While we all know that Christianity is as brutal as Islam, there seems to be a misplaced acceptance of what Christians did to others. I find it fascinating but deeply, deeply disturbing. This book was a fantastic study of a period I didn't know much about.

A very well written and incredibly interesting and informative book about what was done and destroyed in the name of Religion.

Its not a book for anyone that gets easily offended when Christian faith is not shown as this nice thing but rather in its brutal way it really was - that it was used to murder, torture and destroy a lot of people, lives and objects without any regret.
I found that refreshing to see since many other books to side step the extreme ways Christians used and how they believed that dying for their believes would end with being richly rewarded in the afterlife.

This book was a wonderful read and gave a good view into what horrors Christianity spread throughout the world, but it also didn't push the agenda of how Christians today are all horrible and is not attacking modern Christians, but rather showing history as it really was without making anyone look better than they were.

Which i find too rarely happens with especially the brutal history of Christianity.

I highly recommend this book and its a fantastic book to read!

Catherine Nixey endeavours to portray the truth about just how brutal and devastating Christianity's overtaking of the Classical World was in terms of violence and intellect. And she does just that, in such a succinct, objective (as much as you can be when writing history) and engaging way.

The reason why a lot of people criticise this book (and I'm not counting the many Christians who are biased against it) is because the writing is very lyrical and descriptive - it's almost like reading a story, and Catherine addresses this at the start by saying she wants to make the reader truly feel what it is like to be living during this time. While I am always sceptical of history books that do this, I found that Catherine's intentions were met and the descriptive writing only nailed down the point of the facts even more. It was beautiful to read and in some places almost poetic, which posed a lot of existential questions on the nature of religion and humanity and the mourning of an entire era of history.

That being said, I am not sure I would recommend this book to someone who was undergoing study in this topic or anything remotely academic, because there are times where it is difficult to discern where the author got her facts from. It is most certainly popular history and if you are aware of the genre and it's pros and cons before reading, I believe you can enjoy it with just a tiny grain of salt.

Overall, it was beautifully written and an enjoyable read. A good piece of popular history for anyone in the mood for a light and poetic delve into this time period.

I received a free copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Nixey's account of early Christianity's encounter with Classical culture is an angry, somewhat polemical pushback against the narrative of persecuted Christians vs. debauched pagans in the Classical world. I enjoyed it greatly, and Nixey makes many points that bear repeating about the ways in which one ideology/way of life sought to overtake another - and that story is very violent and ugly indeed. It's always worth reminding us of just how extreme Augustine of Hippo was in his teaching and how much he - rather than the original New Testament texts - shaped the church for millennia to come.

However, there's a reason this is a trade book rather than published by an academic press, and it's not just because it will get more exposure this way - it's also very clearly because Nixey has very few actually new points to make. So my issue with her work is not so much that it's "biased" or somehow unfair to early Christianity; it's that it doesn't really give us anything new. But as a summary of recent years' revision of the history of the first five centuries of Christianity, then it's pretty good!

Clear-eyed, poetically written, and absolutely necessary for understanding the present historical moment.

Most of the reviews on Goodreads say that The Darkening Age is biased.
Most of them are written by Christians so one may say that they are biased.
Either way, in The Darkening Age you find Catherine Nixey’s passionate argument about all that was lost when Christianity rose. It doesn’t need to be objective, it doesn’t need to be balanced; it just needs to raise attention of the some 90% of books that were lost, the people that were executed, and the statues that were destroyed. Sure, Christianity did some good - how much good it did is up to the individual - but it is undeniable that, like with the rise of most great powers, it had costs.
It has always confused me, a lowly wannabe-intellectual, as to how quickly the world changed from a time of sexual freedom and scientific discovery to one of suppression and restraint. The link between the fall of Antiquity and the rise of Christianity had never been obvious but now, upon further consideration as to how diametrically opposed the two overarching ideologies of the time periods are, the rise of one leading to the eradication of the other makes complete sense.
Because how, in a world where both of them desired to be the dominant way of thinking, could they have lived side-by-side for very long?
The answer is frankly, they couldn’t.
And so, Nixey’s book charts the rise of a religion that would span more than a millennium. Even 1500 years after the events of The Darkening Age, Christianity, with 2.1 billion followers, is the largest religion in the world today and its effects are seen throughout the infrastructure of daily life.
It makes you wonder how far we’d be without the suppression of ideas by religion; what kind of world we’d be looking at. The scholars and philosophers of Antiquity were discussing astronomy, biology, anatomy, anthropology in a way that wasn’t matched again until the 1700s and 1800s. And what about the scientific advancements that could have taken place if the world hadn’t been put on pause for over millennia, thanks to the threat of accusations of heresy?
Would we have found the cure for the diseases that continue to run rampant? Would we already have flying cars? Would we have colonised Jupiter?
I suppose we will never know.

In Catherine Nixey’s view, the story of Christianity overturning the Classical world has been told a bit too smugly, glossing over the wanton violence and intellectual erasure that actually occurred to present it as a glorious “triumph.” The Darkening Age is her vividly conveyed of somewhat overlong corrective to that story.

Nixey’s perspective is made quickly clear via the opening epigram from St. Shenoute: “There is no crime for those who have Christ” and the ensuing prologue, which is a brief but vibrant recreation of the night “marauding bands of bearded, black-robed zealots” entered the temple of Athena in Palmyra, “heavy with the smoky tang of incense,” and “smashed the back of Athena’s head with a single blow to hard that it decapitated the goddess”, before continuing an orgy of destruction and mutilation until final departing, while “the head of Athena slowly started to be covered by the sands of the Syrian desert.”

What follows the prologue is a lengthy catalog of chaos and mayhem, vandalism, book burnings, censorship, fanaticism, beatings, murder, and torture. Nixey’s title is a biting play on the “Dark Ages” that old imagery of a medieval period of barbarism and anti-intellectualism redeemed by the burning light of Christianity, and in particular the burning candles of those monks who so assiduously copied manuscripts and rescued knowledge from being forever lost in the blackness. Nixey doesn’t just question that old tale, she annihilates it, calling the Christian triumph “the largest destruction of art that human history has ever seen,” and noting that “before it preserved, the Church destroyed. In a spasm of destruction never seen before.” The nice story of rescued texts is belied by her statistic that “only one percent of Latin literature survived.” To make the loss more painfully felt, she offers up a brief catalog:

A last copy of Cicero’s De republica was written over by Augustine on the Psalms. A biographical work by Seneca disappeared beneath yet another Old Testament. A codex of Sallust’s histories was scrubbed away to make room for more St. Jerome.

Why such destruction? Nixey points to several causes. One is the fervent belief in demons that moved right alongside us in this world but could also inhabit statues and texts. Another is that the Church leaders specifically called out for such destruction, as when St. Augustine announced that “all superstition of pagans and heathens should be annihilated.” Then there was Christianity’s relative unique argument that their religion was the “only” truth, as opposed to the “old laissez-faire Roman ways, in which the worship of one god might simply be added to the worship of all the others.” In Christianity’s view, “worship a different god . . . You were demonic.” And, they added, to prevent that false worship, even by violence, is to do good in the world, is to “save” the potentially lost soul. Christians also had a hard time dealing with some of the philosophers’ arguments against Christianity’s tenets, and so far easier to simply silence them than to debate them.

As for the idea that the pagans themselves were hardly innocent, slaughtering Christians b the thousands, throwing them to the animals, torturing and executing the martyrs, Nixey offers up two counter-arguments. One is that the numbers are greatly inflated and the other is that the Christians often forced their executions either for political gain or because for some, their lives were so miserable a belief in the heavenly afterlife and the guaranteed (if posthumous) status of being a martyr made such a choice more than palatable.

Nixey wisely doesn’t simply make abstract arguments but brings much of this to life by giving us real people to care about, creating strong characterizations of people such as Hypatia (murdered in Alexandria), Pliny (governor of Bythinia who felt forced into executing martyrs), and the philosopher/teacher Damascius (force to close the Academy in Athens and flee into exile).

The strength of Nixey’s book lies in her vividness, her flair for dramatic scene description and prose, the constant reference to sources, and he way she always grounds her arguments in their impact on actual people rather than on abstract concepts or faceless institutions. As for the weaknesses, as noted in the intro, the book feels overlong and repetitive, with the sense that one is circling around the same points multiple times to no greater impact. Totaling about 350 pages, I’d argue that a 250-275 page book would have been just as effective. Nixey also sometimes relies a bit on generalizations or presents some points as factual when they might actually be somewhat debatable, depending on which source one uses. Somewhat similarly, I did wonder more than once why this Christian source was deemed unreliable and thus should be dismissed, while this one was fine and could be used in support, outside of the fact that one contradicted her argument and the other confirmed it. To be fair, in her introduction Nixey does make clear that she is aware of these issues and deals forthrightly with the reader, though that still gave me some nagging pause.

But even given that problem, The Darkening Age serves as a counter-argument to the just-as-often biased and much more frequently told story of Christianity’s conquering of the pagan world as a solely triumphant and beneficial event. And thanks to Nixey’s sharp eye for detail and her ability to create vivid scenes and tense action even out of the dust of history, it’s an easy book to recommend.

I really struggled to finish it as it goes downhill after chapter 10. Dropped off nearly at the end of the book. There is no particular insight from the author on the subject that makes it stand out from others.

While Nixey clearly as a chip on her shoulder, this was still a good entrance into the idea of the dark side of early Christianity and the destruction of the art and knowledge of the Classical age.

Excellent story about the death of the Classical era

I enjoyed this book. Catherine Nixey tells a great story about the death of the Classical era and the rise of Christianity. She uses plain language in a way that makes the book difficult to put down. The only thing I didn’t like about the book was Nixey’s use of suppositions without confirmation. Nonetheless, this book is well worth reading for anyone interested in history and goes well with The Swerve: How the World Became Modern by Stephen Greenblatt and The Beginnings of Western Science by David Lindberg.
Disclosure: I received a complimentary copy of this book via Netgalley for review purposes.

I received a free Kindle copy of The Darkening Age by Catherine Nixey courtesy of Net Galley  and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, the publisher. It was with the understanding that I would post a review on Net Galley, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes and Noble and my fiction book review blog. I also posted it to my Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google Plus pages.

I requested this book as the subject matter and the description sounded very interesting.  It is the first book by Catherine Nixey that I have read.

I had high hopes for this book, but the author's writing style (dull, unengaging, biased) made what should be a fascinating subject into a slow druderrgy of a read. As the subtitle indicates, it is a onesided diatribe about how Christianity destroyed the other religions. Some other reviewers have given very positive reviews, but I just could not connect with this one.

I cannot recommend this book. There must be others out there on this subject that would make for a much more interesting read.

When I requested The Darkening Age I had high hopes of truly enjoying the read. Unfortunately, I am not convinced that Nixey achieved her goal. I did enjoy the parts where she stayed focused, and it is clear that early Christianity was full of violence and condemnation for any they felt were different. I am just not sure that she added to the conversation that historians already have going.

This is a fascinating topic, and covers a little-known (and much avoided) area of history.. Nixey provides much well-researched information to debunk myths surrounding "Christian martyrs" and the growth of Christianity in the Roman world..

However, this pre-publication e-version badly needs reorganized. By halfway through, it seems that we're covering the same ground repeatedly, and mentioning the same people several chapters apart. Each chapter seems like a separate article, rather than part of a continuous narrative. A straightforward chronological order would make more sense, and would give the reader a better feel for the gradual, and sometimes dramatic, changes in the religious, legal, and intellectual climate in the empire.

Also missing are the connections to other historical events. How does the Christianizing of the empire and the repression of paganism connect with wars, political struggles, invasions, migrations, etc.? Again, a chronological order would help us see how this important topic fits into the history of the later Roman empire.

It was well written and informative, but the author did seem to have an anti Catholic axe to grind. Still, with that in mind I did enjoy it.

I enjoyed this book because it was different from others that I have read on this subject. I do think the author had decided before writing this that she was in favour of the Pagans, and that reflected throughout the writing, but keeping that in mind, so I would not become tempted to fall into the "all Christians are evil," trap that can happen when you read a book like this, I tried to remain objective and look at her arguments realistically, and found that I really enjoyed this book.

Whilst I do not agree with every viewpoint the author gave, I thought she did a good job of providing an historical foundation for her opinions and believe it is the responsibility of the reader to decide whether they agree with her or not and look into the counter-arguments that could be given against the author's ideas and the opinions of those whom she quotes in her book.

Regardless of personal bias from the author, I liked learning about the destruction done in the name of religion, as I think this type of history is fascinating. The number of lost books and manuscripts, artworks and buildings that have vanished from history is awful to think about, but perhaps in a sobering kind of way, makes us grateful for the historical artifacts we do still have.

Overall, I thought this was an interesting book, with a lot to recommend it.

This review is based on a complimentary copy from the publisher, provided through Netgalley. All opinions are my own.

Before Christianity, no one identified by their religion, says Catherine Nixey. It was not their defining characteristic. Christians imposed their beliefs on everyone else, and required everyone to identify as Christian. That is the essence of The Darkening Age. It shows how the free-for-all that was life in the Roman Empire became the dour, sullen austerity of Christendom.

The Roman Empire was about living life to the fullest. Sex was celebrated (March 17 was a national festival celebrating young men’s first ejaculations), the bathhouses were for both sexes, sex acts provided artwork on walls, floors and objects in homes. Shame was not in the culture. Fine food and wine were exalted. Every religion from the vast expanse of the Empire was tolerated. The attitude was: Believe what you will, I’m having a drink. It was actually very Christian of them.

Nixey’s argument is that right from the beginning, Christianity favored martyrs over do-gooders to promote itself. Stories became epics, the ordinary became tragic and blood became holy, as Christianity’s fame and (forced) attraction spread. Christians were all about suicide and martyrdom, because eternal life after death was the promise and the goal. Christianity’s intolerance also began early on, denigrating any other form of worship, and once in power, punishing it by death to adherents. Homosexuality and lesbianism were banned, slavery was upheld, and death sentences became routine.

It all began with Constantine’s conversion in 312. He exempted the church from taxes, paid bishops five times the rate for professors, and set about converting his entire Roman Empire. To do this, he literally demonized all other religions, claiming all of them were really demons among the good people of the empire. By 386 it was a capital crime to even criticize Christianity. Up to that point, Christianity had been considered an eastern cult with absurd myths at its center.

The Darkening Age follows the collapse of civilization (the Roman Empire) from the time of Jesus to about 500 AD. In that time, the Romans went from tolerating Christians and their fierce sect (Pliny called it a “degenerate sort of cult”), to being taken over by it. The empire went from multi-faith to one single faith, as Christians, far from loving their neighbors, destroyed all vestiges of previous civilization, including the largest repository of knowledge and history – the library at Alexandria – and forced their religion on one and all, or face execution. They implemented spying by neighbors, required bishops to monitor each other for their faith, and instituted gruesome torture and murder for anyone suspected of lack of enthusiasm for Christianity.

Throughout the book there is a heartbreaking refugee, a philosopher named Damascius. He fled Alexandria because philosophy was destroyed by Christianity. He made it to Athens, where he resurrected the Academy of ancient Greece, and it thrived once again -until the Christians took over. He fled again, this time to Persia, which was so vulgar and ignorant, he and his last seven philosophers fled back to the Roman Empire, where they faded from history.

Christians were proud of their ignorance and despised learning. They dragged the most honored mathematician in the world to a temple, stripped her and flayed her skin off with pottery shards. They managed to burn books to the point where entire centuries show no evidence of non-religious writing at all. Monks scraped parchments clean and made copies of the bible on them instead. Statues were defaced, temples destroyed and the stones used to make churches. Nixey’s research says 90% of ancient Greek and Roman artifacts were mutilated or destroyed by Christians. They hammered nipples, carved crosses in foreheads, and smashed limbs. Essentially, any and every evidence of past learning or religion was removed from the Roman Empire as 60 million were cowed into allowing it to go on.

Reading The Darkening Age is very familiar. It is exactly what Islam is going through today. Killing apostates, blowing up statuary, destroying museums, demonizing sex and regulating every movement of every resident. The fierceness and intolerance of the Islamic fundamentalists has all been seen before. Only the numbers are different, as 21st century man counts in the billions, and the entire world is Islam’s target. There are many lessons in The Darkening Age, but mostly it is a fiendishly uncomfortable and gripping read.


David Wineberg

Opening with an account of Palmyra's devastation by bearded zealots, but not the ones you think, aaaah, this polemical history makes its position clear from the off - the supposed 'Triumph of Christianity' at the close of the classical age was in many ways identical to the rise of Da'esh, except worse because more widespread and not so soon reversed. Fortunately, I entirely agree with that assessment. If this book was going to have a problem for me, it would be that just as I didn't read Fire and Fury, or books about the awfulness of Putin's Russia, well, why should I read another deeply depressing book telling me something I already know? But if nothing else there's the difference that I didn't follow this story in the papers and magazines as it unfolded, so while I may know the basics, I don't have that same level of detail on how everything turned to shit. And beyond that, there's the point that in those other instances, you're reading something with which everyone except the ludicrous autocrats' partisans already agrees - whereas here culture remains so deformed by its centuries under the monotheist heel that even neutral parties can tend to forget the atrocities which hastened the end of the pagan world. Although Nixey does point out that of course 'pagan' wasn't a term anyone would have recognised or used until it was needed as the christians' hated other - people worshipped this god or that, or both, joined this cult or the other, but all generally without feeling that painfully insecure need to make it such a major part of their identity.

In the standard version, of course, it was those beastly pagans cruelly persecuting the gentle christians. This despite the record showing that in three centuries of christianity as underground cult within a pagan empire, there were only 13 years of centrally-mandated persecution, and even then, the slightest adherence to the external norms of the imperial cult would get you off. The merciless, invasive persecutions, the insistence that everyone be pure in thought as well as deed, private as well as public - ascribing that to the pagan Romans is mostly projection by the christians, who would indeed prove just that unrelentingly thorough once they had the whip hand. Whereas in order to get themselves martyred, they really had to go out of their way to refuse any proferred olive branch - which many gladly did (I'm surprised and slightly disappointed that Nixey resists any temptation to extend her opening parallel and use the term 'martyrdom operations' for these performative suicides). Equally, the suspect who, once arraigned, answers every question with the same repeated 'I am a Christian' recalls similar behaviour by various flavours of terrorist we've seen tried lately, from that Britain First twat to the more recent Paris suspect. I suppose it makes sense; there's only one thing going through their mind, so why should more than one thing come out of their mouth? The great and glorious variety of the human mind reduced to a single looped statement of loyalty - the natural end state for any ideology founded on exclusion and proscription.

Of course, unlike these joyless monomaniacs, Nixey knows that the same thing over and over gets incredibly dull, so for all that her tale is a bleak one, there are moments of humour. I noisily cracked up when she quotes a historian saying that the real question should be "Why were the Christians persecuted so little and so late?". And then there's Augustine - always an exception to his peers in his gift for the odd great line - reassuring a congregation that they didn't need pagan gods (or in his mind, devils) even for the small stuff. Some used to, because of course multiple gods for different tasks had long been the practice, and was not yet wholly verboten. And from all the grand claims the christians made for their god, some new followers understandably assumed that he should be kept for the big problems. Not necessary, says Augustine: "Let us reduce it to the very least things. He sees to the salvation of your hen."

But it was precisely this easy rubbing along that the christians couldn't abide. To them tolerance was not a virtue, but a sin, letting others destroy themselves, as surely as letting a child play with a knife - so beating the heathens or apostates, burning their books, even killing them was all for their own good really. Especially in the sillier expressions of this militant intolerance, such as the christian fear of being contaminated by the smoke of a pagan sacrifice, I was reminded of the ludicrous displays which we still see today when they get arsey about halal meat, or Easter eggs not using the word 'Easter' (itself a pagan word, of course, but then as another chapter notes, ignorance of everything bar scripture and the bare necessities has long been considered a virtue by many christians).

Inevitably, not everyone is too keen on this new version of events. Consider this example: https://historyforatheists.com/2017/1...
(though be warned that the website header looks like a nineties acid trip threw up). Tim O'Neill, despite identifying as an atheist, seems to agree with the review he quotes from Catholic publication the Tablet, whish says that Nixey "bought into the old ‘blame the Christians’ model. She drives it through with a steely-eyed determination, unrelieved by nuance or counter-argument.” Interesting choice of phrase, that. The christians were in charge for, at the bare minimum, 14 of the 20 centuries they've stained. And even now, for all that they may try laying claim to underdog status, kindly remind me how many senior atheists get seats in Parliament simply for being senior atheists? How many atheist organisations double as nation states, and get treated with respect despite also doubling as paedophile rings? So don't try suggesting that 'blame the Christians' is the old model. The old model was letting them run the world. It went on far too long, and lingers far too much. If anything, the book has far too many #notallchristians interjections. It would have sufficed to note, once, that under even the vilest system some people will do good things, because some people are really nice. But I'm sure that were Nixey writing a book about North Korea, she wouldn't suggest that any of the hundred small kindnesses which must occur there every day reflect any credit on Juche. So I don't know why she feels the need to apply a different standard here.

More generally, there are a number of places where O'Neill raises objections to Nixey's argument which simply don't reflect the version I read. Charitably, let's assume this was because I'm seeing a later revision of the text than he had. The suggestion that Nixey omits mention of the Druids and Bacchic cults as victims of Roman suppression is incorrect. That some pagan statuary considered to have particular artistic merit was preserved by some christians is at the very least implicit in the passage where she mentions fake attributions being added to pieces which were not by the masters claimed, but could be saved by that pretence. Likewise, she freely admits that not every intolerant imperial decree against the pagans can have been entirely enforced, and notes that sometimes this very repetition - however blood-curdling the terms used - can in itself suggest they were not.

This is not to suggest that none of his objections stick. Yes, she does slant the destruction of the Serapeum - but then O'Neill's version suggests the Neoplatonists just spontaneously started being murderous dicks, which seems at least as dubious as Nixey's random outbreak of christian violence. Not least because I can see centuries of other evidence for christians kicking off whenever they feel the least bit slighted, whereas Neoplatonist atrocities...well, those are somewhat thinner on the ground, so long as you count somewhat wishy-washy and impenetrable poetry less atrocious than vandalism and murder, which - not being a zealot - I kinda do. On the death of Hypatia, he has a point that yes, Nixey does slightly oversell her significance (though Agora should still be shown in every school RE class - especially the faith schools. Whose existence, again - remind me how many dedicated atheist schools the government funds?). However, he's extremely disingenuous in suggesting that Nixey doesn't acknowledge there were christians on both sides - a point on which she's very clear. But when Bishop Cyril and his goons are denouncing the more moderate governor Orestes as a backslider for defending Hypatia, it seems a bit of a stretch to call that a political-factional rather than a religious quarrel. To return to Da'esh - most of their victims are their nominal co-religionists, too. It seems a regrettable historical norm that while a faith with many deities can generally rattle along fairly decently, you can't leave monotheists ten minutes before they've turned on each other over some abstruse point of doctrine - how much blood and gold was squandered over the word 'filioque'?

He's quite right that Nixey does lean towards emphasising the urbanity of the pagan world, the ways in which they resemble modern liberal cosmopolitan elites. When she talks about early christians as moving in "a William Blake-ish world where the doors of religious perception lay wide open", emphasising their belief in demons, angels and miracles, this is undoubtedly short-changing the degree to which many pagans moved in a similarly haunted and numinous world (is it telling that she nowhere uses the word 'numinous'?). And yes, while there was undoubtedly a degree of intellectual dishonesty in the christian desire to claim Plato as their unwitting forebear, which Nixey does mention, you'd never know from her account quite how illiberal, absolutist, mendacious and censorious his beastly Republic was, so in that sense yeah, they monotheists are welcome to him. But the important point is surely that for all Plato's diatribes prefigure those of the tyrant-bishops, or Diogenes' performance art rudeness was - as O'Neill suggests - not dissimilar to the gruesome self-abasements of the monks and saints, the old philosophers didn't have armed cadres backing them up. They were examples one could find instructive or ridiculous, according to taste, while getting on with living one's own life. And I don't think it's wrong in the slightest for Nixey to emphasise that change, that reduction of the generally acceptable ways of living - a space which she freely admits had never been all-encompassing, but which I don't think you can argue was reduced by the rise of christianity. It's noticeable that O'Neill, apparently as skittish as any Victorian curator, seems entirely to avoid mention of Nixey's chapter about christianity's war on fun, in which she quotes chapter and verse on the new dispensation's reduction of sexual and gastronomic possibilities. A shame, as it's a particularly good bit, not least because it inclines one to take a childish pleasure in doing anything to which these joyless scum objected. And that adds quite a bit of pleasure to one's day, because they disapproved of pretty much everything. Plucking rogue hairs, condiments, spices, going to the theatre - all sinful, and that's before you even get into the proper stuff like sex and booze! John Chrysostom, especially awful even compared to his priggish peers, talked of ending "the tyranny of joy" - and really, how can anyone hear that phrase and not recognise the man who came up with it as the very embodiment of the enemy, the Anti-Life Equation with a bad moustache?
(Seriously, Google him, and one of the lead images looks like Sinestro and Hector Hammond had an ugly baby. It's like he was unwittingly trying to be a megamix of DC villains - if it hadn't been for the early church's abhorrence of purple, I'd even suspect he had a purple and green outfit on under his robes)

O'Neill also cavils at Nixey's description of the erasure of classical texts as "deliberate", but as she says herself - if this wasn't spite, then at best it was utterly incompetent preservation, and this during a time when the scriptoria were producing Augustine after Gospel after Augustine at the same time they were losing so much. And often that 'losing' did consist precisely in erasing a copy of some rare classical text precisely so that the palimpsest could be used for yet another copy of some pious drivel. As for his argument that the destroyers were only one faction within early christianity, and not the ones whose vision prevailed in the long term - well, if so, how come mediaeval abbots were still purging unseemly texts which had survived that far? If the christians in favour of preserving classical knowledge won the argument, why was so much of it lost - and don't tell me a big barbarian boy done it and ran away, because while that certainly didn't help, we have individual manuscripts proving a fair amount of clerical culpability too. He asks "how is it that she can read Ovid, Aristotle, Plato or the smutty poems of Catullus at all?" Well...no tyranny is perfect, is it? There'll always be the brave and irreverent who manage to save some of it from the flames and pumice stones. Just look at Mali. And if, as O'Neill and the orthodox view suggest, the christians did such a sterling job of saving things, then how come Sappho is a pillar of smoke? Indeed, Nixey doesn't go into this as much as she might, but the list of the lost certainly seems to support the idea of the monastic libraries as a great filter, preserving that which seemed closer to the grim christian outlook. Men's work lasted better than women's, tragedies better than satyr plays. That we have Aristotle on tragedy but not comedy is famous thanks to Umberto Eco; more seldom mentioned is that while we have Homer's two epics of misery and war, we don't have his comedy Margites, whose protagonist sounds like the ancient counterpart of Viz's Terry Fuckwit. Sometimes, O'Neill even seems to be arguing from an absence. He suggests that Nixey overplays the similarity of Democritus' atomism to modern physics, and the degree to which it was a live philosophy by the time christianity lowered into view. And for what it's worth, I incline to agree. But it's hard to be sure given how little we have of the atomist's work, and that generally quotations in works refuting them - the originals have all long since been destroyed. Sorry, 'inexplicably not been preserved by those great custodians of classical culture'.

There are plenty of other marks against christianity here, though. There's one brilliant section which if anything Nixey massively underplays. Given how often I've seen it suggested that christianity deserves credit for the end of slavery - an intriguing notion given the existence of things like serfdom and the American South - I was fascinated to hear the counter-story here. At least one cleric who preached emancipation was excommunicated, and there was even a saint, Theodore, who'd help you find your insubordinate human property! So you can't even argue that the church increased freedom for the most lowly as it massively reduced it for the rest. And oh, the paranoid mutual policing of the early churches, everyone scrutinising their neighbour for signs of backsliding! This sort of behaviour is seldom a good sign, as it leads inevitably to vicious circles of escalating purity and intolerance, whether Maoist, Brexiteer, or even the sillier fringes of the modern left. Yeah, the book slants things - but given how long-lasting the other side's version of events was, I can mostly forgive that. It is valuable nonetheless as a reminder of the wholly negative influence christianity has had on the world, and of how much better things would be if we could remove the remnants of its corpse-grip on us, which despite the considerable progress made these past couple of centuries, are not nearly so few as its wheedling adherents and their enablers tend to claim. So for all that I wish Nixey had been a little more thorough, if only to build a more cast-iron case against christianity, I can forgive her getting carried away by the force and justice of her still little-appreciated central claim - however many people were glad to see christianity, even by the christians' own account there were plenty who were not, and it's past time their suffering took its place in the historical record. And let's face it, even if she had shored up her account of the Serapeum and classical superstition, it's not as if she was ever likely to get a glowing must-read review from the bloody Tablet.

(Netgalley ARC)