The Passion of the Greeks: Christianity and the Rape of the Hellenes (review)

This book was a pleasant surprise for me. Its title, The Passion of the Greeks, reminded me of a statement I had made in Hellenic Philosophy, published ten years ago.¹ I had stated then that "by the Hellenic definition of philosophia, understood as a free inquiry and unfettered speculation about both nature and culture, 'European philosophy' becomes simply a case of homonymia. For this kind of 'philosophy' has been deprived, for historical reasons, of that essential freedom of spirit, which is absolutely necessary for an authentic and genuine philosophy to be born and flourish. . . . [It] had the misfortune to serve, alternatively or simultaneously, three very non-Hellenic masters: dogmatic theology, scientific technology, and political ideology. Hence what I have termed 'the passion of philosophy,' which the forthcoming volume will attempt to bring to light, by critically analyzing the phenomenon of the historical transformation of Ancient Hellenic philosophy in Christianized Europe and the West."

While I was still trying to figure out the details of "the passion of philosophy," that is, what happened to Hellenic philosophy in Christian Europe, Vallianatos's book came to address such larger questions as, What happened to the Greeks? When did the Greek Gods become "myths" and their people, the most highly evolved in the Mediterranean, "pagans?" Why are their statues mutilated and their temples smashed? Why was so much of their knowledge destroyed? This book tells the secret story of the Greek genocide at the hands of the Christians from the fourth to the sixth centuries CE. At a time of religious conflict between Christianity and Islam, this book highlights the intolerant nature of monotheism, the hidden history that plunged the West into the Dark Ages. This book is pleading for another Renaissance, another love affair with the Greeks, so as to reinvigorate our civilization with Greek values.

Written with great passion, by a passionate Greek scholar, this book recounts with graphic details the historical "passion" of the pagan Greeks at the crucial time, when they encountered the fanatic hordes of missionary monks and Christianizing Roman emperors. All tried to convert the remaining Greeks to the new, fanatical, and fashionable faith at the time, willy-nilly. This book is unlike other books, which present the Christianizing of Greece and of the Mediterranean region as some kind of felicitous meeting and mating of the philosophic spirit of Hellenism and the prophetic spirit of the new and ecumenical religion of love and peace. For it chronicles, with boldness and candor, the other and more hideous side of this tragic story. The meeting of Christianity and Hellenism was not peaceful and pious, in the eyes of the author, but bloody and brutal, and it has been kept secret and hidden for a long time.

This challenging and truthful tale, therefore, will probably offend the sensibilities of Christians and Greeks who have been taught the other aspect of the story for so long that they have come to believe it with fanatic faith. They even feel proud of what they refer to, with equal passion, as the great and glorious synthesis of the Greek-Christian heritage historically facing the menace of Islam. For, as Thanasis Maskaleris has put it, the "book dramatically portrays the immense conflict between Christianity and Hellenism from its beginnings to the present, and is structured with a backbone of extensive documentation. It also estimates our great loss for essentially abandoning the political and humanistic principles the Greeks shaped for a civilized sustenance of our world. One wishes that more books were written in the same vein, for the wisdom of the Greeks can provide the guidance we desperately need."

More praise for this good book comes from distinguished professors like Apostolos Athanassakis and Phillip Mitsis. The former has stated that "The Passion of the Greeks is a book which proposes to sail into the highly controversial early centuries when the Christian...