Historyfags, need some help with sorting out my history. When Rome fell, did the Roman elite take cover under the Holy Roman Empire AkA the Vatican?
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To be honest, I'm beginning to question anything we've ever been taught in a classroom.
You should. EVERYTHING!
I'm not 100% convinced "Rome fell."
The power of Rome was in it's laws. In a very important way, all power resides in laws. (This is not intended to be a definitive statement, but one of scope.)
Laws shape the beliefs and actions of the people of the Earth. Of course only Natural Law has any actual power, and we don't really even know what the Natural Laws are, but all of our world is based on, and restricted and guided by, our system of laws. People will act according to the law. Even when they misbehave they are aware of "the law" when they do (unless its obscure), and thus act under it's influence, even if not according to its bounds.
I think it is possible we are still under Roman Law. Of course we have English Law (Common Law) on top of that, so we might still be an English Colony (by law), but England might still be a Roman Colony. (by law).
The Pope would be the apparent present leader of the Roman Empire and dictator of Roman Law.
Not to say I think the Pope really holds the reigns of power. I doubt the Pope is the person really in charge of the Roman Empire, but I doubt the Emperor's of old were the people really in charge of the Roman Empire back then either.
"The Holy Roman Empire was neither holy nor Roman nor an empire" - Voltaire
Came here to type that and did above
Oh yes I heard of that one.
We might find the answer by studying the orthodox church. Why did they allegedly break away?
I thought it was bc part of the church was getting corrupted..getting debauched. Allowing gay sex etc , kind of like now. So the true believers splintered off into the Orthodox Church.
These are close but I see room for nuance. When the empire split there were two emperors for a long while; after about 480 there was only the Eastern Emperor left and so the East got later to be called the Byzantine empire (after its capital Byzantium/Constantinople) rather than the Roman as it had always called itself. From the fall of Rome, for 300 years you had chaos and tribals in the west and for 1000 years you had stability in the east (largely due to the Byzantine gold standard, the best and stablest in world history). There was no political east-west divide after 480 because there was no Western Roman Empire left. Rome was either pagan/Arian, or run wholly by the east.
Did Eastern Emperors try to divide the church? They probably contributed as everyone did. The Pentarchy was nominally led by Rome and Constantinople, which were recognized as first and second among equals. Over time the assertions to Rome's privilege as first diverged so far, partly due to the communication divide, that in the 11th century issues were made over the right to add "filioque" to the creed and the right to excommunicate (both sides excommunicated each other, which was annulled by both in the 20th century). This was recognized as the great schism but both sides thrived afterward: a real Judah-Israel issue.
Until the 11th century, all the Pentarchy heirs were the one true catholic orthodox church of Jesus Christ founded on Peter. The Orthodox do not descend straight from Rome or Peter but from the "equal" grant given to Andrew and then Byzantium, just as the other original cities descended from other apostles. To speak of the origins of Catholics, Orthodox, or Protestants is always to speak of the plenary grant from Jesus to his apostles, and only to narrow that grant due to later events: all three camps should rightly lay claim to the entire church up to 1054. That catholic orthodox millennium is indeed the originator of all subsequently defined churches.
I don't know which Constantine you mean. I and II were over the whole empire, there were two Constantine III's, one for each side, and there were IV-XI in the east along with a few who took the name without a number. If anything Justinian I (Eastern Emperor 527-565) did more to establish Byzantine Christianity and control over western lands than most other eastern emperors, long before eastern Constantine III.
You might say instead the HRE was the answer by the Roman bishop (the pope) to the Eastern Roman Empire. But the HRE was really the "First Reich" of the German people, who went through very many somersaults to retain its alleged continuity after 1806. The Byzantines lost continuity to the Ottomans in 1453; some trace their elites to Russia where they contributed to the czar dynasty being set up. So as I said the political structures come and go; meanwhile the covenant people's structures remain under the one banner of Christ.
Most people complain about Constantine I the Great because he thoroughly changed the church from being a persecuted movement to being a sponsored religion (Edict of Milan 313). Both before and after that the whole church called itself catholic and orthodox and was led by the Pentarchy (Rome, Constantinople, Jerusalem, Antioch, Alexandria). Using those two names "catholic" and "orthodox" to define the split church after 1054 was semantic because they both claimed the same heritage and both want to unite someday on what they say the original principles should have been.
Thank you for explaining the sources there. When you're looking at about 200-450 it would make sense that individual powerful Romans sought refuge in those lands that became tribes like the Goths, as there were many emigrations over the whole period. I don't know of any strands retaining power that we can be specific about, as the nobility system remained within the city, not without. When we see the individual tribes asserting themselves like Goths (themselves divided) and Heruli, I don't know of evidence that they had absorbed much power from imperial citizens.
Certainly the greater currency degradation on the west side contributed to the loss; and the multiple attempts to declare it a formally dual empire could be said to have fared as well as the Civil War, with a similar pretense of unification, except that unlike us they also lost lots of territory to upstart kings. Once Rome fell in 476 the sole remaining emperor, Zeno, was stuck with holding what meager territory he could retain in the west (largely retaken by his successor Justinian), and I saw some good new data on that today that I wasn't aware of but don't have that page handy for summary. But you're right that tracing this period is a challenge; Huns don't keep good records.
So we had these various tribes compete for centuries until in 800 Charlemagne had amassed so many duchies and territories for the Franks that the Pope decided to get a crown and award it to him, literally as a surprise Christmas present, creating the new concept "Holy Roman Empire" as if it were the rightful heir of the Western Roman Empire 300+ years back. Before then it was just the Frankish kingdom like the Saxon or any other kingdom, allied with the recently created Papal States, but it was the clever name that gave it more push to amass more central European princedoms. To trace the actual de facto power over the city of Rome 476-800, it's that chain I've outlined: Romans, Heruli, Ostrogoths, Byzantines, Lombards, Franks, and Romans again. The de jure power largely follows this but the Byzantines claim credit for overseeing some of the more local tribes.
Now for new info on the later period, I find that Habsburg Castle was built by Count Radbot in 1020 (hawk's burg), and his house dates from that time and became the power brokers of Austria and thus the HRE within about 200 years. But just like the Rothschilds you can only say there was an early long-attested family, over a period of a generation or two they cornered a market and centralized power, and they retained that a long time after. I don't know the details. Time and chance happen to them all. Today Musk, tomorrow someone else. It's great if we can find ties that suggest connections from one power center to another, but for them to be true transfers of power they must be either somewhat similar to the popular narrative or so secret as to be speculative. It's not that important who got what from whom, it's more important which were satanists and which weren't. Obviously this period corresponds to the Dark Ages of greater economic disparity, profligacy and poverty.
Napoleon wanted to start his own empire and succeeded in breaking up the HRE 1798 by overpowering military conquest. Napoleon's name literally means Apollyon, not that he was necessarily an antichrist, but that he did want to be the central power. He got that power through the societal class collapse of the French Revolution and its anarchy leading to a call for a dictator; but like Hitler he bit off too much, made too many enemies, and was defeated by their alliance 1815. (We can certainly say the Rothschilds were involved, because Nathan made a ton of money withholding the news of Wellington's victory until he could buy tons of cheap stock from doomers; he and his brothers had mastered intel networking and so he knew about the victory before any other trader, suggesting that he also had an interest in having assisted the British and Prussian victors.) But Germany having been left a shambles it went through another crazy series of political redefinitions including the Second and Third Reichs until defeated by the Allies in 1945.
Napoleon makes a fictional cameo in The Count of Monte Cristo, filmed with Jim Caviezel. The story, like Ben-Hur, illustrates how easily a nobody can rapidly inherit the power of a titled house and take his own place in society to set things right as he sees fit. And I see that theme repeatedly in history except that the heirs are so rarely noble.
Now that's good data. I learned that Nicholas Flamel (1340-1418?) accused other alchemists of using blood so it was probably well-established as you describe by then. However we have many Biblical and mythological hints that everyone always knew blood was important. Noah prohibited eating blood (hinted in his account and supported by Acts 15), indicating that there was also a prediluvian practice about it that has a bit of continuity with the first century. It seems to me that cannibalism never was a tremendous subset of the depravity though, until recently as you hint; the bigger deal was for a much longer time the mere destruction of the child as a substitute, typically by fire.
But there could be very much study done on the "drunk with blood" concept and that might inform how it led to this special appeal to the anemic. I wonder how much of this can be pinned on Vlad and the vampyrs, as they are right in your period (c. 1430-1477).
That’s a lot of history you know fren. 👍
Thanks, the big bulk of that was due to getting called to moderate c/Christianity last year, from which it was necessary to research for myself every viewpoint: Messianic, Catholic, Orthodox, Adventist, Dispensational, British-Israel, NatSoc, the whole nine yards. I found there are indeed lots of cabal strands but they're usually much more complicated than the memes let on. Thank you for the thread.
Yes it is complicated to say the least.
yep. Where is the orthodox church now?
Rome proper.
There were several sacks of Rome prior to its peaceful cession to Odoacer in 476. The bishop of Rome had to plead for retaining jurisdiction of Vatican Hill for the next centuries with whichever Arian or Orthodox took political control of it. While he still probably represented a hypothetical continuous elite, he had to remain in full communion with the rest of the Pentarchy and could only assert his privilege over them by allegation. It used to be that other bishops could contradict the pope successfully and talk him down, but over the centuries he kept asserting that they couldn't until he finally had them excommunicated in 1054 via his legate, thus losing four of the five Pentarchy sees.
What really got the pope going into his own power was getting land grants (the Papal States), via seizing his own political control of duchies. This began in 756 after years of Pope Zachary supporting Pepin the Younger and getting the Duchy of Rome in return. This emboldened Leo to announce the HRE on Christmas 800. I'm not sure what region of the west you're thinking of that was controlled by the east between 480 and 756, though there probably was a holding here or there in that time that was nominally Byzantine.
Turks (Seljuks) didn't come to Turkey from Central Asia until the 11th century (founded as Ottomans in the 13th). Those first called Hungarians and Austrians were basically just margraves among the early HRE. So it's a long road from the sacks of the 4th to 6th centuries to these later aspiring conquerors. As I said, all that I've seen was that whenever the pope's locals had any influence it was either to stay in Rome under its present power or to bring another power to take over Rome. I don't see a narrative for migration of power from Rome elsewhere, only of Rome picking winners among whomever was asserting themselves at the moment. I do appreciate the opportunity for brushing up and new facts.
The Vatican library should be published. I think we would learn alot of what happened back then.
When I look at recent maps of the holy roman empire it is directly over germany. AS we were taught in Jr High: It was neither : Holy.............nor Roman.nor an empire.......and when I was in germany there was a large museum of roman german aretifacts, collections, bits of architecture[I think} I had a photo of myself done behind some shined up roman armor with my head below the helmet and above the breast plate and such through the glass display case.
The Church of Rome took over civil management of the western empire after multiple crises because there was no other structure that could do it. Thus the "Universal Church" became the de-facto heir of Rome (inheriting all its sins) and tired to re-form it in order to consolidate power through various political constructions in the Middle Ages and beyond. The Holy Roman Empire was one of those structures. For 1260 years the Roman Church had a lock-hold on Europe, reigning over kings and peasants alike until its power was stripped away by protestant reformers, revolutions, and finally Napoleon, who put the Pope in jail. Before those events, no one could move a foot unless the Pope said he could. How the black nobility managed it all out of sight is the part of history we are never told. Plans within plans within plans. Few things in the history of Europe were what they seemed on the surface.
Indeed
This is relatively accurate. To call it informal de facto civil management of some of the many dozens of tribal governments that arose in western Europe isn't amiss. The de jure heir of Rome was its conqueror Odoacer, King of Italy, who led a mixture of a couple of these tribes (he was an Arian and possibly Goth, Hun, or Heruli). He was killed by Theodoric the Ostrogoth. The Ostrogoths were first defeated in Rome by Belisarius in 536 (for Eastern Emperor Justinian), and the city was besieged repeatedly over the next 20 years. In the early 8th century the Lombards took de facto control of Italy while everyone pretended the city was still Byzantine, then Pepin of the Franks defeated them and donated some of Rome to Pope Zachary in 756, at which point the east's influence can be said to have ended. So the only continuity is same city, same succession of bishops, different negotiations in each era.
Now, please don't use that Adventist number 1260 (538-1798), for several reasons I discovered last year. First, it was conceived by heretic Millerites in the 1840s, based on earlier questionable schools who thought 1798 was important. Second, since Miller had to adjust his 45-year final gapped endpoint from 1843 to 1844, the epoch should have been 539-1799, but those are even less well-fit dates to any epochal events. Third, nobody really took Rome in 538 anyway, that was merely the end of the first siege when the Ostrogoths left the gates first time (they had been ejected in 536, and kept coming back for the whole Gothic War); 538 was just a convenient, but legally meaningless, marker for those who liked calculating from 1798. Fourth, the connections of the 1260 to ten nations are utterly spurious and based on a source that twisted the text of Daniel to mean the first ten nations of admitted dozens, by an arbitrarily dated list. So if one wants to defend the idea that this is an important 1260 one will need to remove all the original heresy-inspired baggage associated with this number and to demonstrate the meaning of all the associated prophecies without sketchy summaries; it's a much taller order than what I had thought for many years of listening to Adventists and half-permitting their historical possibilities. But they all arose because people saw the pope fall to Napoleon in 1798 and then spent decades constructing theories about him being the deadly-wounded beast, based on what research they could scavenge while constantly starting their own splinter and schism congregations around the UK and then the US.
There is no constancy of this 1260 years that could be called "lockhold" control, merely of successful negotiations and party-changes with the wind of politics. There were times of power and perhaps single events of "nobody moving a foot without permission", but what you have is several centuries of chaos, probably a couple centuries of mafia-style familial control, and then three centuries of constant wearing down by Protestants. Of course we have good records that are not taught about the Medicis and all their in-laws, and I had fun reviewing them for a series in October for c/Christianity (search "XCV" there). There were many negotiations behind the scenes, but most of them have come to light. Further research is to be encouraged.
For present purposes I would refer readers to a nice graphic depicting 11 power centers over history, including Rome itself, the Vatican, and the Jesuits, each of which consist of a mixture of cabalists and sincere brokers. It's important to define the true enemy as the satan and satanists, and to recognize every human institution as an experiment that may be more or less infiltrated by the enemy. This is the perspective of the Bible, which also indicates that there is a 1260 still to come.
Thank you. Very informative.
Yep. Sure did. Transformed. Never died.
Here you go
https://youtu.be/yHy6ptr7NNk
It goes into great detail about the history even going back to the link to the fish god worshipping which is why the pope wears that hat.
Thank you fren
Odoacer deposes last Western Roman Emperor from Rome and declares himself King of Italy, 476.
Pope Leo III crowns Charlemagne first Holy Roman Emperor, 800.
Lots of interchange happened between those dates. The succession of popes remained but their power (other than local bishopric) wavered wildly and so making a narrative that when Rome fell there was immediate cover in the HRE doesn't wash. It's more like any other city where the primary religious leader's office is subject to the vagaries of history; compare the political history of the Patriarch of Constantinople (who now lives in Istanbul).
The question is which power narrative you want to support, and then you can get to what facts do and don't support it.