Introduction: The Year 1000 – When the West was Lost

The historical term ‘the geographical West’ means Western Europe, the extreme tip of the northern Eurasian landmass. In the first millennium this Western Europe went through a process of Christianization, called ‘The Age of the Saints’, which resulted in the conversion of many to Christ. However, despite this spiritual light among many, dark and heathen undercurrents remained. These threatened the very existence of this Age of Saints of the Old West. Already from the middle of the eighth century, and persistently throughout the last quarter of the first millennium (750-1000), the greedy aggressiveness of Frankish barbarians started coming to the fore, combined with the old pagan Roman imperialism and its military technology. Once the merger between them had been practically implemented in north-western Europe, the fall of Western Europe became inevitable.  The West was lost.

This came about in the justification for the merger of this violent and greedy barbarianism and arrogant and pagan imperialism of the pre-Christian West. This can be seen in the implementation of ‘the papal claims’, established as an ideology in ‘the filioque’, which was fully developed in the second half of the 11^th century. The papal claims asserted that the leader of Western Europe, who lived in the old pagan capital of Rome but was a Frankish barbarian, had an absolute and Divine right to control the world; this was expressed ideologically in this ‘filioque’, which asserted that papal authority came to this leader directly from the Son of God, whose unique representative on earth He was. Thus, the world was conceived of in ’feudal’ terms, a crude pyramid scheme which placed this leader at the top and the people at the bottom. The old ‘Age of the Saints’ was well and truly over, replaced by ‘Feudalism’.

Feudalism 1000-1250

Thus, the term ‘The West’ is not a geographical term, but above all an ideological one. The expression of this latter West, masking the geographical West, was in this Feudalism, which placed the Western leader at its apex and those who aided him just beneath him. This system was first seen in the once Roman lands between the Loire and the Rhine, occupied by the barbarian Franks, in the late 10^th century. It developed greatly in the late 11^th century and came to fruition in the 13^th century. The outward signs of this Frankish ideology of Feudalism were: castles, knights, aggressive military technology, serfdom (slavery) and, in the 12^th century, the Gothic style. This was spread to southern Italy and Sicily in the first half of the 11^th century by the barbarous Viking Normans, who then took it to England in 1066 and from there to Wales, Scotland and Scandinavia and, in the late 12^th century, to Ireland.

The Spread of Feudalism 1250-1500

Having taken this feudal ideology to what became Spain and Portugal in the 11^th century, the Franks then took it to the Holy Land with their anti-Christian Crusades, which resulted in the sacking of Christian Rome in 1204. The Frankish Germans also took it into southern Scandinavia, eastwards into Poland and the Baltic, the Czech Lands, Slovakia and Hungary and through the crusades of the Teutonic Knights into the Russian Lands. The whole of Western Europe had become Frankish. However, this was only the beginning of the story. Within three centuries these absurd claims, fully formulated in the eleventh century, were to be carried across the ocean. As naval technology developed, the Frankish south-west began to expand to a new world, invading and massacring in what came to be called Latin America. Here they built their forts, their new castles, and enslaved native peoples, their new serfs.

Feudalism 1500-2000

However, in north-western Europe, the Germanic peoples protested, challenging the original myth of the Western leader’s superiority and asserted that not he, but only Western people who protested against him, themselves, were superior. They claimed that they alone had the Divine right to represent God on earth, that all was permitted, but only to them, that they alone were ‘saved’. This was the ‘democratization of the filioque’, placing all people like themselves at the apex of the still feudal pyramid. This movement marked the second half of the second millennium. These ‘Protestants’, as they called themselves, with the same greed and even fewer vestiges of Christian feeling, also invaded and massacred the new worlds, North America and Australasia. Together with the south-western Europeans who began imitating them, especially after 1750, they also invaded and massacred in Asia and Africa.

The Third Millennium and Feudal Globalism

Thus, the ideology of the ‘filioque’ was carried worldwide and ‘globalism’, the ideology of the superiority of ‘the Western world’ and its ‘Divine’ right to control and interfere in all the countries of the planet, was born. This came to fruition at the end of the second millennium, making its wars into ‘World Wars’, under competing names like Capitalism, Communism and Fascism. Thus, today’s third millennium still proclaims Feudalism. Today it asserts that all who are true believers in the ideology of the superiority of the West, regardless of their race, manmade religion and gender, stand at the apex of the feudal pyramid. All who resist, all the native peoples of the world, are to be enslaved and crushed, militarily, politically, economically and socially. Nothing has changed: the aggressiveness of Germanic barbarians is still combined with the old (‘new’) pagan Roman imperialism and its military technology.

Conclusion: The New West and the Lost West

This is ‘the West’, in structure the same today as yesterday, a totalitarian feudal pyramid. True, today’s totalitarianism is not that of previous Western -isms, like the Feudalism of the Middle Ages between 1000 and 1500, or the last century’s Communism and Fascism, but it is still totalitarian. This is because it is still based on the pyramid, at the apex of which stands the elite which is opposed to the people, lording it over them and despising them as ‘populists’. And this pyramid is today not just in ‘the West’, but is global. Today’s totalitarianism imposes ‘political correctness’, ‘Western values’ (‘European values’) on all and excommunicates them (‘sanctions’ them) if they do not accept. This is not a question of conservatism. Those who are conservative simply regret the pyramid of the past. We reject both the past and the modern pyramid, for our guiding light is the Age of the Saints of the first millennium.

In this way we follow the Tradition, far more radical than mere liberal and mere conservative. We proclaim the values of the Old West, the values of the Saints who stand at the root of the real West. These are the values of:  the holy apostles Peter and Paul, the bearer of God Ignatius, the holy family Sophia, Faith, Hope and Charity, the fearless virgins Tatiana and Cecilia, Lawrence and Sebastian, Anastasia, Januarius and Pancras, the pure lamb Agnes, Irenaeus of Lyon, Eulalia of Barcelona, Ursula of Cologne, Hilary of Poitiers, Ambrose of Milan, Martin of Tours, John Cassian, Vincent of Lerins, Patrick of Ireland, Benedict of Cassino, Columba of Iona, Gregory the Great, Theodore of Tarsus, Clement of the Low Countries, Modest of Carinthia, Boniface of Fulda, Edmund of East Anglia, Anschar and Olaf and the great host of local saints, known and unknown. This is the lost West, the real West, the geographical West.

 

From the Service to All the Saints of the Western Lands

For one thousand years the light of the Sun of Righteousness shone forth from the East on the lands of the West forming a Cross over Europe, before they fell beneath the darkening shades of the Churchless night. Let us now return to the roots of our first confession of the Holy Spirit in the bright Sunrise of Orthodoxy, which is brought again from the East, and so shine forth the light of the Everlasting Christ once more.

O all the saints of the Western Lands, pray to God for our repentance and return, our restoration and resurrection. Tell the people to leave aside the things of men, the fallen fleshly mind and all its vain musings, for they are without the Saviour and the Spirit. And so, through your life in the Holy Trinity, shall we find salvation in the purity of the Orthodox Faith before the end.

Now do we sing to all the saints of the lands of the West and at their head the apostles Peter and Paul, the true glory of Old Rome, and, like stars in the dark night sky, to the constellation of the martyrs and fathers who followed in their apostolic footsteps, leaving behind them the great treasury of holy relics. O First Rome, who art glorious in thy saints alone, do thou return to the eternal faith of Orthodoxy through the Holy Spirit Who proceeds from the Father, as the Saviour tells us.

O all ye holy women, martyrs, matrons and queens, from Old Rome to Sicily of the south, from Sardinia to Iberia, from Gaul to the islands of Britain, from the Celtic realms to the Germanic lands of the north, preferring the humble truth of the Galilean to the proud might of paganism, ye have brought the words of Christ to dumb men, raising up infants and kings to the measure of the stature of Christ, so hallowing your peoples and our souls by the light of the Holy Trinity.

O constellation of all the saints of the Western lands, who shine forth in the night sky, together we gather in your name, in praise to ask you to intercede for us with your prayers. Bring back the Western peoples from the inglorious darkness of their unwisdom to the Wisdom of God, that they may cast aside all the illusions of the fallen reason and know again that the only true glory and enlightenment is in the acquisition of the Holy Spirit.