[Music] okay what can we take away from this eminent roman civilization well the romans passed on values and traditions and inventions to the west that are irreplaceable and amazing let's just review some of those that we talked about earlier they too believed in and adhered to divine law and natural law they believed it couldn't be revoked and great law that for on the human side needs to complement and reflect divine natural law also you won't find any more people groups probably that are more uh perseverant and dedicated and tenacious as the romans were they believed in honor they were a very patriarchal society and believed in manliness they believed in the republic rule and democracy in some form although we've seen where that was overthrown by an emperor they had citizen soldiers just like the greeks every time hannibal would annihilate one of these armies uh the citizen soldiers would amass again and they would replicate another army they believed in servant leadership we saw this with cincinnatus we saw how they believed for the most part it wasn't about themselves but about the people they were serving and being a leader that's not about being a big shot but about being behind the scenes and helping others they also had a mentality that's huge at least for america go big or go home if you're gonna do something right it's worth doing well so the coliseum the circus maximus the aqueducts the road system just conquering the entire mediterranean if you're gonna do something well you might as well go all out and cast your chips in last but not least they left a legacy of a strong statehood and peace for the most part right um aristotle said if you want to plan for peace you must prepare for war so yeah there's moments where the romans are are conquering and fighting and they're in a war time but generally speaking um their their stability in the mediterranean enabled a lot of peace to transpire because what we saw before rome and after rome which we'll see is there was so much turmoil and so much um barbarian attacks and civilizations under attack when rome was the centerpiece for the most part things were pretty stable in the mediterranean because they had that kind of exertion and control so once again as the professor said to me rome was a gift they were an example and they were a warning chesterton said this quote the center of gravity of the world was in the mediterranean with the greeks and the romans when all is said and done if there were nothing in the world but what was said and done and written and built in the lands lying around the mediterranean it would still be in all the most vital and valuable things the world in which we live there's another famous story named arnold toynbee he has a theory on the stages of a civilization this is certainly true the romans and the greeks he believes these five stages go like this there's a genesis there's a growth stage there's a times of trouble stage there's a universal state and then there's a disintegration stage so those certainly hold true for the greeks and the romans it's interesting you think in human history there's a very few select times where mighty men of incredible giftings and talents walk across the stage of the world at the exact same time think about ancient greece socrates who taught plato who taught aristotle who taught alexander the great herodotus thucydides pericles pythagoras euclid sophocles europedies hippocrates so on all those men walked across that world stage in the ancient greek time in a short time span that's phenomenal how about the ancient roman time julius caesar virgil cicero augustus livy mark anthony cleopatra i reminded the reformation time too this to me would be a moment that god allowed many many mighty people to cross the stage and influence the world think martin luther calvin erasmus zwingli huss wycliffe melanchon tyndale and i also have to reflect being an american the founding fathers at that moment in history these men walked across the stage of the world in close proximity thomas jefferson benjamin franklin george washington john adams patrick henry james madison that is a pretty cool list of times when the lord allowed these men in these certain time frames to do what they did to advance western civilization speaking of the founding fathers there was a prayer benjamin franklin said at the constitutional convention in 1787 and when i say his prayer let's think about the ancient greeks and the ancient romans his benjamin franklin quote i have lived a long time and the longer i live the more convincing proofs i see of this truth that god governs in the affairs of men and if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without his notice is it probable that an empire can rise without his aid did god aid the greeks and the romans can we discern god's will and say that yes he did to benefit mankind for all millennia i think in a generous mindset yes we can say that god aided the greeks and the romans what heritage we've been given to us what amazing traditions been passed down to us but i want to ask you to pause just for about 10 seconds what are some things that stand out to you about the greeks and the romans what are some things that are highlighted in your brain that you can carry with you think wait those are what the romans and the greeks handed to us in our western tradition so take about 10 seconds for yourself maybe jot it down on a piece of paper okay i hope you got something because if i'm just teaching you and i'm just in the camera looking at you and you're not responding to it you're not processing it then it's all for naught right so guess what though thank you greeks thank you romans but you know what all the glory goes to god the romans don't get out of the credit the greeks don't get all the credit god gets the credit here's why do you remember one of our guiding principles earlier in our introduction video i said that the goal of history was christ remember colossians 1 all things were made by him for him to him so everything the greeks accomplished everything that rome has accomplished and it was a lot right it was all for jesus he created humans he gave them the creativity he created the ingenuity in mankind to develop and create these things so in my mind from a judeo-christian perspective and that world view i don't i applaud the romans i applaud the greeks but you know what god gets the glory ultimately for those civilizations it advanced humanity to a stage that was pleasing and acceptable to jesus so question for you though and our triad of god's perfect good and acceptable will in romans 12 where do you put the greeks where do you put the romans did god just accept it and just kind of allow it was it a good thing right was it a pleasure or was it his perfect will uh i'm gonna let you decide where that's at i personally have my stance i believe it wasn't perfect because these people weren't christians although later the romans were uh i don't think it was just acceptable where god's like yeah all right i'll allow this to happen i accept it that's fine whatever i think it was it was more in the middle i think it was more good and pleasing for god to allow the greeks the romans to do what they do so power vacuum rome has disintegrated which we will get to a little more detail who takes over the roman empire in the mediterranean and in this tradition of the west that viewer is left for our videos to come okay this next video we're going to call the heirs of rome these people inherited the mediterranean after rome's collapse so warning straight up this is not near as exciting as the greeks or the romans um some people reference this as the dark ages i will get into that later but just from personal experience and from teaching this and from reading books and talking to all these uh historical nerds like me this is the part of time in western history that is not super enticing so that being said we still want to get into it so uh essentially who took after uh the romans and the power struggle it was the germanic tribes the byzantines and islam let's go to the germanic tribes so again remember rome split east west around 300 a.d uh attila and alaric conquered and the goths conquered a lot of the roman west uh and the gothic tribes once they took control of the western part of rome they stayed in control of rome so as you'll see on the map you can see the flows the arrows represent the different types of invasions we have vandals goths huns visigoths but surely creeping in on rome's empire and rome essentially uh seeded away territory and territory so uh after that the next picture you will see the map that is what the territories look like after the western part of roman empire collapsed we still have the byzantines over in the east that would be the pink shaded area on the right so who were these goths they were largely illiterate they had to be honest no really major achievements besides conquering rome and they don't really have any monuments uh so unlike the greeks the romans we don't really have histories of them the only histories we generally have of them are from romans or greeks writing about the barbarians especially tacitus who are the byzantines the byzantines again we talked about this last video some people consider them a continuation of the roman empire they certainly felt like they were the predominant opinion of historians and scholars does not consider them a continuation in rome different region different language different culture so nevertheless uh there are a couple nuggets we can pull from the byzantines uh the first person we need to mention probably the last person who mentioned the byzantines is the emperor justinian um he's won the fifth century a.d so he's a ruling out of constantinople uh he commissioned scholars to gather and write down roman law he called it the corpus juris civilis uh this basis for byzantine law became later the basis for all of european law so you'll see the picture right there uh this is the picture of justinian having his eastern part of rome and he actually for a certain amount of time he went back and conquered a lot of the western part of the roman empire that fell earlier to the barbarians but he didn't hold it for that long what else the byzantines contribute to western tradition well they saved much of the greek and roman learning and spread that learning to the islamic part of the world since they were closer and they were um more to the asian part of the of the globe a lot of that lineage and history of the greeks and the romans and that learning was now starting to get exposed more over to the east because after alexander the great had his hellenization moment um eventually he lost some of that empire so this is just another moment in time for the greek and roman learning and excellence of civilized uh living gets to be exposed to the east um also what the byzantines did is they stopped the muslims from advancing into eastern europe you'll see a picture here this is where starting from medina in a rape saudi arabia there um the muslim armies started to go forth and conquer in the jihad mindset and you can see them going through north africa coming up through spain going out to modern day iraq and iran there on the right side of the map and coming up there to modern day turkey where the byzantine empire is you'll see that right there on the map so as the muslim army spread the byzantines uh kept them at bay for a considerable amount of time so once again if you believe the byzantines were continuing to roam or not um either way the byzantine empire fell about 1453 so they were one of the inheritors of rome so byzantines in the east kind of more in the north we have um the goths and the germanic tribes and then also northern africa which used to be roman rule uh the muslims kind of conquered that so let's get to that phrase the dark ages dark ages a lot of people refer to this moment in history as the dark ages why is that well it's because the greeks and romans were so culturally advanced in what they accomplished they set the bar so high with their learnings and discoveries and their achievements that after they collapsed the bar was set so high the civilizations after them didn't really reach that bar and some people think that that bar didn't really get reached to until the renaissance in the 13th century so if you believe traditionally that rome fell around 400 a.d until the renaissance in the 13th century you're talking there about about 900 years almost a thousand years where there wasn't really a civilization in the mediterranean area in the west that really rose to the level that the greeks and romans did that's why some people call the dark ages although there are some moments and certain lights throughout the west that makes you think it's not entirely dark but there are times we think there was some good things transpiring going on so one of those that we get to is a man named boethius who was boethius boethius uh lived on the sixth century a.d he was a prominent roman uh he wrote a lot he was a philosopher as well he was the last latin speaking scholar of the roman world to master greek because at that point once the romans went to the west and the east usually spoke either one or the other latin or greek believe you spoke both so he bridged that gap uh his legacy he translated numerous works of the greeks from greek language to the latin language so including aristotle plato he also wrote a famous book called the constellation of philosophy while he was imprisoned so boethius kept the ancient philosophy works alive and he gives us a precedent for using reason in theology so he's kind of one of those um road mark signs like we have augustine we have boethius later we'll have aquinas he's one of those intellectual christians that really promulgates the faith in an intellectual capacity besides we have monasteries sprinkled throughout the west uh these spread out over europe obviously as the gospel spread from jerusalem uh what did these monasteries do they really modeled the christian faith as rome decayed and barbarism increased they modeled simple living they had hours and times where they would chant they would do prayers they would do guard work garden work they would go out and help possibly people in the town needed some help and also they were very educated they were very literate and they would copy many many manuscripts both of the scriptures and both of secular sources and so sometimes when we have hundreds of years if no one can find a plato book or aristotle book or something that cicero wrote oftentimes you discover them in monasteries thanks to the monks being so diligent there's a famous book called how the irish saved civilization um and what this thesis the book says that came out recently last 10 15 years is that st patrick uh was a missionary who was taken captive uh when he was in ireland but once he was in ireland he started to convert the entire island to christianity so guess what happens when there's christians and uh a certain part of uh of a civilization there's going to be some monasteries that break out there that want to get away from the secular lifestyle so there's numerous monasteries that popped up in ireland they preserve latin language they preserve theology and many many other important works that they could never find elsewhere and they started to discover them in these irish monasteries now how does the church grow from there in the west and how does it get uh some more power as the as the centuries move on well uh in the 8th century there was a man named charlemagne through some military campaigns he conquered and united most of the western europe he's called the father of modern europe he was a frank um but remember he considered himself a roman because when the romans conquered gaul they adopted them into their um into their empire and so a lot of people that we would call franks or or gauls they would consider themselves roman so there was something called the holy roman empire that was around this time which really didn't as my professor caller said it was neither holy nor roman nor an empire which he's not entirely incorrect on that right so um it was pretty savage in some ways um it wasn't really roman because it didn't constitute the italian peninsula and it wasn't really an empire it's more of a region but nevertheless here's the church um get some power uh pope leo iii crowned charlemagne as the emperor of this holy roman empire this is very significant because this is one of the first times where the church is seen as the official authorizer of a secular ruler um before this time that the church was kept kind of sacred and separate right in the religious sphere then we have the secular world and the political realm so sometimes there's there's overlap but generally there's not so this is one of the few times where the church is seen as look at they're putting the rubber stamp on charlemagne being the official emperor of this holy roman empire so later the church is going to initiate some crusades to stem back the invasions of these muslim armies that are pouring into europe now so let's be honest the crusades uh is a very sensitive topic the common notion and belief even amongst christians and amongst people in the secular world is that the crusades were unnecessary they were unjustified they're almost like a black eye on the christian faith however there is a contrarian point of view that probably you haven't been exposed to that actually argues the crusades were necessary and they were justified either way it's a topic that we want to either save for a hot topic issue in a few suvid or we're going to um accommodate that crusades discussion in a future western civilization part two so just keep in mind that uh the views will promulgate and give to you we'll give you both sides but the contrarian point of view the crusades being absolutely justified from a christian world perspective uh it may surprise you but stay tuned for more on the crusades uh we will jump into some church history here a little bit as it relates to the west uh there is something called the great schism in 1054 also known as the east west schism depending how you want to label it it was a split in christendom between the roman catholic church in the west and the eastern orthodoxy church in the east up until this point there was just one christian denomination there wasn't roman catholics there wasn't protestants there wasn't orthodox they were just known as christians why this split people often overlook the split when they think of a big split in christendom they often think of the reformation in the early 1500s but they neglect and often forget about the great schism in the 11th century um i'll be brief on this but the basic split came down to theological and ecclesial differences that have been brewing actually for a couple hundred years it wasn't something that just popped up overnight what were some of those theological and ecclesial differences that caused that great schism here's a few just on the surface there's differences in language um the latin speaking roman catholic church portion um in the in the west they adhered to latin and so all their um documents and transcripts and communication was generally latin and those in the east were generally greek speaking and there's also some cultural differences as well as the uh barbarians and the goss and the germans assimilated um into christianity with mission work those cultural differences are drastically different than those from those in the east there's also some differences over the recognition of the universal authority and the church does the pope in rome carry authoritative sway for speaking for all christians in all regions um those in the east would say no and those in the west would say yes the pope does have papal authority over all christians so that was a point of contention as well there's also something called the philae controversy and this controversy is difficult to kind of talk about but i'll try my best what this means is that with a nice seeing creed talking about um jesus and the holy spirit born of a virgin uh the nicene creed being around the 300 a.d 323 to be exact there was language later added to the nicene creed in the latin speaking part of christendom that said the holy spirit doesn't just proceed from the father god in the trinity but the holy spirit also proceeds from the son jesus so this rubbed a lot of people the wrong way in the east because the original nice scene creed said that the holy spirit proceeds from the father so biblically if you're thinking about it when jesus was telling his disciples he's saying look i need to go and leave so the comforter is going to come the holy spirit will be here he'll teach you all things he'll convict the world of sin right he's going to be your paracletes he's going to be your helper so some people think jesus was one of the ones that sent the holy spirit others say that no it was the father god that sent the holy spirit so it might seem like it's not that big of a deal it's like splitting hairs but trinitarian issues are actually really big deals so um the filler weak controversy was also one of the points of contention from the east and the west that caused that split but generally speaking it was the first major split in christendom um and the second major split that we had was the reformation so this was not a big deal as much politically economically it was more religious dance when that great schism happened that really affected western civilization because now the eastern churches kind of develop develop their own separate way of of of believing and then you get greek orthodoxy russian orthodoxy um and so just keep that in mind that split doesn't really come in a play till later as far as influence but it started here in 1054. okay one of the things that transpired uh post rome and before we jump into part two of western civilization is the battle of hastings you know i'm a military guy i geek out that stuff so i won't get to do it too much here but basically uh there was a norman invasion from france led by william the conqueror he felt like he was the rightful um heir of the throne of england he felt he was promised from that king when the king died and the next king took over william the conqueror was like that's not your rightful place that's my throne so he invades england and england was mostly anglo-saxon at that time that's just ethnic um descriptors but when the conqueror defeats harold the king herald in england and eventually he brings his norman which would be french kanegal culture and language into england and since 600 years when the romans actually conquered england julius caesar was the first to kind of set foot on england as a roman for 600 years it was kind of like a different culture different region and was sort of separate and apart from mainland europe but once the norman conquest came into england that is where what we know now as the english language really came into that melting pot of the anglo-saxon culture and the norman culture that kind of came together what we would now call middle english and then modern english now so there's also a cultural shift england the island and the isles are not so much separate they're now more a part of the european mainland so that would be the significance of the battle of hastings and western civilization we need to touch on the magna carta this is a huge touchstone in western civilization magna carta was signed in 1215 a.d who was signing it what was this what were they signing about what's the significance of it um basically in a nutshell um these barons these these men of nobility in england were tired of the tyrannical king in england named king john and they forced him to sign this magna carta this document that upheld a lot of their rights that they felt were being violated so before this time generally speaking this is monarchical rule in england and this is where what the king says goes um but these barons were tired that they were getting stepped on and so here's what they entailed in the magna carta they said this they said hey we want a council of barons this is like um a poor man's senate if you will to kind of check the balance of the king and his um absolute power and authority so the king now had to consult with the council of barons before he did anything the barons also wanted to protect the rights of the church in the magna carta uh the magna carta also outlawed illegal imprisonment we had king john and king's previous to him just throwing people in the jail um for no reason at all and imprisoning them for extended periods of time this also made the magna carta the king subject to laws before this the king often put himself above the law i have a divine right i'm supposed to be in charge here this law doesn't pertain to me um this is reminiscent of richard nixon in the watergate scandal in 1970s when he said if the president does it it's not illegal what that basically saying is the principles look if i do it because i'm the president on the king i'm above the law uh that's not logical that's not ethical if the law is important to be made then it applies to all humans just because you're a special human being doesn't mean you're exempt from that the magna carta really helped drive that home you mr king whoever you're going to be not now but later as well you're not in charge of the law you're not over the law you need to submit yourself under the law and last but not least the magna carta curtailed some taxes and payments that were uh headed to the crown so what's the significance in a nutshell um the magna carta it limited the power of the monarch in england and it increased the power of the people in this case the barons so in a way this is shades of democracy rearing its head again so it's not the first time obviously we don't have ancient greeks and romans doing this but when the barbarian invasions fell the western part of rome at least we didn't really have any sense of democracy really transpiring until we see it here in the magna carta with the people exerting their rights so the magna carta is a nice addition to our western canon it crops up again you'll see this in the english bill of rights you'll see this the declaration of independence and the american constitution as well as in the united nations declaration of human rights okay the next uh highlight we will cover here for western civilization is the black death in the 14th century uh this is also kind of known in some ways as the bubonic plague hey you thought the coronavirus was bad nah think again this was a lot worse this was the biggest pandemic in human history per capita if you think about it this affected about 40 to 60 percent of europe it killed around 100 200 million europeans that was devastating on the populace um what's the legacy of this besides kind of being a debbie downer well um it did a few things post black death um these these mindsets and notions were uh in people's brains life is short life is fragile you know when you go to a funeral you leave that funeral thinking life is short i need to take care of important things in my life i need to emphasize you know friends and family i need to love god more and do great deeds um if you had uh either 100 to 200 million people dying in your western you know european um locale man that's really gonna affect your mindset that life is short um it really forces you to reassess what's important in life so what it did in a silver lining kind of way was it paved the way for the renaissance to burst forth humans began to having a renewed zest for life and all things that are good and holy and righteous and lovely so humanity has that potential to go from the depths of doldrum all the way to the glimpses of of divinity so keep that in mind the black death did the lord allow it was you responsible for it who knows probably not but the silver lining is once that transpired the people of europe really sense that hey um we need to focus on what's important because this black death just wiped out a bunch of us let's strive for things that are eternal and what they started to do was look back to the ancient greeks and romans for this renaissance to take place but that will be in videos to come let us now move towards our conclusions and takeaways from this first part of western civilization as we move to the conclusions and take away of this part one of western civilization for theos you let's refresh and remind ourselves what's the purpose of this class to inform you and equip you of your heritage of the west especially the morals and values and basically we mean by that is the ancient greeks and the ancient romans up to this point uh this is samuel johnson quote he says this from the great god we spring to thee we tend path motive guide original and and uh throughout this this course i hope we've been able to in some ways uh try to capture the mind of god and allowing certain things to happen allowing certain things to not happen again it is a condensed class and distilled so uh if you want better treatment i hope this has encouraged you and given you um an impetus to study more read more of these great ancient greeks and romans dig more into the history uh so you can be blessed by that uh there's a macaulay quote and what i mean cauli i mean the historian not macaulay culkin who's a favorite of the finocchios unfortunately uh here's the mccauley quote the end of man is an action and not a thought though it were the noblest i think that quote aptly sums up the ancient greeks and ancient romans and western civilization up to now i think around 1314 century bc because thinking is one thing but action is another so i love the philosophies of plato aristotle uh but i think that alexander the greats i think the pericles i think the julius caesars uh the jesus christ i think the men of action um speak more than men of thought um so part one of western civilization has ended and part two will pick up possibly at the crusades but at least during the times of the renaissance and take us down to modern day western civilization here so uh just to give you a few things to look up look uh forward to in the future for western civilization part two uh aquinas and dante the renaissance the scientific revolution the age of exploration the reformation the enlightenment the founding of america the french revolution the industrial revolution world war one and world war ii maybe you've heard of those things maybe you're getting excited getting goosebumps i know i am to jump into that um the finocchios have no clue what those are unfortunately so i'll be your host for that you're welcome you can thank me later um but as our heritage and lineage the western civilization and culture continues we hope you're being informed we hope you're being equipped especially with the morals and values and we will see you next time thank you