>>11124405>>11124405While most of what your post describes is true you have to set it into correleation with the barbarism, especially of the early middle ages.
Vikings and other Invaders destroyed many monasteries and the libraries within them, which often times had the only copies of some of the works which were irrecoverably lost. Many of the works we enjoy were saved by lone monks and clergy who carried them across Europe to the great libraries of Italy.
The Christians did a number on many pagan works, but Rome had fallen far regardless by the time that Western Rome came crumbling down.
To put this into perspective, the Emperor Majorian decreed in the 460s that citizens may no longer take materials from things like the Forum Romanum or the old statues to refurbish their own homes.
Early Christendom was a tumultuous and squabblesome ideology in a tumultuous and barbaric era. During the Fall of Western Rome half of its territories were burned to the Ground. And because your post mentions the "Christian Barbarians", most of them according to contemporaries were relatively tame when it came to looting. You know who wasn't? The Huns. I remember when I was in France that I visited a church which had the notable history of NOT being leveled by the Huns when they passed through. They sacked half of Gaul and most of Northern Italy in the 5th century.
Mediolanum was sacked so thoroughly in the 6th Century during the Gothic Wars, archaeologists have trouble to find any remnants of the city prior to that period.
The reason why so much was lost is not solely the fault of Christians but a general result of the civilization that allowed for these works to be created to collapse, with those who followed gradually forgetting their forebearers knowledge and wisdom.
Early Christianity definitely didnt help and their superstition and perpetual infighting doomed the unity of Rome, but to pin the processes on Christianity in general is intellectually dishonest.
