Coming Home · Historical Review

Things Nobody Wants to Accept about Christianity

author: High Priest Zevios Metathronos

52 historical dossiers drawn from Christianity’s own scriptures, manuscripts, Church Fathers and Church publications, each with its source and the Temple’s answer. A review written for your return to God, with no accusation against you.

For

Readers who need the detailed record before they choose

You Will Find

52 dossiers in 5 groups, each with its source and answer

Next Step

Discover a Life with the Gods

Paul, 1 Thessalonians 5:21, NRSV

πάντα δὲ δοκιμάζετε, τὸ καλὸν κατέχετε·

…test everything; hold fast to what is good.

I. A Historical Review

This page is a historical review, and it accuses no reader of anything. It is written to wake the Children of the Gods and to welcome them back. It shows the religious errors we have made together as mankind, and invites you to set them right under Zeus and the Eternal Gods.

It sets out what Christianity’s own Bibles, manuscripts, Church Fathers and modern Church publications say about themselves. The Temple of Zeus writes it for one purpose: to help you reconnect with God, Zeus the Father and King of the Gods, and return to the Gods your ancestors knew. You read it as a guest of the Temple, and the review speaks with conviction because its sources speak plainly.

Examining a religion’s claims needs no apology. Paul told his own readers to test everything and hold fast to what is good. The Temple’s Welcome says the same in its own words: Freedom of belief is paramount, as ordained by the Gods themselves.^[1] Freedom includes the freedom to read the record.

Each dossier opens with the source’s own words: the New Revised Standard Version and the King James Version, the Greek New Testament, the Church Fathers, the notes of the evangelical NET Bible and the New American Bible published by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. Then come the claim the witness tests, the Temple’s answer and the consequence for your decision.

The criticism falls on texts, doctrines, institutions and named historical acts. It never falls on you. Many readers were raised inside these claims and never saw the notes printed at the foot of their own Bible’s pages. Read the passage. Then follow what it shows.

II. The Short Route

If you have only a short time, read these 6 dossiers. They cover the book’s text, the making of its canon, the councils that defined the doctrine, the Christian explanation of the older Gods, the reuse of their temples and the laws against their worship. Each one stands alone, and together they carry the whole case.

1. C4Mark’s Longer Ending Is Absent from the Earliest Major WitnessesSinaiticus and Vaticanus end at 16:8 with the women afraid; every appearance of the risen Jesus in Mark comes from a later hand.
2. C14The Canon Was Settled Through Lists That DisagreedEusebius counted 5 letters as disputed, and Codex Sinaiticus bound Barnabas and the Shepherd into its New Testament.
3. C25Councils Defined the Faith and the Emperor Enforced ItConstantine sat among the bishops at Nicaea in 325, the creed anathematised dissent, and a law ordered death for hiding Arius’s books.
4. C32The Fathers Admitted the Parallels and Blamed the DemonsJustin told the emperor that Christians teach nothing different from what Rome believed of the sons of Jupiter, then blamed demons for the likeness.
5. C38Gregory Ordered the Temples Kept and the Worship ReplacedGregory’s letter of 601 keeps the temples and feasts and changes only the one addressed; Boniface IV made the Pantheon a church.
6. C45The Empire Outlawed the Worship of the Gods, Down to the Household HearthCodex Theodosianus 16.10 closed the temples, made sacrifice a capital crime and followed worship indoors to the lar and the penates.

III. All 52 Dossiers

The dossiers fall into 5 groups. Every heading states the exact issue, and every dossier carries its own source, so you can begin anywhere.

IV. The Book: Authorship, Transmission and Canon

The first group examines the book itself: who wrote it, how it was copied and who decided what belongs in it. Every witness comes from Christian Bibles, their manuscripts, the Church Fathers or the notes of modern Christian editions.

C1 The Gospel Writers Never Name Themselves, and the Names Come from Later Tradition

Luke’s author gives no name, John’s last verse speaks of the disciple from outside, and Irenaeus supplies the names more than a century later.

Read the dossier

The preface of the Gospel of Luke, Luke 1:1 to 3, NRSV · Read the passage

Since many have undertaken to set down an orderly account of the events that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed on to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the word, I too decided, after investigating everything carefully from the very first, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus…

The Claim Examined

Christians are taught that the 4 Gospels are the testimony of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. The texts never say so. Luke’s author gives no name and places himself after the eyewitnesses.^[2] John’s closing verse speaks of the beloved disciple from outside: we know that his testimony is true. The US Catholic bishops’ Bible states that Mark is anonymous, apart from the ancient heading ‘According to Mark’ in manuscripts.^[3]

The names come from tradition. Irenaeus, writing while Eleutherius was bishop of Rome (about 174 to 189), assigns all 4 Gospels to their authors.^[4][5]

The Temple’s Answer

Irenaeus reports the names more than a century after the events; he didn’t witness the authorship. The authors chose silence about their identities, and the one who describes his method says he depended on others. A faith that asks you to stake your soul on eyewitness testimony can’t show you a Gospel author who signs his name as an eyewitness.

For Your Decision

Read the Gospels as anonymous religious literature, and judge them as you would any other. See how the first Gospel was written.

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C2 Papias Reports a Hebrew Matthew, but the Greek Gospel of Matthew Copies Mark

Papias spoke of oracles in Hebrew; the Greek Matthew follows Mark’s Greek, and the US bishops call its author unknown.

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Papias (about 135), quoted by Eusebius, Church History III.39.16, tr. A. C. McGiffert; and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, New American Bible, Revised Edition, Introduction to Matthew · Read Papias · Read the introduction

Matthew wrote the oracles in the Hebrew language, and every one interpreted them as he was able.

The ancient tradition that the author was the disciple and apostle of Jesus named Matthew (see Mt 10:3) is untenable because the gospel is based, in large part, on the Gospel according to Mark…

The Claim Examined

The belief that the apostle Matthew wrote the first Gospel goes back to Papias, whom the bishops’ Bible dates to about 135.^[3] Papias speaks of λόγια, oracles, composed Ἑβραΐδι διαλέκτῳ, in the Hebrew language.^[6][7] The Gospel in every Bible is Greek and follows Mark’s Greek closely. Mark 2:10 and Matthew 9:6 break off mid-sentence at the same point with the same aside, λέγει τῷ παραλυτικῷ, he said to the paralytic.^[8] Matthew’s own call is told in Mark’s words, with Mark’s Levi son of Alphaeus replaced by a man called Matthew.^[2]

The Catholic bishops conclude that a companion of Jesus would hardly follow an account that came from one who admittedly never had such an association rather than rely on his own memories.^[9]

The Temple’s Answer

Papias’s words end the old claim on either reading. If Papias meant a Hebrew book, the Greek Gospel in your hands isn’t that book.

If he meant something else, the attribution to Matthew loses its earliest support. The bishops call the author unknown: an unnamed editor reworking Mark, who told an apostle’s calling in another man’s words.

For Your Decision

An unknown editor’s revision of Mark holds no authority to forbid you the Gods. Follow how the text was then copied.

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C3 The Text Comes Through Manuscripts That Disagree, and Editors Must Choose

Editors weigh disagreeing manuscripts verse by verse; a verse King James readers took as proof of Christ’s divinity is a scribe’s reading.

Read the dossier

1 Timothy 3:16 in 2 English Bibles, with the NET Bible’s textual note · Read the note

King James Version (1611): “And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh…”

New Revised Standard Version (1989): “Without any doubt, the mystery of our religion is great: He was revealed in flesh…”

The Claim Examined

Many Christians believe their Bible reproduces the original words. The oldest New Testament manuscript, P52, is a scrap 8.9 by 6 centimetres with parts of John 18:31 to 33 and 37 to 38, dated on its handwriting to 100 to 150 by its first editor, C. H. Roberts, and by later palaeographers as late as the early 3rd century.^[10] Everything fuller is later, and the copies differ.

At 1 Timothy 3:16 the King James reads God was manifest, modern editions He was revealed.^[11][2] The evangelical NET Bible explains that θεός, abbreviated as a sacred name, looked like ὅς, who, the reading of the early witnesses, and calls the defence of God special pleading.^[12] It brackets the angel and the bloody sweat of Luke 22:43 to 44, absent from P75 and Vaticanus.^[13]

The Temple’s Answer

A verse King James readers took as proof of Christ’s divinity is, by evangelical editors’ own judgement, a scribe’s reading. Editors weigh manuscripts and decide, verse by verse, what the Word of God says. The final authority over the text is human judgement.

For Your Decision

A text settled by editors can be studied with respect; it can’t claim to stand above all inquiry. See the largest example.

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C4 Mark’s Longer Ending Is Absent from the Earliest Major Witnesses

Sinaiticus and Vaticanus end at 16:8 with the women afraid; every appearance of the risen Jesus in Mark comes from a later hand.

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Mark 16:8, Nestle 1904 Greek and NRSV; Eusebius of Caesarea, To Marinus 1, tr. J. W. Burgon (1871), who defended the longer ending · Read Burgon’s translation

καὶ οὐδενὶ οὐδὲν εἶπαν· ἐφοβοῦντο γάρ.

…and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.

…the accurate copies, at all events, making the end of Mark’s narrative come after the words of the young man… For at those words, in almost all copies of the Gospel according to Mark, comes the end. What follows, (which is met with seldom, [and only] in some copies, certainly not in all,) might be dispensed with…

The Claim Examined

Mark 16:9 to 20 gives the appearances of the risen Jesus, the commission, the signs of serpents and poison, and the ascension. The oldest major witnesses stop at 16:8, the women silent and afraid. The NET Bible names two of the most respected mss (א B), Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus, and says Eusebius and Jerome knew of almost no Greek mss that had this ending.^[14] Sinaiticus is a 4th-century Bible.^[15] Eusebius reaches you here through John Burgon, who wrote a whole book defending the passage.^[16]

The endings compete: a shorter ending survives in four seventh-to-ninth-century Greek manuscripts, and the Freer Logion in another. The US bishops’ note says the longer ending was defined as such by the Council of Trent, as canonical, while vocabulary and style indicate that it was written by someone other than Mark.^[17]

The Temple’s Answer

A council declared canonical a passage the Church’s own scholars say Mark didn’t write, chosen from rival endings and joined to a Gospel whose oldest form ends in fear and silence. Every appearance of the risen Jesus in Mark comes from a later hand. Here Scripture is what a council decided to keep.

For Your Decision

Open your own Bible at Mark 16:8 and read its note. Then discover a relationship with the Gods that rests on no disputed page.

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C5 The Woman Taken in Adultery Is Missing from John’s Earliest Manuscripts

P66, P75, Sinaiticus and Vaticanus lack the woman taken in adultery, and copyists placed the story in different books.

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United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, New American Bible, Revised Edition, note on John 7:53 to 8:11 · Read the note

…is a later insertion here, missing from all early Greek manuscripts… it is found in different places in different manuscripts… The Catholic Church accepts this passage as canonical scripture.

The Claim Examined

Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her is among the most quoted lines in the Gospels.^[2] It stands outside John’s earliest recoverable text. The NET Bible lists the omitting witnesses, beginning with P66, P75, Sinaiticus and Vaticanus: The earliest and best mss do not contain the pericope. Where it appears, it moves: after John 7:36, after John 21:25, or after Luke 21:38 in the manuscript family 13. Some copies mark it with asterisks or obeli.^[18] The bishops’ note adds that the style and motifs are similar to those of Luke.^[19]

The Temple’s Answer

A book presented as divinely authored took in a floating story, placed in different books by different copyists, and the Church declared it canonical. A text that grows by insertion was assembled by human hands, and the hands are visible in the manuscripts.

For Your Decision

You can keep a good story without granting its editors authority over your soul. See a verse inserted to support a doctrine.

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C6 The Heavenly Witnesses of 1 John 5:7 Are a Later Addition

No Greek manuscript has the heavenly witnesses before the 14th century; Rome defended the verse in 1897 and gave it up 30 years later.

Read the dossier

1 John 5:7 to 8 in the KJV and the NRSV · Read the KJV · Read the NET note

King James Version: “For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one. And there are three that bear witness in earth, the spirit, and the water, and the blood: and these three agree in one.”

New Revised Standard Version: “There are three that testify: the Spirit and the water and the blood, and these three agree.”

The Claim Examined

For centuries English readers held this as the plainest statement of the Trinity in the Bible.^[11] Modern editions omit the heavenly witnesses.^[2] The NET Bible: there is no sure evidence of this reading in any Greek ms until the 14th century; it arose in a 4th century Latin homily and entered the third edition of Erasmus’ Greek NT (1522) because of pressure from the Catholic Church.^[20]

Catholic Answers records the Holy Office’s decree of 13 January 1897 warning scholars against rashly rejecting or doubting the authenticity of this passage, and its statement of 2 June 1927 allowing them to doubt it, subject to any forthcoming judgment of the Church. Its own verdict: No scholar any longer accepts its authenticity.^[21]

The Temple’s Answer

The episode shows how authority over the text works. A Latin gloss entered the printed Greek New Testament under ecclesiastical pressure, Rome defended it as Scripture in 1897 and retreated 30 years later. A guardian of revealed truth that needs 2 rulings to decide whether a verse was revealed has shown its method: human judgement, bending to doctrine first and to evidence later.

For Your Decision

Ask who decided what you were taught to call the Word of God. See how the list of books was settled.

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C7 Matthew and Luke Give Jesus Different Genealogies

Joseph and Shealtiel each get 2 different fathers, and Matthew’s 3 times 14 generations is a count made by omission.

Read the dossier

Matthew 1:16 and Luke 3:23, NRSV · Read Matthew 1 · Read Luke 3

Matthew 1:16: “and Jacob the father of Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born, who is called the Messiah.”

Luke 3:23: “Jesus was about thirty years old when he began his work. He was the son (as was thought) of Joseph son of Heli…”

Point	Matthew	Luke
Joseph’s father	Jacob (1:16)	Heli (3:23)
Line from David	Solomon (1:6)	Nathan (3:31)
Father of Shealtiel (Salathiel)	Jechoniah (1:12)	Neri (3:27)

The Claim Examined

Both Gospels give a pedigree to prove descent from David, and they differ on Joseph’s father and on David’s son. Where the lines meet after the exile, both name Shealtiel and Zerubbabel, yet give Shealtiel different fathers.^[2]

Matthew announces a pattern of 3 times 14 generations (1:17). To keep it, his line runs Joram the father of Uzziah (1:8), while the Chronicler gives Joram his son, Ahaziah his son, Joash his son, Amaziah his son, Azariah his son (1 Chronicles 3:11 to 12), Azariah being the king also called Uzziah (2 Kings 15:1 and 13; 2 Chronicles 26:1). Matthew omits 3 kings.

The Temple’s Answer

Luke’s text names Joseph: son (as was thought) of Joseph son of Heli. Neither Mary’s line nor levirate marriage explains 2 fathers for Shealtiel, and Matthew’s pattern of 14 is a count produced by omission. Each author built a pedigree to serve the claim of royal descent: as history the lists contradict each other, and as argument each was shaped to its conclusion.

For Your Decision

A lineage composed to prove a title proves the author’s purpose. Test the dates of the birth.

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C8 The Only Census of Quirinius That Josephus Records Falls 9 Years after Herod’s Death

Matthew needs Herod alive; Josephus ties Quirinius’s census to Archelaus’s removal, 9 years after Herod died.

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Flavius Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews XVIII.1.1 and 2.1, tr. W. Whiston; the assessment that followed the removal of Herod’s son Archelaus · Read the passage

Moreover, Cyrenius came himself into Judea, which was now added to the province of Syria… When Cyrenius had now disposed of Archelaus’s money, and when the taxings were come to a conclusion, which were made in the thirty-seventh year of Caesar’s victory over Antony at Actium…

The Claim Examined

Matthew sets the birth In the time of King Herod; the family returns from Egypt When Herod died (2:1, 19). Luke dates the annunciation to Zechariah In the days of King Herod of Judea, sends Gabriel to Mary In the sixth month, and places the birth at the first registration, taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria (1:5, 26; 2:2).^[2]

Josephus has Quirinius (Cyrenius) assess Judea once it was added to Syria, disposing of the estate of Archelaus, Herod’s deposed son.^[22] The NET Bible: Herod died in 4 B.C.^[23]; Josephus only mentions a census in A.D. 6, too late for this setting.^[24]

The Temple’s Answer

Every harmonisation needs a census or an office no ancient source records. Josephus, the historian Christians themselves cite for the period, ties Quirinius’s assessment to Archelaus’s removal.

Matthew’s flight to Egypt needs a living Herod; Luke binds the birth to an assessment made after Herod’s dynasty lost Judea. The 2 infancy stories meet only through a census no historian mentions.

For Your Decision

The infancy stories were written for meaning, and their dates yield to it. See how Matthew read his prophecy.

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C9 Mark and John Put the Crucifixion on Different Days

In Mark Jesus eats the Passover and dies the next morning; in John he dies at noon on the day of Preparation, as the lambs are slain.

Read the dossier

Mark 14:12 and John 19:14, NRSV, with the Nestle 1904 Greek of John · Read John 19

Mark 14:12: “On the first day of Unleavened Bread, when the Passover lamb is sacrificed, his disciples said to him, ‘Where do you want us to go and make the preparations for you to eat the Passover?’”

ἦν δὲ Παρασκευὴ τοῦ πάσχα, ὥρα ἦν ὡς ἕκτη· καὶ λέγει τοῖς Ἰουδαίοις Ἴδε ὁ Βασιλεὺς ὑμῶν.

John 19:14: “Now it was the day of Preparation for the Passover; and it was about noon. He said to the Jews, ‘Here is your King!’”

The Claim Examined

In Mark the disciples prepare the Passover on the day the lamb is sacrificed, Jesus eats it with the 12 that evening, and It was nine o’clock in the morning when they crucified him (15:25).^[2] In John the accusers stay out of Pilate’s headquarters to be able to eat the Passover (18:28), and at about noon on the day of Preparation for the Passover Pilate is still presenting Jesus (19:14). The NET Bible names John’s purpose: Jesus was going to die on the cross at the very time that the Passover lambs were being slain.^[25]

The Temple’s Answer

Evangelical editors read John’s hour as theology: the death set at the slaughter of the lambs. Mark sets it a day after the lambs were slain and the meal eaten. One Gospel fixes the date to a symbol, the other to a meal, and the reader receives a chronology governed by doctrine.

For Your Decision

If the day itself was shaped to a meaning, judge the meaning on its merits. Compare the last words from the cross.

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C10 Matthew and Acts Tell Judas’s Death and the Field of Blood Differently

In Matthew Judas hangs himself and the priests buy the field; in Acts Judas buys it himself and bursts open in it.

Read the dossier

Matthew 27 and Acts 1, NRSV · Read Acts 1

Matthew 27:5, 7 to 8: “Throwing down the pieces of silver in the temple, he departed; and he went and hanged himself… After conferring together, they used them to buy the potter’s field as a place to bury foreigners. For this reason that field has been called the Field of Blood to this day.”

Acts 1:18 to 19: “Now this man acquired a field with the reward of his wickedness; and falling headlong, he burst open in the middle and all his bowels gushed out. This became known to all the residents of Jerusalem, so that the field was called in their language Hakeldama, that is, Field of Blood.”

The Claim Examined

In Matthew, Judas repents, returns the silver, throws it into the temple and hangs himself; the chief priests, unable to put blood money in the treasury, buy the potter’s field, and the name Field of Blood follows from their purchase.^[2] In Acts, Judas himself acquires a field with the money, falls headlong and bursts open, and the name follows from what became known of his death.

The 2 accounts differ on who buys the field, how Judas dies and why the field bears its name.

The Temple’s Answer

The usual harmonisation adds what neither text says: a body that falls after a hanging and a purchase made in another man’s name. Matthew says Judas gave the money back; Acts says he acquired a field with it. When the reader must supply the events that join 2 inspired accounts, the joining is the reader’s work and the inspiration rests on it.

For Your Decision

Notice how often you’ve been asked to complete the text in order to believe it. Apply the same test to the resurrection.

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C11 The 4 Resurrection Accounts Differ on Witnesses, Messengers, Response and Place

Mark’s women tell no one and Matthew’s run to tell; Mark and Matthew send the disciples to Galilee, Luke keeps them in Jerusalem.

Read the dossier

Mark 16:8 and Matthew 28:8, NRSV · Read Matthew 28

Mark 16:8: “…and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.”

Matthew 28:8: “So they left the tomb quickly with fear and great joy, and ran to tell his disciples.”

Point	Mark	Matthew	Luke	John
Women named	Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, Salome (16:1)	Mary Magdalene and the other Mary (28:1)	Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James and the other women (24:10)	Mary Magdalene (20:1)
Messenger	A young man sitting inside (16:5)	An angel descends, rolls back the stone, sits on it (28:2)	2 men in dazzling clothes (24:4)	2 angels in white (20:12)
Women’s response	Say nothing to anyone (16:8)	Run to tell the disciples (28:8)	Tell the 11 and the rest (24:9)	Mary runs to Peter (20:2)
Where the disciples are sent or kept	Galilee (16:7)	Galilee, a mountain (28:10, 16)	Stay in the city (24:49)	Jerusalem, a locked room (20:19)

The Claim Examined

Christianity stakes everything on the resurrection, and its 4 accounts differ at every step.^[2] Mark’s women flee and tell no one; Matthew’s run to tell. Mark and Matthew send the disciples to Galilee. Luke turns the Galilee message into a memory, Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee (24:6), and keeps the disciples in Jerusalem until they are clothed with power from on high. John names Mary Magdalene alone at the tomb, though her words include a plural: we do not know where they have laid him.

The Temple’s Answer

The accounts set silence against running to tell, and a command to go to Galilee against a command to stay in the city. A harmony of the 4 requires a sequence of events that none of the 4 narrates. The event on which the faith rests reaches you as 4 different stories, and the earliest of them, in its oldest form, narrates no appearance of the risen Jesus at all (C4).

For Your Decision

Leaving these accounts behind doesn’t mean leaving God. Read the answer to Am I leaving God?

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C12 Isaiah’s Sign Promised a Young Woman’s Child in the Days of Ahaz

Isaiah’s Hebrew has the young woman, a sign for King Ahaz; the US bishops’ own note says it carries no specific reference to virginity.

Read the dossier

Isaiah 7:14 in Hebrew (NRSV) and in the Greek Septuagint (tr. L. C. L. Brenton); the oracle is addressed to King Ahaz of Judah · Read the passage with the Catholic note

הִנֵּה הָעַלְמָה הָרָה

Look, the young woman is with child and shall bear a son, and shall name him Immanuel.

ἰδοὺ ἡ παρθένος ἐν γαστρὶ ἕξει, καὶ τέξεται υἱόν

…behold, the virgin shall conceive in the womb, and shall bring forth a son…

The Claim Examined

Matthew says the virgin birth took place to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet and quotes Look, the virgin shall conceive (1:22 to 23), in Greek ἡ παρθένος.^[2][8] Isaiah’s Hebrew reads הָעַלְמָה, the young woman.^[26] The US bishops’ note: Hebrew ‘almah designates a young woman of marriageable age without specific reference to virginity. The Septuagint translated the Hebrew term as parthenos, which normally does mean virgin, and this translation underlies Mt 1:23.^[27][28] The NET agrees.^[29]

The sign has its own setting: before the child knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good, the land before whose two kings you are in dread will be deserted (7:16). In the bishops’ words, it seeks to reassure Ahaz that he need not fear the invading armies of Syria and Israel.

The Temple’s Answer

Isaiah names his own fulfilment: a child whose early years would see the ruin of Ahaz’s 2 enemies, centuries before Matthew. Matthew’s virgin depends on a Greek translation, and the Catholic bishops’ own note says the Hebrew carries no specific reference to virginity. The virgin birth is defended with a prophecy whose original words don’t contain it.

For Your Decision

Read Isaiah 7 whole, in a Catholic Bible, and decide what it promised Ahaz. See how Matthew built other fulfilments.

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C13 Matthew’s Fulfilments: A Prophecy No Prophet Wrote, a Prophet Misnamed and a Second Animal

He will be called a Nazorean is in no prophet, Zechariah is quoted as Jeremiah, and Jesus rides 2 animals at once.

Read the dossier

Matthew 27:9 and Zechariah 11:13, NRSV, with the NET Bible’s note · Read the note

Matthew 27:9: “Then was fulfilled what had been spoken through the prophet Jeremiah…”

Zechariah 11:13: “So I took the thirty shekels of silver and threw them into the treasury in the house of the Lord.”

The Claim Examined

Matthew presents the life of Jesus as a chain of fulfilled prophecy. Look at 3 links.

• The Nazorean. Jesus settles in Nazareth so that the prophets’ words might be fulfilled: He will be called a Nazorean (2:23).^[2] No such sentence exists in the Hebrew Bible. The NET Bible reads it as a current expression of scorn that conceptually (but not verbally) found its roots in the OT.^[23]
• Jeremiah for Zechariah. The 30 pieces of silver fulfil the prophet Jeremiah, yet The quotation is most closely related to Zech 11:12-13. Copyists felt the problem: one manuscript reads Zechariah, others omit the name or change it to Isaiah.^[30]
• 2 animals. Mark has one colt (11:7). Matthew reads the parallelism of Zechariah 9:9, on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey, as 2 animals: they brought the donkey and the colt, and put their cloaks on them, and he sat on them (21:7). The plural can refer to the cloaks; the second animal is Matthew’s.

The Temple’s Answer

The fulfilments are readings made by the interpreter. A saying no prophet wrote, a citation under the wrong name and a second animal drawn from a poetic couplet show the method: narrative and proof text were fitted to each other. The copyists who altered “Jeremiah” saw the difficulty first.

For Your Decision

Prophecy fitted after the event proves an author’s skill. See who chose the books that carry it.

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C14 The Canon Was Settled Through Lists That Disagreed

Eusebius counted 5 letters as disputed, and Codex Sinaiticus bound Barnabas and the Shepherd into its New Testament.

Read the dossier

Athanasius of Alexandria, Festal Letter 39, for the year 367, tr. R. Payne-Smith; the second line introduces the Wisdom of Solomon, Sirach, Esther, Judith, Tobit, the Teaching of the Apostles and the Shepherd · Read the letter

These are fountains of salvation… Let no man add to these, neither let him take ought from these.

…not indeed included in the Canon, but appointed by the Fathers to be read by those who newly join us…

The Claim Examined

Christians often speak as if the New Testament arrived as one bound book. The lists show a long process. Eusebius counted James, Jude, 2 Peter and 2 and 3 John as disputed, which are nevertheless recognized by many, and the Acts of Paul, the Shepherd, the Apocalypse of Peter and Barnabas as rejected. The Apocalypse of John stands in both columns: accepted if it really seem proper, and listed again among the rejected, which some, as I said, reject.^[31]

Athanasius in 367 closes the list at 27 books and sets Esther outside the canon, among books merely to be read.^[32] Codex Sinaiticus, a Bible of the same century, binds Barnabas and the Shepherd with its New Testament.^[15]

The Temple’s Answer

Bishops disagreed over Revelation, 2 Peter, Esther, the Shepherd and Barnabas for generations, and a 4th-century Bible carried books every modern Bible excludes. No single council invented the canon; many men decided it, list by list. A collection settled by human judgement can’t bar you from the Gods.

For Your Decision

If men chose the books, you may weigh their choice. See how councils defined the doctrine.

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C15 Christian Authorities Themselves Question Who Wrote Hebrews, 2 Peter and the Pastoral Letters

Origen said only God knows who wrote Hebrews, Eusebius left 2 Peter outside the canon, and the US bishops report the majority judgement on the Pastorals.

Read the dossier

Origen on Hebrews, in Eusebius, Church History VI.25.14, tr. A. C. McGiffert; and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, New American Bible, Revised Edition, Introduction to 1 Timothy, on the Pastoral letters · Read Eusebius · Read the introduction

But who wrote the epistle, in truth, God knows.

Most scholars are convinced that Paul could not have been responsible for the vocabulary and style, the concept of church organization, or the theological expressions found in these letters.

The Claim Examined

Several letters carry authority through an apostle’s name, and Christian authorities have doubted those names from antiquity to the present.

• Hebrews. Origen grants that not without reason have the ancients handed it down as Paul’s, then admits that only God knows who wrote it.^[33]
• 2 Peter. Eusebius: we have learned that his extant second Epistle does not belong to the canon.^[31] Origen: Peter left one acknowledged epistle; perhaps also a second, but this is doubtful.^[33] Yet its author claims to be an eyewitness: We ourselves heard this voice come from heaven, while we were with him on the holy mountain (1:18).^[2]
• 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus. The US bishops’ introduction reports the majority judgement against Paul’s direct authorship and allows a date as late as the early second century.^[34]

The Temple’s Answer

The Church’s own scholars state it: letters that gained authority through an apostle’s name were, on their judgement, written by others. 2 Peter goes furthest, because its author claims to have stood on the mountain himself. Apostolic authority rests, at these points, on attributions its own guardians can’t sustain.

For Your Decision

Authority borrowed from a name can be returned. Zevism asks no borrowed authority of you. Read what Zevism is.

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V. The Founder and the Earliest Teaching

The second group turns to the founder as the Gospels present him and to the first teaching about him. The witnesses are the Gospels and the letters of Paul and James, read in the NRSV with the Greek wherever the exact wording decides the point.

C16 Jesus Sent His Disciples to Israel Alone, and the Universal Mission Came Later

Go nowhere among the Gentiles, he told the 12, and he set a Canaanite mother’s plea beside the dogs’ food.

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Jesus to the Canaanite woman, Matthew 15:24, 26 and 28, NRSV · Read Matthew 15

I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel… It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs… Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.

The Claim Examined

Christians present Jesus as the saviour of all peoples. In Matthew he sends out the 12 with an exclusion: Go nowhere among the Gentiles, and enter no town of the Samaritans (10:5). A Canaanite mother begs help for her tormented daughter, and he did not answer her at all. He then says he was sent only to Israel, and when she persists he speaks of the children’s food and the dogs. She accepts the image, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs, and her daughter is healed. Only after the resurrection comes make disciples of all nations (28:19).^[2]

The Temple’s Answer

The founder of a religion now claimed by nations across the world called his mission Israel’s alone and set a foreign mother’s plea beside dogs’ food before granting it. The universal mission rests on a commission given after the resurrection, in accounts that disagree on where it happened (C11). Zeus is honoured as Xenios, Protector of Strangers,^[35] and the stranger comes before Him as a guest.

For Your Decision

No condition of birth or nation stands between you and the Gods. Begin Your Return.

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C17 The End Was Promised within a Generation

Mark 9:1 and 13:30 promise the end to his hearers’ generation, and 2 Peter is already explaining the delay.

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Mark 9:1 and 13:30; 2 Peter 3:4, NRSV · Read Mark 13

Mark 9:1: “Truly I tell you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see that the kingdom of God has come with power.”

Mark 13:30: “Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place.”

2 Peter 3:4: “Where is the promise of his coming? For ever since our ancestors died, all things continue as they were from the beginning of creation!”

The Claim Examined

The earliest texts expect the end soon. Mark’s Jesus promises that some hearers will see the kingdom come with power, and after the Son of Man coming in clouds says this generation will not pass away first. Matthew’s 12 will not finish the towns of Israel before the Son of Man comes (10:23). Paul counts himself among we who are alive, who are left (1 Thessalonians 4:17). 2 Peter answers the scoffers that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years (3:8).^[2]

The Temple’s Answer

Each later fulfilment fails on its own verse. The Transfiguration follows Six days later (9:2), an odd fulfilment for some standing here who will not taste death. Jerusalem’s fall supplies no Son of Man in clouds, which Mark 13:24 to 26 sets in those days, after that suffering.

Matthew 10:23 binds the coming to the 12’s own mission. Each reading settles one verse at most, and 2 Peter shows the promise already being reinterpreted inside the New Testament once time refuted it.

For Your Decision

The Gods hold an eternal order and set no countdown over your life. See the life Zevism offers now.

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C18 The Son Did Not Know the Hour, and Matthew Rewrote “Why Do You Call Me Good?”

In Mark the Son doesn’t know the day or the hour, and Matthew turned Why do you call me good into a question about good deeds.

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Mark 10:18 and 13:32; Matthew 19:17, NRSV · Read Mark 10

Mark 10:18: “Jesus said to him, ‘Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone.’”

Matthew 19:17: “And he said to him, ‘Why do you ask me about what is good? There is only one who is good.’”

Mark 13:32: “But about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.”

The Claim Examined

Christian doctrine holds that Jesus is fully God, sharing the Father’s knowledge and goodness. Mark’s Jesus states that the Son doesn’t know the day or the hour; only the Father knows. When a man kneels and calls him Good Teacher, Mark’s Jesus answers with a question that sets God alone apart as good.^[2]

Matthew, writing with Mark before him (C2), changes the scene: the man now asks what good deed must I do, and the reply becomes Why do you ask me about what is good? The question about Jesus himself disappears.

The Temple’s Answer

Matthew’s editing shows how the earliest Christian reader heard Mark’s question: as a difficulty to remove. The limit on the Son’s knowledge needs no interpretation at all. The texts present a Son who distinguishes himself from God in knowledge and in goodness, and the doctrine of the 2 natures was formulated afterwards to reconcile them with a later creed.

For Your Decision

Read the Gospel’s own words before the creed’s. See how councils defined the creed.

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C19 His Family Thought Him Out of His Mind, and His Own Town Did Not Believe

Mark 3:21: his family went out to restrain him; in Nazareth he could do no deed of power, and Matthew softened the limit.

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Mark 3:21 and 6:5; John 7:5, NRSV · Read Mark 6

Mark 3:21: “When his family heard it, they went out to restrain him, for people were saying, ‘He has gone out of his mind.’”

Mark 6:5: “And he could do no deed of power there, except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and cured them.”

John 7:5: “(For not even his brothers believed in him.)”

The Claim Examined

Those who knew Jesus longest doubted him. His family went out to restrain him, and when his mother and brothers came he answered Who are my mother and my brothers? (Mark 3:33). In Nazareth Mark says he could do no deed of power there beyond curing a few sick people, And he was amazed at their unbelief (6:6). John adds that his brothers didn’t believe in him.^[2]

Matthew again revises Mark: And he did not do many deeds of power there, because of their unbelief (13:58). Could do no becomes did not do many.

The Temple’s Answer

The witnesses closest to him judged him out of his mind; Mark says his power was limited by unbelief, and Matthew softened the limit into a choice. The Christian demand is that you believe what his own household, at first, didn’t.

For Your Decision

You may weigh the same question his brothers weighed. Read why doubt doesn’t separate you from God.

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C20 Mark Says the Parables Were Given So That Outsiders Would Not Turn and Be Forgiven

Mark 4:11 to 12 gives outsiders parables so that they may not turn again and be forgiven, and Matthew changed the conjunction.

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Mark 4:11 to 12, Nestle 1904 Greek and NRSV · Read Mark 4

ἵνα βλέποντες βλέπωσιν καὶ μὴ ἴδωσιν, καὶ ἀκούοντες ἀκούωσιν καὶ μὴ συνιῶσιν, μή ποτε ἐπιστρέψωσιν καὶ ἀφεθῇ αὐτοῖς.

…but for those outside, everything comes in parables; in order that ‘they may indeed look, but not perceive, and may indeed listen, but not understand; so that they may not turn again and be forgiven.’

The Claim Examined

Parables are taught as simple stories that open the truth to everyone. Mark gives a different purpose. To those around him with the 12 belongs the secret of the kingdom of God; to outsiders, parables, ἵνα, in order that they may not understand, μή ποτε, so that they may not turn and be forgiven.^[8][2] Privately he explained everything to his disciples (4:34).

Matthew changes one word. His Jesus speaks in parables ὅτι, because, seeing they do not perceive (13:13). The purpose becomes a reason.

The Temple’s Answer

Isaiah’s commission is itself a hardening: Make the mind of this people dull (6:10). Mark’s Jesus applies it to the crowds in front of him. Matthew’s change of one conjunction shows that the earliest editor of Mark found the purpose clause too hard to keep. A teaching given to outsiders so that they may not turn again and be forgiven divides humanity into insiders and outsiders by design.

For Your Decision

The Temple keeps its first prayer open to anyone who seeks the Gods. See how to begin.

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C21 Luke’s Jesus Makes Hating Father and Mother a Condition of Discipleship

Luke 14:26 sets the price of discipleship in the verb to hate, and Matthew 10:34 brings a sword that turns a man against his father.

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Luke 14:26, Nestle 1904 Greek and NRSV · Read Luke 14

Εἴ τις ἔρχεται πρός με καὶ οὐ μισεῖ τὸν πατέρα αὐτοῦ καὶ τὴν μητέρα καὶ τὴν γυναῖκα καὶ τὰ τέκνα καὶ τοὺς ἀδελφοὺς καὶ τὰς ἀδελφάς, ἔτι τε καὶ τὴν ψυχὴν ἑαυτοῦ, οὐ δύναται εἶναί μου μαθητής.

Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple.

The Claim Examined

Christianity presents itself as the guardian of the family. Luke’s Jesus sets the price of discipleship in the verb μισεῖ, hate.^[8] Matthew’s Jesus says I have not come to bring peace, but a sword, sets a man against his father and a daughter against her mother, and warns that one’s foes will be members of one’s own household (10:34 to 36). Matthew’s version of the demand reads Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me (10:37). Yet in Matthew 15:4 the same Jesus cites the commandment to honour father and mother against his opponents.^[2]

The Temple’s Answer

The demand is plain. Love of the founder must outrank love of parents, spouse and children, and division inside the household is announced as a result of his coming.

The commandment to honour parents is quoted when it serves an argument and outranked when it competes with discipleship. Zevism places no such contest between devotion to the Gods and love of father and mother.

For Your Decision

If your family holds the old faith, you can begin without a breach. Read about practising privately.

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C22 The Gospels Give Different Last Words from the Cross

Mark’s Jesus cries out in abandonment, Luke’s forgives and commends his spirit, John’s says It is finished.

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Mark 15:34, Luke 23:46 and John 19:30, NRSV · Read Luke 23

Mark 15:34: “At three o’clock Jesus cried out with a loud voice, ‘Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?’”

Luke 23:46: “Then Jesus, crying with a loud voice, said, ‘Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.’ Having said this, he breathed his last.”

John 19:30: “When Jesus had received the wine, he said, ‘It is finished.’ Then he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.”

The Claim Examined

Mark and Matthew give one saying from the cross, the cry of abandonment, followed by a wordless loud cry and death (Mark 15:34, 37; Matthew 27:46, 50). Luke omits the cry of abandonment; his Jesus commends his spirit to the Father, promises paradise to a criminal and prays Father, forgive them (23:34, 43, 46). John’s Jesus says It is finished.^[2]

One of Luke’s most loved lines has its own history. The NET Bible: Many important mss, among them P75 and Codex Vaticanus, lack v. 34a, the prayer for forgiveness.^[36]

The Temple’s Answer

The selection shows purpose: Mark’s abandoned sufferer, Luke’s serene martyr who forgives and commends, John’s sovereign who declares his work complete. Each author chose the death that fitted his theology, and one of Luke’s best-known lines is missing from his earliest manuscripts. You receive portraits, painted to doctrine.

For Your Decision

Judge the portraits as portraits. Then see the life the Gods offer.

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C23 Paul Rests His Authority on a Revelation No One Else Could Check

Galatians 1: his gospel came by revelation, he conferred with no one, and he swears before God that he doesn’t lie.

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Paul, Galatians 1:12, Nestle 1904 Greek and NRSV · Read Galatians 1

οὐδὲ γὰρ ἐγὼ παρὰ ἀνθρώπου παρέλαβον αὐτό οὔτε ἐδιδάχθην, ἀλλὰ δι’ ἀποκαλύψεως Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ.

…for I did not receive it from a human source, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ.

The Claim Examined

13 of the New Testament’s 27 books carry Paul’s name, and his authority rests on a claim to revelation. His gospel is not of human origin; afterwards I did not confer with any human being; he saw Cephas for 15 days only after 3 years; and he swears, before God, I do not lie! (Galatians 1:11 to 20).^[2]

Elsewhere he hands on a creed he received, ὃ καὶ παρέλαβον, what I in turn had received (1 Corinthians 15:3), with the same verb he uses in Galatians.^[8] His own sight of the risen Jesus comes Last of all, as to one untimely born (15:8).

The Temple’s Answer

Paul defends his apostleship by a private revelation no one else witnessed, and swears an oath because others doubted it. The church built on these letters asks you to reject the Gods on the strength of one man’s vision.

For Your Decision

Weigh a single vision against the Gods whom whole civilisations knew. See how the first leaders disagreed.

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C24 Paul and James Draw Opposite Lessons from Abraham on Faith and Works

Paul says Abraham wasn’t justified by works, James says he was, and Luther called James an epistle of straw.

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Paul, Romans 3:28, and James 2:24, Nestle 1904 Greek and NRSV · Read James 2

λογιζόμεθα γὰρ δικαιοῦσθαι πίστει ἄνθρωπον χωρὶς ἔργων νόμου.

For we hold that a person is justified by faith apart from works prescribed by the law.

ὁρᾶτε ὅτι ἐξ ἔργων δικαιοῦται ἄνθρωπος καὶ οὐκ ἐκ πίστεως μόνον.

You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone.

The Claim Examined

The first leaders split in public. At Antioch Paul opposed Cephas to his face, because Cephas ate with Gentiles until certain people came from James and then withdrew (Galatians 2:11 to 13).^[2]

The split reaches salvation itself. Paul: if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God (Romans 4:2). James: Was not our ancestor Abraham justified by works when he offered his son Isaac on the altar? (2:21). Same patriarch, same Greek words, ἔργων, πίστεως, δικαιοῦται.^[8] Martin Luther judged James flatly against St. Paul and called it, in the preface to his New Testament of 1522, an epistle of straw, compared to these others.^[37]

The Temple’s Answer

Abraham stands between the 2 letters: Paul declares him not justified by works before God, and James declares him justified by works on the altar. Luther, whose reading of Paul launched the Reformation, read James as a contradiction. Zevism holds what both letters strain toward: Arete is generated by ethics, and the Good is Ma’at and right action together.

For Your Decision

Choose a path where truth and right action stand together. Discover a Life with the Gods.

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VI. Doctrine and the Exercise of Authority

Doctrine is where an institution claims the right to bind your conscience. These 10 dossiers follow the decisions themselves: who voted, who enforced, who reversed the teaching later, and what the institution’s own documents say about it. Each one shows human authority at work. Weigh that authority against the Gods, who were never put to a vote.

C25 Councils Defined the Faith and the Emperor Enforced It

Constantine sat among the bishops at Nicaea in 325, the creed anathematised dissent, and a law ordered death for hiding Arius’s books.

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Constantine, letter to the bishops and people after the Council of Nicaea (325), preserved by Socrates Scholasticus, Church History I.9 · Read the letter

… if any treatise composed by Arius should be discovered, let it be consigned to the flames … if any one shall be detected in concealing a book compiled by Arius, and shall not instantly bring it forward and burn it, the penalty for this offense shall be death …

The Claim Examined

The creed is presented as the faith handed down from the apostles. Socrates records how it was settled in 325. The emperor came also in person to Nice and stood in the bishops’ midst; the creed closed with an anathema on those who said of the Son There was a time when he was not; 5 bishops objected to the word homoousios; an imperial edict sent Arius into exile with Eusebius and Theognis.^[40] Then came the letter above: the books burned, their concealment a capital crime. In 380 Theodosius commanded cunctos populos, all peoples, to hold the faith of the one deity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, judged the rest dementes vesanosque, demented and insane, and promised them divina primum vindicta, post etiam motus nostri, divine vengeance first and then the emperor’s own.^[41][42]

The Temple’s Answer

A vote of bishops records a human judgement. An edict records state power. A death sentence for owning a book records what that power was prepared to do to keep the judgement standing.

None of the 3 is a revelation of the Divine. Zeus was worshipped for centuries before any council met, and no council ever had the Father of Gods and men within its jurisdiction.

For Your Decision

When you test a doctrine, ask first who enforced it and how. Then read how the same method was turned on the Gods in The Inversion Was Politics.

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C26 Augustine’s Inherited Guilt and the Clause “In Whom All Have Sinned”

Augustine read in whom all have sinned in his Latin of Romans 5:12; the Greek ἐφ’ ᾧ reads for that.

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Romans 5:12, Greek text of Nestle 1904, English of the King James Version (1611) · Read the verse

καὶ οὕτως εἰς πάντας ἀνθρώπους ὁ θάνατος διῆλθεν, ἐφ’ ᾧ πάντες ἥμαρτον·

and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned:

The Claim Examined

The Western Church teaches that every child is born carrying Adam’s sin. Augustine argued it against the Pelagians from this verse. His Latin read the clause as in whom all sinned, and he concluded that all men are understood to have sinned in that first “man,” because all men were in him when he sinned, so that sin is derived by birth, and is not remitted save by being born again. His opponents took the clause otherwise.^[43] The Greek ἐφ’ ᾧ is rendered for that in the English above.^[44]

The Temple’s Answer

The doctrine had to be argued into the text by its greatest Western teacher, against Christians who read the same verse and found no guilt of the newborn in it. A teaching so disputed inside the Church can’t carry the weight laid on it: that you arrive in the world condemned and need an institution’s rite to be released.

Zevism teaches the opposite origin. The initiate of the Gods speaks the words of the Orphic gold tablet: γῆς παῖς εἰμι καὶ οὐρανοῦ ἀστερόεντος, I am a child of Earth and starry Heaven; my lineage is heavenly.^[45]

For Your Decision

You can set down a guilt you never committed. See what the Temple says you are, in Your Place in the Divine Family.

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C27 Unbaptised Infants: From “the Mildest Punishment” to an Admission of No Sure Knowledge

Augustine sent unbaptised infants to the mildest punishment; in 2007 Rome’s theologians admitted no sure knowledge of their fate.

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Augustine, Enchiridion 93, tr. J. F. Shaw · Read the chapter

… the mildest punishment of all will fall upon those who have added no actual sin, to the original sin they brought with them …

The Claim Examined

Augustine placed the infant who dies unbaptised under punishment, the mildest, but punishment.^[46] Later theologians softened this into Limbo. In 2007 the International Theological Commission reviewed the whole history. It found theological and liturgical reasons to hope that infants who die without baptism may be saved, said that Limbo never entered into the dogmatic definitions of the Magisterium and remains a possible theological opinion, and conceded that the Church does not have sure knowledge about the salvation of unbaptised infants who die.^[47]

The Temple’s Answer

For centuries the fate of dead children was governed by theories that were never defined, never binding and never withdrawn, while the grief of parents was answered with them. When Rome’s theologians finally faced the question directly, their answer was hope and an admission of ignorance. An authority that doesn’t know what becomes of a dead infant can’t hold you by the fear of what becomes of you.

Zeus is Father. The Gods don’t condemn a child for a rite the child couldn’t request.

For Your Decision

Fear that its own authors couldn’t ground has no claim on you. Read Am I Leaving God?

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C28 No Salvation Outside the Church, Then Salvation for Those Outside It

In 1442 a council sent pagans, named first, into eternal fire; in 1964 Vatican II opened salvation to those outside the Church.

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Council of Florence, bull of union with the Copts Cantate Domino, 4 February 1442, Latin text of the Holy See, tr. Temple of Zeus · Read the bull

Firmiter credit, profitetur et predicat nullos extra ecclesiam catholicam existentes, non solum paganos, sed nec iudeos aut hereticos atque scismaticos eterne vite fieri posse participes, sed in ignem eternum ituros, qui paratus est dyabolo et angelis eius … nisi ante finem vite eidem fuerint aggregati.

It firmly believes, professes and preaches that none of those existing outside the Catholic Church, not only pagans but neither Jews nor heretics and schismatics, can become partakers of eternal life, but they will go into the eternal fire which was prepared for the devil and his angels … unless before the end of life they have been joined to it.

The Claim Examined

In 1302 Boniface VIII declared, proclaimed and defined that it is absolutely necessary for salvation that every human creature be subject to the Roman Pontiff.^[48] In 1442 a council sent pagans, named first, into eternal fire.^[49] In 1964 the Second Vatican Council taught that Those also can attain to salvation who through no fault of their own do not know the Gospel of Christ or His Church and sincerely seek God. The same constitution keeps the older edge: whoever knows the Church was made necessary by Christ and refuses to enter it could not be saved.^[50]

The Temple’s Answer

Read the 2 texts side by side and the practical meaning has turned over. In 1442 the worshipper of Zeus was named and sent to the fire. In 1964 the same person may be saved, unless they have understood the Church’s claim and declined it. Salvation now depends on not having been persuaded. A teaching that rewards ignorance of itself and condemns understanding has told you how much it trusts examination. Zevism asks for the opposite: study first, then commit when you understand.

For Your Decision

Your examination of the claim is no offence against the Divine. Read Am I Leaving God? and judge freely.

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C29 A Council Anathematised Pope Honorius; Infallibility Was Later Defined Around the Case

An ecumenical council and Pope Leo II condemned Pope Honorius for heresy; in 1870 Rome defined papal infallibility.

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Third Council of Constantinople, Sentence against the Monothelites, Session XIII (681), NPNF 2.14 · Read the sentence

… we define that there shall be expelled from the holy Church of God and anathematized Honorius who was some time Pope of Old Rome, because of what we found written by him to Sergius, that in all respects he followed his view and confirmed his impious doctrines.

The Claim Examined

An ecumenical council condemned a pope for his teaching on Christ’s will, and Pope Leo II confirmed it, anathematising Honorius, who did not attempt to sanctify this Apostolic Church with the teaching of Apostolic tradition.^[51][52] In 1870 the First Vatican Council defined that when the Roman pontiff speaks ex cathedra he possesses that infallibility which the divine Redeemer willed his church to enjoy, that such definitions are irreformable of themselves, and not by the consent of the church, and that this see of St. Peter always remains unblemished by any error.^[53]

The Temple’s Answer

The Catholic Encyclopedia saves the dogma by definition: of Honorius’s letter, it is of course impossible to regard it as an ex cathedra utterance.^[52] Every papal error the record discloses falls, by definition, outside the conditions of infallibility. A claim that no historical case can test has stopped being a finding about history.

And the same chapter that drew the conditions asserted a see unblemished by any error, about a see whose occupant a council had cast out of the Church for heresy. It ended by anathematising anyone who rejects it.

For Your Decision

No office on earth is unblemished; the Temple asks you to judge every authority by Ma’at, its own included. See Why This Temple.

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C30 The Blessed Will Watch the Damned: Aquinas and Tertullian on the Joy of Heaven

Aquinas has the saints rejoice in the punishment of the wicked, and Tertullian looks forward to Jove and the philosophers burning.

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Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Supplement, Q.94 a.1 · Read the question

… in order that the happiness of the saints may be more delightful to them … they are allowed to see perfectly the sufferings of the damned.

The Claim Examined

The question’s third article asks Whether the blessed rejoice in the punishment of the wicked? and answers that the saints will rejoice in the punishment of the wicked, by considering therein the order of Divine justice and their own deliverance.^[54] Tertullian had already imagined the scene as a show: How vast a spectacle then bursts upon the eye! He would laugh and exult to see philosophers burning with their pupils, as one fire consumes them, and deified monarchs groaning now in the lowest darkness with great Jove himself.^[55]

The Temple’s Answer

Aquinas gives the reason: the order of Divine justice and the saints’ own deliverance. Heaven, in this account, includes a perfect view of torment, granted so that happiness may be more delightful. Tertullian names whom he expects to see burning: the philosophers and Jove, that is, the teachers of your inheritance and its King.

Zevism judges a doctrine by the soul it forms. A soul trained to enjoy the suffering of the condemned is moving away from the Divine, whatever name it calls it by. The Temple’s aim is ὁμοίωσις θεῷ, becoming like God as far as possible, which Plato defines as becoming holy, just and wise.^[56]

For Your Decision

Choose a religion whose heaven you would be proud to stand in. Read what the Gods ask of the soul in Power Given a Direction.

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C31 The Bible Changes Its Account of the Dead, and Borrows Tartarus

Ecclesiastes gives the dead no knowledge, Daniel 12:2 brings everlasting contempt, and 2 Peter 2:4 casts angels into Tartarus.

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Ecclesiastes 9:5 and 9:10, New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition (2021) · Read the passages

… the dead know nothing … there is no work or thought or knowledge or wisdom in Sheol, to which you are going.

The Claim Examined

Christian preaching presents one settled teaching on the afterlife as biblical. The Bible holds more than one. Ecclesiastes gives the dead no knowledge in Sheol. Daniel 12:2 announces that Many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life and some to shame and everlasting contempt.^[57] And 2 Peter 2:4, for the fallen angels, uses a Greek verb: σειροῖς ζόφου ταρταρώσας, consigning them to Tartarus in pits of gloom.^[58] Tartarus is the prison of Hesiod’s Theogony, where by the counsel of Zeus who drives the clouds the Titan gods are hidden under misty gloom.^[59]

The Temple’s Answer

Across writers and centuries the teaching of eternal punishment grew; it wasn’t given whole. When the New Testament needed a word for the deepest prison of rebellious powers, it took one from the cosmos ruled by Zeus. The punishment vocabulary used to frighten you away from the Gods was borrowed from Their own sacred poetry.

For Your Decision

A threat assembled over centuries isn’t a fixed decree of God. Follow the borrowings in The Borrowed Testament, then decide.

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C32 The Fathers Admitted the Parallels and Blamed the Demons

Justin told the emperor that Christians teach nothing different from what Rome believed of the sons of Jupiter, then blamed demons for the likeness.

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Justin Martyr, First Apology 54 (mid 2nd century), tr. M. Dods and G. Reith (ANF 1) · Read the chapter

… having heard it proclaimed through the prophets that the Christ was to come, and that the ungodly among men were to be punished by fire, they put forward many to be called sons of Jupiter, under the impression that they would be able to produce in men the idea that the things which were said with regard to Christ were mere marvellous tales, like the things which were said by the poets.

The Claim Examined

Christianity presents its central story as unique. Its first apologists faced readers who saw otherwise. Justin told the emperor that Christians propound nothing different from what you believe regarding those whom you esteem sons of Jupiter.^[60] His explanation, in chapter 54 above, is that demons planted the stories of Zeus’s sons in advance. Of the Mithraic rite of bread and a cup of water he wrote: Which the wicked devils have imitated in the mysteries of Mithras, commanding the same thing to be done.^[60] Tertullian said the devil vies even with the essential portions of the sacraments of God: Mithra sets his marks on the foreheads of his soldiers and celebrates also the oblation of bread, and introduces an image of a resurrection.^[61]

The Temple’s Answer

Justin’s own argument settles the order for the sons of Zeus: demons could only put forward the stories in advance if the stories came first. The Fathers saw the likeness and called the older Gods devils. That decision is the root of the inversion: the Gods of your ancestors became demons because the resemblance had to be explained away.

A daemon, δαίμων, is a divine spirit. The hostile word was made from the holy one.

For Your Decision

The fear of the Gods began as an apologist’s answer to an awkward question. Trace it in The Inversion Was Politics and the Temple’s The Inversion.

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C33 Beliefs Made Binding Centuries Later, Under Pain of Shipwreck

Transubstantiation in 1215, the Immaculate Conception in 1854, the Assumption in 1950: each made binding on a stated day.

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Pius XII, Munificentissimus Deus 45, 1 November 1950 · Read the constitution

… if anyone, which God forbid, should dare willfully to deny or to call into doubt that which we have defined, let him know that he has fallen away completely from the divine and Catholic Faith.

The Claim Examined

The faith is said to be the deposit given once for all. Its binding definitions arrive on dates. In 1215 the Fourth Lateran Council taught that the bread and wine are changed in substance, by God’s power, into his body and blood.^[62] On 8 December 1854 Pius IX defined the Immaculate Conception and warned that whoever dares to think otherwise is condemned by his own judgment; that he has suffered shipwreck in the faith.^[63] On 1 November 1950 Pius XII defined that Mary was assumed body and soul into heavenly glory, with the penalty quoted above.^[64]

The Temple’s Answer

A belief that Christians held or doubted freely for centuries became, on a stated day, a condition of belonging, so that a Catholic who doubted on 31 October 1950 was a faithful doubter and on 2 November had fallen away completely. The truth about Mary didn’t change overnight.

The authority’s claim over your mind did. The Temple holds that freedom of belief is ordained by the Gods, and it doesn’t force or coerce anyone into its religion.^[65]

For Your Decision

Your conscience doesn’t belong to a calendar of definitions. See how commitment works in Zevism: study, then dedicate when you understand.

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C34 One Faith, and Anathemas Across Every Dividing Line

Trent anathematised the Protestants, Luther’s articles called the pope Antichrist, and Rome and Constantinople lifted their excommunications only in 1965.

Read the dossier

Council of Trent, Session VI, canon 9 on justification, 13 January 1547 · Read the canons

If any one saith, that by faith alone the impious is justified … let him be anathema.

The Claim Examined

Ephesians 4:5 promises One Lord, one faith, one baptism.^[66] The churches that read it condemned each other in the Spirit’s name. Trent anathematised the Protestant doctrine of justification by faith alone. Luther’s Smalcald Articles of 1537 declared that the pope is the true Endchrist or Antichrist.^[67][68] The excommunications exchanged between Rome and Constantinople in 1054 stood until 7 December 1965, when Paul VI and Patriarch Athenagoras resolved to remove both from memory and from the midst of the Church the sentences of excommunication and commit these excommunications to oblivion, 911 years later.^[69]

The Temple’s Answer

Each side claimed the Holy Spirit’s guidance, and each used it to curse the other. When a claim of divine guidance yields anathemas in both directions, that claim can’t settle anything for you. The 1965 declaration proves the point: sentences pronounced in God’s name for 9 centuries were consigned to oblivion by 2 men by agreement. The Temple names the pattern without malice. It also invites you past it, to the source that preceded every schism, which is Zeus, Father and King of the Gods.

For Your Decision

You don’t have to choose which anathema to live under. Read What Is Zevism?

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VII. Appropriation, Representation and Disputed Authority

The next 8 dossiers show what the Church took from the world it replaced: the day of the Sun, the solstice birthday, the chariot of the Sun, the temples, the feasts, the title of Rome’s high priest. They also show where authority was manufactured outright. Each act is documented by the Church’s own writers and reference works.

C35 Constantine’s Law Named the Day of Rest for the Sun

Constantine’s law of 321 rested the courts on the venerable day of the Sun, and Justin already called the Christian meeting day the day of the Sun.

Read the dossier

Constantine to Helpidius, Codex Iustinianus 3.12.2, 3 March 321, tr. Temple of Zeus · Read the law

Omnes iudices urbanaeque plebes et artium officia cunctarum venerabili die solis quiescant.

Let all judges and the people of the cities and the workshops of every craft rest on the venerable day of the Sun.

The Claim Examined

Christians speak of Sunday as purely the Lord’s Day of the resurrection. The empire’s first law of rest on it called it dies solis, the day of the Sun, and let farmers continue their work.^[71][72] A Christian apologist of the mid 2nd century had already used the same name: on the day called Sunday, all who live in cities or in the country gather together to one place, in Greek τῇ τοῦ Ἡλίου λεγομένῃ ἡμέρᾳ, the day called of the Sun.^[60]

The Temple’s Answer

The record shows how the day was named from the start. Justin explained his religion’s weekly meeting to Rome by the Sun’s day, and the first Christian emperor legislated rest for it under the Sun’s title, venerabilis.

Europe still keeps the name. Every week your calendar honours the light of the sky, and Zevism tells you whose light that is.

For Your Decision

The sacred week you grew up with already belongs to the older world. Read The Name You Already Speak.

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C36 December 25: The Unconquered’s Birthday and Christ’s in the Same Roman Book

The Chronograph of 354 lists the Unconquered Sun’s birthday and Christ’s birth on 25 December, and Pope Leo found Romans bowing to the Sun at St Peter’s.

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The Chronography of 354, calendar for December and the list of the burials of the martyrs, ed. T. Mommsen, transcribed by R. Pearse, tr. Temple of Zeus · Read the calendar and the martyrs’ list

N·INVICTI·CM·XXX · VIII kal. Ian. natus Christus in Betleem Iudeae.

25 December: birthday of the Unconquered, games ordered in the circus. 25 December: Christ born in Bethlehem of Judaea.

The Claim Examined

The festival of Christ’s birth is presented as purely Christian. A Roman almanac of the year 354 lists, for the same day, the Natalis Invicti, the birthday of the Unconquered Sun with circus games, and in its list of Christian commemorations the birth of Christ in Bethlehem.^[73] About a century later Pope Leo the Great complained that some Christians, before entering St Peter’s, turn round and bow themselves towards the rising sun and with bent neck do homage to its brilliant orb, a practice he blamed partly to the fault of ignorance and partly to the spirit of heathenism.^[74]

The Temple’s Answer

Rome kept both birthdays on the same day in the same book, and a century later its own bishop found his flock saluting the Sun on the steps of St Peter’s. The people kept their reverence for the light while the Church renamed its object. The Temple keeps the winter solstice as the Holy Night of Zeus.

For Your Decision

Keep the light you already loved, and give it back its name. Read the Temple’s Winter Solstice.

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C37 Christ in the Chariot of the Sun Beneath St Peter’s

In the tomb of the Julii under St Peter’s, a figure with rays and a globe drives the white horses of the Sun.

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Catalogue entry, Ceiling mosaic from the Tomb of the Julii, Vatican Necropolis, Rome, 3rd century, Harvard History of Art and Architecture image collection · Read the entry

This figure has been identified as Christ in the guise of the sun god, Sol Invictus. He is shown driving a horse-drawn chariot.

The Claim Examined

Mausoleum M in the necropolis under St Peter’s was built for the Julii in the late 2nd or early 3rd century. Its vault mosaic shows a figure in the chariot of the sun drawn by white horses, rays rising from his head, a globe in his hand. The walls carry a fisherman, a shepherd and a boat scene read as Jonah.^[75][76] Catalogues date the mosaic differently, from the 3rd century to the 4th.^[77]

The Temple’s Answer

The figure is read 2 ways: as Christ, or, with Steven Hijmans, as Sol alone.^[75] Where the Church reads Christ, it names him with Malachi 4:2, the Sun of righteousness.^[78] If the figure is Christ, a Christian family under the site of St Peter’s gave its Lord the radiate crown and the solar chariot.

If it’s Sol, the same vault set the Sun’s chariot above Christian scenes. On both readings Christian burial art beneath the Vatican spoke the visual language of the Gods. The image is there.

For Your Decision

The face you were taught to worship was drawn with the features of the older Gods. Read For Christians: The Faith Before the Faith.

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C38 Gregory Ordered the Temples Kept and the Worship Replaced

Gregory’s letter of 601 keeps the temples and feasts and changes only the one addressed; Boniface IV made the Pantheon a church.

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Gregory the Great to Abbot Mellitus, 601, in Bede, Ecclesiastical History I.30, ed. A. M. Sellar (1907) · Read the letter

… the temples of the idols in that nation ought not to be destroyed; but let the idols that are in them be destroyed; let water be consecrated and sprinkled in the said temples, let altars be erected, and relics placed there. For if those temples are well built, it is requisite that they be converted from the worship of devils to the service of the true God …

The Claim Examined

Christianity is said to have won Europe by the truth of its message. Its own pope set down the method in 601. Keep the sacred places so that the nation, seeing that their temples are not destroyed, may remove error from their hearts and may the more freely resort to the places to which they have been accustomed. Because the English are used to slaughter many oxen in sacrifice to devils, some solemnity must be given them in exchange for this: huts of boughs about those churches which have been turned to that use from being temples. His reason: it is impossible to cut off every thing at once from their rude natures.^[79]

The Temple’s Answer

Bede shows that the month was once called after a goddess of theirs named Eostre, in whose honour feasts were celebrated in that month, and that the English now call the joys of the new rite by the time-honoured name of the old observance.^[80] The English name of the Paschal feast is the name of a Goddess.

The letter is the confession. It keeps the place, the day, the feast and the people’s devotion, and changes only the one addressed, whom it calls devils. At Rome the same policy reached the greatest temple of all.

Boniface IV obtained from Emperor Phocas the temple at Rome called by the ancients Pantheon, as representing all the gods, and dedicated it to the holy Mother of God and to all Christ’s martyrs.^[79] That is the inversion in Church documents: your ancestors kept walking to the same sacred places while the Gods who had stood there were renamed devils. Recovering the Gods restores the address the letter changed.

For Your Decision

The sacred places and feasts were never taken from the Gods; only Their names were. Read The Inversion Was Politics and the Temple’s Spring Equinox.

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C39 Pontifex Maximus: Rome’s High-Priestly Title on a Papal Façade

A Christian emperor refused the pagan high priest’s robe as unlawful, and the title Pontifex Maximus stands carved over St Peter’s.

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Zosimus, New History IV.36 (of the reign of Gratian), English translation (London: Green and Chaplin, 1814) · Read the passage

But when the Pontifices, in the accustomed manner, brought the sacred robe to Gratian, he, considering it a garment unlawful for a Christian to use, rejected their offer.

The Claim Examined

The pontifex maximus headed the priestly colleges of Rome’s worship of the Gods. Zosimus records that a Christian emperor refused its robe as unlawful for a Christian, and that a priest answered: If the emperor refuses to become Pontifex, we shall soon make one.^[81] In the early 3rd century Tertullian mocked a Christian bishop with the title: The Pontifex Maximus, that is, the bishop of bishops, issues an edict.^[82] In 1612 Paul V Borghese set his name across the façade of St Peter’s with the title Romanus Pont. Max.^[83]

The Temple’s Answer

The record traces usage: a title a Christian emperor rejected as unlawful, a title a Christian writer used as an insult for an overreaching bishop, became the title carved in stone over the Church’s central basilica. The Church whose emperors dismantled Rome’s priesthoods gave its own bishop the title of their head. Names carry power, and this one was borrowed from the Gods’ own priesthood.

For Your Decision

When the successor wears the predecessor’s title, ask whose authority is really being invoked. Read The Name You Already Speak.

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C40 Forged Authority: the Donation, the False Decretals and the False Areopagite

The Donation of Constantine was forged between 750 and 850, and Proclus’s Neoplatonism passed into the Church under the name of Paul’s convert.

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J. P. Kirsch, Donation of Constantine, The Catholic Encyclopedia 5 (1909) · Read the article

This document is without doubt a forgery …

The Claim Examined

3 documents shaped papal and mystical authority under false names, and the Church’s own encyclopedia says so. The Donation of Constantine, fabricated somewhere between the years 750 and 850, had the emperor grant the pope Rome and the provinces of Italy and the West; Leo IX was the first pope who used it in an official act, in 1054, and later popes relied on it.^[84] The False Decretals, published between 847 and 852 under the pseudonym Isidore Mercator, are letters of early popes of which every one agrees they are forgeries; the article concedes the popes benefited by the forgeries.^[85] The writings of Dionysius claim the Areopagite converted by Paul, yet date from no earlier than the close of the 5th century and show an astonishing agreement with the Neoplatonist Proclus in arrangement, sequence of thought, examples, figures, and expressions.^[86]

The Temple’s Answer

The exposure came centuries after the use. The forgeries did their work while they were believed: a territorial claim in papal acts, a canon law of papal precedent, a mystical theology the Scholastics, Thomas Aquinas among them, adopted.^[86] The last case matters most to you. The Church’s mysticism of the divine names and the hierarchies of light rests in large part on Proclus, a Neoplatonist of the old religion, published under the name of Paul’s convert. The ascent the Church taught is older than the Church. Go to its source.

For Your Decision

What was borrowed under a false name can be received under its true one. Begin with An Inheritance You Can Live In.

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C41 The Shroud of Turin: Radiocarbon, a Bishop’s Report and a Pope’s Instruction

The 1989 radiocarbon test dated the linen to the Middle Ages, and the Avignon pope ordered it shown as a picture.

Read the dossier

P. E. Damon and others, Radiocarbon dating of the Shroud of Turin, Nature 337 (16 February 1989), abstract · Read the abstract

Very small samples from the Shroud of Turin have been dated by accelerator mass spectrometry in laboratories at Arizona, Oxford and Zurich … The results provide conclusive evidence that the linen of the Shroud of Turin is mediaeval.

The Claim Examined

The Shroud is venerated as Christ’s burial cloth. 3 kinds of evidence bear on it, and the Temple keeps them apart. First, the 1989 radiocarbon result above.^[87] Second, an allegation: in 1389 the Bishop of Troyes appealed to the Avignon pope Clement VII and declared the cloth the work of an artist who some years before had confessed to having painted it. That is the bishop’s report; no confession by a named painter survives in this record. Third, a papal instruction: Clement VII, without absolutely prohibiting the exhibition, ruled that when it was shown the priest should declare that it was not the real shroud of Christ, but only a picture made to represent it.^[88]

The Temple’s Answer

The papal record settles it apart from the laboratory. The earliest papal ruling on record ordered the cloth announced to the people as a picture. The Catholic Encyclopedia’s own author reported in 1912 that the immense preponderance of opinion among learned Catholics was against its authenticity.^[88]

Devotion grew around an object its own authorities had labelled a representation. Faith in the Gods doesn’t depend on a relic surviving a laboratory.

For Your Decision

Build your relationship with the Divine on practice you can test in your own life. See An Ordinary Day with the Gods.

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C42 A Reformer’s Inventory of the Relics

Calvin judged that the nails are all spurious and that every apostle has more than 4 bodies.

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John Calvin on the fragments of the True Cross, Treatise on Relics (1543), as rendered by Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church VIII §122 · Read the section

… would form a good shipload, which it would take three hundred men to carry instead of one.

The Claim Examined

Relic cults claimed physical contact with the sacred. A Christian reformer audited the claims. Calvin’s tract, as Schaff summarises it, judged that the nails are all spurious and that every apostle has more than four bodies and every saint two or three.^[89] An English version of the 16th century has the fragments of the Cross inough to fraighte a great ship.^[90]

The Temple’s Answer

Calvin is a witness from inside Christendom: a Christian theologian testified that relic claims multiplied bodies and objects beyond reckoning, and that no authority had stopped it. One branch of Christianity had to accuse the other of venerating the counterfeit sacred, and Catholic writers still defend the fragments of the Cross by measuring them.^[91] The Gods are approached by prayer, meditation and right conduct, open to anyone who practises them.

For Your Decision

You need no fragment to stand before the Gods. Begin with the Temple’s Prayer to Zeus for Protection.

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VIII. Institutional Actions and Their Consequences

The last 10 dossiers concern acts: laws, bulls, sentences, wars and the handling of abuse. The Temple keeps 4 things apart throughout: an allegation, a finding, an estimate and a conviction. Each figure stays with the source that reported it. The criticism falls on laws, offices and named acts. It never falls on you.

C43 Scripture Told Slaves to Obey; Popes Licensed the Enslavement of Pagans

Ephesians 6:5 told slaves to obey with fear and trembling, Augustine made sin the cause of slavery, and Dum Diversas licensed enslaving pagans in 1452.

Read the dossier

Nicholas V, Romanus Pontifex, 8 January 1455, recalling his earlier grant to King Alfonso V of Portugal, tr. F. G. Davenport (1917) · Read the bull

… to invade, search out, capture, vanquish, and subdue all Saracens and pagans whatsoever … and to reduce their persons to perpetual slavery …

The Claim Examined

Christianity is credited with ending slavery. Its scripture commanded: Servants, be obedient to them that are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling.^[92] Augustine explained: The prime cause, then, of slavery is sin, and the apostle admonishes slaves to be subject to their masters, and to serve them heartily.^[93] In 1455 a pope confirmed a king’s licence to reduce pagans whatsoever to perpetual slavery.^[94] On 30 March 2023 the Vatican’s dicasteries for culture and education and for integral human development acknowledged that such bulls did not adequately reflect the equal dignity and rights of indigenous peoples and stated that they have never been considered expressions of the Catholic faith.^[95]

The Temple’s Answer

The grant stands in the record: the head of the Church authorised the permanent enslavement of people because they weren’t Christian, and pagans were named as a class. Worshippers of the Gods were made lawful captives by a papal act.

Now the Church says such acts were never expressions of its faith. Then you’re entitled to ask what a papal bull expresses when it disposes of human beings, and why the same office should be trusted when it disposes of your soul.

For Your Decision

The Gods made no one a slave for worshipping Them. Read how Zevism grounds human dignity in Your Place in the Divine Family.

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C44 Women Commanded to Silence in the Assembly

1 Timothy 2:14 grounds women’s silence in Eve’s deception, and 1 Corinthians 14 calls it a shame for a woman to speak in church.

Read the dossier

1 Timothy 2:12 to 13, King James Version (1611) · Read the chapter

But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence. For Adam was first formed, then Eve.

The Claim Examined

The text grounds the restriction in creation itself, then adds: the woman being deceived was in the transgression. The Corinthian letter repeats it: Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak, and it is a shame for women to speak in the church.^[96] Tertullian drew the conclusion for every woman: You are the devil’s gateway, you are she who persuaded him whom the devil was not valiant enough to attack.^[97]

The Temple’s Answer

The same letters name Phoebe a deacon of the church at Cenchreae^[98] and give women’s silence a ground of its own: the order of creation and Eve’s deception, reasons that apply to every woman in every age. Churches that ordain women today have had to argue against their own scripture’s stated rationale. Zevism has no such quarrel to settle.

Wisdom proceeds from Zeus as Athena, and the initiate’s dedication asks acceptance from the Great Father and from Hera the Divine Mother.^[45] The divine world you return to has Goddesses at its height.

For Your Decision

Bring your daughters into a religion whose heaven includes Them. Meet the Gods in Zeus and the Gods.

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C45 The Empire Outlawed the Worship of the Gods, Down to the Household Hearth

Codex Theodosianus 16.10 closed the temples, made sacrifice a capital crime and followed worship indoors to the lar and the penates.

Read the dossier

Theodosius I, Arcadius and Honorius, Codex Theodosianus XVI.10.12, 392, tr. C. Pharr (1952) · Read the law

No person at all, of any class or order whatsoever of men or of dignitaries … shall sacrifice an innocent victim to senseless images in any place at all or in any city. He shall not, by more secret wickedness, venerate his Lar with fire, his Genius with wine, his Penates with fragrant odors; he shall not burn lights to them, place incense before them, or suspend wreaths for them.

The Claim Examined

Christianity is said to have spread by persuasion. The Christian emperors legislated. An earlier law in the same title, issued under Constantius II, ordered that the temples should be closed at once and that whoever sacrificed should be stricken with the avenging sword.^[42] In 392 the prohibition reached the family shrine, as above: the lamp, the incense and the garland offered to the household Gods at home.^[99] In 435, Schaff records, Theodosius II. commanded the temples to be destroyed or turned into churches, and Justinian later prohibited heathenism as a form of worship in the empire on pain of death.^[100]

The Temple’s Answer

The legislation repeated over 2 centuries shows 2 facts at once: the worship of the Gods continued, and the state kept legislating to end it. The intent is written in the law’s own words, which follow the worshipper indoors to the hearth.

Nothing in that record is persuasion. Today you can light the lamp at a home shrine that 392 forbade, and no one can forbid it to you.

For Your Decision

The first act of return is the one the law tried hardest to prevent: worship of the Gods in your own home. Begin at How to Begin; the full record is in the Temple’s The Inquisition Is Not Over.

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C46 Christian Armies Against Christians: Béziers and Constantinople

In 1204 crusaders broke the great church’s altar table into pieces at Constantinople, and in 1209 the legate reported Béziers to the pope.

Read the dossier

Arnaud Amalric, abbot of Cîteaux and papal legate, report to Innocent III on Béziers, August 1209, Patrologia Latina 216, col. 139 · Read the text and its sources

nostrique non parcentes ordini, sexui, vel aetati, fere viginti millia hominum in ore gladii peremerunt

Our men spared no one, irrespective of rank, sex, or age, and put to the sword almost 20,000 people.

The Claim Examined

The crusades are defended as wars for Christendom. In 1209 a crusade called by the pope fell on a Christian city in southern France, and the papal legate reported the slaughter to the pope.^[101] The figure is the legate’s own medieval claim, and modern estimates of the town’s population are lower; the famous Kill them all, God will know his own comes later, from Caesarius of Heisterbach, who reported it at second hand.^[101] In 1215 the Fourth Lateran Council granted to Catholics who take the cross and gird themselves up for the expulsion of heretics the same indulgence as crusaders to the Holy Land.^[62] In 1204 crusaders sacked Constantinople; Niketas Choniates saw its altar table broken into pieces and divided among the despoilers.^[102]

The Temple’s Answer

A pope called the sack of 1204 tragic in 2001.^[103] The papacy authorised holy war against Christians it judged heretical and rewarded it with the indulgence of a crusader to the Holy Land.

Its victims were Christians, and their suffering belongs in this account. The Temple’s Declaration names the cycle in which each claimant justifies destruction by calling the destroyed unholy, and it commits Zevism never to convert by force.^[104]

For Your Decision

Choose a faith that has bound itself never to build on another’s ruins. Read Why This Temple.

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C47 Torture by Papal Law, Bruno Burned, Galileo Condemned

Ad extirpanda made torture a duty of civil rulers in 1252, Bruno burned in 1600, and Galileo knelt to abjure in 1633.

Read the dossier

Innocent IV, Ad extirpanda, 15 May 1252, Lex 25, tr. Temple of Zeus · Read the bull

Teneatur praeterea Potestas, seu Rector omnes haereticos, quos captos habuerit, cogere citra membri diminutionem, et mortis periculum … errores suos expresse fateri, et accusare alios haereticos

The governor or ruler shall furthermore be bound to compel all heretics he holds captive, short of loss of limb and danger of death … to confess their errors expressly and to accuse other heretics.

The Claim Examined

3 cases, 3 different outcomes. In 1252 a papal bull obliged civil rulers to force confessions from heretics, short of maiming or killing them.^[105] Giordano Bruno, handed to the Roman Inquisition, was held for six years, condemned in January 1600, handed over to the secular power and burned at the stake in the Campo dei Fiori on 17 February; the Catholic Encyclopedia insists he was condemned for his theological errors.^[106] Galileo was sentenced on 22 June 1633 as vehemently suspected of heresy for teaching that the Sun stands still at the centre, made to abjure, curse and detest it, condemned to the formal prison of this Holy Office during our pleasure, and his book prohibited.^[107]

The Temple’s Answer

A papal law made torture the procedure. A man was burned at the stake for his theology, and the Church’s encyclopedia offers that as the mitigating fact.

A scientist was condemned to prison at the Inquisition’s pleasure for describing the heavens, and the institution took 359 years to say its theologians had confused their reading of scripture with scripture.^[108] Every one of these is an exercise of authority over the mind.

For Your Decision

The Temple asks you to search and evaluate before you commit. Read how dedication follows understanding.

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C48 The Witch Persecution Had Its Verse, Its Bull and Its Handbook

Exodus 22:18, Innocent VIII’s bull of 1484 and the Malleus Maleficarum of 1487: Levack estimated about 60,000 executed.

Read the dossier

Innocent VIII, Summis desiderantes affectibus, 5 December 1484, 1928 English translation as excerpted · Read the bull and its context

Many persons of both sexes, unmindful of their own salvation … have abandoned themselves to devils, incubi and succubi …

The Claim Examined

The witch trials are often blamed on superstition outside the Church. The Church’s texts sit at their centre. The verse: Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live (Exodus 22:18).^[109] The bull: in 1484 Innocent VIII authorised his inquisitors in Germany to proceed against such persons, correcting, imprisoning, punishing and chastising. The handbook: the bull was printed in the preface of the inquisitor Heinrich Kramer’s Malleus Maleficarum, which appeared in 1487.^[110] Brian Levack’s standard study estimated in 1987 that European communities executed about 60,000 witches in the early modern period; other historians give other figures.^[111]

The Temple’s Answer

Catholic and Protestant courts alike worked from the same scripture, the same demonology and the same conviction that converse with spirits was traffic with the devil. The verse, the papal commission and the handbook supplied the theology the courts applied. The theology they applied drew no line between the healer and the poisoner.

For Your Decision

The practices once punished as witchcraft are part of the inheritance you are returning to. Read the Temple’s The Inquisition Is Not Over.

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C49 The Index: Rome Decided What the Faithful Could Read, for 407 Years

From 1559 to 1966 a Roman office banned books under pain of censure, Copernicus among them.

Read the dossier

Decree of the Congregation of the Index, 5 March 1616, tr. M. A. Finocchiaro, The Essential Galileo (2008) · Read the decree

… the false Pythagorean doctrine, altogether contrary to the Holy Scripture, that the earth moves and the sun is motionless …

The Claim Examined

The Church presents itself as the patron of learning. In 1559 Paul IV issued the first Roman Index of Prohibited Books, which the Catholic Encyclopedia calls very severe.^[112] The 1616 decree ordered Copernicus’s On the Revolutions suspended until corrected and Foscarini’s defence of it completely prohibited and condemned.^[113] In 1633 the Holy Office ordered Galileo’s Dialogue prohibited by public edict.^[107] Only on 14 June 1966 did the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith declare that the Index no longer has the force of ecclesiastical law with the attached censure, and on 15 November 1966 those under the censures of canon 2318 were declared absolved.^[114]

The Temple’s Answer

Name the authority, the date and the penalty, and the system speaks for itself. For 407 years, from 1559 to 1966, a Roman office decided which books a Catholic could read under pain of ecclesiastical censure, and among its targets was the motion of the earth. Even at the end, the 1966 notification declared that the Index remains morally binding, in light of the demands of natural law while removing its legal force.^[114] Zevism teaches the opposite discipline: search and evaluate, read the sources for yourself, and test every claim, including the Temple’s.

For Your Decision

Read freely; then choose. The Temple’s sources are open to you in Instructions for New People.

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C50 Luther’s Programme Against the Jews, and His Church’s Repudiation

In 1543 Luther urged the princes to burn the synagogues, raze Jewish houses and seize their books; the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America repudiated it in 1994.

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Martin Luther, On the Jews and Their Lies (1543), Luther’s Works 47 (Fortress Press, 1971) · Read the excerpt

First to set fire to their synagogues or schools and to bury and cover with dirt whatever will not burn …

The Claim Examined

Luther is honoured as the father of the Reformation and of a recovered gospel. In 1543 he set out a programme: burn the synagogues; their houses also be razed and destroyed; their prayer books and Talmudic writings be taken from them; their rabbis forbidden to teach henceforth on pain of loss of life and limb.^[115] In 1994 the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America declared: we reject this violent invective, and expressed deep and abiding sorrow over its tragic effects on subsequent generations.^[116]

The Temple’s Answer

The Temple’s invitation rejects hostility to any people, and its criticism falls on this text and its author alone. Notice what the text shows about exclusive religious authority. The man who freed Christians from Rome’s claim to bind their consciences claimed the power to burn another people’s houses of prayer. The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America formally rejected the programme 451 years later, in concert with the Lutheran World Federation. Exclusive truth breeds exactly this: a sure conviction that the other’s worship has no right to stand.

For Your Decision

A faith is known by what it does to the worship of others. See the Temple’s commitment in Why This Temple.

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C51 The Day of Pardon Confessed Categories of Sin, Not Particular Cases

On 12 March 2000 the pope confessed 7 categories of sin and asked pardon of God alone.

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John Paul II, Universal Prayer for the Day of Pardon, section V, St Peter’s, 12 March 2000 · Read the prayer

Yet Christians have often denied the Gospel; yielding to a mentality of power, they have violated the rights of ethnic groups and peoples, and shown contempt for their cultures and religious traditions …

The Claim Examined

On 12 March 2000 the pope led 7 confessions: sins in general; sins committed in the service of truth; against the unity of the Body of Christ; against the people of Israel; against love, peace, the rights of peoples, and respect for cultures and religions; against the dignity of women and the unity of the human race; and against the fundamental rights of the person. The second admitted that even men of the Church, in the name of faith and morals, have sometimes used methods not in keeping with the Gospel.^[117] The preparatory document named intolerance and even the use of force in the service of truth, and set limits: Subjective responsibility ceases with the death of the one who performed the act, and Generalization must be avoided.^[118]

The Temple’s Answer

The Day of Pardon named categories. Within those categories stands a confession that Christians showed contempt for other peoples’ religious traditions. The pardon was asked of the Christian God.

It wasn’t asked of the peoples whose sanctuaries were taken, and it restored nothing to the Gods whose worship was outlawed. Many readers descend from those traditions. Their restoration is yours to make.

For Your Decision

An admitted contempt for your ancestors’ religion is a reason to recover it. Begin at Begin Your Return.

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C52 Abuse and Accountability: What Each Count Measures and Who Made It

John Jay counted 4,392 accused priests in the United States and CIASE about 216,000 abused children in France.

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Francis, Letter to the People of God, Vatican City, 20 August 2018 · Read the letter

With shame and repentance, we acknowledge as an ecclesial community that we were not where we should have been …

The Claim Examined

The Church claims the moral authority to judge your soul. Its own pope wrote this letter after a report that detailed the experiences of at least a thousand survivors over approximately seventy years.^[119] The main counts measure different things:

• United States, 2004. The John Jay College study, commissioned by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, counted allegations reported by dioceses: 4,392 clergy accused between 1950 and 2002, about 4% of the 109,694 clergy of the period, by 10,667 individuals.^[120] Allegations are not convictions.
• Pennsylvania, 2018. A state grand jury, convened under the Attorney General and independent of the Church, examined 6 dioceses and named over 300 predator priests; More than 1,000 child victims were identifiable from the church’s own records, and the jurors wrote that We believe that the real number is in the thousands.^[121] These are a grand jury’s findings, not trial verdicts.
• France, 2021. The CIASE, commissioned by the French bishops’ conference and the conference of religious orders, estimated from a population survey of 28,010 adults about 216,000 victims of clergy and religious from 1950 to 2020 (95% interval 165,000 to 270,000), 330,000 including lay people in Church settings, and 2,900 to 3,200 abusers as a lower limit.^[122] These are statistical estimates.

The Temple’s Answer

On the Church’s own commissioned studies, an independent grand jury’s findings and its pope’s own words, the institution that claims to stand between you and God failed to protect children in its care, across decades and continents. Its authority over your conscience was never greater than its conduct. Zevism places no required mediator between you and the Gods, and its Declaration applies its diagnosis of spiritual pathology to us with the same force it applies to others.^[104]

For Your Decision

Authority must be earned under Ma’at, by every institution, the Temple included. See Why This Temple.

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IX. The Record: Crimes Committed in the Name of Christianity

Here are the acts themselves, year by year, each with the law, letter, chronicle or report that records it. Emperors, bishops, popes, councils, kings, religious orders and churches did them in the name of Christ, and their own documents keep the count.

Nothing here is drawn from an enemy of the Church. No Christian reading this did any of it.

Against the Gods and Those Who Kept Them, 380 to 529

The new faith took the empire’s law within 70 years of Constantine’s conversion. First it named every other belief madness. Then it closed the temples, made sacrifice a crime against the state, and ended with a law of death.

The emperors Valentinian II, Theodosius I and Arcadius, 24 February 391, Codex Theodosianus 16.10.10, Latin from the edition at droitromain.univ-grenoble-alpes.fr, tr. Temple of Zeus · Read the law

Nemo se hostiis polluat, nemo insontem victimam caedat, nemo delubra adeat, templa perlustret et mortali opere formata simulacra suspiciat

Let no one pollute himself with sacrificial victims, let no one slay an innocent victim, let no one approach the shrines, walk through the temples or look up to images formed by mortal labour.

Socrates Scholasticus on the death of Hypatia, 415, Church History 7.15, tr. A. C. Zenos (Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 1890) · Read the chapter

they took her to the church called Cæsareum, where they completely stripped her, and then murdered her with tiles.

Conversion by the Sword, 615 to 1000

In Spain a Christian king baptised the Jews by force, and a council of bishops kept them bound to it. North of the old empire the new faith arrived with armies.

Charlemagne made baptism the price of life in Saxony. In Norway a king offered the same choice with fire and serpents.

Charlemagne, Capitulatio de partibus Saxoniae, chapter 8, tr. D. C. Munro (1900) · Read the capitulary

… shall have scorned to come to baptism and shall have wished to remain a pagan, let him be punished by death.

Crusade, Inquisition and the Fire, 1096 to 1415

The Church turned the sword on Jews, on Muslims, on pagans of the Baltic, on other Christians and on its own dissenters. A pope wrote torture into law. Its councils sent men to the stake and dug up the bones of the dead.

Pope Innocent IV, Ad extirpanda, 15 May 1252, law 25, Latin as transcribed from the Bullarium Taurinense, tr. Temple of Zeus · Read the bull

Teneatur praeterea Potestas, seu Rector omnes haereticos, quos captos habuerit, cogere citra membri diminutionem, et mortis periculum

The podestà or ruler shall moreover be bound to force all the heretics he holds captive, short of the loss of a limb and danger of death, …

The Inquisitions, the Witch Hunts and the Expulsions, 1478 to 1700

The tribunals of the faith ran for 356 years in Spain alone. Popes gave the witch hunters their authority, Catholic and Protestant states burned their dissenters, and Jews were baptised by force or driven out.

Conquest, Slavery and Racism, 1452 to 2023

Popes gave the kings of Portugal and Spain the right to enslave every pagan they could reach. Churches owned slaves, branded them and preached the curse of Ham over them. The colour line ran through the churches into the 21st century.

The Children in Their Care, 1819 to 2021

The last chapter is written by governments, courts and commissions. Churches ran schools, homes and laundries for children and the poor, and the reports of the 21st century count what happened inside them.

The Church itself has confessed the categories. On the Day of Pardon, 12 March 2000, its pope prayed that in certain periods of history Christians have at times given in to intolerance.^[185] The record above gives the dates, the documents and the dead behind the words.

X. How These Politicized Programs Took Power: Forced Conversion & Varvarim

• Yehubor The God-sealed hollow ones: those who claim God’s exclusive favour and condemn every soul outside their circle. The Temple defines them by their conduct alone.
• Atibilibil Confusion made into a weapon: the darkening of a people’s judgement until it can’t see what it’s sent to kill for.
• Varvarim War in the Name of God: violence under claimed divine authority, which defiles the Name it invokes and serves those who command it.
• Izfet The force of dissolution that opposes Ma’at, the order of the Gods. Every war below fed it.

The Temples Fall 325 to 600

1. after 325 · Aphaca (Mount Lebanon, Phoenicia) and Aegae (Cilicia)Constantine orders temples at Aphaca and Aegae razed

   Eusebius wrote that Constantine ordered the temple of Aphrodite (Venus) at Aphaca on Mount Lebanon utterly destroyed, and that military force was used to purge the place. He ordered the healing temple of Asclepius at Aegae in Cilicia razed to the ground to advance the worship of the Christian God, and a band of soldiers laid it in the dust. Eusebius added that the emperor’s agents stripped temples of their doors and roofs and melted down gold and silver images in the provinces.^[190]

   gave directions that this temple also should be razed to the ground. In prompt obedience to this command, a band of soldiers laid this building, the admiration of noble philosophers, prostrate in the dustEusebius of Caesarea, Life of Constantine III.56, tr. Ernest Cushing Richardson (NPNF II.1, 1890)

2. 341 to 346 · Roman EmpireConstantius II makes pagan sacrifice a capital crime

   In 341 Constantius II decreed that superstition should cease and the madness of sacrifices be abolished. A later law, dated 346 in Ayer’s edition, ordered the temples closed in all places and cities so that freedom to sin would be denied the wicked. Anyone who sacrificed was to fall by the sword and lose his goods to the treasury, and governors who failed to punish such acts were themselves to be punished.^[191]

   We will that all abstain from sacrifices; that if any one should commit any such act, let him fall before the vengeance of the sword.Codex Theodosianus XVI.10.4, in J. C. Ayer, A Source Book for Ancient Church History, 1913

3. c. 371 to 397 · Gaul (Touraine and neighbouring regions)Martin of Tours demolishes and burns pagan temples

   Sulpicius Severus, Martin’s disciple, wrote that Martin demolished a very ancient temple in one village, set about cutting down a pine tree beside it because it had been dedicated to a demon, and set fire to another ancient temple elsewhere. At Leprosum, where the villagers had driven him off, Sulpicius wrote that 2 angels with spears and shields put the crowd to flight while Martin razed the temple to its foundations and reduced its altars and images to dust. Wherever he destroyed temples he built churches or monasteries.^[192]

   while the crowds of heathen looked on in perfect quiet as he razed the pagan temple even to the foundations, he also reduced all the altars and images to dust.Sulpicius Severus, Life of St Martin ch. 14, tr. Alexander Roberts (NPNF II.11, 1894)

4. c. 386 · Syria (countryside around Antioch)Libanius protests monks wrecking rural temples

   Libanius told Emperor Theodosius I that black-robed monks ran to the temples with wood, stones and iron, uncovered the roofs, pulled down walls, carried off images and overturned altars, while the priests had to keep silent on pain of death. He wrote that this happened in the cities but especially in the countryside, where the monks said they fought the temples and punished those who sacrificed. He added that they seized the peasants’ stores and lands as spoil, claiming the land was sacred.^[193]

   the roofs are uncovered, walls are pulled down, images are carried off, and altars are overturned: the priests all the while must be silent upon pain of death.Libanius, Oration 30 (Pro Templis), tr. Nathaniel Lardner, Heathen Testimonies (1830 edition), pp. 76 to 77

5. c. 386 · Apamea, SyriaBishop Marcellus destroys the temple of Zeus at Apamea

   Theodoret wrote that Marcellus, bishop of Apamea, was the first bishop to enforce the edicts of Theodosius I ordering pagan shrines destroyed. With the prefect of the East, 2 tribunes and their troops in the city, whose presence kept the people quiet, Marcellus prayed for God’s aid in the work of destruction and had 3 columns of the great temple of Zeus (Jupiter) undercut and burned until they fell, dragging 12 more columns and a side of the temple down. He destroyed other shrines in the same way.^[194]

   This bishop had commanded the demolition of all the temples in the city and villages, under the supposition that it would not be easy otherwise for them to be converted from their former religion.Sozomen, Church History VII.15, tr. Chester D. Hartranft (NPNF II.2, 1890)

6. 402 · Gaza, PalestineImperial troops destroy the temples of Gaza and the Marneion

   In 402 Bishop Porphyry of Gaza obtained from the empress Eudoxia an imperial order to overturn the idols, and she sent Cynegius, a man fervent in the faith, with soldiers to destroy the temples of Gaza. When the pagans cried out at the reading of the imperial letter, soldiers sent by the governors beat them with clubs and staves; troops and Christians then spent 10 days overthrowing the city’s 8 public temples and burned the Marneion, temple of Zeus Marnas. Idols and sacred books found in searched houses were burned or thrown into latrines.^[195]

   the idolaters cried out with a loud voice, so that the governors were wroth and threatened them, sending soldiers among them, who beat them with clubs and staves.Mark the Deacon, Life of Porphyry ch. 63, tr. G. F. Hill (1913)

7. 428 · Constantinople and western Asia MinorNestorius begins his persecution of heretics

   On his ordination as bishop of Constantinople, Nestorius publicly promised the emperor heaven in return for an earth purged of heretics. Socrates wrote that 5 days later he set out to demolish the chapel of the Arians, who set it on fire in despair, and that he later had the Macedonians deprived of their churches. Socrates added that multitudes perished in a popular tumult that Nestorius caused at Miletus and Sardis while he persecuted the Quartodecimans.^[196]

   Give me, my prince, the earth purged of heretics, and I will give you heaven as a recompense. Assist me in destroying heretics, and I will assist you in vanquishing the Persians.Nestorius, sermon at his ordination, quoted by Socrates Scholasticus, Church History VII.29, tr. A. C. Zenos (NPNF II.2, 1890)

8. 507 · Vouillé, near Poitiers, GaulClovis wages war on the Arian Visigoths

   Gregory of Tours wrote that Clovis told his people he took it very hard that Arians held part of Gaul and that they should go with God’s help and conquer them. Clovis prayed for a sign that God would surrender this unbelieving nation to him, and Gregory presented the march as guided by miracles against the heretic armies. At Vouillé Clovis killed the Visigothic king Alaric, and Gregory wrote that a great number of the people of Auvergne, who had come with Apollinaris and the leading senators, perished.^[197]

   I take it very hard that these Arians hold part of the Gauls. Let us go with God’s help and conquer them and bring the land under our control.Clovis, as reported by Gregory of Tours, History of the Franks II.37, tr. Ernest Brehaut (1916)

9. c. 529 to 530 · Phrygia and PalestineJustinian’s forced conversions and the Samaritan revolt

   Procopius wrote that Justinian ordered the dissenting Christian sects abolished and replaced by orthodox doctrine, and sent agents everywhere to force people to renounce the faith of their fathers; the Montanists of Phrygia shut themselves in their churches and set them on fire. A similar law against the Samaritans drove the country people of Palestine to revolt under a leader named Julian, son of Sabarus. Procopius wrote that 100,000 men were said to have perished when the imperial troops defeated them.^[198]

   Agents were sent everywhere to force whomever they chanced upon to renounce the faith of their fathers.Procopius, Secret History ch. 11, tr. Richard Atwater (1927)

10. c. 535 to 537 · Philae, on the Nile near Elephantine, EgyptJustinian’s general closes the temple of Isis at Philae

    Procopius wrote that the sanctuaries of Philae, where the Blemyes and Nobatae worshipped Isis and Osiris, were kept up until his own time, when Emperor Justinian decided to tear them down. Narses, commander of the troops there, tore down the sanctuaries on the emperor’s order, put the priests under guard and sent the statues to Constantinople.^[199]

    These sanctuaries in Philae were kept by these barbarians even up to my time, but the Emperor Justinian decided to tear them down.Procopius, History of the Wars I.19, tr. H. B. Dewing (Loeb, 1914)

11. 542 to 546 · Asia, Lydia, Caria and Phrygia; ConstantinopleJohn of Ephesus converts pagans of Asia Minor for Justinian

    In 542 Justinian sent John of Ephesus on a mission to the pagans of Asia, Lydia, Caria and Phrygia, and in 4 years he baptized 70,000 people. In 546 the emperor charged him with hunting out men in Constantinople who professed Christianity but practised pagan rites in secret; the city prefect Phocas, when informed against, took poison, and his corpse was thrown into a ditch without burial on the emperor’s command. The others were ordered to receive Christian instruction, and an edict gave them 3 months to convert.^[200]

    John, therefore, being directed by a divine mission, made this temple the first object of his attack, and having levelled it to its very foundations, he built this chief monasteryJohn of Ephesus, Ecclesiastical History, Part 3, III.36 (on the temple at Derira near Tralles), tr. R. Payne Smith (1860)

12. 576 · Clermont, Auvergne, GaulBishop Avitus forces the Jews of Clermont to convert

    On Ascension Day, 14 May 576, a crowd following Bishop Avitus of Clermont in procession demolished the synagogue. Next day the bishop gave the Jews a choice between baptism and banishment, and during the 3 days they delayed many were attacked in their houses and some killed. On 18 May over 500 asked to be baptized, and those who kept their religion left for Marseilles.^[201]

    if you are willing to believe as I, be one flock with me as your guardian; but if not, depart from the place.Bishop Avitus’s message to the Jews, in Gregory of Tours, History of the Franks V.11, tr. Ernest Brehaut (1916)

13. 579 to 580 · Baalbek (Heliopolis), Antioch, Edessa and ConstantinopleTiberius II’s inquisition crucifies and burns pagans

    In 579 Emperor Tiberius II sent the officer Theophilus against the pagans of Baalbek, and he arrested many, crucified them and slew them with the sword, and tortured them for the names of other pagans across the East. In Constantinople a crowd of more than 100,000, crying for the faith of the Christians, seized a pagan man and woman from prison and burned them in a boat. Clergy convicted of pagan practices were sentenced to be thrown to wild beasts and their bodies burned.^[202]

    and the sentence pronounced upon them was, that they should be cast to the wild beasts, and their bodies burnt with fire.John of Ephesus, Ecclesiastical History, Part 3, III.34, tr. R. Payne Smith (1860)

14. 582 · Kingdom of Chilperic (Neustria), GaulKing Chilperic orders the baptism of Jews

    Gregory of Tours wrote that King Chilperic ordered many Jews to be baptized that year and stood as godfather to some of them. When the Jew Priscus refused, the king had him put in prison to force him to hear and believe.^[203]

    in the idea that if he did not wish to believe of his own accord he would force him to hear and believe.Gregory of Tours, History of the Franks VI.17, tr. Ernest Brehaut (1916)

Kings Baptise by the Sword 600 to 1000

1. c. 629 · Frankish kingdomDagobert I orders Jews to convert, leave or die

   The Jewish Encyclopedia (1906) states that about 629 the Frankish king Dagobert I, to emulate the religious zeal of Emperor Heraclius and the Visigothic king Sisebut, decreed that Jews who hadn’t converted to Christianity by a set date must leave his lands or be put to death. It cites a Jewish chronicler for the claim that many converted and large numbers were slain by the sword.^[204]

2. 686 · Isle of Wight, EnglandCaedwalla tries to exterminate the Isle of Wight pagans

   Bede wrote that Caedwalla, king of the West Saxons, took the Isle of Wight, which was entirely given over to idolatry, and tried by slaughter to destroy all its inhabitants and replace them with his own people. He had vowed a fourth of the land and booty to the Lord, and gave land of 300 of the island’s 1,200 families to Bishop Wilfrid, whose clergy were to bring baptism there. Caedwalla condemned 2 captured brothers of the island’s king; at an abbot’s request they were baptized first and then executed.^[205]

   he also took the Isle of Wight, which till then was entirely given over to idolatry, and by cruel slaughter endeavoured to destroy all the inhabitants thereofBede, Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation IV.16, translation attributed to L. C. Jane (Everyman, 1910)

3. c. 723 · Geismar (Gaesmere), HesseBoniface fells the sacred Oak of Jupiter at Geismar

   Willibald wrote that Boniface, sent back to Hesse as a bishop under the protection of the Frankish ruler Charles Martel, set out to cut down a giant oak the pagans called the Oak of Jupiter at Gaesmere. He did it in front of a great crowd of pagans who were cursing him in their hearts, and then built an oratory from its timber dedicated to Saint Peter.^[206]

   Boniface in their presence attempted to cut down, at a place called Gaesmere, a certain oak of extraordinary size called in the old tongue of the pagans the Oak of Jupiter.Willibald, Life of St Boniface ch. 6, tr. C. H. Talbot (1954)

4. 772 to 804 · SaxonyCharlemagne’s 33 year war to Christianize the Saxons

   Einhard wrote that the Franks fought the Saxons for 33 years from 772, describing them as a fierce people given to the worship of devils and hostile to the Christian religion. Whenever the Saxons broke their promises to renounce devil worship and accept Christianity, Charlemagne sent armies to take vengeance, and in 804 he deported 10,000 Saxons living along the Elbe with their wives and children and scattered them through Gaul and Germany. The war ended when the Saxons accepted his terms: renunciation of their religious customs, acceptance of the Christian sacraments and union with the Franks.^[207]

   renunciation of their national religious customs and the worship of devils, acceptance of the sacraments of the Christian faith and religion, and union with the Franks to form one people.Einhard, Life of Charlemagne ch. 7, tr. Samuel Epes Turner (1880)

5. 772 · Eresburg, SaxonyCharlemagne takes Eresburg and destroys the Irminsul, the Saxons’ sacred pillar

   In 772 Charlemagne held an assembly at Worms and then marched into Saxony for the first time. The Royal Frankish Annals record that he took the castle of Eresburg, went on to the Irminsul, destroyed the shrine and carried off the gold and silver he found there.

   The annal says that during a drought, while the king meant to stay 2 or 3 days to finish destroying the shrine, water suddenly flowed for the whole army by divine grace. He then met the Saxons on the Weser, took 12 hostages and returned to Francia.^[208]

   Eresburgum castrum coepit, ad Ermensul usque pervenit et ipsum fanum destruxit et aurum vel argentum, quod ibi repperit, abstulit.Royal Frankish Annals (Annales regni Francorum), entry for 772

6. 843 to 844 · Byzantine Armenia and eastern Asia MinorEmpress Theodora’s campaign to convert or exterminate the Paulicians

   In 843 or 844 the regent Theodora sent the commanders Leo, Andronikos and Soudales against the Paulician sect with orders to convert or exterminate them. During these attacks the father of the Paulician officer Karbeas was crucified, and Karbeas deserted to the Arabs with 5,000 Paulician followers and made war on the empire from Tephrike.^[209]

7. 865 to 866 · BulgariaBoris I kills rebel nobles and their children after baptism

   After Khan Boris I of Bulgaria was baptized and made his whole people be baptized, the Bulgarians rose against him, saying he hadn’t given them a good law. Boris told Pope Nicholas I that with the help of divine power he defeated them, and all their leaders and magnates were slaughtered by the sword with every one of their children. In 866 the pope replied that killing children who hadn’t borne arms against him was a sin.^[210]

   how all the leaders and magnates along with every one of their children were slaughtered by the sword, though the mediocre and lesser persons suffered no evil.Pope Nicholas I, Responses to the Questions of the Bulgars, ch. 17, tr. W. L. North, summarising Boris’s own report

8. 867 to 886 · Byzantine Empire, including Apulia in southern ItalyBasil I orders the forced conversion of Byzantine Jews

   The Chronicle of Ahimaaz, a Jewish family history, records that Emperor Basil I set out to compel the Jews to abandon their Law and accept Christianity, sending couriers and horsemen through all his provinces as far as Apulia. It says his agents were ordered to fall upon the Jews and force them out of their religion, and that the persecution lasted until his death. His translator notes that Byzantine chroniclers praised this zeal in converting Jews, by persuasion, privileges and, as a last resort, compulsory baptism.^[211]

   He sent couriers and horsemen to the provinces and all parts of his kingdom, to force the Jews out of their religion, and make them adopt his senseless faith.Ahimaaz ben Paltiel, Chronicle of Ahimaaz (1054), tr. Marcus Salzman (1924), p. 70

9. 988 · Kiev, Rus’Vladimir orders Kiev’s idols destroyed and the city baptized

   In 988, after his siege of the Greek city of Kherson, Prince Vladimir of Kiev ordered the idols of Kiev overthrown, some cut to pieces and others burned. The statue of the god Perun was tied to a horse’s tail, dragged to the river, beaten by 12 men with sticks to affront, the chronicler wrote, the demon who had deceived men in this guise, and thrown into the Dnieper. Heralds then proclaimed that any inhabitant, rich or poor, who didn’t go to the river would risk the Prince’s displeasure, and the people were baptized in the Dnieper.^[212]

   He thus ordered that Perun should be bound to a horse’s tail and dragged along Borichev to the river. He appointed twelve men to beat the idol with sticks,Russian Primary Chronicle, entry for 6496 (988), tr. Samuel H. Cross (1930)

10. 999 to 1000 · Nidaros, Norway, and IcelandOlaf Tryggvason threatens Icelanders and takes hostages

    In 999 the priest Thangbrand came back from his mission to Iceland, and King Olaf Tryggvason, enraged that the Icelanders had mocked him, had all Icelanders in the town assembled and was going to kill them. Christian Icelanders persuaded him to spare them if they were baptized, saying Thangbrand had worked in Iceland with violence and manslaughter. Olaf sent Gissur the White and Hjalte Skeggjason to proclaim Christianity while he kept 4 leading Icelanders as hostages, and in 1000 the Althing made Christianity law.^[213]

    King Olaf was so enraged at this, that he ordered all the Icelanders to be assembled by sound of horn, and was going to kill all who were in the town,Snorri Sturluson, Heimskringla, King Olaf Trygvason’s Saga ch. 91, tr. Samuel Laing

The Age of Crusade 1000 to 1300

1. 1000 to 1018 · PolandTeeth knocked out for eating meat in Lent

   Thietmar of Merseburg, writing in 1018, recorded that in Boleslaw the Brave’s Poland people who ate meat after Septuagesima, the start of a 9-week Lent, had their teeth knocked out. Thietmar treated this severity with understanding, writing that the divine law, newly arisen in those lands, was better upheld by such force than by the fasts imposed by the bishops. Roman Michalowski dates the rule to no earlier than March 1000, when the archbishopric of Gniezno was founded.^[214]

   people who ate meat after the Septuagesima, had their teeth knocked outRoman Michalowski, summarising Thietmar of Merseburg, Chronicon VIII.2, in Acta Poloniae Historica 89 (2004), p. 5

2. 1018 to 1030 · Uplands and Stiklestad, NorwayOlaf Haraldsson maims and hangs those who keep heathen ways

   On his progress through the Uplands in 1018 with 300 men-at-arms, King Olaf Haraldsson examined each district’s Christianity and punished those who wouldn’t renounce heathen ways by banishment, cutting off hands or feet, putting out eyes, hanging or the sword. Before the battle of Stiklestad in 1030 he ordered the 900 heathens in his army to be baptized, saying he would have no heathens with him in battle; 400 accepted and 500 went home. His men painted the holy cross on their helmets and shields and went into battle crying “Forward, forward, Christ-men! cross-men! king’s men!”^[215]

   mutilated others of hands or feet, or stung their eyes out; hung up some, cut down some with the sword; but let none go unpunished who would not serve God.Snorri Sturluson, Heimskringla, Saga of Olaf Haraldson ch. 73, tr. Samuel Laing

3. 1064 · Barbastro, AragonSack of Barbastro

   In 1064 an army of Norman, French and Burgundian knights took Barbastro, a Muslim fortress town in Aragon. The monk Amatus of Montecassino wrote that the princes planned the expedition by divine inspiration so that the Christian religion would spread and crush the Saracens. The Cordoban historian Ibn Hayyan wrote that the victors massacred the garrison after promising its soldiers their lives, then killed about 6,000 inhabitants after their surrender, and that their commander took about 1,500 young girls as his share.^[216]

4. 1071 · Novgorod, Rus’Prince Gleb kills a pagan magician with an axe

   The Primary Chronicle records under 1071 that a magician who blasphemed against the Christian faith won over almost all of Novgorod, and the people wanted to kill their bishop. The bishop stood with his cross and called every loyal Christian to his side; Prince Gleb and his retainers joined him while the common people followed the magician. Gleb hid an axe under his garments, approached the magician and killed him with it, and the people dispersed.^[217]

   But Gleb drew forth the axe and smote him, so that he fell dead, and the people dispersed.Russian Primary Chronicle, entry for 6579 (1071), tr. Samuel H. Cross (1930)

5. 1098 · Antioch, SyriaFirst Crusade: the capture of Antioch

   The First Crusade took Antioch on 3 June 1098 after a siege of 8 months, the men shouting God wills it! as they climbed in. The Gesta Francorum says they killed the Turks and Saracens they found there, except those who fled into the citadel, until the city squares were full of corpses. Anselm of Ribemont wrote to the Archbishop of Reims that God had given the crusaders the city.^[218]

   We, however, devastated the city, and on that same day killed all the pagans in it, except some who were holding out in the castle of the city.Anselm of Ribemont, letter to Manasses, Archbishop of Reims (1098), in Krey, The First Crusade (1921), p. 160

6. 1098 · Ma’arrat al-Nu’man, SyriaFirst Crusade: massacre and cannibalism at Ma’arra

   Raymond of Saint-Gilles and Bohemond stormed Ma’arra on 11 December 1098 while priests in vestments prayed that God would exalt Christianity and cast down paganism. The Gesta Francorum says Bohemond promised to protect those who gathered in a palace, then had some of them killed and the rest taken to Antioch for sale. It adds that some crusaders cut the flesh of the dead into pieces and cooked it for food.^[219]

   However, when day came they killed many of them, whether man or woman, wherever they found them. No corner of the city was free from corpses of the SaracensGesta Francorum, tr. Krey, The First Crusade (1921), p. 206

7. 1121 to 1124 · Pomerania (Stettin)Polish sword and Bishop Otto’s axes convert Pomerania

   Otto of Bamberg’s biographer Ebo wrote that Duke Boleslaw III of Poland raised an army year after year to devastate the pagan lands so that, through fear of the sword, they would submit to the Christian faith. On Otto’s mission of 1124 his party found a town marked by burning and heaps of corpses, its people killed or carried off by the Polish duke. At Stettin, Herbord wrote, the bishop and priests attacked the temples with axes and all 4 were torn down, and Otto sent the heads of the 3-headed idol Triglav to Rome as proof of the conversion.^[220]

   He was wont year after year to raise a large army and to devastate the lands of the pagans in order that, through fear of the sword, they might be brought into subjection to the Christian faith.Ebo, Life of Otto, Book II ch. 18, tr. Charles H. Robinson (1920)

8. 1147 · Lisbon, PortugalSecond Crusade: the sack of Lisbon

   Anglo-Norman and Flemish crusaders who sailed from Dartmouth for the Second Crusade in May 1147 helped Afonso I of Portugal besiege the Moors in Lisbon. When the gates were opened, the archbishop and bishops entered with the Lord’s cross and set it on the highest tower to the praise and honor of God. The crusade chronicle De expugnatione Lyxbonensi records that the men of Cologne and the Flemings broke their oaths, plundered the city and cut the throat of its elderly bishop.^[221]

   They ran hither and yon. They plundered. They broke down doors. They rummaged through the interior of every house.De expugnatione Lyxbonensi (attributed on the Sourcebook page to Osbernus), tr. James Brundage, The Crusades: A Documentary History (1962)

9. 1168 · Arkona and Karenz, RügenDanish crusaders hack down Svantevit at Arkona

   Persuaded by Absalon, Bishop of Roskilde, to launch a crusade against the Wends, King Valdemar of Denmark landed on Rügen in 1168 and besieged Arkona, whose people agreed to surrender after his forces set fire to the walls and buildings. Valdemar ordered the statue of the god Svantevit destroyed, and his men hacked it down with axes while the townsfolk watched. At Karenz, Saxo Grammaticus wrote, Absalon’s men cut down the idols of Rugevit, Porevit and Porenut, made the people drag them out of town, and Absalon baptized the people.^[222]

   Every citizen was possessed by sheer panic when our henchmen began to apply their hatchets to its lower legs.Saxo Grammaticus, Gesta Danorum Book 14, tr. Peter Fisher, ed. Karsten Friis-Jensen (Oxford, 2015), as quoted on Medievalists.net

10. 1190 · York, EnglandMassacre of the Jews of York

    In March 1190 men of York who had taken the cross for Jerusalem joined local debtors in attacking the city’s Jews, offering those they caught outside the castle the choice of baptism or death. A Premonstratensian hermit urged on the siege of the royal castle where the Jews had fled, crying Down with the enemies of Christ! William of Newburgh wrote that after many inside killed themselves, the survivors who came out asking for baptism were slaughtered.^[223]

    those cruel swordsmen seized them as enemies, and slaughtered them in the midst of their continual cries for the baptism of Christ.William of Newburgh, Historia rerum Anglicarum IV.10, tr. Joseph Stevenson (1861)

11. 1191 · Acre, PalestineThird Crusade: Richard I kills the Acre prisoners

    After taking Acre, Richard I of England ordered on 20 August 1191 that 2,700 Muslim hostages be led out of the city and beheaded when Saladin didn’t meet the surrender terms. The crusader chronicle Itinerarium Peregrinorum says Richard wished to confound the Moslem law and vindicate Christianity, and that his men gave thanks for acting with the approval of divine grace. Saladin’s biographer Baha al-Din put the number killed at more than 3,000.^[224]

    to the number of more than three thousand, all tied together with ropes. The Franks rushed upon them all at once and slaughtered them in cold blood with sword and lance.Baha al-Din (Beha ed-Din), The Life of Saladin, ch. CXVI, Palestine Pilgrims’ Text Society translation (London, 1897), p. 273

12. 1198 · Holm and Riga, LivoniaPope grants crusade indulgence against the Livonians

    After pagan Livonians plotted to burn, kill or drown Bishop Berthold, the pope granted remission of sins to all who took the cross against them, and Berthold returned in 1198 with an army. The Livonians offered to let him keep those already baptized and lead others to the faith by words alone; he demanded their sons as hostages, and in the battle that followed Berthold was killed. His army then laid waste the Livonians’ crops with fire and sword until they renewed the peace, and about 50 were baptized at Holm and about 100 at Uexküll.^[225]

    The lord pope, therefore, granted remission of sins to all those who should take the cross and arm themselves against the perfidious Livonians.Henry of Livonia, Chronicle, Book I ch. 3, tr. James A. Brundage (1961)

13. 1210 · Minerve, LanguedocAlbigensian Crusade: Cathars burned at Minerve

    In 1210 Simon de Montfort’s crusaders took Minerve, entered behind the cross and raised the Lord’s cross on the tower. Peter of les Vaux-de-Cernay wrote that Montfort urged the assembled heretics to convert to the faith of Christ and, when they refused, had 140 or more of the Cathar perfects thrown together into a great fire. He added that 3 women were pulled from the pyre and reconciled to the Roman Church.^[226]

14. 1211 · Fellin (Viljandi), EstoniaCaptives slaughtered at Fellin when defenders refuse baptism

    In February 1211 an army of Germans, Livonians and Letts, gathered by threats of punishment, besieged the Estonian fort of Fellin after killing many pagans in the surrounding villages. Berthold of Wenden offered to return the captives alive if the defenders would renounce their gods; when they refused, Russin and the Letts slaughtered the captives and threw them into the moat. On the 6th day the survivors asked for the yoke of Christianity, and priests sprinkled the fort with holy water but put off baptism because of the great shedding of blood.^[227]

    If you will renounce the worship of your false gods, said Berthold, “and will believe with us in the true God, we will return these captives alive to you.Berthold of Wenden, as reported by Henry of Livonia, Chronicle XV.1, tr. James A. Brundage (1961)

15. 1211 · Lavaur, LanguedocAlbigensian Crusade: Lavaur taken, heretics burned

    In 1211 Montfort’s crusaders stormed Lavaur while the bishops and clergy sang Veni Creator Spiritus, and Peter of les Vaux-de-Cernay wrote that God willed its capture on the feast of the Finding of the Holy Cross. Montfort ordered Aimery of Montréal and about 80 knights hanged; when the gallows collapsed the crusaders killed the rest, and Aimery’s sister Guiraude, lady of the castle, was thrown into a well and stoned. Peter wrote that the crusaders then burned countless heretics with extreme joy.^[228]

16. 1212 · Las Navas de Tolosa and Úbeda, AndalusiaLas Navas de Tolosa and the destruction of Úbeda

    Pope Innocent III granted remission of sins to those who joined Alfonso VIII of Castile against the Almohads, and on 16 July 1212 the Christian kings attacked in God’s name to fight for the Catholic faith. Alfonso wrote to the pope that 100,000 Muslims fell in the battle against some 20 or 30 Christians. At Úbeda, he reported, about 60,000 Saracens perished, some killed and others taken as captives, and the town was razed.^[229]

    Some 60,000 Saracens perished there: some we killed, others were taken as captives into the service of the Christians and of the monasteries which needed to be repaired in the border regions.Alfonso VIII of Castile, letter to Pope Innocent III (July 1212), tr. Colin Smith, Christians and Moors in Spain

17. 1215 to 1216 · Harrien (Harju), EstoniaCrusaders kill all the males of Harrien

    In November 1215 a council in Rome under Pope Innocent renewed Bishop Albert’s authority to enlist pilgrims for Livonia for the remission of their sins. On 15 August 1216 the Rigans, Livonians, Letts and pilgrims entered the Estonian province of Harrien. Henry of Livonia, who rode with them, wrote that they burned and devastated everything, killed all the males, captured the women and children and drove off the horses and flocks.^[230]

    When we arrived there, we divided our army among all the roads, villages, and provinces of that land. We burned and devastated everything, killed all the malesHenry of Livonia, eyewitness, Chronicle XX.2, tr. James A. Brundage (1961)

18. 1219 to 1220 · Lyndanise (Tallinn) and Wierland, EstoniaDanish crusade at Lyndanise; elder hanged over a rival baptism

    In 1219 the king of Denmark, Valdemar II, came with the archbishop of Lund and other bishops to the Estonian province of Reval and built a new fort at Lyndanise. When the Estonians attacked, the Danes and their allies killed more than 1,000 of them, and the king’s men fought the people of Reval throughout that year until they accepted baptism. In the rivalry with Riga that followed, the Danes later hanged Tabelin, elder of Purdiviru, because he had been baptized by the Rigan priests.^[231]

    The bishops remained there with the king’s men, who throughout that year fought with the people of Reval until at last they received the sacrament of baptism.Henry of Livonia, Chronicle XXIII.2, tr. James A. Brundage (1961)

19. 1219 · Marmande, GasconyAlbigensian Crusade: massacre at Marmande

    When Marmande fell in June 1219 to the crusade forces of Louis of France and Amaury of Montfort, the crusaders massacred the population. The historian Malcolm Barber writes that for the crusaders, heretics and their defenders fell into the same category as Saracens, and quotes the Song of the Cathar Wars on lords, ladies, children, women and men cut to pieces. The poem says Marmande was then razed and set alight.^[232]

    Not a man or a woman was left alive, neither old nor young, no living creature, unless any had managed to hide.Song of the Cathar Wars (anonymous continuator of William of Tudela), as quoted by Malcolm Barber (2001)

20. 1227 · Mona (Muhu) and Waldia (Valjala), OeselCrusade over the ice to baptize Oesel

    After the legate, Bishop William of Modena, preached the cross against the Oeselians, an army of nearly 20,000 Germans, Livonians, Letts and Estonians crossed the frozen sea to Oesel in January 1227 to bring the islanders to baptism. Henry wrote that the defenders of the fort of Mona deserved to be killed rather than baptized; the Germans stormed it, killed or captured its people and burned it. The people of Waldia, dismayed by the slaying at Mona, begged for baptism, and priests baptized many thousands and threw out their god Tharapita.^[233]

    They deserved to be killed, rather than to be baptized.Henry of Livonia, Chronicle XXX.4, tr. James A. Brundage (1961)

21. 1229 · MallorcaJames I of Aragon conquers Mallorca

    James I of Aragon wrote that he came to Mallorca to serve God and conquer it, and the Bishop of Barcelona told him that pursuing the enemies of the faith and the cross would win him the kingdom of Heaven. When his army stormed the city, James wrote, 30,000 Muslim men and women fled to the hills, and of those who hid in the houses 20,000 were killed. At the gate of the Almudaina his men killed 300 who had been shut out.^[234]

    they did not hide themselves so well as that twenty thousand were not killed at the taking of the city.James I of Aragon, Llibre dels Fets, ch. LXXXVI, tr. John Forster (1883)

22. 1232 to 1234 · Steding and Altenesch, near BremenCrusade against the Stedinger peasants

    In October 1232 Pope Gregory IX ordered bishops to preach the cross against the Stedinger, free peasants of the lower Weser whom a synod at Bremen had banned as heretics in 1230 during their long dispute with the archbishop over tithes and lordship. In June 1233 crusaders devastated eastern Steding, killing without regard to age or sex and burning every man they captured. At Altenesch on 27 May 1234 a much larger crusader army broke the Stedinger and left 6,000 dead on the field, besides those drowned in the Weser.^[235]

    Six thousand were left dead upon the field, besides those drowned in the Weser in the vain attempt at flight,Henry Charles Lea, A History of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, vol. 3 (1888), ch. 4

23. 1242 to 1289 · Kurland and Semigallia (Latvia)Kurs killed until baptized; Semigallia starved out

    In the conquest of Kurland from about 1242, the Master of the Teutonic Knights in Livonia built the castle of Goldingen and attacked Amboten; the Livonian Rhymed Chronicle says many Kurs were killed before they grudgingly accepted baptism. In the winter of 1288 to 1289 an army of more than 6,000 men attacked the Semigallian castles of Racketen and Doblein and killed everyone caught in the outerworks. Repeated raids that cut down the ripe grain brought famine, until the Semigallians abandoned both castles and fled, some to Lithuania.^[236]

    Many Kurs were killed before the land was conquered, but to break a stubborn stone, one has to strike hard.Livonian Rhymed Chronicle (anonymous, c. 1290), tr. Jerry C. Smith and William L. Urban (1977)

24. 1248 to 1254 · France and Caesarea, PalestineLouis IX: defend the faith with the sword

    Louis IX of France told Jean de Joinville that only a very good scholar should argue with Jews, and that a layman who heard the Christian law defamed should defend it with the sword alone. Joinville wrote that the king had foul oaths about God or the Virgin severely punished, and that at Caesarea, which Louis fortified during his crusade, he saw a goldsmith put on a ladder with a pig’s entrails hung round his neck. He heard that Louis later had a Paris burgher seared through the nose and lips for the same offence.^[237]

    a layman, if he hear the Christian law defamed, should undertake its defence with the sword alone, and that he should use to run them straight through the body as far in as it will go!Louis IX, as reported by Jean de Joinville, Life of Saint Louis, tr. Ethel Wedgwood (1906)

Heretics, Jews and the Last Pagans of Europe 1300 to 1492

1. 1306 to 1307 · Vercelli and Biella, PiedmontCrusade against Fra Dolcino and the Apostolic Brethren

   Pope Clement V issued bulls for a crusade against Fra Dolcino’s Apostolic Brethren and offered plenary indulgence to all who served 30 days in the army of the Lord against them. When the crusaders took the last entrenchments on 23 March 1307, the chronicler of Dolcino’s heresy wrote, more than 1,000 heretics died by fire, river and sword. After an assembly at Vercelli abandoned the captives to the secular arm, Margherita was burned before Dolcino’s eyes on 1 June 1307 and he was torn to pieces with red-hot pincers.^[238]

   Thus they who made sport of God the Eternal Father and of the Catholic faith came, on the day of the Last Supper, through hunger, steel, fire, pestilence, and all wretchedness, to shame and disgraceful death, as they deserved.anonymous Historia Dulcini heresiarchae (Muratori IX, 439), as translated in Lea, vol. III, ch. II

2. 1320 · Southern FranceShepherds’ Crusade massacres the Jews of the south

   In 1320 a popular crusade movement of shepherds in southwestern France, aiming at war on the Muslims of Spain, turned on the Jews and put to death those who refused baptism. At Toulouse they invaded the Jewish quarter, looting houses and killing anyone who refused baptism, and at Verdun-sur-Garonne and Castelsarrasin several hundred Jews were killed or killed themselves. Jewish chroniclers counted 120 communities that suffered, and the Inquisition wouldn’t let the forcibly baptized return to Judaism.^[239]

3. 1336 · Pilėnai, LithuaniaPilėnai defenders burn their goods and die

   On 25 February 1336 a large army of the Teutonic Knights attacked the Lithuanian castle of Pilėnai. The Order’s chronicler Wigand of Marburg, who called the attackers “the Christian army” and the defenders “idolaters”, wrote that the Prussians hurled fire, logs and rocks at the castle. Losing hope, the defenders threw their wealth into the fire and killed themselves, and their duke pierced his wife with a sword and threw her into the flames.^[240]

   Upon seeing the Christian army, the idolaters became very afraid, losing hope of defending the castle. They threw a heap of the wealth into the fire and killed themselves.Wigand of Marburg, Chronicle (Latin version), quoted in English by Darius Baronas, Orbis Lituaniae

4. 1387 · Vilnius, LithuaniaJagiełło destroys Lithuania’s temple, groves and sacred fire

   Jan Długosz wrote that Władysław Jagiełło, bound by oath under his treaty with Poland to turn the Lithuanians from idolatry, went to Lithuania in 1387 to baptize it. The king ordered the temple and its sacrificial altar destroyed, the sacred groves cut down and their fences broken, the household snakes killed, and the sacred fire at Vilnius put out before the eyes of the people. Długosz wrote that the people wept and wailed but didn’t dare to grumble, and that they were baptized in groups and given woollen clothes from Poland.^[241]

   The king also ordered to destroy the temple and the altar on which the sacrifices were slain; moreover, he ordered the groves in the forests, which were considered sacred, to be cut down and their fences broken downJan Długosz, Annales (written 1460s to 1480), as translated in Augustinas Dainys (2025) from the Russian edition of 1962

5. 1391 · Seville, Castile and AragonMassacres and forced baptisms of Jews in Spain

   Ferrand Martinez, archdeacon of Ecija, preached for years against the Jews of Seville, and on 8 December 1390, as vicar-general, he ordered the clergy to demolish all synagogues in their parishes. On 6 June 1391 the people of Seville attacked the Jews, killing several thousand and forcing many to accept baptism. The violence spread through Castile, Aragon and Majorca, where many thousands were slain or forced into the Church.^[242]

6. 1402 to 1496 · Lanzarote and Tenerife, Canary IslandsThe conquest and conversion of the Canary Islanders

   In 1402 Jean de Béthencourt and Gadifer de La Salle began the conquest of the Canary Islands from Lanzarote, and Béthencourt asked the King of Castile for leave to conquer the islands and bring them to the Christian faith. Le Canarien, the expedition’s chronicle by Pierre Bontier and Jean Le Verrier, records that more than 80 men, women and children of Lanzarote were baptised at Pentecost, and that the island’s king, who asked for baptism on 20 February 1404, was baptised with his household and named Louis.

   In 1435 Pope Eugene IV’s bull Sicut dudum ordered Christians to free within 15 days the islanders they had enslaved, some of them already baptised, on pain of excommunication. During the conquest of Tenerife in 1494, Alonso de Espinosa records, Spaniards lured allied Guanches onto their ships and carried them off to be sold as slaves.^[243]

   to kill all the men of the country who bore arms, and to save the women and children, and have them baptisedLe Canarien, ch. 34, the resolution of Gadifer de La Salle and his companions on Lanzarote if they saw no other course open to them; tr. R. H. Major, The Canarian (Hakluyt Society, 1872), p. 59

7. 1419 to 1421 · BohemiaPapal crusade against the Hussites of Bohemia

   In March 1420 a legate of Pope Martin V, empowered to proclaim a crusade with Holy Land indulgences, had the Prague merchant John Krasa dragged at a horse’s tail and burned at Breslau for defending Jan Hus, and 2 days later proclaimed the crusade. Henry Charles Lea put the crusading army that invaded Bohemia in 1421 at 150,000 men, and wrote that during the siege of Prague all Bohemians captured were burned as heretics. Earlier, German Catholic miners of Kutná Hora (Kuttenberg) threw every Calixtin they could seize into abandoned mines.^[244]

Conquest and Conversion Across the World 1492 to 1600

1. 1493 to 1504 · Hispaniola (Haiti and the Dominican Republic)Hispaniola: gibbets of 13 and the Xaragua burning

   Las Casas, who wrote that he was an eyewitness, said Spaniards on Hispaniola built low gibbets holding 13 people each, which they said honoured the Redeemer and his 12 apostles, and burned the victims as they hung. He wrote that in the kingdom of Xaragua a governor with 60 horse and 30 foot summoned about 300 nobles, burned the leading ones in a thatched barn and speared the rest. The queen, Anacaona, was hanged.^[245]

   Thirteen Persons in Honour and Reverence (as they said blasphemously) of our Redeemer and his Twelve Apostles, under which they made a Fire to burn them to Ashes whilst hanging on themBartolomé de las Casas, Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies (1552), Of the Island Hispaniola, anonymous English translation, London 1689

2. 1499 to 1501 · Granada and the AlpujarrasForced conversion of Granada’s Muslims

   In 1499 Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros (Ximenes) pressed the conversion of Granada’s Muslims despite their surrender guarantees, chaining those who resisted and having 5,000 of their religious books publicly burned. After a riot he offered the people the choice of baptism or punishment, and 50,000 to 70,000 were baptized in the city and the Vega. Henry Charles Lea wrote that in the Alpujarras revolts that followed, until January 1501, massacre and baptism went hand in hand.^[246]

3. 1502 · Castile and LeonCastile orders its Muslims to convert or leave

   Under Queen Isabella, whose clerical advisers included Ximenes, Castile issued a pragmática on 12 February 1502 ordering all Moors to leave the kingdoms of Leon and Castile by the end of April, citing the gratitude due to God, to be shown by expelling his enemies. Exiles had to leave behind boys under 14 and girls under 12, couldn’t take gold or silver, and could sail only from ports of Biscay. Henry Charles Lea concluded that these conditions made departure so hard that conversion was the real intent.^[247]

4. 1511 to 1512 · CubaCuba: Hatuey burned alive after a friar’s offer of heaven

   Las Casas wrote that the Spaniards crossed to Cuba in 1511 and that the cacique Hatuey (Hathney in this translation), a refugee from Hispaniola, fought them until he was captured and burned alive. At the stake a Franciscan friar promised him eternal glory if he believed the articles of the faith and everlasting torment if he didn’t. Told that heaven was open to all who were good, Hatuey said he would rather go to hell than share it with the Spaniards.^[248]

   that he would rather go to Hell then Heaven, for fear he should cohabit in the same Mansion with so Sanguinary and Bloody a NationBartolomé de las Casas, Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies (1552), Of the Isle of Cuba, anonymous English translation, London 1689

5. 1519 · Cholula, MexicoCholula: Cortés’s surprise attack kills more than 3,000

   At Cholula Cortés shut the city’s lords in a chamber and, at the firing of a musket, had his men fall on the crowds near his quarters. He wrote to Charles V that more than 3,000 people died within 2 hours. His editor Francis MacNutt wrote that Cortés held the land to be Spain’s by Pope Alexander’s bull and saw rescuing idolaters for the faith as a chief part of his mission.^[249]

   we did such execution that, in two hours, more than three thousand persons had perished.Hernán Cortés, Second Letter to Charles V (30 October 1520), tr. Francis Augustus MacNutt, Letters of Cortes, vol. 1 (1908)

6. 1519 to 1520 · Tenochtitlan (Mexico City)Tenochtitlan: Cortés casts the idols down the temple steps

   In the great temple of Tenochtitlan Cortés threw the principal idols from their pedestals down the temple steps and put images of Our Lady and the saints in their chapels. He wrote that Moctezuma and the inhabitants protested that the people would rise against him if this became known. He answered that they must learn there was but one God, whom they were bound to adore.^[250]

   the principal ones, in which the people have greatest faith and confidence, I precipitated from their pedestals, and cast them down the steps of the templeHernán Cortés, Second Letter to Charles V (1520), in Oliver J. Thatcher, ed., The Library of Original Sources, vol. 5 (1907), Internet Modern History Sourcebook, Fordham University

7. 1520 · Tenochtitlan (Mexico City)Toxcatl: Alvarado’s men massacre the dancers at the temple

   While Cortés was away in May 1520, Pedro de Alvarado refused to let the statue of Huitzilopochtli be restored to its place in the great temple, from which it had been thrown out to make room for altars to the Virgin and Saint Christopher. At the feast of Toxcatl he tortured 3 youths meant for sacrifice, one of whom died, to obtain testimony of a plot. His men then fell on some 600 unarmed nobles and priests dancing at the great temple before about 3,000 spectators and slaughtered them without quarter.^[251]

   This slaughter in the Sacred Patio went on for three hours.Aztec account of the massacre, in Miguel León-Portilla, ed., The Broken Spears: The Aztec Account of the Conquest of Mexico (Boston: Beacon Press, 1962), pp. 129 to 131, Internet Modern History Sourcebook, Fordham University

8. 1521 to 1526 · ValenciaForced baptism of the Muslims of Valencia

   After Germanía rebels forcibly baptized Muslims around Valencia in 1521, Pope Clement VII released Charles V from his 1518 oath not to force conversions, and in 1525 Charles told the Muslims he had been inspired by Almighty God that His law should prevail and commanded their baptism. A decree ordered every Moor to be baptized by 8 December or leave; Fray Antonio de Guevara boasted of baptizing 20,000 families, and the Moriscos said they were penned and sprinkled with water. The revolt in the Sierra de Espadán was put down with considerable slaughter, and the converts’ Korans were burned.^[252]

9. 1521 · Tenochtitlan (Mexico City)Fall of Tenochtitlan: Cortés counts tens of thousands dead

   Cortés’s ordinances issued at Tlaxcala declared, in his editor MacNutt’s summary, that the war would be unjust if fought for any motive other than overthrowing idolatry and converting the Indians. In his Third Letter Cortés wrote that on one day of the siege the dead and prisoners numbered more than 40,000, and that more than 50,000 had died from salt water, starvation and pestilence. In his Fifth Letter he listed destroying idolatries and planting the Catholic faith among his services to the emperor.^[253]

   It appears they had perished to the number of more than fifty thousand, from the salt water which they drank, or from starvation, and pestilence.Hernán Cortés, Third Letter to Charles V (1522), tr. Francis Augustus MacNutt, Letters of Cortes, vol. 2 (1908)

10. 1521 to 1525 · Kingdom of Valencia, Crown of AragonThe Germanía rebels force baptism on Valencia’s Muslims, and Charles V makes conversion compulsory

    In July 1521, after Muslim vassals fought for the nobles against the Germanía revolt, rebel bands forced baptism on the Muslims (Mudéjars) of the places they took; at Polop about 800 Muslims who’d surrendered on a promise of safety were massacred. Witnesses told a 1524 inquiry that friars carrying crucifixes proclaimed that all Moors must turn Christians or die.

    In 1525 a junta under Inquisitor-General Manrique ruled the baptisms valid, and on 25 November Charles V ordered every Muslim of Valencia out of Spain by 31 December 1525, and those of Aragon and Catalonia by 31 January 1526. A further edict set 8 December for baptism, and the friar Antonio de Guevara claimed he had baptised 27,000 Muslim families in Valencia.^[254]

    Long live the faith of Christ and war to the Saracens!A Franciscan friar brandishing a crucifix at the gate of his convent in the city of Valencia, 4 July 1521, as reported by Henry Charles Lea, The Moriscos of Spain (1901), p. 63, citing Danvila y Collado, La Germanía de Valencia, pp. 146 and 471

11. 1522 to 1539 · Texcoco and central MexicoNew Spain: friars burn temples; a Texcoco lord burned

    Bancroft wrote that at Texcoco the friars led a chanting procession to the chief temple, broke its idols and set the building on fire, and that the Franciscans claimed to have destroyed more than 500 temples and 20,000 images within 7 years. Bishop Juan de Zumárraga had a lord of Texcoco, Don Carlos, burned for making sacrifices to idols. When this became known in Spain, the Inquisition was forbidden to proceed against Indians.^[255]

    A chief of Tezcuco, Carlos de Mendoza, was burned by order of Bishop Zumarraga for having made sacrifices to idols.Hubert Howe Bancroft, History of Mexico, vol. 2 (1883), chapter on church government, note 25

12. 1525 · Alsace, Thuringia and Franconia, Holy Roman EmpireLuther urges the princes to slay the rebel peasants

    In May 1525 Martin Luther urged the German princes to kill the rebel peasants and promised heaven to those who fell in the fight. Duke Anthony of Lorraine treated the repression as a crusade against Luther, and on 27 May the Bavarian chancellor reported that Anthony had already destroyed 20,000 peasants in Alsace. A moderate estimate put the victims across Germany at 100,000, and at Kitzingen Casimir, brother of Margrave George, put out the eyes of 59 townsfolk.^[256]

    Stab, smite, slay, whoever can. If you die in doing it, well for you! A more blessed death can never be yours, for you die in obeying the divine Word and commandment in Romans xiiiMartin Luther, Against the Robbing and Murdering Hordes of Peasants (May 1525), trans. Charles M. Jacobs, Works of Martin Luther, Philadelphia edition, vol. 4 (1931), p. 253;

13. 1532 to 1533 · Cajamarca, PeruCajamarca: Valverde’s Bible, the ambush and Atahualpa’s garrotting

    At Cajamarca in November 1532 the Dominican friar Vicente de Valverde approached the Inca Atahualpa with a cross and a Bible and urged him, on the part of God, to be the Christians’ friend. When Atahualpa threw the book down, Pizarro seized him and the Spaniards charged; Pizarro’s secretary Francisco de Xerez counted 2,000 killed in the square and on the plain. Atahualpa was later baptised by Valverde at his execution and strangled at a pole instead of being burned.^[257]

    We come to conquer this land by his command, that all may come to a knowledge of God, and of His Holy Catholic FaithFrancisco Pizarro to the captive Atahualpa, as reported by his secretary Francisco de Xerez (1534), tr. Clements R. Markham (Hakluyt Society, 1872)

14. 1534 to 1535 · Münster, Westphalia, Holy Roman EmpireAnabaptist Münster: expulsions, siege and death by red-hot pincers

    In February 1534 the Anabaptist prophet Jan Matthys demanded in the name of God the expulsion from Münster of all who refused conversion, and old people, mothers with infants and barefoot children were driven out into the snow. Bishop Franz von Waldeck besieged the city for a year and a half and took it by treachery on the night of 24 June 1535, and a slaughter followed. Jan of Leyden and Knipperdollinck were tortured to death in the market place with red-hot pincers, and the Bishop’s authority and Catholicism were re-established.^[258]

15. 1541 to 1567 · Goa and Salsete, IndiaSalsete, Goa: viceroy orders temples burned; 280 destroyed

    In 1541 a policy called Rigour of Mercy was adopted in Goa and Hindu temples there were destroyed. In 1567 the viceroy, urged by the archbishop and the provincial, ordered Diogo Rodrigues, captain of the fort of Rachol, to burn down as many temples of Salsete as possible. Working with the missionaries, Rodrigues burned temples and broke their images, some of which were melted into candlesticks for local churches; the chronicler Francisco de Souza counted 280 temples destroyed.^[259]

16. 1545 · Mérindol, Cabrières and the Luberon, Provence, FranceMassacre of the Waldensians of Mérindol and Cabrières

    On 1 January 1545 royal letters patent, obtained by the Parlement of Aix, ordered that all found guilty of the Waldensian heresy be exterminated. After the First President, Jean Meynier d’Oppède, read the decree to the Parlement on 12 April, Mérindol, Cabrières and other villages were in ashes within a week, and A. A. Tilley records 800 people, including women and children, put to death at Cabrières alone. After nearly 2 months it was computed that 3,000 men, women and children had been killed and 22 villages burned, and the strongest men were sent to the galleys.^[260]

17. 1561 · San Sisto, La Guardia and Montalto, Calabria, Kingdom of NaplesInquisition and viceregal troops destroy the Waldensians of Calabria

    In March 1561 the Roman Inquisition’s commissioner in Calabria wrote to Rome that little could be done with the Waldensians except extermination, and the viceroy of Naples sent troops and offered a bounty of 10 ducats for a heretic brought in dead. On 1 June soldiers set fire to San Sisto, on 5 June they sacked La Guardia and took about 700 prisoners to Montalto, and on 11 June at Montalto an executioner cut the throats of 88 Waldensians. A Catholic witness wrote that 2,000 souls had been executed in 11 days and 1,600 prisoners condemned.^[261]

    Pocho rimedio credo si possi fare [con questi popoli] se non l’esterminio se non de tucti, almeno d’alchuniThe commissioner of the Roman Inquisition in Calabria, letter to Rome, March 1561, as quoted by Peyronel Rambaldi and Fratini (source page, p. 48)

18. 1562 · Maní, Yucatán, MexicoManí: Landa’s idolatry inquiry, torture and burned books

    In 1562 the Franciscan provincial Diego de Landa led an inquiry into idolatry in the province of Maní in which testimony was extracted by torture, and he held an auto de fe at Maní on 12 July 1562. Testimony cited by Alfred Tozzer counted 4,549 people tortured and 6,330 whipped, shorn and fined, and later testimony said 157 died from torture that year. Of the Maya books Landa wrote that we burned them all.^[262]

    we burned them all, which they regretted to an amazing degreeDiego de Landa, Relación de las cosas de Yucatán (about 1566), tr. Alfred M. Tozzer (1941)

19. 1562 to 1587 · Japan (Ōmura domain, Kyushu)Japan: a Christian daimyo burns temples; Hideyoshi’s 1587 edicts

    Historian Alec Ryrie wrote that Ōmura Sumitada, baptised in 1562 as the first Christian daimyo, purged Buddhist worship from his territory, burning temples and destroying statues, against Jesuit advice. In 1587 Toyotomi Hideyoshi’s edict expelling the missionaries charged that they made their converts destroy shrines and temples. A second edict banned lords from forcing farmers registered at temples to become followers of the padres.^[263]

    let them destroy shrines and temples. This is an unheard of outrage.Toyotomi Hideyoshi, Expulsion of Missionaries (1587), art. 2, tr. David J. Lu, Japan: A Documentary History (1997), via Columbia University Asia for Educators:

20. 1562 · Wassy (Vassy), Champagne, FranceThe Duke of Guise’s men fire on Huguenots at Wassy

    On Sunday 1 March 1562 the Duke of Guise and a large band of armed retainers came upon a Huguenot service in a barn at Vassy; when some of his men tried to push in, stones flew, the Duke was struck, and his attendants fired on the crowd. Of 600 or 700 worshippers 60 were killed and many wounded. Catholic apologists compared the Duke to Moses and Jehu, another slaughter of Huguenots followed at Sens, and by April war was seen as inevitable.^[264]

21. 1567 to 1573 · Brussels, Mechelen and Naarden, Spanish NetherlandsAlba’s Council of Troubles and the sacks of 1572

    Philip II sent the Duke of Alba with 10,000 Spanish and Neapolitan soldiers in August 1567 to make the 17 provinces a secure bulwark of the Church of Rome, and Alba’s Council of Troubles, called the Blood Council, became his chief instrument against heretics and agitators. More than 1,000 people were executed under Alba and 11,130 lost their property. In 1572 he gave Mechelen to his soldiers for 3 days of plunder although it had surrendered without a fight, and after the punishment of Naarden in December he reported to the king that not one child had escaped.^[265]

    »Nicht ein Kind ist entkommen.«The Duke of Alba to Philip II after the sack of Naarden, December 1572, as quoted in German translation by Gorch Pieken (source page); English: Not one child has escaped.

22. 1568 to 1571 · Kingdom of GranadaWar of the Alpujarras and deportation of Granada’s Moriscos

    A decree published in Granada on 1 January 1567 banned Arabic, Moorish dress, names and baths, and Espinosa refused any suspension because religious men had told Philip II he was responsible for the souls of the apostates. The Moriscos rose in December 1568, and Henry Charles Lea wrote that the war, which lasted into 1571, was waged with ferocious greed and cruelty, the men often massacred and women and children sold by the thousands. On 25 October 1570 Philip ordered Don John of Austria to deport all the Moriscos of Granada to other provinces.^[266]

23. 1578 to 1579 · Brunei, Borneo, and the southern PhilippinesBrunei: Sande demands an end to Muslim preaching

    Governor Francisco de Sande wrote to the ruler of Brunei that the Castilians were sent to proclaim the law of the true God, and demanded that Brunei admit Christian preachers and send no more preachers of Islam to the islands. His fleet took the city in April 1578 and he had objects removed from its mosque. His instructions of January 1579 ordered the house where Islam was taught on Mindanao burned and reported that the mosque at Brunei was already burned.^[267]

    inasmuch as the doctrine of Mahoma is a false and evil law, and the religion of the Christians alone is true, holy, and good.Governor Francisco de Sande, letter to the king of Borneo (1578), in Blair and Robertson, The Philippine Islands, vol. 4

24. 1588 · Dondra (Devinuwara), southern Sri LankaDondra, Ceylon: Portuguese raze the great Tenavaram temple

    In 1588 the Portuguese captain Thomé de Sousa raided the south coast of Ceylon. Diogo do Couto wrote that he swore to destroy the great Vishnu temple at Dondra, the island’s most visited shrine after Adam’s Peak, to rid the heathens of their belief in its god; his soldiers broke more than 1,000 idols, demolished the shrines and burned what they didn’t carry off. For greater insult they slaughtered cows inside the temple.^[268]

    swore to destroy that pagode, in order to rid the imagination of the heathens of that superstitionDiogo do Couto, Da Ásia, Decade 10, Book 10, ch. 15, tr. Donald Ferguson (1908)

25. 1599 · Acoma Pueblo, New MexicoAcoma: friars define a just war; captives’ feet cut off

    After Acoma warriors killed Juan de Zaldívar and a dozen of his men, Governor Juan de Oñate asked Fray Alonso Martínez to define a just war; the friar concluded that a Christian prince might destroy any obstacle to peace, and 5 Franciscan priests agreed. In January 1599 Spanish troops sacked Acoma and took more than 500 men, women and children captive. Oñate sentenced Acoma men aged 25 and older to lose one foot and serve 20 years as slaves.^[269]

    wage war and destroy any obstacle in the way of peace until it is effectively achievedFray Alonso Martínez, opinion on just war for Governor Oñate (January 1599), as quoted by John L. Kessell, Kiva, Cross, and Crown (National Park Service, 1979)

Wars of Religion and Missions 1600 to 1800

1. 1609 to 1614 · SpainExpulsion of the Moriscos from Spain

   After Archbishop Juan de Ribera of Valencia sent memorials urging expulsion, Philip III’s edict expelling Valencia’s Moriscos was published on 22 September 1609, and Ribera declared that the royal resolution came from heaven. Over 150,000 people were shipped out of Valencia, and in the Val del Aguar, where some resisted, 3,000 Moriscos were slain and only 1 Spaniard died. Lea notes contemporary estimates of all the exiles from Spain ranging from 300,000 to 3,000,000, and a Lucchese envoy’s report of 600,000 in 1610.^[270]

2. 1617 to 1621 · Archdiocese of Lima, PeruPeru: extirpators burn huacas and ancestor mummies

   The Jesuit Pablo José de Arriaga accompanied the idolatry inspector Hernando de Avendaño from February 1617 to July 1618 and published an eyewitness tally of what they found in 31 towns. He counted 679 ministers of idolatry given penance, 603 principal huacas and 3,418 household idols (conopas) taken, and 617 ancestor mummies (malquis), and described ancestral bodies and huacas being burned. He wrote that everything that could be burned was burned at once and the rest broken to pieces.^[271]

   Todo lo que se puede quemar, se quema luego, y lo demás se haze pedaços.Pablo José de Arriaga, Extirpación de la idolatría del Pirú (Lima, 1621), ch. 1; Spanish original (Everything that can be burned is burned at once, and the rest is broken to pieces)

3. 1620 · Tirano, Teglio and Sondrio, Valtelline, northern ItalyCatholic rising massacres the Protestants of the Valtelline

   On 19 July 1620 Catholic Valtelliners led by Robustelli began a planned murder of all Protestants in the valley, then ruled by the Grisons. At Tirano about 60 people died and the preacher Basso’s head was placed on his own pulpit for the derision of Catholic children; at Sondrio the minister and 140 of his flock were killed in the square while the crowd cried revenge for the Catholic archpriest Rusca. The killing lasted 14 days and took about 600 lives.^[272]

   This is our revenge for Rusca.Cry of the Catholic crowd at Sondrio, July 1620, as reported by Horatio F. Brown, Cambridge Modern History, vol. 4, ch. 2, p. 49

4. 1621 to 1627 · Prague and the Kingdom of BohemiaFerdinand II executes Bohemian rebels and drives out Protestants

   After the rout of the Bohemian rebels at the White Hill in 1620, 27 condemned leaders of the Bohemian revolt were put to death in Prague on 21 June 1621. Emperor Ferdinand II, set on his vow to extirpate heresy, expelled all Protestant clergy from Bohemia in 1623, banned every service except the Catholic in 1624, and enforced conversion by billeting soldiers on those who refused. In 1627 Protestant recusants were given 6 months to sell up and leave, and more than 30,000 families abandoned Bohemia.^[273]

5. 1622 to 1632 · EthiopiaEthiopia: imposed Catholicism ends in civil war and 8,000 dead

   Emperor Susenyos proclaimed Roman Catholicism the religion of Ethiopia in 1622, and after the Catholic patriarch Afonso Mendes arrived in 1624 the religious quarrel turned into rebellion and open warfare. After the battle of Wayna Dega on 2 June 1632, his son Fasilidas reminded him that the 8,000 dead on the field were his own subjects, some of them kinsmen. Susenyos restored the Ethiopian Orthodox Church and abdicated.^[274]

6. 1631 · Magdeburg, Holy Roman EmpireImperial and Catholic League troops sack Protestant Magdeburg

   On 20 May 1631 Imperial troops and the army of the Catholic League, led into the breach by Pappenheim, stormed the Protestant city of Magdeburg; fires spread and soldiers plundered and murdered at will. The mayor Otto von Guericke, an eyewitness, wrote that the soldiers were driven partly by hatred of those who held to the Augsburg Confession, that women were raped, and that some 20,000 people died. General Tilly had the burnt corpses carted off and dumped into the Elbe.^[275]

   These had all become very violent and cruel, partly from their common hatred for those who adhered to the Confession of AugsburgOtto von Guericke, mayor of Magdeburg, chronicle of the siege and destruction of Magdeburg, ed. F. W. Hoffmann (1860), pp. 82 to 87, trans. Julie K. Tanaka (GHDI)

7. 1637 · Mystic River, ConnecticutMystic: Pequot fort burned, 600 to 700 killed

   Captain John Mason’s force attacked the Pequot fort on the Mystic River and set its wigwams on fire. Mason wrote that in little more than an hour 600 or 700 people were destroyed, with 7 captured and about 7 escaping, and that the Lord judged among the Heathen, filling the Place with dead Bodies. Captain John Underhill answered critics that they had sufficient light from the word of God.^[276]

   Sometimes the Scripture declareth women and children must perish with their parents.Captain John Underhill, Newes from America (London, 1638), reprinted in History of the Pequot War (Cleveland, 1897)

8. 1649 · Drogheda, IrelandCromwell storms Drogheda and puts its defenders to the sword

   On 10 September 1649 Oliver Cromwell’s army stormed Drogheda after its governor refused to surrender, and Cromwell forbade his men to spare any in arms. He reported that about 2,000 were put to the sword that night, near 1,000 of them in St Peter’s church where Catholics had lately said public Mass, that he had the church steeple set on fire with men inside, and that all the friars but 2 were knocked on the head. He called it a righteous judgment of God and wrote that God alone should have the glory.^[277]

   I am persuaded that this is a righteous judgment of God upon these barbarous wretches, who have imbrued their hands in so much innocent bloodOliver Cromwell to William Lenthall, Speaker of the Parliament of England, Dublin, 17 September 1649 (Letter CV in Carlyle’s edition)

9. 1655 · Waldensian valleys of Piedmont (Luserna, Angrogna), Duchy of SavoySavoyard troops massacre the Waldensians of Piedmont

   On 25 January 1655 Andrea Gastaldo, the Duke of Savoy’s Conservator General of the Holy Faith, ordered every Protestant family in Luserna and neighbouring villages to leave within 3 days on pain of death, unless they showed within 20 days that they had become Catholics. Troops and irregulars under the Marquis of Pianezza then attacked the Waldensian valleys. Captain du Petit Bourg, who commanded a regiment sent to join Pianezza, declared in November 1655 that he saw people of every age and sex massacred, dismembered, hanged, burned and raped, and that Pianezza ordered prisoners given no quarter.^[278]

   to give them no quarter at all, because (said he) his Highness is resolved to have none of the Religion in any of his DominionsDeclaration of the Sieur du Petit Bourg, first captain of the Regiment of Grancey, signed at Pinerolo in November 1655, reporting the order of the Marquis of Pianezza; English version printed by Samuel Morland, 1658

10. 1675 to 1680 · Santa Fe and the Pueblos, New MexicoNew Mexico: 47 Pueblo religious leaders tried for sorcery

    Franciscans in New Mexico smashed Pueblo sacred objects and burned piles of kachina masks and prayer sticks. In 1675 Governor Juan Francisco Treviño had 47 men of the Tewa pueblos accused of sorcery tried in Santa Fe: 3 were hanged, 1 hanged himself, and the rest were sentenced to lashing, prison or servitude. After the revolt of 1680 an old Tiwa man told Governor Otermín that the Pueblos had long resented that the friars and Spaniards took away their idols and forbade their ceremonies.^[279]

    because the religious and the Spaniards took away their idols and forbade their sorceries and idolatriesTestimony of a Southern Tiwa man of Alameda to Governor Antonio de Otermín (1680), as quoted by John L. Kessell, Kiva, Cross, and Crown (National Park Service, 1979)

11. 1680 to 1695 · Guam and Saipan, Mariana IslandsMarianas: Quiroga’s campaigns to subdue and Christianize the Chamorros

    Guampedia describes José de Quiroga y Losada as dedicated to the Christianization of the Chamorros, killing many of them in the process, and records that by 1680 Chamorros on Guam were forced into church-centred villages. On Saipan in 1684 he urged his soldiers to avenge so many sacrileges and at one village killed more than 200 men, many of them, in Guampedia’s words, apparently while they slept. Back on Guam he ordered the towns of the rebels burned.^[280]

    encouraged his soldiers with greater vigor that with the sword they might avenge so many sacrilegesContemporary Jesuit account of Quiroga’s 1684 Saipan campaign, as quoted in Guampedia, José de Quiroga y Losada

12. 1681 to 1685 · Poitou, Béarn and other provinces, FranceDragonnades and the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes

    Louis XIV told the Protestant deputy general Ruvigny that he was bound to convert all his subjects and extirpate heresy. From 1681 soldiers were quartered on Protestant households with a hint that their excesses would be overlooked, and in 1685 tens of thousands of Protestants in Béarn and other provinces escaped outrage and torture by professing Catholicism. In October 1685 the king revoked the Edict of Nantes, exiled Protestant ministers, closed their schools and sentenced men caught leaving France to the galleys.^[281]

    wholly to obliterate the memory of the troubles, the confusion, and the evils which the progress of this false religion has caused in this kingdomLouis XIV, Edict of Fontainebleau revoking the Edict of Nantes, October 1685, preamble, trans. J. H. Robinson, Readings in European History, vol. 2 (1906);

13. 1682 · Pustozersk, northern RussiaArchpriest Avvakum and 3 companions burned in a log house

    Archpriest Avvakum, a leader of the Old Believers who rejected Patriarch Nikon’s church reforms, was defrocked and anathematized with his companions by the church council in Moscow in 1666 and exiled to Pustozersk with Lazar and Epifanii, whose tongues had been cut. On 14 April 1682, at the instigation of Patriarch Joachim, Avvakum was burned alive in a log house with Lazar, Feodor and Epifanii, officially for great blasphemies against the royal house.^[282]

    великие на царский дом хулыThe official charge against Avvakum (great blasphemies against the royal house), as quoted by L. K. Gavryushina (source page)

14. 1685 to 1689 · Russia (Moscow, the north and Lake Onega)Regent Sophia’s decree orders unrepentant Old Believers burned alive

    In 1685 the regent Sophia decreed that Old Believers be tortured 3 times and, if they didn’t recant, burned alive, and that anyone who had rebaptized a convert be put to death even if he repented. Communities facing capture by troops burned themselves alive; at the Paleostrov monastery on Lake Onega the deacon Ignatius and 2,700 followers perished in the flames in March 1687. The historian Pavel Milyukov estimated that as many as 20,000 Old Believers burned themselves alive by the end of 1689.^[283]

15. 1702 to 1704 · Cévennes, Languedoc, FranceRoyal troops burn the Cévennes to crush the Camisards

    After the Revocation of 1685 Protestant churches in France were destroyed and Reformed worship forbidden, and in 1702 the Cévennes rose in the Camisard war. On 1 April 1703 Marshal de Montrevel massacred the participants of a secret meeting at the Moulin de l’Agau near Nîmes. Between October and mid-December 1703, with the king’s permission, royal troops under Brigadier Julien destroyed 466 villages and hamlets and moved the population to Catholic areas.^[284]

16. 1704 to 1706 · Kingdom of Kongo (northern Angola)Kongo: Dona Beatriz Kimpa Vita burned alive

    Dona Beatriz Kimpa Vita said she was possessed by Saint Anthony and taught that Christ and the saints had lived in Kongo; the Capuchin Bernardo da Gallo charged her with apostasy, and the Duke of Mbamba led an army under a large cross against her followers. King Pedro IV tried her for witchcraft under Kongo law, the missionaries having decided against a religious trial. On 2 July 1706 she was burned alive with her follower João Barro.^[285]

17. 1712 to 1726 · Western Siberia (Khanty and Mansi lands), Russian EmpireForced baptism of the Khanty and burning of their gods

    In 1701 Tsar Peter I ordered the Russian Orthodox Church to baptize the peoples of Siberia and gave it power to use all means necessary. Metropolitan Filofei Leshchinsky toured Khanty settlements from 1712 to 1726 accompanied by troops, and according to official reports 40,000 Khanty, Mansi, Selkups, Nenets and others were baptized. Orthodox missionaries seized and burned hundreds of Khanty images of gods and destroyed sacred places of worship and sacrifice.^[286]

18. 1731 to 1732 · Archbishopric of Salzburg, Holy Roman EmpireArchbishop Firmian expels 20,000 Lutherans from Salzburg

    In 1731 the Archbishop of Salzburg, Leopold Anton von Firmian, expelled some 20,000 Lutheran Protestants from his territory, forcing them to seek refuge in other German principalities. Between April and July 1732 many of the exiles made their way to Prussia in 26 groups of about 800 people each, where the Calvinist King Frederick William I settled them in East Prussia.^[287]

19. 1742 · Kazan, Siberian and Astrakhan provinces, Russian EmpireRussian authorities destroy 418 of 536 mosques around Kazan

    A decree of 19 November 1742 became the legal basis for the wholesale destruction of mosques in the Volga region, at a time when the Russian Orthodox Church saw Islam as its rival for influence over the region’s pagan peoples. In the missionaries’ logic, as historian F. G. Islaev put it, destroying the mosques would destroy the Muslim clergy and so Islam itself. In a short time 418 of the 536 mosques in Kazan and its district were destroyed, with 98 of 133 in Siberian province and 29 of 40 in Astrakhan province, and the schools attached to them disappeared.^[288]

20. 1769 to 1834 · Alta CaliforniaCalifornia missions: flogging, shackles and hunted runaways

    From 1769 the Spanish missions in California reduced Indians into settled communities to make them subjects of the king and children of God, and the mission authorities sent armed parties after runaways. In 1799 Padre Antonio de la Concepción Horra of Mission San Miguel reported heavy flogging, shackles and the stocks, and was declared insane and removed under armed guard. After a revolt in 1824 that began at a flogging, 7 Indians were put to death.^[289]

    For the slightest things, they receive heavy flogging, are shackeled and put in the stocks, and treated with so much cruelty that they are kept whole days without water.Padre Antonio de la Concepción Horra of Mission San Miguel, report to the viceroy (1799), as quoted in Five Views (1988) from Heizer (1978)

The Modern Era 1800 to the Present

1. 1827 to 1859 · Russian EmpireJewish child conscripts pressed into Orthodox baptism

   Under Nicholas I’s statute of 26 August 1827 Jewish communities had to supply conscripts aged 12 to 25, and Jewish boys were sent to some 25 cantonist battalions. In 1842 Nicholas I authorized the baptism campaign, sending additional parish priests to the battalions and paying money rewards to the newly baptized. Reports prepared for the tsar counted about 1 in 3 of some 15,050 Jewish cantonists converted between 1827 and 1840, and hundreds baptized under duress were later refused a return to Judaism.^[290]

   Jewish cantonists were not infrequently forced into the Russian Orthodox creedYohanan Petrovsky-Shtern, Military Service in Russia, YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe

2. 1850 to 1864 · Southern and central ChinaTaiping rebels smash temples and idols for one God

   Hong Xiuquan found what he took to be the explanation of his visions in Good Words for Exhorting the Age, tracts by Liang Afah, a Chinese convert, which the missionary T. Hamberg said contained whole chapters of the Bible. Lindley records that Hong and 3 friends, including Feng Yunshan, went to the temple of the idol Kan-wang-ye in Guangxi, where Hong smashed the idol with a stick, and that the destruction of many images followed. A Taiping follower told the missionary Dr. Medhurst that they were demolishing temples and destroying idols everywhere.^[291]

   we all of us worship one God (Shang-te), and believe in Jesus, while we do our utmost to put down idolatry; everywhere demolishing the temples and destroying the idolsA Taiping follower speaking in Shanghai, quoted in a letter of the Rev. Dr. Medhurst (London Missionary Society), as reproduced in Lindley, Ti-Ping Tien-Kwoh, vol. 1

3. 1858 · Bologna, Papal StatesPapal soldiers seize Edgar Mortara after secret baptism

   A former servant, Anna Morisi, confessed to a priest that she had secretly baptized the Jewish child Edgar Mortara when he was ill, and the Congregation of the Inquisition ordered him removed from his parents to be raised a Christian. On 23 June 1858 at 10 o’clock at night papal soldiers under a Swiss officer took the 6-year-old from his family in Bologna. Petitions from German rabbis, Moses Montefiore and Catholic sovereigns failed, and the boy was educated in a convent and later entered the Augustinian order.^[292]

   the Congregation of the Inquisition gave orders that the child be taken forcibly from his parents and that he be educated as a Christian.Gotthard Deutsch, Mortara Case, Jewish Encyclopedia (1906)

4. 1903 · Kishinev, Bessarabia, Russian EmpireRitual murder accusation precedes Kishinev pogrom

   Before Passover 1903 the Kishinev newspaper Bessarabets, edited by Pavolachi Krushevan, accused the city’s Jews of the ritual murder of a Christian child. It was shown that Jews hadn’t killed the child. A mob attacked the Jews anyway on 6 and 7 April, killing 49 people, maiming 586 and destroying 1,350 Jewish houses and 588 shops.^[293]

   the newspaper accused Kishinev’s Jews of the ritual murder of a Christian child.Wolf Moskovich, Kishinev, YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe

5. 1910 to 1970 · AustraliaThe Stolen Generations: Aboriginal children removed to missions and church homes

   Australia’s Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission concluded in 1997 that between 1 in 3 and 1 in 10 Indigenous children were forcibly removed from their families from about 1910 to 1970. It found that, under protection laws, children were housed in dormitories with family contact strictly limited, with a view to encouraging the conversion of the children to Christianity.

   Government officials carried out most removals, but in early cases missionaries took children without their parents’ consent, and the report found that the churches share some responsibility. Witnesses described being forbidden their languages and given religious instruction 7 days a week, and the Aboriginal Legal Service of WA found that 85% of the removed people it interviewed had spent time in a mission.^[294]

   [In the Home] they used to tell us not to talk that language, that it’s devil’s language. And they’d wash our mouths with soap.Confidential evidence 170, South Australia, a woman placed at Umewarra Mission, in Bringing Them Home (HREOC, April 1997), ch. 10 ’Children’s Experiences’

6. 1915 · Stone Mountain, Georgia, United StatesThe second Ku Klux Klan is founded under a burning cross as a white Protestant order

   On Thanksgiving evening 1915 William J. Simmons and 16 others climbed Stone Mountain, Georgia, lit a flaming cross and proclaimed the revival of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, open only to white, American-born Protestant men. The Klan’s ritual book, the Kloran, required each candidate to affirm belief in the tenets of the Christian religion and had the Kludd, or chaplain, lay a Bible open at Romans 12 on the altar while the fiery cross illumines the klavern.

   The Klan attracted an estimated 5 million members in the early 1920s, and much of its appeal came from its advocacy of white supremacy, anti-Catholicism, anti-Semitism and immigration restriction. In Alabama its members committed thousands of acts of violence and intimidation; African Americans were its principal target, and Klansmen also attacked many Jews and Catholics.^[295]

   Are you a native-born white, Gentile American citizen? ... Do you believe in the tenets of the Christian religion?Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, Kloran, Qualifying Interrogatories nos. 2 and 4, p. 25, 5th edition (Atlanta: Imperial Palace, copyright 1918 by W. J. Simmons); scan at https://archive.org/details/KloranOfTheKKK_201404

7. 1936 to 1937 · Mallorca, SpainMallorca executions with a priest absolving between volleys

   Georges Bernanos, a Catholic writer living on Mallorca, wrote that 200 inhabitants of Manacor judged suspect were taken from their beds at night, shot in the head at the cemetery and burned in a heap, while a priest delegated by the bishop of Majorca gave absolutions between volleys. He wrote that by early March 1937 the island’s repression counted 3,000 killings, a figure he said came from a chief of the repression in Palma. On 1 July 1937 the Spanish bishops’ joint letter, signed by Cardinal Gomá, said the rising had been seen as the force needed against the enemies of God.^[296]

   that of the Religious sense, which considered it as the force necessary to reduce to impotence the enemies of GodJoint Letter of the Spanish Bishops to the Bishops of the Whole World: The War in Spain, 1 July 1937 (English edition, The America Press, New York, 1937)

8. 1941 · Bucharest, RomaniaLegion of the Archangel Michael’s Bucharest pogrom

   The Wiesel Commission found that the Legion of the Archangel Michael, or Iron Guard, glorified spiritual struggle grounded in the mystical imagery of the Romanian Orthodox Church and cast its fight as a battle against Satan, meaning the Jews. During the Legion’s rebellion in January 1941 almost 2,000 Jews were taken to its 14 torture centres; 15 were tortured or shot in the Bucharest slaughterhouse, and 86 bodies were found in the Jilava forest. The Commission counts 125 Jews killed, synagogues burned with their Torah scrolls and 1,274 buildings destroyed.^[297]

   The bodies of the dead were hanged on the hooks used by slaughterers.Antonescu’s military prosecutor investigating the pogrom, as quoted in the Final Report of the International Commission on the Holocaust in Romania, ch. 5

9. 1941 to 1945 · Independent State of Croatia (Croatia and Bosnia)Ustaša killings and forced conversion of Orthodox Serbs

   After April 1941 the Ustaša regime of the Independent State of Croatia set out to purge Croatia of foreign elements, which Yad Vashem’s encyclopedia says mainly meant the Eastern Orthodox Serb minority, greatly despised by the Catholic Ustasa. The same entry gives more than 500,000 Serbs murdered, mostly in the summer of 1941, 250,000 expelled and 200,000 forced to convert to Catholicism. The entry adds that the Ustaša also hated Jews, Communists and non-Catholics.^[298]

   More than 500,000 Serbs were murdered in horribly sadistic ways (mostly in the summer of 1941), 250,000 were expelled and another 200,000 were forced to convert to Catholicism.Robert Rozett and Shmuel Spector (eds.), Encyclopedia of the Holocaust (Facts On File, 2000), entry Croatia, as reproduced by Yad Vashem

10. 1971 · Manili, Carmen, North Cotabato, PhilippinesIlaga militia massacre inside the Manili mosque

    The Transitional Justice and Reconciliation Commission describes the Ilaga as armed bands of Christian paramilitaries, mainly Ilonggo settlers, and records reports of the Ilaga rampaging across Cotabato targeting Muslims and indigenous peoples. On 19 June 1971 Moro villagers in Manili were killed in a mosque and outlying houses. A participant in the Commission’s listening sessions said the Constabulary and Ilaga members called the Muslim residents into the mosque, gave a Moro commander 30 minutes to surrender, then executed those inside, women and children among them.^[299]

    True enough, after 30 minutes, the people inside the mosque were summarily executedParticipant in a TJRC Listening Process session, North Cotabato, 23 March 2015, quoted in the TJRC report, note 84

11. 1987 to 1997 · Acholiland (Gulu and Kitgum), northern UgandaHoly Spirit Movement and Lord’s Resistance Army in northern Uganda

    In late 1987 Alice Lakwena, who claimed to be possessed by the Holy Spirit, led thousands of Acholi fighters anointed with shea butter oil against Ugandan government troops, and thousands were killed. Human Rights Watch found that Joseph Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army grew out of her movement, that Kony claimed to do the bidding of the Holy Spirit, and that his rebels mixed Christian, Acholi and Islamic rites, marking abducted children with oil in the sign of the cross. Between 6 and 10 January 1997 the rebels killed 400 civilians in an attack in Kitgum.^[300]

    This also is why some people must be killed: we must become pureGeorge, 14, a child abducted by the LRA, repeating what the rebels told him, in Human Rights Watch, The Scars of Death (September 1997)

12. 1992 · Bosanska Krajina, Bosnia and HerzegovinaBosnian Serb forces demolish mosques and Catholic churches

    The ICTY found beyond reasonable doubt that Bosnian Serb forces deliberately targeted Muslim and Roman Catholic religious buildings in the Krajina, with the campaign peaking in summer 1992. In Šipovo on 7 August 1992 they bombed the Staro Šipovo, Bešnjevo and Pljeva mosques, destroying the mosques and their minarets. A VRS Main Staff analysis of April 1993 said the army had grown by relying on the Serbian Orthodox Church, and a document of 6 August 1992 reported that places of worship outside that church were being demolished.^[301]

    All places of worship not belonging to the Serbian Orthodox Church are being demolishedDocument dated 6 August 1992 (ICTY exhibit P1789), quoted in Prosecutor v. Brđanin, Trial Judgement, note 1673 (to para. 654 on Prnjavor)

13. 1995 · Srebrenica, Bosnia and HerzegovinaSrebrenica: 7,000 to 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys killed; a priest blesses the Scorpions unit

    After Bosnian Serb forces took the UN safe area of Srebrenica in July 1995, 7,000 to 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys were executed, the ICTY Trial Chamber found in the Krstić judgment of 2 August 2001. The Chamber took the destruction of Srebrenica’s principal mosque soon after the attack as evidence of intent to destroy the Bosnian Muslims of Srebrenica as a group.

    On 1 June 2005, in the Milošević trial, prosecutor Geoffrey Nice played a video of the Scorpions unit being blessed by a priest at Djeletovci; the same video showed a lorry load of 6 young men from Srebrenica whom, Nice said, the unit then executed. Radio Free Europe identified the priest as a Serbian Orthodox priest, Father Gavrilo.^[302]

    we see here a ceremony of the Skorpions being blessed by a priest, and this is happening at DjeletovciProsecutor Geoffrey Nice, cross-examination of Obrad Stevanović, Prosecutor v. Slobodan Milošević (IT-02-54), ICTY open-session transcript, 1 June 2005, p. 40275

14. 2000 · Sintuwu Lemba (Kilo Nine), Poso, Central Sulawesi, IndonesiaChristian fighters kill Muslims at Wali Songo school

    On 28 May 2000 a group of Christians surrounded the Muslim village of Sintuwu Lemba near Poso, captured the women and children and sexually assaulted some of the women. Some 70 men fled to the Wali Songo pesantren, a Muslim school, where many were killed with guns and machetes whether or not they surrendered; 39 bodies were found in 3 mass graves. In nearby Tabalo the red Christian fighters burned the houses but left the Christian ones.^[303]

    First they burnt the houses near the road. We ran and hid and then they burnt the rest, but left the Christian houses.Muslim resident of Tabalo village interviewed by Human Rights Watch, in Breakdown (2002)

15. 2004 · Yelwa, Plateau State, NigeriaChristian attackers kill about 700 Muslims in Yelwa

    On 2 and 3 May 2004 large numbers of well-armed Christians from several ethnic groups surrounded Yelwa and specifically targeted its Muslim population. Human Rights Watch judged credible the residents’ count of about 660 Muslims killed, saying the real figure may be closer to 700, and found mosques burned and Muslim women and children abducted. Some abducted women were held as wives, raped and fed pork and alcohol, both forbidden in Islam.^[304]

    They [the victims] were all Muslims.Yelwa witness interviewed by Human Rights Watch, in Revenge in the Name of Religion (2005)

16. 2013 to 2014 · Central African RepublicAnti-balaka militias drive out and kill Muslims

    Amnesty International described the anti-balaka as mostly Christian militias whose attacks on Muslims were carried out with the stated intent of forcing them out of the country. In Bossemptélé on 18 January 2014 they killed at least 100 Muslims, among them women, old men and an imam in his mid-70s. Mosques were particularly targeted, and the Fouh mosque in Bangui was reduced to rubble.^[305]

    Many anti-balaka fighters and their supporters maintain that Muslims are foreigners who should leave the country or be killed.Amnesty International, Ethnic Cleansing and Sectarian Killings in the Central African Republic (February 2014)

17. 2022 to 2024 · Ukraine and MoscowChurch council calls the war on Ukraine a Holy War

    On 27 March 2024, at a congress chaired by Patriarch Kirill in Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, the World Russian People’s Council approved a decree calling the special military operation a Holy War from a spiritual and moral point of view. In that war OHCHR documented the killings of 73 civilians in Bucha, held by Russian troops from 5 to 30 March 2022. At least 14 civilians were shot dead and left where they fell on a 150 metre stretch of Yablunska Street.^[306]

    С духовно-нравственной точки зрения специальная военная операция является Священной войнойDecree (Nakaz) of the XXV World Russian People’s Council, The Present and Future of the Russian World, section 1, as published by the Moscow Patriarchate (text read via

The record ends where it began: with men who didn’t choose the war, sent to it by men who did. Zeus asks no one to kill for Him. Return to the Gods by your own free act, with understanding.

XI. The Authority You Are Asked to Grant

52 dossiers lead to one question. What authority are you being asked to grant? The claim is exclusive: that one institution, or one family of institutions, holds the only door to the Divine, may define what you must believe, and may threaten you with eternal fire if you walk through another door.

Its own record answers. Councils voted and emperors enforced. Popes defined, reversed and were anathematised. Forgeries carried authority for centuries before the Church’s scholars exposed them. Its writers preserved the older sacred world while calling its Gods devils, kept its temples while removing their worship, and wrote its punishment in the vocabulary of Zeus’s cosmos. Its laws followed the worshipper of the Gods to the household hearth. Its own commissions, prayers and letters admit contempt for other peoples’ religions and failure to protect children. None of this requires you to hate a Christian. All of it removes the ground for an exclusive claim on the Divine.

The Zevist Teaching

No institution holds a monopoly on the Divine. Zeus is Father and King of the Gods, and the Gods endure; political and doctrinal change never extinguished Them. The inversion deprived people of their spiritual inheritance and potential. Return restores the relationship.

Here is what you return to. The Temple teaches that the Gods are Eternal Essences, living divine intelligences whose existence and powers transcend nations, languages and historical periods.^[70] Its Declaration of Principles says it plainly: Zeus lives. Athena lives. Atum lives. Shiva lives.^[104] Its law is Satya, the Eternal Truth that Zeus embodies and upholds, known in Egypt as Ma’at.^[65] Its aim is ὁμοίωσις θεῷ κατὰ τὸ δυνατόν, becoming like God as far as possible.^[56] Its path runs through meditation, ethics, a life lived toward that aim, and theurgy, and the Gods guide the one who dedicates.

• Divine kinship. You approach Zeus as Father and the Gods as family, never as a defendant awaiting sentence.
• Freedom of belief. The Temple holds that freedom of belief is ordained by the Gods, and it doesn’t force or coerce anyone into its religion.^[65] You study first and commit when you understand.
• No required mediators. Teachers and the community offer instruction; your relationship with the Divine develops through your own participation.^[70]
• A daily path. Prayer, meditation, study and right conduct give your return a form you can practise today and continue tomorrow.

The record above belongs to the past. Your choice belongs to the years ahead of you. You can carry the old prohibition into them, or you can stand before the Gods your ancestors knew, light the lamp the law once forbade, and begin. The door is open, and no council, edict or anathema has the power to close it.

Scribes copied these books, councils chose them and bishops defined them. The Gods were before them all, and the Gods remain: return to Them.

Continue

• Next. The life Zevism offers. Why Zevism
• Then. The first prayer and 7 days. Begin Your Return
• For Christians. The main case in one sitting. For Christians