|
Ancient Pagans
As soon as Christianity became legal in 315EV, increasing numbers of pagan temples were destroyed by mobs and its priests murdered. Examples of destroyed Temples include the Sanctuary of Asklepios in the Aegean, the Temple of Aphrodite in Golgotha, Aphaka in Lebanon and Heliopolis. Christian priests such as Mark of Arethusa or Cyril of Heliopolis were famous as "temple destroyers." [DA468]
Between 315 and 6Th century, thousands of pagan believers were slain.
In the early fourth century the philosopher Sopatros was executed by command of Christian authorities. [DA466]
Pagan services became punishable by death in 356. [DA468]
In 415, the famous female philosopher Hypatia of Alexandria was torn to pieces with glass fragments, in a church by an hysterical Christian mob led by a priest called Peter. [DO19-25]
Christian Emperor Theodosius (408-450) even had children executed, because they had been playing with remains of pagan statues. [DA469]
Missions
Charlemagne in 782 had 4,500 Saxons, unwilling to convert to Christianity, beheaded. [DO30]
On May of 1234, between 5,000 and 11,000 men, women and children were slain in Steding, Germany because they were unwilling to pay suffocating church taxes. [WW223]
Battle of Belgrade in 1456: 80,000 Moslems slaughtered. [DO235]
15Th century Poland: 1,019 churches and 17,987 villages plundered by Knights of the Order. [DO30]
16Th and 17Th century Ireland: English troops "pacified and civilised" Ireland, where only "Wild Irish? unreasonable beasts lived without any knowledge of God or good manners, in common of their goods, cattle, women, children and every other thing." One of the more successful soldiers, a certain Humphrey Gilbert, half-brother of Sir Walter Raleigh, ordered that: "The heddes of all those (of what sort so ever they were) which were killed in the daie, should be cutte off from their bodies... and should bee laied on the ground by eche side of the waie" (sic). The effort to civilise the Irish indeed caused "? greate terrour to the people when theiy sawe the heddes of their dedde fathers, brothers, children, kinsfolke, and freinds on the grounde". Tens of thousands of Gaelic Irish fell as victims of this carnage. [SH99, 225]
Crusades (1095-1291)
The first Crusade began in 1095 on command of pope Urban II. [WW11-41]
In Semlin and Wieselburg in Hungary thousands were slain. [WW23]
In the towns of Nikaia, Xerigordon in Asia Minor thousands murdered. [WW25-27]
Until January of 1098 a total of 40 capital cities and 200 castles had been conquered (number of slain unknown). [WW30]
After Antioch was conquered (6/3/1098), between 10,000 and 60,000 were killed.
28/06/1098: 100,000 Moslems (including women and children) were killed. [WW32-35]. Here the Christians "? did no other harm to the women found in [the enemy's] tents, save that they ran their lances through their bellies," according to Christian chronicler Fulcher of Chartres. [EC60]
At Marra (Maraat Al-numan) 11/12/98, thousands were killed. Because of the subsequent famine "the already stinking corpses of the enemy were eaten by the Christians" said chronicler Albert Aquensis. [WW36]
Jerusalem was conquered in 15/07/1099 with more than 60,000 victims (Jewish and Moslem, men, women and children). [WW37-40] In the words of one witness: "There [in front of Solomon's temple] was such a carnage that our people were wading ankle-deep in the blood of our foes", and after that "? happily and crying for joy our people marched to our Saviour's tomb, to honour it and to pay off our debt of gratitude."
The Archbishop of Tyre who was an eyewitness wrote: "It was impossible to look upon the vast numbers of the slain without horror; everywhere lay fragments of human bodies, and the very ground was covered with the blood of the slain. It was not alone the spectacle of headless bodies and mutilated limbs strewn in all directions that roused the horror of all that looked upon them. Still more dreadful was it to gaze upon the victors themselves, dripping with blood from head to foot. An ominous sight, which brought terror to all who met them. It is reported that within the Temple enclosure alone about ten thousand infidels perished." [TG79]
Christian chronicler Eckehard of Aura noted that "? even the following summer in all of Palestine, the air was polluted by the stench of decomposition". One million victims of the first crusade alone. [WW41]
Battle of Askalon, 12/08/1099: 200,000 heathens slaughtered "In the name of Our Lord Jesus Christ". [WW45]
Fourth crusade: 12/04/1204 Constantinople sacked, the number of victims was in the many thousands, many of them Christian. [WW141-148]
Until the fall of Akkon in 1291 there were probably 20 million victims of the crusades, in Palestine and the Moslem territories alone. [WW224]
Note: All figures according to contemporary Christian chroniclers.
Heretics
In 385 EV, the Spanish Priscillianus and six of his followers, were beheaded for heresy in Trier, Germany. [DO26]
The Manichean heresy was a crypto-Christian sect that practiced birth control. Its followers were exterminated in huge campaigns all over the Roman Empire, between 372 and 444. Thousands of victims. [NC]
The Albigensians, or Cathars viewed themselves as ?good Christians?, but did not accept Catholicism, church-taxes, and the prohibition of birth control. [NC] The terror began in 1209, on Pope Innocent III?s command; he was the greatest single pre-Nazi mass murderer. Beziers, France was destroyed (22/07/1209) and all its inhabitants slaughtered. Victims included Catholics refusing to turn over their heretic neighbours. 20,000-70,000 died. [WW179-181]
Carcassonne 15/08/1209, thousands slain. Other cities followed. [WW181]
Subsequent 20 years of war until nearly all Cathars, probably half the population of the Languedoc in southern France, were exterminated. [WW183]
After the war ended in 1229, the Inquisition was founded in 1232 to search and destroy surviving or hiding heretics. Last Cathars burned at the stake in 1324. [WW183]. One million victims estimated (Cathar heresy alone). [WW183]
Other heresies included the Waldensians, Paulikians, Runcarians, Josephites, and many others. Most of these sects were exterminated. Some Waldensians remain today, despite 600 years of persecution. Total victims number at least a hundred thousand.
Spanish Inquisitor Torquemada allegedly responsible for 10,220 burnings. [DO28]
John Huss, a critic of papal infallibility and indulgences, was burned at the stake in 1415. [LI475-522]
University professor B. Hubmaier burned at the stake 1538 in Vienna. [DO59]
Giordano Bruno a Dominican monk, after having been incarcerated for seven years, was burned at the stake for heresy on the Campo dei Fiori, in Rome on 02/17/1600.
Witches
From the beginnings of Christianity until 1484 probably more than several thousand murdered for witchcraft.
In the witch-hunting era (1484-1750), according to modern scholars, several hundred thousand (80% female) burned at the stake or hanged. [WV]
Extermination of American Indians
In the words of John Winthrop, the first governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony: "? justifieinge the undertakeres of the intended Plantation in New England... to carry the Gospell into those parts of the world... and to raise a Bulworke against the kingdome of the Ante-Christ." (sic) [SH235]
On average, two thirds of the native population was killed by colonist-imported smallpox before the violence began. This was a great sign of "? the marvelous goodness and providence of God.? The Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony wrote in 1634, ?As for the natives, they are near all dead of the smallpox, so as the Lord hath cleared our title to what we possess." [SH109, 238]
On Hispaniola alone, on Columbus?s visits, the native population (Arawak), a rather harmless and happy people living on an island of abundant natural resources, soon mourned 50,000 dead. [SH204] The surviving Indians fell victim to rape, murder, enslavement and Spanish raids.
As one of the culprits wrote: "So many Indians died that they could not be counted, all through the land the Indians lay dead everywhere. The stench was very great and pestiferous." [SH69]
The Indian Chief Hatuey fled with his people, but was captured and burned alive. As "? they were tying him to the stake a Franciscan friar urged him to take Jesus to his heart so that his soul might go to heaven, rather than descend into hell.? Hatuey replied, ?If heaven is where the Christians go, I would rather go to hell." [SH70]
An eyewitness described what happened to his people: "The Spaniards found pleasure in inventing all kinds of odd cruelties... They built a long gibbet, long enough for the toes to touch the ground to prevent strangling, and hanged thirteen [natives] at a time in honour of Christ Our Saviour and the twelve Apostles... then, straw was wrapped around their torn bodies and they were burned alive." [SH72]
Or, on another occasion: "The Spaniards cut off the arm of one, the leg or hip of another, and from some their heads at one stroke, like butchers cutting up beef and mutton for market. Six hundred, including the cacique, were thus slain like brute beasts... Vasco [de Balboa] ordered forty of them to be torn to pieces by dogs." [SH83]
?The island's population of about eight million people, at the time of Columbus's arrival in 1492, already had declined by a third to a half before the year 1496 was out." Eventually, all the island's natives were exterminated, so the Spaniards were "forced" to import slaves from other Caribbean islands, who soon suffered the same fate. Thus "The Caribbean's millions of native people were thereby effectively liquidated in barely a quarter of a century". [SH72-73] "In less than the normal lifetime of a single human being, an entire culture of millions of people, thousands of years resident in their homeland, had been exterminated." [SH75]
"And then the Spanish turned their attention to the mainland of Mexico and Central America. The slaughter had barely begun. The exquisite city of Tenochtitlan [Mexico City] was next." [SH75]
Cortez, Pizarro, De Soto and hundreds of other Spanish conquistadors likewise sacked southern and meso-american civilisations in the name of Christ (De Soto also sacked Florida).
"When the 16th century ended, some 200,000 Spaniards had moved to the Americas. By that time probably more than 60,000,000 natives were dead." [SH95]
Of course the founders of North America were no different. Although none of the settlers would have survived winter without native help, they soon set out to expel and exterminate the Indians. Warfare among North American Indians was rather 'harmless', by European standards, and was meant to avenge insults rather than to conquer land. In the words of some of the Pilgrim Fathers: "Their Warres are farre less bloudy..." so that there usually was "? no great slawter of nether side". Indeed, "They might fight seven yeares and not kill seven men." What is more, the Indians usually spared women and children. [SH111]
In the spring of 1612, some English colonists found life among the friendly and generous natives attractive enough to leave Jamestown, "? being idell did runne away unto the Indyans," to live among them, which probably solved a sex problem.
Governor Thomas Dale had these settlers hunted down and executed: "Some he apointed to be hanged some burned some to be broken upon wheles, others to be staked and some shott to deathe." (sic) [SH105] Of course these elegant measures were restricted for fellow Englishmen: "This was the treatment for those who wished to act like Indians. For those who had no choice in the matter, because they were the native people of Virginia" methods were different: "? when an Indian was accused by an Englishman of stealing a cup and failing to return it, the English response was to attack the natives in force, burning the entire community down." [SH105]
On the territory that is now Massachusetts the founding fathers of the colonies were committing genocide, in what has become known as the "Peqout War". The killers were New England Puritans, refugees from persecution in England.
When however a dead colonist was found, apparently killed by Narragansett Indians, the Puritan colonists wanted revenge. Despite the Indian chief's pledge, they attacked. Somehow they seem to have lost the idea of who they were after, because when Pequot Indians, long-time foes of the Narragansetts greeted them, the troops made war on them and burned their villages.
The Puritan commander-in-charge John Mason after one massacre wrote: "And indeed such a dreadful Terror did the Almighty let fall upon their Spirits, that they would fly from us and run into the very Flames, where many of them perished... God was above them, who laughed his Enemies and the Enemies of his People to Scorn, making them as a fiery Oven... Thus did the Lord judge among the Heathen, filling the Place with dead Bodies." [SH113-114]
So "the Lord was pleased to smite our Enemies in the hinder Parts, and to give us their land for an inheritance". [SH111]
Because of his readers' assumed knowledge of Deuteronomy, there was no need for Mason to quote the words that immediately follow: "Thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth. But thou shalt utterly destroy them..." (Deut 20)
Mason's comrade Underhill recalled how "? great and doleful was the bloody sight to the view of the young soldiers." Yet he reassured his readers that "Sometimes the Scripture declareth women and children must perish with their parents". [SH114]
Other Indians were killed in successful plots of poisoning. The colonists even had dogs especially trained to kill Indians and to devour children from their mothers? breasts, in the colonists' own words: "? Blood Hounds to draw after them, and Mastives to seaze them." This was inspired by Spanish methods of the time. In this way they continued until the extermination of the Pequots was near its completion. [SH107-119]
The surviving handful of Indians "? were parceled out to live in servitude." John Endicott and his pastor wrote to the governor asking for a share of the captives, specifically "? a young woman or girle and a boy, if you thinke good." [SH115]
Other tribes were to have a similar fate.
Comment the Christian exterminators: "God's Will, which will at last give us cause to say: How Great is His Goodness! And How Great is his Beauty! Thus doth the Lord Jesus make them to bow before him, and to lick the Dust!" [TA]
"Peace treaties were signed with every intention to violate them. When the Indians 'grow secure uppon (sic) the treatie', advised the Council of State in Virginia, 'we shall have the better Advantage both to surprise them, and cutt downe theire Corne'." [SH106]
In 1624, sixty heavily armed Englishmen cut down 800 defenceless Indian men, women and children. [SH107]
In a single massacre in "King Philip's War" of 1675 and 1676 some "600 Indians were destroyed. A delighted Cotton Mather, revered pastor of the Second Church in Boston, later referred to the slaughter as a 'barbeque'." [SH115]
IN SUMMARY: Before the arrival of the English, the western Abenaki people in New Hampshire and Vermont had numbered 12,000. Less than half a century later about 250 remained alive, a destruction rate of 98%. The Pocumtuck people had numbered more than 18,000, fifty years later they were down to 920, 95% destroyed. The Quiripi-Unquachog people had numbered about 30,000, fifty years later they were down to 1500, 95% destroyed. The Massachusetts people had numbered at least 44,000, fifty years later barely 6,000 were alive, 81% destroyed. [SH118]
These are only a few examples of the multitude of tribes living before Christian colonists set their foot on the 'New World.' All this was before the smallpox epidemics of 1677 and 1678.
All the above was only the beginning of the European colonisation, it was before the frontier age had actually begun.
Smallpox and other epidemics destroyed a total of maybe more than 150 million Indians between 1500 and 1900, amounting two thirds of the population. This leaves some 50 million killed directly by violence, bad treatment and slavery.
Reverend Solomon Stoddard, one of New England's most esteemed religious leaders, in "? 1703 formally proposed to the Massachusetts Governor that the colonists be given the financial wherewithal to purchase and train large packs of dogs 'to hunt Indians as they do bears'." [SH241]
Massacre of Sand Creek in Colorado 29/11/1864. Colonel John Chivington, a former Methodist minister and still an elder in the church ("I long to be wading in gore") had a Cheyenne village of about 600, mostly women and children, gunned down despite the chiefs' waving a white flag: 400-500 killed.
From an eye-witness account: "There were some thirty or forty squaws collected in a hole for protection; they sent out a little girl about six years old with a white flag on a stick; she had not proceeded but a few steps when she was shot and killed. All the squaws in that hole were afterwards killed..." [SH131]
By the 1860s, "In Hawaii the Reverend Rufus Anderson surveyed the carnage that by then had reduced those islands? native population by 90 percent or more, and he declined to see it as tragedy; the expected total die-off of the Hawaiian population was only natural, this missionary said, somewhat equivalent to 'the amputation of diseased members of the body'." [SH244]
20th Century Church Atrocities
Extermination camps:
Suprisingly few know that Nazi extermination camps in World War II were by no means the only ones in Europe. Between 1942-1943 in Croatia there existed numerous extermination camps, run by the Ustasha under their dictator Ante Pavelic, a devout Catholic and regular visitor to the then Pope. There were even concentration camps exclusively for children!
In these camps, the most notorious being Jasenovac headed by a Franciscan priest, Orthodox-Christian Serbs and a substantial number of Jews were murdered. The Ustasha burned their victims in kilns, whilst they were still alive (the Nazis had their victims gassed first). However, most of the victims were simply stabbed or shot to death, the number of them being estimated between 300,000 and 600,000. Many of the killers were Franciscan friars.
The atrocities were appalling enough to induce even bystanders of the Nazi "Sicherheitsdient der SS" to complain about them to Hitler, who did not seem interested. The Pope knew about these events but did nothing to prevent them. [MV]
Christian terror in Vietnam:
With the help of Christian lobbies in Washington and Cardinal Spellman, the Vatican's spokesman in US politics, who later on would call the U.S. forces in Vietnam "Soldiers of Christ", a scheme was concocted to prevent democratic elections in Vietnam, which would have brought the communist Viet Minh to power in the South. The fanatically Christian Ngo Dinh Diem was made president of South Vietnam. [MW16ff]
Diem saw to it that U.S. aid, food, technical and general assistance was given to Catholics alone. Buddhist individuals and villages were ignored or had to pay for the food aid, which were given to Catholics for free.
By 1956 Diem promulgated a presidential order, which read: "Individuals considered dangerous to the national defence and common security may be confined by executive order, to a concentration camp."
Supposedly to fight communism, thousands of Buddhist protesters and monks were imprisoned in detention camps. Out of protest dozens of teachers and monks poured gasoline over their heads and torched themselves. Meanwhile some of the prison compounds had evolved into death camps. It is estimated that during this period of terror (1955-1960) at least 24,000 were wounded - mostly in street riots - 80,000 people were executed, 275,000 had been detained or tortured, and about 500,000 were sent to concentration or detention camps. [MW76-89]
Rwanda Massacres:
In 1994 in the small African country of Rwanda, in just a few months, several hundred thousand civilians were butchered, apparently in a conflict between the Hutu and Tutsi ethnic groups. Rumours circulated that Catholic clergy were actively involved in the 1994 massacres. Odd denials of involvement were printed in church journals, before anybody had openly accused them. Then on the 10/10/96, in a broadcast of S2 Aktuell, a German station not usually critical of Christianity, the following statement was made:
"Anglican as well as Catholic priests and nuns are suspected of having actively participated in murders. The conduct of a certain priest has been occupying the public mind in Rwanda's capital Kigali for months. He was minister of the church of the 'Holy Family' and allegedly murdered Tutsis in the most brutal manner. He is reported to have accompanied marauding Hutu militia with a gun in his cowl. In fact there had been a bloody slaughter of Tutsis seeking shelter in his parish."
Even years after the massacres, many Christians refuse to set foot in their churches. To them the participation of a certain sector of the clergy in the slaughter is well established. There is almost no church in Rwanda that has not seen refugees being brutally butchered facing the crucifix.
According to eyewitnesses, clergymen gave away hiding Tutsis and turned them over to the machetes of Hutu militia. In connection with these events again and again two Benedictine nuns are mentioned, both of whom fled to a Belgian monastery to avoid prosecution.
According to survivors, one of them called the Hutu killers and led them to several thousand people who had sought shelter in her monastery. By force the doomed were driven out of the churchyard and were murdered in her presence, in front of the gate.
The other one is also reported to have directly cooperated with the murderers of the Hutu militia. In her case, witnesses report that she watched the slaughtering of people in cold blood without showing any emotion. She is even accused of having procured some petrol used by the killers to set fire and burn their victims alive..." [S2]
|
what good things and events were caused by christianity. and what bad things?
