying it seemed at the slightest wind and yet at the same time this violence said he was also a very religious one it was said that when he went to a grocer to buy a loaf of bread you were just as likely to get stuck into a big theological argument as you were about the price of the loaf westerners who came in founded a very exotic very mysterious place it's an ambassadors came here for various reasons over the centuries they left us letters of their accounts they're quite extraordinary documented first of all as they came towards the city they talk about its smell because all the content you know we used to flavor its food with a fish sauce made from the brown juice of rotten fish the westerners didn't like that very much neither did they like the terrible garlic that was everywhere already by the 6th Century Byzantium had made its own style of food and architecture too the city was rich prosperous and growing the vast Imperial Church the Via Sofia consecrated in 537 loomed over its palaces in celebration of the reign of that most astute and successful of its rulers the emperor Justinian the church looks a bit like the back of an enormous stage set promising a world within it [Music] foreign [Applause] [Music] this is the great door the Imperial door of Justinian's Church for 800 years only the Emperor of Byzantium and his Patriarchs the chief priests went through this door the door I think probably the greatest building in the world it's a Christian Church and in secret is really in the New Testament right at the top of that door hidden away summer is a few lines from the Gospel of John and it's where Jesus is talking to the Pharisees and he says I am the door Jesus is saying I am the door to Salvation if you come through me if you go into this church you will achieve salvation okay we understand that but what a Greek thing to put on the door to start with it's a conversation between two people like a couple of Greek philosophers and it's people thinking they've got the the message behind it what message have they got what message do this church give you I think it gives you a message that this is a new universe this isn't the old Pagan Universe this is a new Christian universe if you look at this building difficult to see at first after all the Romans have been making things that look like this for 800 years and they knew exactly how all these bits fitted together the cornices the dados the door jambs and you know it all went and the Romans got their slaves bashed them a bit and they got him to make it when you look at those Roman buildings their faceless hard machine made things they're pretty perfect but this building is nothing like that at it if you look at the small details on this building they're not made by slaves they're not made by machines they're made by people's hands look at this little ivy plant running up here little leaves every little leaf is carefully drawn it's a little leaf with a little bit of God's life in it it's trembling on the vine every single line here moves slightly it's got a warmth about it it's not mechanical it's not machine light you can see the hand of the man that made it and this huge building it's a universe of a building this building is full and it tells you that man has a place so let's go in the church and see what amazing beauty is that whole source you never get in [Music] you know like every really great work of architecture this building is actually unprotographable it moves around you keeps you inside this building too is doubly extraordinary what for me makes it probably the greatest building in the whole world is the fact that you go from these minute Beauties to vast expansive Dome it's absolutely extraordinary is it like a model of the universe you might say God is enclosed Under the Dome it's sort of gone terrifying every detail in the building has extreme Beauty and sensitivity in it think about it in Rome slaves made huge blank walls but here look at them look what's happened every wall is dissolved it's gone it's like a piece of lace it's like a necklace too for God think about it all these Stones grow from all over the Empire gathered together here heaven in a grain of sand it's a building that's enormous but you don't feel dominated in it that's his secret and that's why I think it's the most profoundly Christian so just think of the M for adjusting and he marches in he looks up at his dome for the first time he said nothing for a moment and then he suddenly said Solomon I have surpassed you see it's a Byzantine emperor immediately thinking about a Bible character and he's sort of incompetition with the Bible characters Justinian was probably the greatest of all the Byzantine emperors he knew exactly where he was going what he wanted to do he took over a very rich Empire he had great generals too they conquered well they reconquered all of the Roman Empire everywhere from Spain to Syria all of Italy Rome and right up through the country all came under the control of Justinian it's extraordinary man a very powerful man he sat down and wrote a new code of laws he closed all of the old Pagan churches he closed all the philosophical academies in Greece the Egyptian temples it was a very moral very tough ruler and a great man and he had was his Empress equally remarkable woman A lady called Theodora now the trouble with theodoro is that she's had a bad press because her history was written by a man who was alive today I'd be riding for the Sun or the National Enquirer so what we know about so maybe as legendary as the story of Justinian in his dome but what we do know is that apparently she'd been a prostitute before she was an empress a woman who is alleged to have said that she would have liked to have had more orifices in her body so she could please more of her clients at the same time anyway be that as it may they ruled incredibly well for 40 years and this if you like was the center of their Universe Justinian's Church was the center of it all their Imperial ritual ground if you like as God controlled the clock of heaven so this was the center of the clock of the earth Justinian actually in this church sat on a Golden Throne over there the Adora was up there in the balcony both of them looking down you really got to think of this church as a theater a vast Imperial theater see they came in to look at the ceremonies but the ceremonies were actually hidden behind a great screen between this column over here that one over there was a great long screen that ran across and it had a few doors in it now the altar was behind the screen so you could only catch glimpses of it as you went past one of the doors you'd have seen bits of this huge golden table covered in linen and embroideries and on it the great buyables of Byzantium the crosses and all that sort of thing and you'd have heard the murmuring and the choirs and the priests behind and the other sense would have come wafting over the top of the lights in the church would have been so low that between the clouds of incense and these little stars burning just above your head you might have fancied it a bit inhabitants and then the great moment came started to sing a song called the cherubicon cherub.com it means the image of the cherubim now imitating the Heavenly quiet Justinian was moving towards him and what were the words he was singing the lord of the universe and he's trusting you and he's caught not God and His angels are coming can you imagine all that amazing Byzantine splendor actually you have to imagine it because they're actually zayaks of the sea made by justinians and artists now you can see his Bishops carrying their great Jewel Bibles and their crosses and then Justinian himself looking a bit stirred at the power of an impatient arrogant young man a great arched eyebrows behind him his army in front of him his Bishops the Unholy Trinity that now ruled the Earthly Empire of almighty God it's wonderful mosaics of Justinian and Theodora on in Constantinople at all they're in Italy in Ravenna in the old Imperial Court Justinian's armies just conquered me again he wanted to spam his Imperial presence on the country now in these wondrous mosaics in this church that book The Bible has a special significance because Justinian isn't just trying to unite the people with their God serving as a servant he's actually trying to justify his position to Divine Right on Earth and it's theologians of eugenesis to do it what they did you see was to find episodes in the Book of Genesis which seemed to prophesy events in the New Testament and then to link These Old Testament events with Justinian himself to say look Justinian is just like one of these people it's a complicated circular argument so we have a picture of Abraham offering Bread and Wine to Three Angels the Three Angels that have come to tell Sarah's wife that she was going to Bear a child that's obviously a sort of Prophecy of communion itself now on the right Abraham's sacrificing Isaac and that's sort of a prophecy and the crucifixion because there Isaac is had to be on the wood in the Bible just as Jesus would be on the wood in the New Testament [Music] now on this side there's a man who actually hardly appears in the Bible at all a shadowy character named Melchizedek he's not much known today but amongst the Imperial theologians the king Melchizedek play quite an important role Melchizedek was king of Jerusalem just as Justinian was King of the New Jerusalem of the empire Melchizedek the Book of Genesis tells us just offered Bread and Wine to Abraham not a very strong connection you might think but enough of the theologians they've transformed that event into Melchizedek actually standing in front of an imperial altar from the time of Justinian himself in fact an altar exactly like this one and to rub the point home further Melchizedek has a hay layer just as Justinian does over there so the two figures seem to be somehow Linked In Time by theology the idea is the Justinian Rules by divine right and if you go against him you go against God so Christ up there there's Mr handsome young man he's a judge he's rewarding a righteous with crowns and he threatens the Terrible retributions and high high above justinians Alden is the Lamb of God the Holy Lamb Of Jesus who sacrifices but not only saved the world but which according to theologians also Sanctified the rule of kings and Emperors so the ancient Bible stories refused to organize the lives of men [Music] you know in Justinian's day this was the very edge of the world the west coast of Ireland out there is the Atlantic we know that America's on the other side Justinian's geographers would have thought just a few monsters and then well you fell off you know nothing but shortly after the time of Justinian these same remote areas actually became the centers of Western Civilization look I tell you what's happened Justinian's arms have absolutely devastated it they went back to the east shortly after he died so there was nothing going that Italy was ruined and lost even old Rome where the Pope live was pretty well devastated the papacy was now very poor and of course if Italy was ruined the empire was totally ruined all of Western Europe which have once been huge cities was now a desert A Wasteland there was nothing there people have forgotten how to live in cities civilization went from Western Europe that is what is meant by the Dark Ages but in places like Ireland and Scotland places that had never been a part of the Roman Empire Christianity lived on the missionaries from the old Roman Empire and spread it through these remote areas that never died so what was once the froth at the edge of everything now became the Center of Western Civilization there were a few literate men living in places like Scotland northumbria certainly here in Ireland those literate men were writing viables the word of God the centuries that follow those literate men in their Bible could preserved Western Civilization would actually revive it by taking the word of God back into Europe [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] foreign almost entirely disappeared there's just a few beautiful jewels and a few precious Bibles from the 6th and 7th Century that's all people of those days lived in buildings made of Watling door and they just washed away but it's nice like this one in Ireland this is clonmac noise you can still see a reflection a sort of shadow of how those people lived because here that lifestyle went on for hundreds and hundreds of years this little wall right around the edge of a settlement of monks right in the middle of the settlement would have been a little church just like that one probably made of wood filled with these beautiful little things Bibles crosses that sort of thing around the edge of that would have been all the places where the monks lived and worked within the kitchens places for the animals places where they prepare the meat for the winter all that sort of thing Dallas with a beautiful smell of turf fires running over the whole thing too the most amazing building here the most extraordinary building the thing that made this these sort of places in the sixth and 7th Century one of the centers of world culture was a scriptorium of places where the Bible was written it was in places like that that men like bead and Columbus spent their whole lives in meditation and writing the Bible all around the edges of the old Empire these small colonies of monks and Hermits prayed for the world immuned alone with God almost inadvertently kept learning and literacy alive in the West [Music] how do you imagine it stone cold winter and summer perhaps the room filled with smoke from a fire Bracken over the ceiling the small window a little wax taper to light you and a chair and so what you had and yet you know these people working like this made the most beautiful books in the world some of the most beautiful manuscripts of man has ever made looks so beautiful that a few hundred years later in Gothic times people thought they'd be made by Angels they're famous today the lindisfarne gospels The Book of Kells the book of Darrow the Catholic of Saint Columba the Catholic of Saint Columba is the oldest manuscript known from Western Europe sixth or seventh centuries something like that made in a little damp dark room like this look they've got the text from Italy it's come out from the south brought up from missionaries it's a good Latin Bible but all the pages the decoration are laced with their own lives and and filled in with that wonderful decoration and color was all the events of their own lives all the animals and plants that they knew they saw an otter taking a salmon by a stream the lineage would go in their Bible next to a picture of an evangelist all the plants and everything you can think of it was all there were others they're actually on intent on re-christianizing Europe itself they actually landed in France they sent many students back to the Irish monasteries English French students came to places like Club mcnice to actually study the word of God other monks went from Germany down the Rhine christianizing Europe as they went visiting the pagans sometimes getting murdered and some of the most famous churches and monasteries there now are actually founded by the Irish and then believe it or not they moved actually back into Italy foreign [Music] [Music] foreign look at that this Blended page of the world's oldest Latin Bible going on its Majestic Way in double columns 7th century and made in northumbria of all places how it ends up in Michelangelo's Masterpiece of a library in Florence is a story of Exquisite improbabilities it's one we largely know in fact through the writings of a northumbrian monk the famous bead in fact beats scriptorium that's the part in his Monastery that made books made this book perhaps some of these words here actually beads own words written in his own hand we don't know but the story is in the book itself part of it is it let me show you the beginning of the book now this beautiful simple page in the front of the book is the dedication it tells you who ordered the book to be made and to whom it was to be presented look there's something quite interesting you see that line there where the Ink's a bit different that line there with that line there now this book is made of vellum that is the skin of an animal and somebody's scratched away at it and written new names on it they've written Italian names on it so it looks like it was written for an Italian to be given to the Pope but in 1890 an Italian scholar looking at this realize it had been changed and saw under that bit there the original dedication was of a northumbrian bishop Bishop cholfrith bead's own Bishop had ordered this book to be made some 1500 animals were slaughtered to make three of these ones this is the only one that survived and it survived because of childhood himself when he got very very old he decided he wanted to go back to Rome on a pilgrimage to see the holy city for the last time and he decided to take one of his great Bibles as a present so they must have strapped it onto a horse or a donkey can you imagine finding a Bible on carrying up mountains through Rivers little slender thread of knowledge going through illiterate Europe very very few people could read anyway the old man died in France but the Bible somehow continued and it got to Rome and it seems that the pope eventually gave it to a little Italian Monastery in the shadow of a Tuscan Mountain Monte amiatus that's how this book gets his name the army artinus [Music] all right but even more extraordinary is this perhaps the most famous page in the whole book it's famous because it links this Bible from Charo with the real history of the Latin Bible remember cassia Doris that friend of boethius who've been murdered by the Barbarian remember we went to South Italy and there he set up a sort of a monastery in which his monk sat down and got the Latin Bible and put it into its exact final form well this is a picture of cassia doors we know that because we know from other mind if the Cassidy doors owned a certain set of Bibles a young one very famous set of nine volume Bible and there it is in the bookcase we know that he owned a little bible in one volume and there it is on the floor and it's open the cassiodorus himself is copying out this big fat Bible now that big fat guy was a very famous bible it was called the Codex grandial seems that that very Bible taken up to jarrow and this huge volume is actually a copy of cassia Doris's book written hundreds of years earlier this then shows you the line the direct line of descent of all our modern Bibles [Applause] if there's one thing in the whole world which you can say lifted Europe out of the bolts of the Dark Ages and put it back onto the path of literacy and prosperity was this chair or rather it's the ideas that come to surrounded because this you might say is the Throne of Europe Legend has it it is actually the Throne of Charlemagne he was the king of the Franks he ruled an area which was much of France and part of Germany right down into Italy and on Christmas Day 800 he was actually crowned an emperor by the pooping robe this northerner was the first Holy Roman Emperor and when it got home again to German to the heart of his Empire to his great palace Charlemagne built himself this fine Imperial Chapel the idea of course is there is a man an emperor sitting on the throne of Christendom who rules all of Europe with a just and fair hand pure Christian King ruling an Empire organized and controlled viable it is in the same part it's going to give people a dignity and the prosperity and the union with God hundreds of stories about Charlemagne some of them are probably true too but one of them and one of them is particularly appropriate because it actually tells you quite a lot about the sort of man he must have been concerns the emperor sitting up there looking down at a service on the ground floor of his church somewhere down there there's a particularly well-known Verger reading from the Bible this Verger was said to be like an Italian in that he perpetually tried to resist the course of nature as she meant the poor guy trimmed his fingernails and washed his hair which was pretty rare anyway as Charlemagne watched him reading the Bible to his great fascination spiders started to come down from a sealage and landed straight on top of his virgin's head now the Virgin must have felt it as it landed but he was so terrified of the emperor's eye because Charlemagne was a big man and you didn't muck around with him he was so terrified of the emperor's eye that he carried on reading the book The Spider jumped onto his head ran down his neck bit him on the net and killed him Charlemagne was mortified he hadn't actually been able to look after the welfare of one of his subjects needed Penance in his own church for it it's a good story embodies all of Charlemagne's principles the watching the education and the idea of a just ruler actually The Man spent most of his life fighting all around the borders of his Empire but when he wasn't fighting foreigners he was actually fighting for good order inside his own kingdom did it by a number of ways he framed marvelous laws Charlemagne's laws are the basis of civil law in Europe to this day education system anything you can think of and he also did it too by setting up Bible writing schools inside the monasteries there were practically no books in Europe Charlemagne himself was illiterate but he knew the power of writing and of that book this beautiful style of writing developed by Charlemagne scribes is not only the ancestor of all Western handwriting but is also the medium through which the wisdom of the ancient world has come down to us most of the oldest surviving manuscripts of classical writing Cicero Virgil and all the rest of them are copies that were made in Charlemagne's monasteries it was Charlemagne's Bibles however that had the most effect four evangelists became the heroes of his Brave New World cassia Doris's Latin Bible became a standard Imperial Bible text the Bible word of God covered in gold made as precious as a jewel after Charlemagne's death though the Emperors and courtiers were themselves mostly illiterate they thought it was a noble thing a royal Duty indeed to support scholar monks who pay for them to make fine books so learning was revived cassiodorus's perfect Latin text from the gift of European with Bible that come to stand at the heart of the new Christian civilization that was slowly growing in northern Europe one of the most beautiful and one of the most moving examples of this in jeweling of the word of God this making a new Prestige object out of the Bible there's a paw pit made by one of Charlemagne successors for the court Chapel at Arkham and this is it down the sides are actually antique ivories from Egypt it's a bit like the history of the bible really much older than Charlemagne he's Columns of ivories they actually got Greek gods and things like that on the goddess of Alexandria Isis who became the Blessed Virgin Mary got dionysius the god of drinks flying around with his grapes and everything cross in the middle that really holds your eye isn't it it's a magnificent and each of his Corners it's got one of the four evangelists Matthew now Luke and John basically writing their gospels the cross itself is a really bizarre collection of objects there's ancient chess pieces there but the big Blobby bits the ones that look like fruit gums are actually but it's a Roman Crockery turned up the other way and bunged into the gold right in the middle of that nice blue fruit bowl down there used to be stuck on one of the finest cameos in the world it's an ancient Roman Cameo it has a superb picture of an eagle on it it was made in the time of the Roman emperors Charlemagne and his successors adopted that ancient Roman sign just the same way they thought they put on the cloak of the Roman empress that became the Black Eagle of the German Empire marvelous they're sort of burning with the fire of Northern Faith now you might say these things have been brought from the south like the buyer ones stuck up here and of course even in the most ancient times when this was brand new the lectern was always here this is a new one but there was an old one we've got fragments on it and here of course would have still one of the carolingian Bibles the real Triumph of Charlemagne's Court they became the justification of Nations capitalism too the root of law the seed perhaps of all the rising power of the West and in the east those same centuries old Christianity the Christianity of Constantine and Justinian slowly dying the great old city of Constantinople finally fell to the Turks on a Tuesday 29th of May 1453. spring the people on the walls and watch as the Turkish Army dragged off its huge Siege ganons it didn't dare put any cannons on their walls they were a thousand years old and they felt they just disintegrate early on that Tuesday morning the Turkish Canada started lobbing these huge Granite cannonballs against the walls they knocked them down so much in a few places but the Turks were actually able to ride into the city but actually the city just fell apart it was penetrated by the Turkish Army in several different places they were outnumbered six perhaps even ten to one [Music] foreign on the door shortly after they killed the emperor that was about an hour after sunrise look what happened was this the evening before just before midnight The Last Emperor Byzantium would come into this church for the last time for communion great jeweled Bibles and the crosses have been carried to the altar and all the Italian and the Greek Knights who were going out with the emperor the next day prayed and then they'd walked out of this church bolted the doors [Music] they left the whole Court of byzantia all the Senators the scholars and their wives and their children when the Turks finally got into the church they killed everybody who resisted stripped the rest put them in Chains and they were LED off into slavery Sultan mechner told mehmed the Conqueror after he conquer constantly came into the church on that first day on his horse Legend says that when he came in here he looked at the church and told his men to stop damaging him which is what they were doing he said this is obviously a building meant for God so it became the mosque of the Divine wisdom instead of the Church of the Divine wisdom and it's said that he put his hand in one of the pillars and spun it round to face Mecca three days later of course prayers were held in here and The Sultans brow literally touched the marble marble do you know at that time it was said that you could buy 10 books for any coin that you might possess now Byzantium was stuffed with books there was all the learning of the Greek World in this town The Works of Homer Aristotle Plato God knows what we do not know was here it was all destroyed in that period the story of the Bible it's probably its most tragic time how much of the Bible's history was lost then obviously all the great Bibles of Byzantium with their golden covers are just stripped and thrown down but think of the ancient manuscripts that were here manuscripts that went back who knows practically the time of Jesus nobody knows half the history of the Bible was lost on that day on that day too Christianity lost its last direct connection the real ancient Bible world under Turkish rule Greek the very language of the New Testament became a provincial language since then of course the entire Christian world has been even further isolated from its own Beginnings this mostly by things of its own making by social industrial revolutions and two huge Wars yet that seed the Charlemagne planted in the main through the centuries it's only lost its real power indeed in the last hundred years or so I suppose it was his monasteries those great monasteries that Charlemagne set up that really started Europe on the boil again they really generated a new economy in Europe even though weather got better everything got better water powers developed they started breeding animals the population went out Bingo you were into a new world it was wonderful but it was still a world based based the Bible you see that Gothic period which came along after Charlemagne and really didn't conk out until the 15th 16th century hundreds and hundreds of years later that period still held the Bible at its Center because throughout all that time even with the new technology the people in that Society worked that are from Bible people when they read their Bible and it said they were shepherds abiding in the fields or there was a guy who was a Tanner or a this or a letter they knew about that they still had those people they still had courts and chamberlains and all the rest just like Herod the Great it wasn't that different and that Bible supplied everybody in that Society in Europe for hundreds of years with an identity with a dignity everybody from a thief to a King had his place in the Bible those great churches that they built filled up with statues they ought to do with placing everybody in that Society in terms of their Bible characters and their Bible equivalents and the morality of it all stuck together and you could say then the gothic world is the most successful Bible culture in the west they thought it was literally a mirror image of the world in the Bible itself [Music] thank you

Channel: Parable - Religious History Documentaries

Views: 22,596

Keywords: Biblical archaeology, Charlemagne, Christian culture, Christian faith, Christian monks, Christian traditions, Christianity, Christianity growth, Church preservation, European history, Ireland, Parable - Religious History Documentaries, Religious studies, archaeological discoveries, religious influence, religious studies

Id: iGjSk4ieEIw

Length: 50min 35sec (3035 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 10 2023