church of alexandria burningchurch of alexandria burning

[citation needed], July 12, 1562, Fray Diego de Landa, acting Bishop of Yucatn then recently conquered by the Spanish threw into the fires the books of the Maya. "Fruit, Fiber, Bark, and Resin: Social Organization of a Maya Urban Center.". [citation needed], The Church ordered the burning of all his writings; this was done so thoroughly than none of them survives and it is unknown even what they were except for what can be inferred from polemics against him. Enough copies survived for new editions to be published in 1561 and 1562, after Elizabeth I came to power. [citation needed], In 1808, Rabbi Nachman of Breslov burned the only copy or copies of one of his own books for an unknown reason. It was said that the waters of the Tigris ran black for six months with ink from the enormous quantities of books flung into the river. If disease put us to the test, all our splendor, title, ring, and name will be as much help as a horse's tail'). He wrote about the Armenian Holocaust in ways that were offensive to Azerbaijan. As a consequence a list was drawn up of over 30,000 titles, ranging from school textbooks to poetry, which were then banned. At that time, also the wealth of Buddhist manuscripts written on screwpine leaves by Maldivian monks in their Buddhist monasteries was either burnt or otherwise so thoroughly eliminated that it has disappeared without leaving any trace. "[80][93] De Landa was later recalled to Spain and accused of having acted illegally in Yucatn, though eventually found not guilty of these charges. It seems to have been a deliberate attempt by the Georgian paramilitary soldiers to wipe out the region's historical record. 762 Romanian literary works were withdrawn from circulation, including those of Liviu Rebreanu, Ioan Alexandru Brtescu-Voineti and Octavian Goga. One of the largest destructions of books occurred at the Library of Alexandria, traditionally held to be in 640; however, the precise years are unknown, as is whether the fires were intentional or accidental. It agrees doctrinally with Eastern Orthodoxy except that it holds that Jesus has a purely divine nature and never became human, a belief the Council of . German Verbrennungskommandos (Burning detachments) were responsible for much of the targeted attacks on libraries and other centers of knowledge and learning. In religious paintings he is often depicted holding the book whose preservation he preferred to his own life (see illustration in Saint Vincent of Saragossa page. The Temple of Serapis was estimated to hold about ten percent of the overall Library of Alexandria's holdings. [263], A scroll written by the Hebrew prophet Jeremiah (burnt by King Jehoiakim), Protagoras' "On the Gods" (by Athenian authorities), Chinese philosophy books (by Emperor Qin Shi Huang and anti-Qin rebels), Books of pretended prophecies (by Roman authorities), Jewish holy books (by the Seleucid monarch Antiochus IV), Greek and Latin prophetic verse (by the emperor Augustus), Sorcery scrolls (by early converts to Christianity at Ephesus), Rabbi Haninah ben Teradion burned with a Torah scroll (under Hadrian), Burning of the Torah by Apostomus (precise time and circumstances debated), Manichaean and Christian scriptures (by Diocletian), Books of Arianism (after Council of Nicaea), Writings of Priscillian (by Roman authorities), Etrusca Disciplina (by Roman authorities), Books on astrology (by Roman authorities), "Book of the Miracles of Creation" (reportedly destroyed by Saint Brendan), Patriarch Eutychius' book (by Emperor Tiberius II Constantine), Repeated destruction of Alexandria libraries (multiple people), Iconoclast writings (by Byzantine authorities), Qur'anic texts with varying wording (ordered by the 3rd Caliph, Uthman), Abelard forced to burn his own book (at Soissons), The writings of Arnold of Brescia (in France and Rome), Buddhist writings in the Maldives (by royal dynasty converted to Islam), Buddhist writings in the Gangetic plains region of India (by Turk-Mongol raiders), Ismaili Shite writings at Al-Azhar (by Saladin), Destruction of Cathar texts (Languedoc region of France, by the Catholic Church), The Talmud (at Paris), first of many such burnings over the next centuries (by Royal and Church authorities), Rabbi Nachmanides' account of the Disputation of Barcelona (by Dominicans), Lollard books and writings (by English law), Codices of the peoples conquered by the Aztecs (by Itzcoatl), Decameron, Ovid and other "lewd" books (by Savonarola), Arabic books and archives in Oran (by Spanish conquerors), Catholic theological works (by Martin Luther), Lutheran and other Protestant writings (in the Habsburg Netherlands), The works of Galen and Avicenna (by Paracelsus), Books and papers of the Portuguese Order of Christ (By Fra Antnio of Lisbon), Servetus' writings (burned with their author at Geneva, and also burned at Vienne), Religious and other writings of the Saint Thomas Christians (by the Portuguese Church in India), Maya codices (by Spanish Bishop of Yucatan), Arabic books in Spain (owners ordered to destroy their own books by King Philip II), "Obscene" Maltese poetry (by the Inquisition), Arwi books (by Portuguese in India and Ceylon), Luther's Bible translation (by German Catholics), Uriel da Costa's book (by Jewish community and city authorities in Amsterdam), Marco Antonio de Dominis' writings (in Rome), Books burned by civil, military and ecclesiastical authorities between 1640 and 1660 (in Cromwell's England), Socinian and Anti-Trinitarian books (by secular and church authorities in the Dutch Republic), Manuscripts of John Amos Comenius (by anti-Swedish Polish partisans), Pascal's "Lettres provinciales" (by King Louis XIV), Mythical (and/or mystical) writings of Moshe Chaim Luzzatto (by rabbis), Protestant books and Bibles (by Archbishop of Salzburg), The writings of Johann Christian Edelmann (by Imperial authorities in Frankfurt), Vernacular Catholic hymn books (at Mainz), The Libro d'Oro (in the French-ruled Ionian Islands), "The Burned Book" (by Rabbi Nachman of Breslov), Records of the Goa Inquisition (by Portuguese colonial authorities), The Code Napolon (by German Nationalist students), William Blake manuscripts (by Frederick Tatham), Count Istvn Szchenyi's book (by conservative Hungarian nobles), Libraries of Buddhist monasteries (during the Taiping Rebellion), "The Bonnie Blue Flag" (by Union General Benjamin Butler), On the Ancient Cypriots (by Ottoman Authorities), "Lewd" books (by Anthony Comstock and the NYSSV), Pedigrees and books of Muslim law and theology (By the Mahdi in Sudan), Emily Dickinson's correspondence (on her orders), Ivan Bloch's research on Russian Jews (by Tsarist Russian government), Italian Nationalist literature (by Austrian authorities in Trieste), Books in Serbian (by World War I Bulgarian Army), George Grosz's cartoons (by court order in Weimar Germany), Theodore Dreiser's works (at Warsaw, Indiana), Works of Goethe, Shaw, and Freud (by Metaxas dictatorship in Greece), Books, pamphlets and pictures (by Soviet authorities), Pompeu Fabra's library (by Franco's troops), Jewish, anti-Nazi and "degenerate" books (by the Nazis), Jewish books in Alessandria (by pro-Nazi mob), Andr Malraux's manuscript (by the Gestapo), Manuscripts and books in Warsaw, Poland (by the Nazis), Books in the National Library of Serbia (by World War II German bomber planes), The books of Knut Hamsun (in post-World War II Norway), Books by Shen Congwen (by Chinese booksellers), Judaica collection at Birobidzhan (by Stalin), Romanian literature (by the Romanian Workers' Party), Mordecai Kaplan's publications (by Union of Orthodox Rabbis), Memoirs of Yrj Leino (by Finnish government, under Soviet pressure), Religious, anti-Communist and genealogy books (in the Cultural Revolution), Leftist books in Chile during the Pinochet dictatorship, Books burned by at order of school board in Drake, North Dakota, USA, Book burning caused by Viet Cong in South Vietnam, Central University Library (Bucharest, 1989), Oriental Institute in Sarajevo (Bosnia and Herzegovina, 1992), National and University Library of Bosnia and Herzegovina (1992), Abkhazian Research Institute of History, Language and Literature and National Library of Abkhazia (by Georgian troops), The Nasir-i Khusraw Foundation in Kabul (by the Taliban regime), Morgh-e Amin publication house in Tehran (by Islamic extremists), Abu Nuwas poetry (by Egyptian Ministry of Culture), United Talmund Torah School Library, Montreal 2004, The Diary of Anne Frank during a midsummer's party, Germany 2006, Inventory of Prospero's Books (by proprietors Tom Wayne and W.E. The order was effective in Prussia, but the King could not prevent some 30,000 copies being sold in Paris. In 1900, Herman C. Duncan, who was pastor of St. James Episcopal Church, decided to file a claim against the U.S. Government for the loss of the church and its possessions as a result of the. "Baghdad After The Storm. [43][44], Patriarch Eutychius of Constantinople published a treatise, on the General Resurrection, maintaining that the resurrected body "will be more subtle than air, and no longer palpable". After the publication of the bull in 1410, the Czech Wycliffite leader Jan Hus appealed to Alexander V, but in vain. Under Dioscurus (444-451), the unworthy successor of St. Cyril, the Church of Alexandria became embroiled in the Monophysite heresy. The imperial palace and state archives were burned, destroying many of the remaining written records that had been spared by the father. Although, some regard the death of Hypatia as the final destruction of the Library. [citation needed], In 1656 the authorities at Boston imprisoned the Quaker women preachers Ann Austin and Mary Fisher, who had arrived on a ship from Barbados. [citation needed], Henry of Villena, a scion of Aragon's old dynasty, was a scholar, surgeon, and translator who was persecuted by the kings of Castile and Aragon as a sorcerer and necromancer. For Gibbon, the Library of Alexandria was one of the great achievements of the classical world and its destructionwhich he concludes was due to a long and gradual process of neglect and growing ignorancewas a symbol of the barbarity that overwhelmed the Roman Empire, allowing civilization to leach away the ancient knowledge that was being re-encountered and appreciated in his own day. Since there are no archaeological remains left, we only have ancient texts to try and rebuild its history. When they calculated the value of the scrolls, the total came to fifty thousand drachmas." Meijer, Reinder. The purging of the books was led by Petre Constantinescu-Iai, Mihai Roller, Barbu Lzreanu and Emil Petrovici. It is also quite likely that even if the Museum was destroyed with the main library the outlying "daughter" library at the Temple of Serapis continued. [248][249][250], Traditionalist Catholic seminarians purged a Boone, North Carolina, theology library in 2017 of works they considered heretical, including the writing of Henri Nouwen and Thomas Merton. Art and architecture of Saint Catherine's Monastery at Mount Sinai [215] More recently books have been burnt in response to J.K. Rowling's comments on Donald Trump,[216] and to protest her gender-critical beliefs. Alexandria was founded in Egypt by Alexander the Great. The books that have exemption are those on medicine, divination, agriculture and forestry. Unlike earlier Nazi book burnings where specific books were deliberately targeted, the burning of this library was part of the general setting on fire of a large part of the city of Warsaw. The first person blamed for the destruction of the Library is none other than Julius Caesar himself. The power of the legend of Alexandria prompted the creation of a new Library of Alexandria in the modern Egyptian city, which was opened in 2002 with a focus on storing and preserving digital information. [citation needed], It is the Chinese tradition to record family members in a book, including every male born in the family, who they are married to, etc. ", Grendler, Paul F. "The Destruction of Hebrew Books in Venice, 1568. The collection may have ebbed and flowed as some documents were destroyed and others were added. [262] Russian military police seize and destroy books on Ukrainian history and culture in the occupied territories in the Northeast of Ukraine. [82], In March 1521 Emperor Charles V published in Flanders a ban prohibiting the "books, sermons and writings of the said Luther and all his followers and adherents" and ordering all such materials to be burnt. [citation needed], On 20 December 1409, Pope Alexander V (later declared an anti-Pope) issued a papal bull that empowered the illiterate Prague Archbishop Zbynk Zajc z Hzmburka to proceed against Wycliffism in Prague. ", "New developments in alleged book burning in FLDS towns", "Dutch group burns cover of Hill's Book of Negroes", "Dutch group burns the cover of Lawrence Hill's novel The Book of Negroes", "Suicide Bomber Attacks US Base in Afghanistan", "What's Driving Chaotic Dismantling of Canada's Science Libraries? [155], Around 1949, the books that Shen Congwen (pseudonym of Shen Yuehuan) had written in the period 19221949 were banned in the Republic of China and both banned and subsequently burned by booksellers in the People's Republic of China. The impact that these various acts of destruction of libraries and archives has had on communities and on society as a whole is profound. 14 other libraries were completely burned to the ground. An irreverent commentary on religion", Grattan-Flood, William. The authorities had the condemned material meticulously weighted, it was found to measure no less than 4.7 metric tons. At Leuven eighty copies of Luther's works were burned in October 1520 (even before publication of the official ban). [134], In 1923 the anarchist Guy Aldred and his partner and co-worker Rose Witcop, a birth control activist, published together a British edition of Margaret Sanger's Family Limitation a key pioneering work on the subject. Among other things, the Synod of Diamper condemned as heretical numerous religious and other books current among the Saint Thomas Christians, which differed on numerous points from Catholic doctrine. [52][53][54], Following the conversion of the Maldives to Islam in 1153 (or by some accounts in 1193), the Buddhist religion hitherto state religion for more than a thousand years was suppressed. Targeted under this definition and put to the fire were not only the writings of dissident Greek writers, but even works by such authors as Goethe, Shaw, and Freud. [citation needed], Several other large book burnings also occurred in Chinese history. An aspect of this was a Portuguese hostility to and destruction of writings in the Arwi language, a type of Tamil with many Arabic words, written in a variety of the Arabic script and used by local Muslims. [188][189] The author was condemned to death by various Islamist clerics and lives in hiding. [36], In 385, the theologian Priscillian of vila became the first Christian to be executed by fellow-Christians as a heretic. The justice of his defense was recognized by the King and the commission, but to satisfy the Dominicans Nahmanides was exiled and his pamphlet was condemned to be burned. The opening episode of Carl Sagans TV series Cosmos, first shown in 1980, lamented the most famous burning of books in historythe conflagration that destroyed the Library of Alexandria. [1] [2] [3] The monastery was built by order of Emperor Justinian I, enclosing what is claimed to be the burning bush seen by Moses. The Burning of the Library of Alexandria | eHISTORY March 7, 2013. (Servola is a suburb of Trieste. Early Christians May Have Destroyed What Remained of the Alexandrian Instead, Many Islamic scholars believe that Umar's order burned the library, a powerful 7th century Caliph from Mecca, after the Muslim conquest of Alexandria 641 A.D . "The Twelve Apostles of Erin." Once these stories were picked up by the national press wire services, similar events followed in many other cities. During the 12th and 13th centuries, Buddhist texts were burnt by the Muslim armies in the Gangetic plains region, which also destroyed hundreds of Buddhist monasteries and shrines and killed monks and nuns. [192][193][194][195][196], On August 25, 1992, the National and University Library of Bosnia and Herzegovina in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina was firebombed and destroyed by Serbian nationalists. The best known of these were Innocent IV (12431254), Clement IV (12561268), John XXII (13161334), Paul IV (15551559), Pius V (15661572) and Clement VIII (15921605). When he refused to buy the remaining six at the same price, she again burned three, finally forcing him to buy the last three at the original price. From the French Revolution, through the early history of the United States of America, from the First World War to the conflicts in the Balkans in the late 20th century, the word Alexandria has been a reference point for the subsequent destruction of libraries and archives. Allen Wells calls his work an "ethnographic masterpiece",[94] while William J. Folan, Laraine A. Fletcher and Ellen R. Kintz have written that Landa's account of Maya social organization and towns before conquest is a "gem. St. Catherine's Monastery, Sinai, Egypt. Quotations of his works were embedded in the works of later authors. Of Orders 13. Among the books he branded as subversive was Stendhal's The Red and the Black. The burning was livestreamed on Facebook. However, on August 12, 1998, the Taliban fighters ransacked the press, the museum, the video facilities and the library, destroying some books in the fire and throwing others in a nearby river. [66][67] Some modern historians have begun to doubt the actual extent of these damages. [11], In 186 BC, in an effort to suppress the Bacchanalia practices that had been led in part by Minius Cerrinius, a consul of Rome claimed that the fathers and grandfathers of the Romans had suppressed foreign rites and ceremonies, "seeking out and burning all books of pretended prophecies. Immediately after the death of Hierax, a group of Jews who had helped instigate his killing lured more Christians into the street at night by proclaiming that the Church was on fire. These actions, and other ones, are a testament to your Majesty's devotion to Christianity. [citation needed], Martin Luther's 1534 German translation of the Bible was burned in Catholic-dominated parts of Germany in 1624, by order of the Pope. 1.9M views 1 year ago. All copies of Wycliffe's writings were to be surrendered and his doctrines repudiated, and free preaching discontinued. The people of Egypt before the Arab conquest in the 7th century identified themselves and their language in Greek as Aigyptios (Arabic qib, Westernized as Copt). Filippov advised that if Leino's book was published, the Soviet Union would draw "serious conclusions". Civil War burning of Alexandria detailed in handwritten affidavits from France proceeded to annex the islands, organize them as the dpartements of Mer-ge, Ithaque and Corcyre, and introduce there the principles and institutions of the French Revolution initially getting great enthusiasm among the islands' inhabitants. [64], In 1263 the Disputation of Barcelona was held before King James I of Aragon between the monk Pablo Christiani (a convert from Judaism) and Rabbi Moses ben Nachman (also known as Nachmanides). Hillar, Marian. [261] In the temporarily occupied Mariupol, Russian invaders are throwing away books from the library collections of the Pryazovskyi State Technical University. Comiz 10. The Epistle of Mernaceal 11. [139], In his Open Letter to Stalin Old Bolshevik and former Soviet diplomat Fyodor Raskolnikov alleges that Soviet libraries began circulating long lists of books, pamphlets and pictures to be burnt on sight, following Joseph Stalin's ascension to power. Richard Ovenden is the author of Burning the Books: A History of the Deliberate Destruction of Knowledge, available now from Belknap Press. [166] The book was finally published in 1991, when interest in it had largely dissipated. De Landa himself admitted to 27, other sources claim "99 times as many"[89][90] the later being disputed as an exaggeration motivated by anti-Spanish feeling, the so-called Black Legend. To best-preserved library building of the ancient world. The losses included 5,263 bound manuscripts, as well as tens of thousands of Ottoman-era documents of various kind. Until the 19th century it was called simply the Egyptian Church. President Hosni Mubarak has urged Egypt's Muslims and Christians to stand united against terrorism after a bombing outside a church in Alexandria. The writer Edward Gibbon, in his classic The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire dismissed another theory, that the destruction could be blamed on one of the Muslim conquerors of Egypt, Caliph Omar. If we are going to heed Sagans warning, however, we must be sure of the true reason for the librarys demise. "[49], The provincial synod held at Soissons (in France) in 1121 condemned the teachings of the famous theologian Peter Abelard as heresy; he was forced to burn his own book before being shut up inside the convent of St. Medard at Soissons. [149], On April 6, 1941, during World War II, German bomber planes under orders by Nazi Germany specifically targeted the National Library of Serbia in Belgrade. [citation needed], After the death of the prominent late Byzantine scholar Gemistus Plethon, there was discovered among his papers a major work called Nmn syngraf ( ; book of laws) or Nmoi (; laws). [80], In 1509 Spanish forces commanded by Count Pedro Navarro, on the orders of Cardinal Francisco Jimnez de Cisneros, conquered the city of Oran in North Africa. Serbian priests, professors, teachers and public officials were deported into prison camps in prewar Bulgaria or executed; they were later replaced by their Bulgarian counterparts. [102], As noted by Jonathan Israel, the Dutch Republic was more tolerant than other 17th century states, allowing a wide range of religious groups to practise more or less freely and openly disseminate their views. 15. [129][130] When Dickinson's work gained prominence, scholars greatly regretted the loss of the papers which Lavinia Dickinson did burn, and which might have helped elucidate some puzzling references in the poems. In 640 AD the Moslems took the city of Alexandria. Burning Down the House: A Christian Conspiracy? [160], In 1954, the rabbi Mordecai Kaplan was excommunicated from Orthodox Judaism in the United States, and his works were publicly burned at the annual gathering of the Union of Orthodox Rabbis. As well as systematically destroying the written works, 53 authors of such works were executed, in some cases by lingering torture or along with their family members. [2] According to Diogenes Lartius, the above outspoken agnostic position taken by Protagoras aroused anger, causing the Athenians to expel him from their city, where the authorities ordered all copies of the book to be collected and burned in the marketplace. The term Alexandria has become shorthand for the triumph of ignorance over the very essence of civilization. [125] Temples of Daoism, Confucianism, and other traditional beliefs were often defaced. There are also cases of destruction and damage to the Ukrainian archives with documents about the Soviet repression and attempts to introduce Russian re-educational programs in Melitopol. [citation needed], Uthman ibn 'Affan, the third Caliph of Islam after Muhammad, who is credited with overseeing the collection of the verses of the Qur'an, ordered the destruction of any other remaining text containing verses of the Quran after the Quran has been fully collected, circa 650. [32] It had been heavily stocked by the aid of his non-Christian predecessor, Emperor Julian. Aristoxenus in his Historical Notes affirms that "Plato wished to burn all the writings of Democritus that he could collect". The manuscript came into the possession of Princess Theodora, wife of Demetrios, despot of Morea. One ancient writer claimed that there were no people who loved a fight more than those of Alexandria. [51], The Royal Library of the Samanid dynasty was burned at the turn of the 11th century during the Turkic invasion from the east. Journalist Carlos Rama reported in February 1974 that up to that point, destroyed works included: the handwritten Chilean Declaration of Independence by Bernardo O'Higgins, thousands of books of Editora Nacional Quimant including the Complete Works of Che Guevara, thousands of books in the party headquarters of the Chilean Socialist Party and MAPU, personal copies of works by Marx, Lenin, and anti-fascist thinkers, and thousands of copies of newspapers and magazines favorable to Salvador Allende including Chile Today. Built between 548 and 565, it is the oldest continuously inhabited Christian monastery in the world. The Temple of Serapis was estimated to hold about ten percent of the overall Library of Alexandria's holdings. Ultimately it is not unlikely that everyone mentioned above had some hand in destroying some part of the Library's holdings. The missing literature has not been recovered to this day and are presumbed to be lost. This makes the year of its destruction lies sometime between the years 642-644, since the fall of Alexandria in the Arab hands occurred in 642 AD. The 2011 Alexandria bombing was an attack on Coptic Christians in Alexandria, Egypt, on Saturday, 1 January 2011. He was officially stripped of his "People's Writer" title and his presidentially-awarded pension. [122], The poet William Blake died in 1827, and his manuscripts were left with his wife Catherine. [citation needed], Later, Voltaire's Dictionnaire philosophique, which was originally called the Dictionnaire philosophique portatif, had its first volume, consisting of 73 articles in 344 pages, burnt upon release in June 1764. [241], On February 22, 2012, four copies of the Qur'an were burned at Bagram Airfield due to being among 1,652 books slated for destruction. The Council reiterated the order for Wycliffe's books to be burned, and since Wycliffe himself was already dead, it ordered that his body be exhumed and burned which was duly done. [citation needed], In 1683 several books by Thomas Hobbes and other authors were burnt in Oxford University. [217][218], On May 27, 2007, Tom Wayne and W.E. He admitted involvement in collecting New Testaments and "Messianic propaganda" that had been distributed in the city. Interestingly, Caesar wrote of starting the fire in the harbor but neglected to mention the burning of the Library which proves little since he was not in the habit of including unflattering facts while writing his history. At one point Locke claimed that the fire department was trying to put the fire out but his security team was successfully blocking their access. [204][205], Following the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Iraq's national library and the Islamic library in central Baghdad were burned and destroyed by looters. Arius taught that only "The Father" is true God and that Christ, the "Logos" had a beginning but was the first and most perfect of all beings. The Soviet Union's Charg d'affaires in Finland Ivan Filippov (Ambassador Viktor Lebedev had suddenly departed from Finland a few weeks earlier on October 21, 1958) demanded that Prime Minister Karl-August Fagerholm's government prevent the release of Leino's memoirs. [citation needed], Maimonides' major philosophical and theological work, "Guide for the Perplexed", got highly mixed reactions from fellow-Jews of his and later times some revering it and viewing it as a triumph, while others deemed many of its ideas heretical, banning it and on some occasions burning copies of it. The collections of the institute were among the richest of its kind, containing Oriental manuscripts centuries old and written about the subjects in wide varieties of fields, in Arabic, Persian, Turkish, Hebrew and local arebica (native Bosnian language written in Arabic script), other languages and many different scripts and in many different geographical location around the world. In retaliation, Polish partisans burned his house, his manuscripts, and his school's printing press.