A fictional history of Europe. Three Prosecutors

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

The thesis that Christianity is a European creation that arose no earlier than the 10th century of the new era, with all its obviousness and a huge number of supporters, still needs some clarification. It will be given below and, if necessary, will be rather brief: for a more detailed presentation of it, we would need to draw on material that is many times larger than the modest size of this publication, including the history of the Christian church, the history of antiquity and the early Middle Ages.

Three outstanding thinkers of different eras and peoples were not afraid - each in his own time - to challenge the official historiography, established ideas and all the "ordinary" knowledge that was hammered into the heads of many generations of schoolchildren. Perhaps not all of their modern followers know the names of these predecessors, at least not all of them mention them.

Gardouin

The first was Jean Hardouin, a Jesuit scholar born in 1646 in Brittany and working as a teacher and librarian in Paris. At the age of twenty he entered the Order; in 1683 he became the head of the French Royal Library. Contemporaries were amazed at the vastness of his knowledge and inhuman performance: he devoted all his time to scientific research from 4 in the morning until late at night.

Jean Hardouin was considered an indisputable authority on theology, archeology, the study of ancient languages, numismatics, chronology and philosophy of history. In 1684 he published the speeches of Themistius; published works on Horace and on ancient numismatics, and in 1695 presented to the public a study of the last days of Jesus, in which, in particular, he proved that, according to the traditions of Galilee, the Last Supper should have been held on Thursday, not Friday.

In 1687, the French Church Assembly entrusted him with a colossal task in volume and importance: to collect the materials of all Church Councils, starting from the 1st century AD, and, bringing them in line with the changed dogmas, to prepare them for publication. The work was ordered and paid for by Louis XIV. 28 years later, in 1715, the titanic work was completed. Jansenists and adherents of other theological directions delayed the publication for ten years, until, in 1725, the materials of the Church Councils finally saw the light of day. Thanks to the quality of processing and the ability to systematize material that is still considered exemplary, he developed new criteria for modern historical science.

Simultaneously with the main work of his life, Gardouin published and commented on many texts (primarily Critique of Pliny's Natural History, 1723)., - his criticism of the written heritage of antiquity caused fierce attacks from his colleagues.

Back in 1690, analyzing the Epistles of Saint Chrysostom to the Monk Caesar, he suggested that most of the works of supposedly ancient authors (Cassiodorus, Isidore of Seville, Saint Justin Martyr, etc.) were created many centuries later, that is, fictional and falsified. The commotion that began in the scientific world after such a statement was explained not only by the fact that the harsh sentence of one of the most educated people of that time was not so easy to refute. No, many of Gardouin's colleagues were well aware of the history of the falsifications and most of all feared exposure and scandal.

However, Garduin, continuing his investigation, came to the conclusion that most of the books of classical antiquity - with the exception of the speeches of Cicero, the Satyr of Horace, Pliny's Natural History, and Virgil's George - are falsifications created by monks of the 13th century and introduced into European cultural everyday life. The same applies to works of art, to coins, to the materials of Church Councils (before the 16th century) and even to the Greek translation of the Old Testament and the supposedly Greek text of the New Testament. With overwhelming evidence, Gardouin showed that Christ and the Apostles - if they existed - had to pray in Latin. The theses of the Jesuit scientist again shocked the scientific community, especially since this time the argumentation was irrefutable. The Jesuit Order imposed a penalty on the scientist and demanded a refutation, which, however, was presented in the most formal tones. After the death of the scientist, which followed in 1729, scientific battles between his supporters and more numerous opponents continued. Passion heated the found working notes of Gardouin, in which he directly called church historiography "the fruit of a secret conspiracy against the true faith." One of the main "conspirators" he considered Archon Severus (XIII century).

Garduin analyzed the writings of the Church Fathers and declared most of them to be fakes. Among them was Blessed Augustine, to whom Garduin dedicated many works. His criticism soon became known as the "Gardouin system" because, although he had predecessors, none of them explored the veracity of ancient texts with such shrewdness. After the death of the scientist, the official Christian theologians recovered from the shock and began to retrospectively "win back" the fake relics. For example, the Epistles of Ignatius (early 2nd century) are still considered holy texts.

One of Gardouin's opponents, the learned Bishop Hue, said: "For forty years he worked to discredit his good name, but he failed."

Another critic's verdict, Henke, is more correct: “Gardouin was too educated not to understand what he was encroaching on; too smart and vain to frivolously risk his reputation; too serious to amuse scientific colleagues. He made it clear to close friends that he set out to overthrow the most authoritative fathers of the Christian Church and ancient church historiographers, and with them a number of ancient writers. Thus, he questioned our entire history."

Some of Garduin's works were banned by the French Parliament. A Strasbourg Jesuit, however, succeeded in publishing an Introduction to the Critique of Ancient Writers in London in 1766. In France, this work is prohibited and to this day is a rarity.

Garduin's work on numismatics, his system for recognizing counterfeit coins and false dates, is recognized as exemplary and is used by collectors and historians around the world.

Linguist Baldauf

The next was Robert Baldauf, at the beginning of the 20th century - assistant professor at the University of Basel. In 1903, the first volume of his extensive work History and Criticism was published in Leipzig, in which he analyzed the famous work "Gesta Caroli magni" ("Acts of Charlemagne"), attributed to the monk Notker of the monastery of St. Gallen.

Having discovered in the St. Gallenic manuscript many expressions from everyday Romance languages and from Greek, which looked like an obvious anachronism, Baldauf came to the conclusion: "The Acts of Charlemagne" Notker-Zaika (IX century) and "Casus" Eckehart IV, a student of Notker the German (XI century) are so similar in style and language that they were most likely written by the same person.

At first glance, in terms of content, they have nothing in common, therefore, it is not the scribes who are to blame for the anachronisms; therefore, we are dealing with falsification:

“The St. Gallenic Tales are remarkably reminiscent of the messages considered to be historically accurate. According to Notker, with a wave of his hand, Charlemagne cut off the heads of the tiny, sword-sized, Slavs. According to the annals of Einhart, under Verdun the same hero killed 4,500 Saxons overnight. What do you think is more plausible?"

There are, however, even more striking anachronisms: for example, "Stories from the Bath with Piquant Details" could only have come from the pen of a person familiar with the Islamic East. And in one place we meet with a description of the water hordes ("divine judgment"), containing a direct allusion to the Inquisition.

Notker even knows Homer's Iliad, which seems completely absurd to Baldauf. The confusion of Homeric and Biblical scenes in The Acts of Charlemagne prompts Baldauf to draw even bolder conclusions: since most of the Bible, especially the Old Testament, is closely related to the novels of chivalry and the Iliad, it can be assumed that they arose at about the same time.

Analyzing in detail in the second volume of "History and Criticism" Greek and Roman poetry, Baldauf cites facts that will shudder any inexperienced lover of classical antiquity. He finds many mysterious details in the history of the classical texts "emerged from oblivion" in the 15th century and summarizes: “There are too many ambiguities, contradictions, dark places in the discovery of the fifteenth century humanists in the monastery of St. Gallen. Isn't that surprising, if not suspicious? It's a strange thing - these findings. And how quickly what one wants to find is invented. " Baldauf asks the question: is it not "invented" Quintilian, criticizing Plautus in the following way (v. X, 1): "the muses had to speak the language of Plautus, but they wanted to speak Latin." (Plautus wrote in folk Latin, which was absolutely unthinkable for the 2nd century BC.)

Have copyists and falsifiers practiced wit on the pages of their fictional works? Anyone who is familiar with the work of the "knights of Charlemagne" with their "Roman" poets from Einhard will appreciate how funny classical antiquity is joked there!

Baldauf discovers in the works of ancient poets features of a typically German style, completely incompatible with antiquity, such as alliteration and final rhymes. He refers to von Müller, who believes that Quintilian's Casina-Prologue is also "gracefully rhymed."

This also applies to other Latin poetry, says Baldauf and gives startling examples. The typically German final rhyme was introduced into Romanesque poetry only by medieval troubadours.

The suspicious attitude of the scientist towards Horace leaves the question of whether Baldauf was familiar with the works of Gardouin, open. It seems incredible to us that a venerable philologist would not read the criticism of a French researcher. Another thing is that Baldauf in his work decided to proceed from his own premises, different from the arguments of the Jesuit scholar two hundred years ago.

Baldauf reveals the internal relationship between Horace and Ovid and to the question: “how can the obvious mutual influence of two ancient authors be explained” he himself answers: “Someone will not seem suspicious at all; others, arguing at least logically, assume the existence of a common source from which both poets drew. " Further, he refers to Wölflin, who states with some surprise: “the classical Latinists did not pay attention to each other, and we took for the heights of classical literature what is actually a later reconstruction of texts by people whose names we may never know ".

Baldauf proves the use of alliteration in Greek and Roman poetry, cites the example of a poem by the German Muspilli and asks the question: "how could alliteration have been known to Horace." But if in the rhymes of Horace there is a "German trace", then in the spelling one can feel the influence of the Italian language already formed by the Middle Ages: the frequent appearance of an unpronounceable "n" or a permutation of vowels. "However, of course, negligent scribes will be blamed for this!" - ends the passage Baldauf (p. 66).

Caesar's "Notes on the Gallic War" is also "literally teeming with stylistic anachronisms" (p. 83). About the last three books of the "Notes on the Gallic War" and the three books of the "Civil War" by Caesar, he says: "They all share the same monotonous rhyme. The same applies to the eighth book of the "Notes on the Gallic War" by Aulus Hirtius, to the "Alexandrian War" and "African War". It is incomprehensible how different people can be considered the authors of these works: a person with a little sense of style immediately recognizes one and the same hand in them.

The actual content of the "Notes on the Gallic War" gives a strange impression. So, the Celtic druids of Caesar are too similar to the Egyptian priests. "Amazing parallelism!" - exclaims Borber (1847), to which Baldauf remarks: “Ancient history is full of such parallelisms. This is plagiarism! " (p. 84).

"If the tragic rhythms of Homer's Iliad, the final rhymes and alliterations belonged to the usual arsenal of ancient poetry, then they would certainly be mentioned in classical treatises on poetry. Or prominent philologists, knowing about unusual techniques, kept their observations in secret?" - continues to ironic Baldauf.

In conclusion, I will allow myself one more lengthy quote from his work: “The conclusion suggests itself: Homer, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Pindar, Aristotle, previously separated by centuries, have come closer to each other and to us. All of them are children of the same century, and their homeland is not at all ancient Hellas, but Italy of the XIV-XV centuries. Our Romans and Hellenes turned out to be Italian humanists. And one more thing: most of the Greek and Roman texts written on papyrus or parchment, carved in stone or in bronze are genius falsifications of the Italian humanists. Italian humanism presented us with the recorded world of antiquity, the Bible and, together with humanists from other countries, the history of the early Middle Ages. In the era of humanism, not only learned collectors and interpreters of antiquities lived - that was a time of monstrously intense, tireless and fruitful spiritual activity: for more than five hundred years we have been walking along the path indicated by humanists.

My statements sound unusual, even audacious, but they are provable. Some of the evidence I have presented in the pages of this book, others will emerge as the era of humanism is explored to its darkest depths. For science, such research is a matter of the utmost importance”(p. 97 ff.).

As far as I know, Baldauf was unable to complete his research. His scientific designs, however, included the study of later editions of the Bible. Therefore, there is no doubt that in the manuscripts of Baldauf, if they were ever found, we will meet many more shocking surprises.

Cummeier and Operation Large-Scale

The third prominent prosecutor was Wilhelm Kammeier, born “between 1890 and 1900” (Nimitz, 1991). He studied law, worked at the end of his life as a school teacher in Thuringia, where he died in the 50s in complete poverty.

The field of application of his research activity was written evidence of the Middle Ages. Every legal act, he believed, be it an act of donation or confirmation of privileges granted, meets first of all four basic requirements: it is clear from it who issued to whom, when where. The document, the addressee of which or the date of issue is unknown, becomes invalid.

What seems self-evident to us was perceived differently by people of the late Middle Ages and the beginning of the New Age. Many older documents do not have a full date; the year, or day, or neither one nor the other is not stamped. Their legal value is thus zero. Cammeier established this fact by thoroughly analyzing the vaults of medieval documentation; for the most part he worked with the multivolume edition of Harry Bresslau (Berlin, 1889-1931).

Bresslau himself, who took most of the documents at face value, states with amazement that the 9th, 10th and even 11th centuries were a period “when the mathematical sense of time among scribes, even who served - no more, no less - in the imperial chancellery, was in its infancy; and in the imperial documents of this era we find countless proofs of this. Further, Bresslau gives examples: from January 12th year of the reign of Emperor Lothar I (respectively, 835 AD), the dating jumps to February 17th year of the reign of the same monarch; events go on as usual only until March, and then - from May for two and a half years, dating is supposedly the 18th year of reign. During the reign of Otto I, two documents are dated 976 instead of 955, etc. The documents of the papal office are full of similar errors. Bresslau tries to explain this by local differences in the start of the new year; confusion of the dates of the act itself (for example, donation) and the notarial record of the act (drawing up a deed of gift), psychological delusions (especially immediately after the beginning of the year); negligence of scribes, and yet: a great many written records have completely impossible dates.

But the thought of falsification does not occur to him, on the contrary: the often repeated mistake confirms the authenticity of the document for Bresslau. This is despite the fact that many of the dates are obviously put down in hindsight, sometimes in such a way that they simply cannot be made out! Bresslau, a man of encyclopedic education, who with the diligence of a mole cut through a mass of material, worked through tens of thousands of documents, was never able to evaluate the results of his scientific research and, having risen above the material, to see it from a new angle.

Cammeier was the first to succeed.

One of Cammeier's contemporaries, Bruno Krusch, who, like Bresslau, worked in academic science, in Essays on Frankish Diplomacy (1938, p. 56) reports that he came across a document that lacked letters, and “in their place were gaped lacunae ". But he had come across letters before, where empty spaces were left for names “for later filling in” (p. 11). There are many fake documents, Krusch continues, but not every researcher can spot a fake. There are “absurd forgeries” with “unthinkable dating”, such as the charter on the privileges of King Clovis III, exposed by Henschen and Papebroch back in the 17th century. The diploma provided by King Clothar III Béziers, which Bresslau considers quite convincing, Crusch declares "pure fake, never contested, probably for the reason that it was instantly recognized as such by any understanding critic." The collection of documents "Chronicon Besuense" Crusch unconditionally refers to the falsifications of the XII century (p. 9).

Studying the first volume of the "Collection of Acts" by Pertz (1872), Crusch praises the author of the collection for the fact that he discovers, along with ninety-seven allegedly genuine acts of the Merovingians and twenty-four allegedly genuine acts of the major domites, almost the same number of forgeries: 95 and 8. “The main goal any archival research is to determine the authenticity of the written evidence. A historian who has not achieved this goal cannot be considered a professional in his field. " In addition to the forgeries exposed by Pertz, Crusch calls many of the documents Pertz acknowledged for originals as such. This has been partially indicated by various other researchers. Most of the falsifications not recognized by Pertz, according to Krusch, are so obvious that they are not subject to serious discussion: fictitious toponyms, style anachronisms, false dates. In short, Kammeier turned out to be just a little more radical than the leading figures of German science.

Several years ago, Hans-Ulrich Nimitz, re-analyzing Kammeier's theses, concluded that the factual material collected by a humble teacher from Thuringia can thrill any sane representative of academic science: there is not a single important document or serious literary work of the Middle Ages in the manuscript of the original. The copies available to historians are so different from each other that it is not possible to reconstruct the "original original" from them. The “genealogical trees” of the surviving or cited chains of copies are leading to this conclusion with enviable persistence. Considering that the scale of the phenomenon excludes chance, Kammeier comes to the conclusion: “The numerous supposedly 'lost' originals never really existed” (1980, p. 138).

From the problem of "copies and originals" Cammeier goes on to analyze the actual content of the "documents" and, by the way, establishes that the German kings and emperors were deprived of their permanent residence, being on the road all their lives. Often they were present in two places at the same time or in the shortest possible time covered great distances. Modern "chronicles of life and events" based on such documents contain information about the imperial chaotic throwing.

Many official acts and letters lack not only the date and place of issue, but even the name of the addressee. This applies, for example, to every third document of the era of the reign of Henry II and to every second - the era of Konrad II. All these "blind" acts and certificates have no legal force and historical accuracy.

Such an abundance of counterfeits is alarming, although a limited number of counterfeits would be expected. On closer examination, Kammeier comes to the conclusion: there are practically no authentic documents, and the forgeries were made in most cases at an extremely low level, and the slovenliness and haste in the production of forgeries does not honor the medieval guild of counterfeiters: anachronisms of style, spelling, and variability of fonts. The widespread reuse of parchment after scraping off old records is contrary to all the rules of the art of counterfeiting. Perhaps the repeated scraping of texts from old parchments (palimpsest) is nothing more than an attempt, by “aging” the original canvas, to give more credibility to the new content.

So, it has been established that the contradictions between individual documents are insurmountable.

When asked about the purpose of making countless materially worthless fakes, Kammeier gives, in my opinion, the only logical and obvious answer: falsified documents should have filled the gaps with ideologically and ideologically “correct” content and imitated History. The legal value of such "historical documents" is zero.

The gigantic volume of work determined its haste, uncontrollability and, as a result, carelessness in execution: many documents are not even dated.

After the first mistakes with conflicting dates, they began to leave the date line blank, as if the compilers were waiting (and did not wait) for the appearance of some unified setting line. The "Large Scale Operation", as Cammeier defined the venture, was never completed.

Cammeier's highly unusual ideas, which now seem to me to be based on a correct basic idea, were not accepted by his contemporaries. The continuation of the investigation he began and the search for clarity should be the most important task of all historians.

The comprehension of Cammeier's discovery prompted me to undertake research, the result of which was the firm conviction that, indeed, from the time of the early humanists (Nikolai of Kuzansky) to the Jesuits, a conscious and zealous falsification of history was carried out, deprived, as already mentioned, of a single precise plan … A terrible change has taken place in our historical knowledge. The results of this process affect each of us, because they obscure our view of the actual past events.

None of the three above-mentioned thinkers, not realizing initially the true scale of the action, was forced to gradually, step by step, investigate, and then, one by one, reject the documents of antiquity and the Middle Ages that they considered to be authentic.

Despite the fact that forced abdications, a ban on the part of the state or church authorities, "accidents", and even constrained material circumstances contributed to the erasure of the evidence of the historical accusation from the scientific memory, there have always been and are new truth-seekers, including among the own ranks of historians -professionals.