[Ursus]

"There is no crime for those have Christ," declared Shenoute, a fifth-century Egyptian abbot. For Shenoute and those like him, the call from Christ to promote, defend and preserve the new religion outweighed any other consideration and justified any means.

"Violence" whether of the margins or of the center , cannot be understood without reference to the values, motives and self-preservations of its authors, explains Michael Gaddis, the book’s author. He spends the rest of his 392 page treatise seeking to do just that. The book is not a mere catalogue of acts of religious violence, but attempts to explain the context in which violence occurred. It seeks to define violence, the parties involved, and the justifications behind it within the context of the Roman Empire`s evolution from a Pagan to a Catholic society. Particular attention is paid to the concept of the martyr and how it defined and was defined by early Christianity....

[Viggen]

the full review can be read at
http://www.unrv.com/...is-no-crime.php

regards
viggen

[Skarr]

Good review, Ursus. I have read a few accounts of violence that was perpetrated by the Church in the name of preserving their faith and I would tend to agree with your conclusion that you didn't need to read 300 pgs to arrive at that.

Violence has always been a factor in any movement involving control or power over a territory, state or people's minds / beliefs. After all, most individuals fear physical harm and beatings, torture and a number of other things which are extremely abhorrent to our modern sensibilities were routinely performed on those who were weak or less fortunate in those times.

There is a tendency for people to yearn for the peaceful times of yore, but that is more or less due to the romantic authors and the poets, who always tend to hyperbole anyway. Violence was a fabric of society and you had no real police or a form of justice that treated people with any compassion or with a sense of according them basic rights. It was all about who had the money and the power.

If you think about it really, when Rome fell in the west, the aristocracy in Rome was not much affected. They simply shifted loyalties to their new masters and sure, they lost a little land. However, the poor lost everything - from their skin to their lives.

[FLavius Valerius Constantinus]

Well, that review shocked me. "Violence is effecious" in solving the Church's problems. I didn't think the Church truly used that much vim until the Cathars.