The Spirit of Roman Civilization (V)

The causes of the decline of the Roman Empire, its rectification in the Middle Ages, and future prospects.

Instead, the best is the analysis made by De Francisci of the various political and social factors and various attempts of the restoration of the late imperial period. He brings to light the true cause of decadence: the universal Empire could only hold on provided that the expansive moment would have a corresponding moment of deconcentration and national-racial intensification. Although indispensable, a unique supreme point of reference—the imperial divine authority—could not be sufficient: it would have been necessary instead to provide simultaneously for the spiritual and material defense of the Italico-Roman race as the matrix privileged by elements destined to govern and command in the world. In place of that, Rome accepted cosmopolitanism, the turmoil of leveling and disarticulation. The Empire presumed to embrace universally the human species without distinction of race, peoples or traditions, on the only basis of the supreme central divine power, and close to a break up and a “positivisation” of the ancient juridical idea, at this point turning into the natural law.

On such a basis we tend to believe that contrary to the opinions of most and, it can be said, judging by some of his comments, of De Francicsi himself, Christianity, or at least a certain Christianity, assumed the inheritance of only the negative aspects of the Empire. In fact, only in terms of the “spirit”, universalistically, it proposed to unify and gather the scattered peoples in the Empire; and if, beyond that, it created in the clergy a hierarchy and a central power, it was created without any racial presuppositions: the clergy was recruited from all the classes and peoples and, because of celibacy, could not constitute a caste, it could not give rise to a regular tradition, also supported on blood, as instead happens in many ancient Aryan societies.

Only in the Middle Ages, by means of the Aryo-Germanic contribution, a certain rectification of these negative aspects of the legacy of the last Romanity arose. The organic ideal arose. Catholicism itself came to show less the traits of a universalistic religion than those of the faith characteristic of the fighting block of the Aryan and European nations of “Christianity”. And it is in these terms and in forms that, as we have had the occasion recently to note in this journal, today have a curious aspect of current affairs and even of “futurism”, that the purest force of our origins is reaffirmed beyond the decline of the first Rome.

⇐ Part IV Finis

Posted

2012-04-19

Julius Evola, Romanity

Aeneas

Tags:

La Vita Italiana, Pietro De Francisci

Comments

4 responses to “The Spirit of Roman Civilization (V)”

Logres

2012-04-20

I was just thinking of John Romanides’ criticisms of Charlemagne, last evening, & how perfect they sounded five years ago. It’s becoming clearer that the West (in fact) did the “one thing necessary” in the wake of Rome’s collapse. I need to re-read Carvalho & Dugin’s exchange; the Penty article on Right Hand Path is excellent. And I finally understand (after re-reading Soloviev’s Law of Development article, here) how the “devolution” of spiritual/temporal linking doesn’t entail the disappearance of the Tradition, but sets up a re-convergence out of Freedom, per Tomberg.
http://www.gornahoor.net/?p=3571
Cologero

2012-04-20

No, the lack of a hereditary caste is not anti-traditional. Guenon did not think so, since Islam has no such thing. Even by Evola’s standards, viz., caste is something transcendent and essential to a man’s identity, caste is not necessarily dictated by biology. In may be forgotten today that priests used to have to meet certain standards as far as manliness, physical health, even mannerisms and postures; these should be regarded as the recognition of someone’s caste.

Excellent point about Dugin and Evola. Evola never could accept the separation of the two powers in the Middle Ages. We have been preparing the background to bring Solovyov back into the picture. Unlike Evola, he regarded the separation of the spiritual and temporal powers as an advance. So did Tomberg. Since their respective domains are different (albeit hierarchically related), it seems better to separate them. For example, look up the post on the City of the Sun.

Our position is that the only real unity is a spiritual unity based on a valid tradition, not a pseudo-unity based on biology, race, military conquest, heresy, or a social contract. I believe we have made this point often enough. In Penty’s Common Mind we read:

From a sociological point of view, the first function of the Church is to maintain in society the acceptance of common standards of thought and morals. This is a necessary condition of any stable social order, because if men are to share a common life they must share a common mind, for there must be a common mind if men are to act together. We have moved so far away from the thought and impulse of the Middle Ages that there are few to-day who recognise the fundamental importance of the common mind to any successful ordering of our social arrangements. Yet it is only necessary to reflect on the general social and political situation to-day to realise that in recognising its importance the Mediaevalists were right while the Modernists in failing to do so are wrong.

You can easily substitute “Ancient Rome” or “Spiritual Authority” for “Church” is this passage.
Graham

2012-04-19

One observes a similar cosmopolitanism, both racial and spiritual, preponderating in Rome since Vatican II. With the same deletorious effects.

Evola seems to blunder slightly on the issue of priestly celibacy, since this isn’t the main reason why Christianity has never had a real priestly caste. Celibacy has only been required of priests since the 11th Century, and even then only in the Latin Rite. In the Coptic Rite, for instance, where priestly marriage is actually encouraged, a caste of priests has never emerged. Many further details could be added but are unnecessary. This discipline was added for the Latins in large part to counteract the incipience of a priestly caste. So there are deeper reasons at work.

Is it Gornahoor’s position that Christianity’s congenital lack of an hereditary priestly caste is anti-Traditional?

With apologies for quoting at length, I would like to expose the readers here to an argument made by Olavo de Carvalho in a debate against Alexander Dugin. I believe Logres has made reference to this debate before, but unfortunately – in my opinion – only to Dugin, the less intellectually forcible of the two men.

“The strength of the Orthodox Church as a historical agent has penetrated deeply into the mind of Professor Dugin, shaping his “holistic” notion of theocratic empire. He does not conceive of the empire but as a structure emanated from the Church and united to her, symbolically, in the person of the Czar. In an interview given in 1998 to a Polish magazine[15] he qualifies as “heresy” the distinction between Church and Empire that shaped Western civilization. But without this separation, the only hypothesis left is that the borders of religious expansion coincide with the map of the empire with pinpoint accuracy. Now, the various empires and imperial nations existing in history have always had well-defined borders that separated them from other empires and independent nations. In this case, the imperial religion becomes only an expanded national religion. What is then the Czar? One of two things: either he is the head of a mere national religion having no possibility of expanding itself beyond its borders and looking with deadly envy at the expansion of her Western competitor, or, alternatively, if he wants his religion to impose itself as universal belief, he has to invade all countries and become the emperor of the world. Both the National-Bolshevik project and its Eurasian version are born from an internal contradiction of the Russian imperial religion. The Eurasian project is the only way out for the Orthodox Church if she does not want to remain confined to the limits of the Russian nation, failing in her declared mission as a universal religion. Meanwhile, the Roman Catholic Church can expand comfortably to the last frontiers of Paraguay and China without the need to carry an empire on its back. And that was, in fact, what happened, while the Orthodox Church, through the medium of Professor Dugin, is still looking for an exit leading to the world and does not see other means of finding it but to constitute herself into a World Empire.”

http://www.theinteramerican.org/blogs/olavo-de-carvalho/257-olavo-de-carvalho-debates-alexandr-dugin-ii.html

It is clear that Dugin backs the same ‘totalitarian’ vision as Evola advances in this article, one which the Catholic Church’s understanding of universality has always rejected. And indeed it can legitimately be asked which of the two visions is the more universal – the one that necessitates militaristic expansion, or the one that simply requires adventurous missionaries? I would like to ask which of these two visions, if either, Gornahoor supports – the total fusion of spiritual and temporal powers envisioned by Dugin and Evola, or the somewhat looser cooperation of Mr. de Carvalho and, it seems, the whole of the Catholic tradition. Has this been addressed somewhere?
Cologero

2012-04-19

Evola manages to skip over 1500 years in a paragraph and show signs of a hope that would be dashed. It is the latter Evola, the man among the ruins, that English only readers know. These pre-WWII writings paint a different picture.

There are interesting points here. The first Rome was already in decline. It was becoming universalistic, ethnically mixed, and infected with Asiatic cults. But how could it not be? That is the very nature of Empire. Christianity was just one of those Asiatic cults, but it is important because it became the dominant one. Evola, and apparently De Francisci, claims that Christianity (as Catholicism, a “certain” form of it) inherited the worse aspects of the decline of the Empire. In other words, it was not the cause, but rather the result, the decline of the first Romanity.

Again, Evola points to the rectification of Catholicism under the influence of the Germanic peoples in conjunction with the Romans. But he claims this rectification did not apply to the priestly caste, that is, the spiritual element of Catholicism, something Evola wants to bracket out. However, Catholicism did become the faith of the warrior caste of the nations within Christendom. That is undeniable, but it is hardly obvious how the warrior religion can be split off from its spiritual aspects. Here, we prefer to follow Dante and De Giorgio.

But the final sentence says more than the entire essay. At the time the essay was written, Evola was hopeful another Roman-Germanic alliance, in the form of the Axis powers, was the real future that would reaffirm the forces of the First Rome. After all, let us not forget that the First Reich was the Holy Roman Empire, the creation of the original Roman-German alliance.

Of course, we now know that was not to be. Nevertheless, the essay does indeed have the aspect of current affairs and a futurism, although not in the sense hoped for. A de-Christianized Europe without spiritual moorings and without a faith for its warriors, is following the downward path of the First Rome. Europe is universalistic, ethnically mixed, and besieged with Asiatic cults. A very few see that as a problem, but most do not. The former may resort to desperate tactics.

Is a rectification possible? Do we need another poll question?