In the Eastern empire the destruction continued; a law in 397 ordered that stones from destroyed temples were to be used in public works projects such as road repair, building of bridges, aqueducts and fortifications, which indicates the magnitude of destruction going on. John Chrysostom led a death squad through Phrygia (Turkey) killing all the third gendered devotees (galli) and other worshipers of the Great Goddess Cybele that they came across; the lynching party was praised by the Patriarch of Constantinople. He thanked Chrysostom for leaving Phrygia "without sons her whom they called the Mother of Gods".26 The Church particularly hated the tradition of Cybele, whose unpatriarchal practices (prominence of women, transgenderism, homosexuality including lesbianism, direct experience of divinity through ecstatic dancing and music and sex) went so against their own, and whose personal brand of spirituality and immense popularity among the poorer classes was felt as a serious competition. Three centuries earlier Augustine, one of the prime shapers of Christianity called Cybele, a 'demon' and a 'monster' and declared that "The Great Mother surpassed all the gods ... not by reason of the greatness of her divine power but in the enormity of her wickedness".27 Cybele, the Great Goddess known as Magna Mater in Rome, had extremely ancient roots in Anatolia but had entered both Greece and Rome at a very early date and was celebrated with ecstatic worship. After Justinian, Valentinian II officially banned her worship, making it illegal for citizens to visit her temples. And in 390 Theodosius issued a law directed at the galli and other gender-variant and homosexually inclined males: "All those who shamefully debase their bodies by submitting them, like women, to the desire of another man, and in giving themselves to strange sexual relations, shall be made to expiate such crimes in the avenging flames, in view of the people".28 It isn't an accident that St. Peters was built on the spot on the Vatican hill where her temple had stood.
Later as Bishop of Constantinople, John Chrysostom, employed bands of monks to ransack the old sanctuaries of the Phoenician hills. Defending their sacred sites the peasants rose up and massacred or beat up these zealots, while the bishop encouraged the monks to hold on "like pilots in a storm or doctors when fever rises". He funded them, sending supplies of food, clothing and sturdy shoes, and money for hiring laborers to actually pull the buildings down, the christlike hands to remain unblistered, apparently. Contemporary observers described them as 'men in black' who ate like 'elephants'. However the bishop wrote that 'they train to live like angels; neither the men nor the women marry, they barely sleep and eschew all comfort; with the exception of a few, they have even become incorporeal".29
Eleusis fell to a mob of fanatical monks, in 396, bringing to a close, at least a thousand years and probably many more, of Mystery celebrations which had deeply nourished Mediterranean culture. Its loss constituted a violent rupture for western culture. This ritual center near Athens had already been ransacked by Christians in the third century but had been rebuilt. This time it went underground, the area remaining sacred to local peasants.
Gaza, in Palestine, was another city that saw enormous discord during this period. There Bishop Porphyrius contended with a most vexing problem, the city, he considered himself religious leader of, was almost entirely Pagan. At the beginning of his office, 396, he was only able to find 280 followers of Christ. To get to his diocese, upon his arrival to Gaza, he had to travel on a road which the city folk had scattered with brambles, thorns and trash; they also burned stinking smoking substances so as to sting the eyes of the hated bishop. Instead of the welcome, he had expected, of Christians scattering flowers and waving palm fronds, he was advised to enter at night passing along the deserted streets strewn with palm thorns and burning cow dung.30 In a highly ritualistic society this was sure to have terrorized the bishop and his retinue.
After couple of years, he'd gotten his courage up enough to order the shutting of the temples. The most popular was the Marneion dedicated to 'Zeus Marnas' a Hellenized Canaanite Baal; the worshipers ignored the closure and continued to use it secretly. But the bishop hungered for its total destruction, like so many of his kind satisfied only with such spectacular fits of power. The emperor advised against it, knowing how popular it remained and how this prosperous trading city substantially contributed to his coffers through taxes: "Well do I know that your city is full of idols. But it is prompt in paying taxes and contributes much to the treasury. If we were suddenly to terrorize these people, they might flee and we would lose considerable revenues",31 said the emperor. The bishop set himself upon a course of ingratiating himself with the imperial family, spending time in Constantinople, predicting correctly to the pregnant empress that she would give birth to a son, which was something she wanted to hear. This bishop seems to have been a man of much patience, able to well defer his goals. Porphyrius' next strategy was, to be the one to baptize the baby princeling and then with his new-found proximity to the imperial ear he finally obtained permission from the emperor to demolish all eight of Gaza's temples. The order was given for them to be destroyed in May 402 by imperial troops who were made enthusiastic by the promise of pillage. And so the temples were pulled down, the citizens of Gaza were humiliated and the stones of the temple were used for paving.
In city after city the most important sacred centers had been torn down, places that had centered ancient communities, woven peoples and local environments together in mythic stories and communal celebrations; the psychological shock was devastating to the pagan population. The local religions were religions of place, their deities intimately associated with local mountains and rivers or in the East as patrons of their cities; the Church the places of the deities were strategically seized and desecrated these places to destroy their power and finish the take-over often built a church on the site.. However, the temple of Aphrodite, in Constantinople, was turned into a garage for the chariots of the praetorian prefect. Of course, materialistic desires operated and the Church grew wealthy with what it looted from the temples. In Rome, the Christian fanatic, Stilicho scraped the gold from the doors of the temple of Jupiter on the Capitol. His wife Serena removed the beautiful necklace form the neck of the statue of Cybele and departed with it around her own neck. Stilicho is said to have burned the prophetic Sybilline books as well, although Christians would later say that these prophesied the coming of Christ.
Notes to this chapter
26. quoted in Conner p.125
27. ibid.
28. ibid.
29. quoted in Chuvin p.76
30. Chuvin p.77
31. quoted in Chuvin, p.76