Iconoclasm

General pattern

Saints and martyrs

  • Many saints were criminals. “St” Boniface chopped down Thor’s Oak sacred to Germanics, “St” Nicholas said to have done same in Lycia to Hellenic sacred trees, “St” Martin did same (later Dutch Protestants defaced his cathedral)
  • If you read martyr stories, you find saints going up and destroying shrines and icons, and then threatening to come back with a crusader army if the pagans refuse to convert. Then they get killed by pagans, which the Christians describe as the unjustified murder of an innocent.
  • “The Christain saints and missionaries like Cyril and Bonerface were part communist “community organizer” and part Taliban death squad leader.”
  • “There was a 1583 revolt in Goa (then under Portuguese) called Cuncolim revolt where the locals killed missionaries going around destroying temples, they were turned into “martyrs” & beatified.”

Digestion

  • Digestion of icon-worship and polytheism within Catholicism and Eastern Orthodox Christianity
    • In Catholicism there are many angels and saints, whose icons are worshiped, sometimes infused with prechristian rites, identities and traits.

Roman empire

  • Vandalism [MT]
  • The charity route [Julian TW]

hasten to attack the temples with sticks and stones and bars of iron, and in some cases, disdaining these, with hands and feet. Then utter desolation follows, with the stripping of roofs, demolition of walls, the tearing down of statues and the overthrow of altars, and the priests must either keep quiet or die. After demolishing one, they scurry to another, and to a third, and trophy is piled on trophy, in contravention of the law. Such outrages occur even in the cities, but they are most common in the countryside. Many are the foes who perpetrate the separate attacks, but after their countelss crimes this scattered rabble congregates and they are in disgrace unless they have committed the foulest outrage. Temples, Sire, are the soul of the countryside: they mark the beginning of its settlement, and have been passed down through many generations to the men of today. - Libanius

Desecration patterns

The Jupiter columns which were important Roman religious icons were often demolished & incorporated into pretAlaya-s & fortifications. In other cases the burial with bones suggests that they were desecrated with animal corpses before being buried. There are several such examples in Germania where the preta vandals were in overdrive after the death of emperor Julian. Here is one from the church of George, Alzey, Deutschland, where the pretAlaya has been erected on the foundation of demolished religious columns & altars of the Romans.

Egypt

  • “There is no crime for those who have Christ” - Xtian monk Shenoute’s response to the accusation of attacking a pagans house in Roman Egypt.

Greece

  • Apollo ruin vandalism: here.
  • Valliantos: 1.
  • “One of the ways the Christians prevented Greeks to visit their temples/shrines was to build cemeteries around them or to bring bones into the temples. The ‘pollution’ of the dead around the temples kept people away.” Example: Cornith 5Ce - IMG.

Armenia

See cursades page.

North Europe

England and Ireland

Sweden

  • Adalward’s designs. [TW]

France

  • Charlemagne’s massacre of the Saxons (who were a Germanic people) at Verdun for refusing to become Xtians.

Slav lands

Americas

Central America

Brazil

Australia

  • Aborigines egged on by an Austronesian Christian preacher burnt sacred aboriginal objects; saying that the zombie cult helped them rid themselves of Satan, behavioral problems (smoking, drinking etc..) ABC19

NE Asia

Africa

  • Nigeria
    • 2015 shrine attack here.

Persia

See separate page.

India

Considered separately.