“The ruin of Paganism, in the age of Theodosius, is perhaps the only example of the total extirpation of any ancient and popular superstition; and may therefore deserve to be considered as a singular event in the history of the human mind.”
Andrew Marr pointed out recently, that in the fourth century the Roman and Chinese empires were very similar. They had roughly the same level of technology, had much the same form of government and were about the same size. They were vaguely aware of each other, and traded through third parties. They also had exactly the same enemies on the steppes of Russia. If they could have communicated with each other and co-ordinated their tactics, maybe they could have had more success in resisting them. But I digress.
Was the Catholic Church simply a new way for the Romans to rule their empire? The traditional conquest model didn’t work any more, so was this another way to keep control in the same hands? It is a thought that has occurred to more than one person over the centuries. If you were looking for evidence to support the idea you’d be off to a good start with the career of St Ambrose. His father was the governor of a large province in Gaul. Ambrose was educated in Rome with the intention of following in his father’s foot steps. And he started off doing exactly that, being the governor of a region including Milan. Rome was still the nominal capital, but Milan was where the emperors lived and so that was where the real power was.
Napoleon famously always asked if someone was lucky when considering promoting them. It is certainly the case that luck plays a big part in what historical figures achieve and an even bigger part in determining their future reputations. President Obama for instance was extremely lucky to be black at just the time this was no longer something that barred his political progress but was still enough of an obstacle for his successes to be enhanced by it. Nobody else will ever be the first black president, and being the second black president won’t pull in much kudos. In the future I predict the rise of Obama will be treated as some sort of defining historical event, and his own part in it will be exaggerated – a myth will be created.
Gregory of Nazianzus has an enviable reputation among the leading lights of church history. But it his ideas and writings that are remembered. His actual achievements in the real world are less impressive. His biggest one, his appointment as bishop of Constantinople by Theodosius – probably the top job in Christianity at the time – didn’t last long. Once again it was politics that let him down. Some intrigues originating in Egypt (where else?) aimed to replace him. Given how hard he had worked for the cause of Orthodoxy that was at the very least ungrateful. Gregory ostentatiously resigned, no doubt as a manoeuvre.
Theodosius as a new emperor wanted to bring an end to the religious in-fighting that was weakening the empire, particularly that between the Arians and the Orthodox. Theodosius came from a part of the empire where Arianism hadn’t really penetrated, and so presumably was a believer in the orthodox form. Whatever his personal convictions, the most straight forward way to achieve the unity he needed was to support the strongest group against all the others. This meant enforcing the orthodox position against the various heresies that challenged it. The biggest single step in this direction was to win Constantinople over from the Arians. To do so he appointed the obvious candidate, Gregory of Nazianzus as the patriarch of Constantinople.
All art involves distortion and recreation. Myths and legends take this to a high degree, with multiple versions of the same story that often vary wildly in details. So it is justified to come up with a new take on an old tale. Is it also justifiable to treat myths as a grab bag of names and plots for your latest project? Nobody complains when Wagner does it. But lots of people complained on Twitter when the BBC’s latest Saturday night blockbuster Atlantis did.
The big political theme of my life has been the rise of free market values and the decline of collectivism. When I was first old enough to be aware of what was going on politically, in the seventies, the state played a big role in things. It would intervene and manage things quite extensively. The results of that intervention varied. Some were quite good – like universal education and health provision. Others were perverse or just embarrassing. Keeping British Leyland going was a bad idea in retrospect. The people who spearheaded the radical moves to dismantle the state’s role and encourage us all to become entrepreneurs were the Tories. This was a bit of a departure for the one time representatives of the upper classes, but it was a very successful one. Even when it didn’t win them elections, which it usually did, the radicalism generally won the argument. Nowadays even avowedly left wing politicians don’t want to go back to the old failed statist ways of the past.
Advice to Young Men is one of the less well known of Cobbett’s books. It was published in paperback in the eighties when there was a bit of a Cobbett revival, but aside from that it has rarely troubled the shelves of bookshops. It would be a stretch to say it is a forgotten classic, and other works by Cobbett deserve the greater attention that they receive. But Advice to Young Men does have the distinction of being maybe the first self help book, beating the better known examples by Samuel Smiles and Napoleon Hill into print by many decades. It was also originally published by Cobbett himself who was the very definition of a self made man. So maybe there is some undeserved credit available there.
Margaret Thatcher was buried today, and was given a burial that was consciously modelled on that of Winston Churchill. It was fitting in one way – it was a bit of a jarring anachronism. And that is pretty much what the woman was. The cliché that the media hatched for coverage of her passing was that she was a divisive figure. And so she was, But I wonder if the Venn diagram looks quite how the reports implied. Maybe the division was between the people who thought she did something important, whether good or bad, and those that wondered what all the fuss was about.
