Having entered the Christmas season, we ask those who find the work of the Mystagogy Resource Center beneficial to them to help us continue our work with a generous financial gift as you are able. As an incentive, we are offering the following booklet.

In 1909 the German philosopher Arthur Drews wrote a book called "The Myth of Christ", which New Testament scholar Bart D. Ehrman has called "arguably the most influential mythicist book ever produced," arguing that Jesus Christ never existed and was simply a myth influenced by more ancient myths. The reason this book was so influential was because Vladimir Lenin read it and was convinced that Jesus never existed, thus justifying his actions in promoting atheism and suppressing the Orthodox Church in the Soviet Union. Moreover, the ideologues of the Third Reich would go on to implement the views of Drews to create a new "Aryan religion," viewing Jesus as an Aryan figure fighting against Jewish materialism. 

Due to the tremendous influence of this book in his time, George Florovsky viewed the arguments presented therein as very weak and easily refutable, which led him to write a refutation of this text which was published in Russian by the YMCA Press in Paris in 1929. This apologetic brochure titled "Did Christ Live? Historical Evidence of Christ" was one of the first texts of his published to promote his Neopatristic Synthesis, bringing the patristic heritage to modern historical and cultural conditions. With the revival of these views among some in our time, this text is as relevant today as it was when it was written. 

Never before published in English, it is now available for anyone who donates at least $20 to the Mystagogy Resource Center upon request (please specify in your donation that you want the book). Thank you.



April 2, 2019

The Romiosini of 1821 and the Great Powers (7 of 11)

Medieval serfs working the land.

...continued from part six.

23. How Did the Russians Receive Their Plan

No one can doubt the amazing success of Tsarist Russia in dissolving Romiosini and the Ecumenical Patriarchate. But this begs the question: how did the Russians receive this plan?

The answer is: unfortunately from the example of the new Greek state, where the Europeans had inaugurated a similar design, which was applied by the Franks from the 9th century for the dissolution of Romiosini in the West.(15) What the Russians did in eastern Romiosini, approximately the same thing had been done by the Franks in western Romiosini.

The Franks acquired the huge multitudes of Romans in France and half of Italian Romania from the 6th to the 8th century. The Romans of these provinces became serfs and the Frankish conquerors consisted of the noble class according to their nature and birth, and this is how European feudalism was born. This is why the serfs were not called Franks until the French Revolution, since the Franks were the free descendants of the conquerors.(16)

In order for the Roman serfs to forget that there existed a free eastern Romania, the Franks gave them the name "Greeks", the emperor of the Romans in Constantinople became the "emperor of the Greeks", and the eastern Patriarchates of the Romans became the "Patriarchates of the Greeks". At the same time the Franks called the first emperor of the Franks the "emperor of the Romans"(!), they banished the Romans from the Patriarchate of Old Rome, and they called the Frankish pope the "Pope of the Romans", while keeping the name Romania for the papal state.

In this way the Roman serfs of western Romiosini lost their ecclesiastical ethnarchy, came into a state of illiteracy, believed that the state of Romania is only the papal state, also that the Frankish Pope was still their Roman ethnarch, and the Frankish "emperor of the Romans" was their traditional emperor.

At the same time the Franks condemned those they called "Greeks" as being heretics, and in this way managed to cut off the western subjugated Romans from the free eastern Romans, and they taught them to hate the nonexistent "Greeks" or "Byzantines", who were in the truly united nation of the Romans.

This is why the name "Greek" for the Europeans came to mean "heretic, thief, liar, vagabond, charlatan and fraud."(17)

Notes:

15. See J. Romanides, Romiosini, Romania, Roumeli. The reader can take advice from this book in which I further show the results of what is contained in this study.

16. Old English and French lexicons refer to the name "Frank" as meaning "noble" and "free" in contrast to the serfs. This is why Masonry in France and the Ionian Islands is called "Frankish Masonry" while elsewhere it is called "Free Masonry".

17. Panagiotis Chrestou, Αι περιπέτειαι των εθνικών ονομάτων των Ελλήνων ("The Adventures of the National Names of the Greeks"), Thessaloniki 1960, pp. 40-45.




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