In the case of the Byzantines, did you know that all Christian
monasteries started off as Epicurean communities? I once
researched it. I asked, "What happened to the Epicureans?" Well,
they never left. Emperor Justinian and Empress Theodora, upon
establishing their territory and Christianizing the Roman Empire
(the Eastern side 'cause Rome was shit by then), all of the
Epicureans got a Christian frosting on top. Everything else
stayed the same for them. No bloodshed, conversion by force like
you'd expect (at least that I ever read about). They just
changed flags. Protection of the empire wasn't the worst thing
to have. They got to keep their lifestyle and it formed the
basis of Christian monasticism. After the Great Schism, the west
started going a little differently of course. Scholasticism was
a uniquely western way of doing things.. liked splitting things
up. Ended up taking western monasticism in a different
direction... or a bunch of them really. Anyway, I wouldn't cry
over the gnostics. The real gnostics were over and done with
VERY early on in Christianity. Anybody afterwards (11th century
or whatever) that called themselves gnostics were
neo-gnostics... picking up some old books and trying to start a
new thing based on old books. Not really the same. But I'm not a
fan of the western church stuff. It's weird - i've been agnostic
for like 15 yrs now I suppose but I guess my exposure with the
Orthodox biased me. Oh well tongue emoticon == Yeah, because of
my exposure to the Orthodox, in my mind, I see the timeline of
things kinda like this. Not exactly, but kinda. So, I see all
the stuff in Europe and Rome to be political power hungry BS,
Protestantism as "hey we got this book and we don't need
historical continuity" and basically, they're playing church.
That's what I get for searching for roots. I was raised
Methodist, went church hopping, ALMOST went catholic, then ended
up going Orthodox for 5 yrs... Got to breath a different
perspective than BBC history. It was cool. Expanded my
perspective of history away from event-driven dynamics towards
historical continuities and discontinuities of peoples. One of
these days I want to dive into Chinese history and get that kind
of 'sense' of it that I get with Western Civ. I'm also lacking
in much Islamic history. In my head, Islam proper ended the
moment they started slashing instead of educating, around the
13th century I suppose and DEFINITELY by the Ottoman empire. TO
me, that's when they lost it and became "this thing they call
islam" but isn't REALLY Islam. Lost their continuity. Weird way
of viewing history I suppose. == I mean, the ppl running the
empire and the bishops were definitely working with each other,
but they kinda kept their affairs separate but in sync as much
as could be. Not always of course. But they were big believers
in something we see as a negative these days: "status quo". They
lived and breathed status quo for like 900 yrs. Has its downside
but the upside was an internal peace and even decent relations
with foreign countries, once diplomacy took place. But it was a
unique situation in world history. Awesome modern example of
status quo is
[1]
https://en.wikipedia.org/.../Status_quo_%28Holy_Land... -
from the 18th century onwards. There's peace and cooperation in
the holy sites. NOTHING happens new without complete agreement
among all parties. OF course that means,nothing broken gets
repaired. BUT, they're not fighting over it. An awkward peace
but it serves a function. ==
References
Visible links
1.
https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FStatus_quo_%2528Holy_Land_sites%2529&h=lAQGR85jM
