Christian history

Quote:

---

Christian historians often give the impression that Europe’s barbarians welcomed the new faith, which held out a hope of immortality and a more kindly ethic. The impression is false. The people didn’t willingly give up the faith of their ancestors, which they considered essential to the proper functioning of the earth’s cycles. They had their own hope of immortality and their own ethic, in many ways a kinder ethic than that of Christianity, which was imposed on them by force. Justinian obtained 70,000 conversions in Asia Minor by methods that were so cruel that the subject populations eventually adopted Islam in order to rid themselves of the rigors of Christian rule. As a rule, heathen folk resisted Christianity as long as they could, even after their rulers had gone over to the new faith for its material rewards… Certain words reveal by their derivation some of the opposition met by missionaries. The pagan Savoyards called Christians “idiots”, hence crétin, “idiot” descended from Chrétian, “Christian.” German pagans coined the term bigot, from bei Gott, an expression constantly used by the monks.

---