In 1417, a former secretary to Pope John XXIII, the
pope most associated with the selling of indulgences, was on a quest to
discover, or perhaps I should say, rediscover long forgotten texts from ancient
Rome. His journey took him to far flung libraries in distant monasteries
throughout Europe. During one such quest this secretary named Poggio
Bracciolini came across the greatest discovery of his lifetime, a long
forgotten scroll written by a Roman poet-philosopher, Lucretius. Christianity
had been so successful in stamping out all thought that did not confirm or
support its dogma that the words of Lucretius had not been read in over 1,000
years. At the time of his discovery Bracciolini could not have known, but time
has shown that his discovery of this single long lost text literally change the
trajectory of the world and helped nudge it out of the dark ages.
So what was it about the writings of Lucretius that had the power to reshape the path of human history? In simple terms it was the long lost, straightforward philosophy that the world we live in is random, full of chaos and undetermined. In other words it was in stark contrast to the governed, organized, predestined world of dark ages Christianity.
The philosophy of Lucretius, with its denial of Christian asceticism, enabled people to turn away from a preoccupation with angels and demons and to focus instead on things in this world: to conduct experiments without worrying about infringing on God’s jealously guarded secrets, to question authorities and challenge received doctrines, to contemplate without terror the death of the soul.
So what was it about the writings of Lucretius that had the power to reshape the path of human history? In simple terms it was the long lost, straightforward philosophy that the world we live in is random, full of chaos and undetermined. In other words it was in stark contrast to the governed, organized, predestined world of dark ages Christianity.
The philosophy of Lucretius, with its denial of Christian asceticism, enabled people to turn away from a preoccupation with angels and demons and to focus instead on things in this world: to conduct experiments without worrying about infringing on God’s jealously guarded secrets, to question authorities and challenge received doctrines, to contemplate without terror the death of the soul.
Lucretius believed that religion sucked the pleasure
of living out of life by burdening the believer with guilt, dogma and superstition
that prevents adherents from living an authentic, pleasurable life in reality. It is amazing to me that this philosophy of “Secular
Humanism”, so toxic to religion in general and Christianity specifically, was
able to survive at all. It also amazes
me to know that secular humanism was once so prevalent in ancient Rome…was
virtually stamped out by the Christian religion and literally stalled the world
of human advancement and enlightenment for over 1,000 years.
You can read more about this fascinating bit of history in Stephen Greenblatt’s Pulitzer Prize winning book “The Swerve, How the World became Modern” I highly recommend it.
