The Unitarian/Trinitarian Wars (No. 268)

The Athanasian/Arian Dispute from Nicea

After the Edict of Toleration of Milan in 314, the emperor Constantine sought to use Christianity for political purposes and initially supported the Roman faction, which came to adopt the doctrines of Athanasius and, later, that of the Cappadocians. The doctrinal position of the Church had become blurred by Gnostic factions, influenced by the mystery cults. Constantine supported the Athanasian faction on the mistaken assumption that, because it was dominant in Rome, it was the major sect, but the deposition of Arius in the packed Synod of Alexandria led ultimately to war with his co-emperor, Licinius, and the troubles of 322-323 CE.

After conquering Licinius and establishing himself as sole Emperor, he convened the Council of Nicea in 325 CE to consolidate the Athanasian (later Catholic) position. The creed attributed to the Council of Nicea is referred to as the Nicean Creed, but its edicts were really expanded by the Council of Constantinople in 381. The Synod of Chalcedon in 451 refers to the Creed of the Council of Constantinople in 381, but in an effort to give an incorrect picture of continuity, the Council of Nicea is referred to by Trinitarian Christianity. In 318 Constantine had ordered the conference between the bishop of Rome and the desposyni; the bishops were of the family of Jesus Christ. The response of the Roman Church was to order their extermination (see below and the paper The Virgin Mariam and the Family of Jesus Christ (No. 232)).

The Canons of the Council of Nicea have been lost. It was later established that there were only 20, which commenced the introduction of aberrations such as: domiciliary rules for the clergy living with females, i.e. celibacy; the persecution by the imposition of penance of Unitarians (incorrectly called Arians) and those who supported Licinius; the establishment of the diocesan system and its controls on priests and the prohibition of the clergy lending at interest; and the introduction of standing prayers at Sunday worship and during the "Pascal Season" (which was in fact the introduction of Easter instead of the Passover). The Creed reconstructed from Constantinople itself, introduces the concept of Binitarianism essential to the formulation of the Trinity and introduces the aberration that Christ was the "only begotten of the Father" and hence removes the promise of the elect as begotten sons of God. Athanasius says (in Ad Afros) that there were 318 bishops present. Arius was summoned to the Council often, which began possibly on 20 May 325 CE under the Athanasian Hosius of Cordova. Constantine joined the Council on 14 June. To get agreement Constantine marched in a cohort of Roman troops and arrested a number of bishops and exiled Arius, Theonas of Marmarica and Secundus of Ptolemais to Illyrica. Arius' writings were then burnt and all three were anathematised. The remainder agreed on the symbol of the Creed on 19 June. The Council ended on 25 August with a 'party' hosted by Constantine with presents to the bishops.

Three months after the Council, Eusebius of Nicomedia and Theognius of Nicea, who were forced to sign the Creed under duress, were exiled for retracting and Theodotus of Laodicea, who also signed under duress and retracted, recanted rather than join them.

In 328 CE Constantine realised that the Athanasians were not the majority sect and were a source of division and persecution in the Empire and he recalled the five Unitarian leaders. (It is suggested this was at the urging of Constantia, widow of Licinius. However, it is more probable that she was merely a prominent Unitarian of the Eusebian or Arian faction). The problem with the Unitarian Christian system was that it followed the Bible tenets and was not concerned with the control of nations. Each nation was separate and subject to its own leaders and the religious system of that nation was between them and God. As the nation obeyed God so it was blessed. The empire was concerned with world domination and the converts to the church in Rome were also imbued with this mentality. Thus they courted an organisation that wanted world domination and would tolerate no opposition to that model. As a result, the Roman Church system adapted the pagan system of the sun cults and among the Aryans to Christianity, such that no Bible believing person can follow both systems. That is the core of the problem. That is why they have to corrupt the Bible texts in key verses even to this day and destroy educated opposition, such as in the Holocaust.

Constantine was never baptised an Athanasian Christian and in fact only became a Christian at the end of his life, being baptised Unitarian by Eusebius of Nicomedia, a relative of Julian, who came to be held in high regard by him in 329 CE. There was no such thing as Roman Catholic or Roman Catholic Church in those days, as everyone was catholic, meaning universal in reference to the church. The Unitarians were the oldest faction with the original doctrines of the apostolic church and that fact should never be forgotten. The Ante-Nicene Fathers (ANF) were all Unitarian for centuries (cf. the paper Early Theology of the Godhead (No. 127)). The Binitarians were a new faction that had a new and developed doctrine based on the pagan theology of the Triune God, which came in from the worship of Attis in Rome and Adonis among the Greeks. Trinitarians and Trinitarianism did not come into existence until 381. Constantine II and Constantinius were also Unitarians termed "Arian" or "Eusebian" by these later Trinitarians. The groups were referred to by the Athanasians as Arians and Eusebius denies this. It appears to have been a ploy of the Athanasians to lay the name of Arius on the faction he spoke for to lessen the full power and importance of the sect, which was older and greater than the Athanasians.

If it is true that the sect believed that Christ created the Holy Spirit then it is indeed erroneous, but this is not evident from any of their writings. It may have entered the Goths as an error and at a later date, resulting in the syncretic formulation by the Roman Catholic faction of the Filioque clause at Toldeo among the Visigoths.

Had the Athanasian/Arian dispute been properly understood and correctly settled then, Christianity would have taken a markedly different course with a much more coherent philosophical structure. Human sciences and paleo‑anthropology would have been better understood and probably more peaceably advanced, avoiding both the Dark Ages and the Inquisition. Let us examine the dispute.

The protagonists were Alexander and Athanasius, bishops of Alexandria from 312-328 and 328-373 respectively for the Athanasians; and Arius (256-336), Asterius the Sophist (d. circa 341), and Eusebius of Nicomedia (d. circa 342), for the Arians or Eusebians.

Unfortunately, with the defeat of the Arians in Spain the history has been written by Athanasians, and a comprehensive, accurate and unbiased reportage is virtually impossible. However, Robert C. Gregg and Dennis E. Groh have written a useful work entitled Early Arianism: A View of Salvation (Fortress Press, Philadelphia, 1981). From this work we can establish some of the metaphysics, and it will become obvious that both factions were wrong.

Reconstructions of the Thalia of Arius rely on the writings of their opponents and hence have been erroneously simplistic. The argument centres, as the Athanasians saw it, around the following:

Salvation for orthodoxy is effected by the Son’s essential identity with the Father: that which links God and Christ to creation is the divine nature’s assumption of flesh. Salvation for Arianism is effected by the Son’s identity with the creatures: that which links Christ and creatures to God is conformity of will (Gregg & Groh p.8).

The Athanasians, by accepting the biological definition of son, developed an ontological link between the Son and God, which enabled Christ to be God’s proper Logos and Wisdom, and which invested the Son with the divine omniscience (ibid., Ep.9).

From the Council it is obvious that Unitarianism was a very major force. They were really converted only by the conquests of the Salien Franks who systematically stifled debate. By force they “converted”, through the self-interest of their leaders, the Goths, Vandals, Heruli, Burgundians and Lombards and groups loosely referred to as Teutons, on a progressive basis. The British were converted under agreement at Whitby in 664 CE by threat of force from the Anglo‑Saxons, after the conversion of the latter in 597 (cf. Stephen Neill, Anglicanism, Pelican, London, 1965).

The controversy was seen in simple terms by these tribes as enunciated by one of the Arian Kings, Gundobald the Burgundian, who refused to worship three Gods (Encyc. Of Religion and Ethics (ERE), Vol. 1, p.782). This essential definition was the root of the issue, and the Athanasian faction was so pressed by the laity’s rejection that they were forced to modify notions of the Godhead. Foakes‑Jackson admitted the error of his earlier notions (expressed in Cambridge Theological Essays, p.500) of the inferiority of the Arian Theology of the Barbarians. He asserted later that the Arianism of the Visigoths, Lombards, Vandals, etc. was no more than a phase in the ecclesiastical struggle between the Teutonic and the Roman conceptions of Christianity (ibid., p.783). This is a major factor not properly examined. The origins of the Teutons in the Middle East, especially from the fall of the Parthian Empire, has not been correctly explored or explained by historians, because of the Trinitarian bias of the schools of higher learning.

What emerges in the examination of the Athanasian-Arian Dispute is that the church now comprised two factions who were bitterly opposed, engaged in political intrigue and persecuted each other. The Athanasians, being centred in Rome, were by their enlistment of the power of the Salien Franks politically and militarily successful in the long run. Both sects had in fact denied their faith in the lust for power. The sequence of the struggle and the movement of the tribes involved are important to an understanding of the nature and attitudes of the peoples involved.

Unitarianism, the Teutonic Tribes and the Goths

Faced with the dilemma of being an official state religion and continuing the exercise of civil and military power, contrary to the instruction of Christ, doctrine had to be promulgated and the first comprehensive biblical analysis we have of the use of military force occurred in the writings of Augustine, a North African thinker, who was baptised a Christian and was educated in Punic, a variant of Hebrew, as well as Latin. From 373-383 CE he was a Manichean and Platonist philosopher, having a concubine who bore him a son in 372 CE. He was rebaptised in 387 as an Athanasian. Ambrose of Milan, with Theodosius, had gained control of the Roman Church for the Athanasian faction (381 CE) and his involvement with Augustine was instrumental in the latter's adoption of that creed, which at the time was, to him, a prudent course.

The Athanasian/Arian disputes led to bitter persecution by both the Athanasians and much later the Arians. The Goths and Vandals were so-called “Arians” (the Gothic Bible dates from 351). The disputes were to arise even later when the Empress Placidia sent the Goths, aided by the Vandals, to oppose the revolt of Count Boniface in Africa in 427. They were accompanied by Maximinius, a Unitarian (termed Arian) Bishop. Augustine had to publicly defend the Athanasian sect in 428.

At about 330 CE Constantine granted the East German sub-tribe of the Vandals (or Silingi) lands in Pannonia on the right bank of the Danube. In 166-181 they had lived in Silesia and had fought Aurilian in 271, being contained at the middle course of the Danube. The so-called Germanic tribes included the Vandals, Alans, Sarmations, Suevians and Alamanni in the East and the Franks (or French), the Burgundians who may in fact have not been Germans) and Lombards or Longobards in the West. Parsons, Remnant of Japeth (1767) quotes Procopius as stating that the Alans were Goths as were the Sauromatae and Melancleni and that the Vandals have a commonality of origin with the Ostrogoths (p.73).

The Lombards more closely resembled the Anglo-Saxons in dress and manner than the Germans and seem to be related to the Anglo–Saxons as a sub-tribe. They occupied from Austria to Central Italy and merged with the Celtic tribes and the Ostrogoths, who also occupied what is now Croatia and neighbouring regions. The Burgundians (443 CE) were to finally end as the Western Cantons of Switzerland, settling on both sides of the Jura, lake Geneva, in the Valais, and on the banks of the Rhone and the Saone (Historians History Vol. XVI pp. 534ff.). The larger part incorporated into modern France and some in Northern Italy. The first Burgundian Empire ended in 534 CE prompted in large part by family feuds and vices of its princes (ibid., p. 535). The Ostrogothic Empire ended about the same time after the losses of five successive kings in both war and lands. Thibert, King of the Franks, took advantage of their weakness, recovering Rhaetia in 536 CE and from then controlled all of Rhaetia and Helvetia, the area termed Switzerland (ibid.).

The Alemanni had settled Northern Switzerland, Alsatia and Baden-Wurtemburg and superimposed themselves on the indigenous Gallo-Celtic people, who had come from the same area around the Black Sea up the Danube. The Franks, who had subjected the Alemanni, did likewise to the Cimbri, Gauls and Celts in what is now Northern France. The Lombards had succeeded the Ostrogoths to dominion in Italy, but being small in number after establishing the northern kingdom, whose capital was Pavia and the southern Duchy of Benevento, were defeated by the Franks in 774. The southern Duchy maintained its independence for some two centuries longer (ibid., vol. IX p. 18). The Saxons were separated from Scandinavia and forced into German union by Charlemagne (768-814) as were the Frisians. It is worth noting that whilst Helvetia was a dominion of the Catholic Franks, under Clotaire II and his son Dagobert who succeeded him in 628, it was general for the Bishops to live in wedlock like the clergy and the laity who elected them and were afterwards confirmed by the king (ibid., p. 535). Thus even as late as this period monasticism and celibacy was rejected by large areas of Christian Europe.

The Emperor Valens (364-378) was instrumental in the conversion of the Vandals to Unitarian (termed Arian) Christianity. Whilst accepting Christianity they did not become pacified, because the new edicts of Constantine had enshrined the religion as a military power. The Goths had become Christian long before that, seemingly from Christians within the tribe and from runaways.

The Sabbath-keeping Unitarian Church was to continue among the tribes and people of France, Northern Italy and Europe generally for a series of reasons. The first reason was that after the Council of Nicea in 325 CE the Emperor Constantine favoured the Athanasians, who later became the Roman Catholic Church from 381 CE. He had ordered the conference of the Desposyni, who came to Rome in 318 CE, to converse with the bishop of Rome. These blood relatives of Christ demanded the reintroduction of the Law, which included the Sabbath and the Holy-Day system of Feasts and New Moons of the Bible. They wanted Jerusalem as the centre of the tithe. The bishop, or pope, (all bishops of major sees were called pope initially when the term was introduced from the cults) then, with Roman contrivance, ordered that they be exterminated and this campaign of extermination was undertaken against Christ’s immediate family from 318 onwards (cf. the paper The Virgin Mariam and the Family of Jesus Christ (No. 232)).

The Unitarian faction however, with Eusebius as its spokesman, was placed back in favour two years or so after the Council of Nicea, ca. 327. The doctrine came to be referred to as Arianism, but Arius was only a presbyter and was not even at the Council of Nicea. However, he was summoned often as its logician. The doctrines attributed to so-called Arianism, namely of the creation of the Holy Spirit by Christ, are not substantiated from any writings of Arius or of the faction (cf. the paper Socinianism, Arianism and Unitarianism (No. 185)).

The emperor Constantine was baptised a Unitarian by Eusebius on his death-bed. He had reunited the empire under himself, as sole emperor and moved the seat of the empire to Constantinople in 331. He died in 337. His three sons Constantine II, Constantius II and Constans, disputed the succession and Constantine II was killed in the battle of Aquileia, fighting his brother Constans, in 340. The empire then split again into two halves, with Constans as Western and Constantius as Eastern Emperor from 340.

In 360 the Huns invaded Europe, invading the area of what is now Russia in 376. In 361 Julian the apostate tried to revive heathen doctrines or so-called paganism in the Roman Empire but failed.

The Huns were of the later Scythian Horde. They ravaged Asia Minor after the death of Theodosius in 395, at the same time as the Visigoths under Alaric had risen in Moesia and Thrace. Alaric became Governor of Eastern Illyricum in 398 (see H.H., Vol. VII, p. 6). By the 9th century, the Huns had entered Europe by way of the Danube whilst the Slavs pressed in on the north (ibid., p. xvii). Some of these people integrated with the Germanii Persians in Europe as an aggregation of the greater Aryan race, and together with the Goths, another 'Aryan' tribe (perhaps derived from an amalgum including the biblical Guti) contained most of the European tribes of Mesopotamian derivation.

The Scythian horde was not one nation, but rather contained elements of various tribes. The composition of the Scythian nations is a separate subject. Etzal (or Attila) consolidated these warring nations at the beginning of the 5th century and occupied the left bank of the Danube and ultimately all Northern Europe. The Huns, however, left Europe in the fifth century only to re-settle in Eastern Europe at the beginning of the ninth century, to be joined by other more eastern tribes.

In 364 the Eastern half of the Roman Empire, from the Danube to the Persian border, was under the Emperor Valens, who was a Unitarian. At this time the so-called Catholic or Universal and Orthodox Church, was predominantly Unitarian, except for the paganised faction in Rome and the paganised elements of the Hellenised system worshipping Attis in the West and Adonis in the East under the name of Jesus Christ (cf. the paper The Origins of Christmas and Easter (No. 235)). The western half from Caledonia to north-western Africa was under Valentinian I. Valens had allegedly been converting the northern tribes to Unitarianism (so-called Arianism), but in 378 he was defeated and killed by the Visigoths at Adrianople in Thrace. He was succeeded as emperor by the Spanish born Theodosius, who was the first Athanasian or Binitarian and later Trinitarian emperor to sit on the throne being appointed by Gratian. He had driven the Picts and Scots out of Britain in 370, but by 383 the Roman legions began to evacuate Britain. Under the emperor Magnus Maximus the army crossed the channel and conquered Gaul and Spain.

There was no Trinitarian emperor on the throne until 381, when the Trinity was formulated at Constantinople under protection of Theodosius. They had all been Unitarians until 381 with the exception of Julian the apostate.

This Unitarian creed is based on the theology expressed in Psalm 45:6-7 and Hebrews 1:8-9. The early apologists such as Irenaeus at Lyons held it in the second century. This theology was held by the Goths, Vandals, Alans, Suevi, Heruli, Britons, Lombards, Germans and all the northern tribes (see also the paper The Pre-Existence of Jesus Christ (No. 243) for the creed of the Goths). It came from the teachings of theologians and disciples of the apostles that were already centuries old before the Council of Nicea in 325 CE, where many of these bishops were present. The heresy of Binitarianism was commenced from this Council.

In 381 the Trinity was declared at Constantinople from the theology of the Cappadocians Basil, Gregory of Nyssa and Gregory of Nazianzus. The destruction of the faith by the Greeks and Romans had begun to take effect. Trinitarians incorrectly and dishonestly label the creed as Arianism, to give the impression that their doctrine is older and this doctrine originated with Arius in the fourth century. The Trinitarians then alternately label the subordinationist Unitarian doctrine after Arius (Arianism) and then Eusebius of Nicomedia (Eusebianism) and other bishops much senior to Arius (who was not even present at Nicea, only being summoned there for advice on logic). Trinitarians accuse Arians of holding that the Spirit was a creation of the son, when in fact that is the doctrine of Filioque advanced from the Council of Toledo, by the Catholics themselves in the sixth century. Even the Greeks rejected that view. People who label this view as Arian, are either being deliberately dishonest, or do not understand enough to know what they are saying.

Theodosius the Great (392-395) reunited the empire, but it was divided again by his successors Honorius and Arcadius in 395.

In 382 Theodosius I had resettled the Visigoths in the empire but they were still Unitarian. Allegedly it was the emperors, especially Valens, who converted the northern tribes to Unitarianism and not to Trinitarianism. The Goths, Vandals, Alans, Suevi, Heruli, were all Unitarian as were the tribes of the Teutons and there were a number of bishops from the Unitarian tribes at Nicea. The German Hermunduri remained Unitarian until the eighth century.

The Hermunduri were also a tribe of the Germans (later called Thuringians from 420 CE) and occupied a large part of central Germany. Unitarian Christianity was introduced to this tribe by the Visigoths and Frisians. They were overthrown by the Franks in 531 and converted to Catholicism in 742 by Boniface, the Anglo-Saxon from the earlier efforts of the Catholic Franks. Boniface was later killed by the Frisians (754), on his third visit, probably as a heretic, as they completely rejected Trinitarian theology at his first (716) and second (719) attempts.

Interestingly, this tribe derived its name from an ancient Chaldean or Babylonian tradition. They were called the Hermunduri, meaning "the men of Her or Er", which is a direct derivation of the original Myth of Er from the worship of that system. The practice of calling children Herman is a mark of these people even today, as is the practice of naming males Malcolm from Milcolm, the Canaanite Fire God, still widespread amongst the Celts. We would term these people “men of Ur”. They are almost certainly Assyro-Persian, with the inherited Babylonian religious system, which fitted easily into the later syncretic religious system in Rome, which came from the same source. The Germans, far from being a sub-tribe of the Persians as Herodotus records, appear to be the greatest aggregation of the Assyrian and Chaldean/Persian people. The Anglo-Saxons and the tribes that came with them from the Middle East appear to be the remnants of the great Parthian Empire that were allies of Judah and lay between the Persians and the Roman Empires, until the second century of the current era. They appear to be of Hebrew descent and have claimed to be the Lost Ten Tribes of Israel that were relocated there, north of the Araxes, in 722 by the Assyrians. The so-called Magi of the NT text probably came from these people.

Goths and Vandals: a bad press

Alaric became king of the Visigoths and in 396 he invaded Greece. In obedience to biblical law, he destroyed pagan statues there and hence he is held to have plundered Athens and then the Balkans in 398. In 401 they invaded Italy continuing until 403. In 406 Gunderic (406-428) became king of the Vandals. In the same year the Burgundian Kingdom of Worms was founded. These Teutonic tribes were all Unitarians. The Lombards appear to be a related offshoot of the Anglo-Saxons and split from them in the north in their move across Europe, moving south to the north bank of the Danube ca. 500. They expanded from there by warfare, settling also in the area of northern Italy.

The Ostrogoths tried to invade, but were stopped by Stilicho in 406. However, the Visigoths under Alaric captured and sacked Rome in 410, but he died on his way south and was buried in the bed of the Busento River near Cosenza. This action, however, forced the remaining Roman legions to withdraw from Britain to protect Italy in 410.

The Goths consisted of the Eastern or Ostrogoths and the Western or Visigoths, and together were part of the Guti (or Massagetae?) the Greater Goths. The people of Guta or Guteans originally occupied the area across the Tigris and north of Akkadia. The grouping of the Guti and the kindred tribes is unclear. The movements into Europe will be discussed elsewhere. It appears however, that the later elements of the Goths moved east of the Caspian and were replaced by the Medes. The early Celts in the Danube appear to be those referred to by the Greeks as Hyperboreans, being the earliest Scythian colonists of Europe "beyond the north wind". The nomenclature of the Celts and the ancients of the Hittites as Hatti or Kalti and the Greek reference to the Celts as Keltoi are not coincidental. This will be explained in the paper dealing with the Celts and their history and origins. Also the Danes and Swedes alike have for centuries acknowledged that the Danes derive from the Scandinavian Goths, being named from Dan, the son of Humelus.

The Ostrogoths also occupied an area in what we now term Yugoslavia after the death of Valens in 378 and later moved on Rome. In 395 the Visigoths, who had been federated into the Roman Empire, revolted under Alaric in Moesia and Thrace and Alaric became governor of Eastern Illyricum in 398 (see H.H, Vol. VII p. 6). They were stopped by Stilicon the Vandal in support of the Empire, but the Athanasian faction, by this time under the Spanish born Theodosius, who died in 395, had gained control of Rome and the Church. On December 31, 406 CE the Vandals, Sarmatians, Alans, Suevians and Alemanni, with the Huns at their back, crossed the Rhine and the Vandals advanced with the Suevians from Pannonia, by way of Gaul into Spain, where they settled in 411 in Galicia and Asturia. Spain was divided by lot and the Suevian-Teutons won Galicia and a large part of Leon and Castille. Baetica fell to the Vandals and was renamed Vandalusia. The Western Alans, who rejoined them in Spain, won Lusitania, but were later destroyed and incorporated into the Vandals and their name disappeared. The Suevi fought the Vandals and both fought the Goths, while the Arian Goths fought the Catholic Francs/Romans and also the Burgundians. The Unitarian tribes in Spain fought the Heruli (of the Ostrogoths) and each other. The Suevi occupied Galicia and part of Leon and Portugal after defeat by the Goths. The Portuguese are thus Teutons (called Germanic) of Vandal Alans in the South and Suevi in the North superimposed on Phoenician/Carthagineans with an early Unitarian and later Islamic tradition.

The Suevians are distinguished from the Allemani because they ended up as two distinct national groups. The Suevians were the original core of the Allemani (also Alemanni). The tribe had been originally Suevians until 210-211, when they got together as “All-men” later to be Allemanni. Gibbon (Vol 1, p. 104, col. 2) says:

“The hasty army of volunteers gradually coalesced into a great and permanent nation, and as it was composed from so many different tribes, assumed the name of Alemanni, or All-men:..”

The western group then went into Spain and settled in Portugal, where the Alans who were a related group, went as well. Part of the Royal House of Judah also settled there. This aspect is noted in the genealogical tables of http://www.ccg.org/_domain/Abrahams-Legacy.org/.

The addition of volunteer males added to the tribe who went also into Switzerland and formed the root of the Swiss people. This is indeed reminiscent of the tribe of Benjamin that was added to, and eventually formed a composite union through the female lines.

The Vandals had occupied Spain, and Spain was Unitarian. The Visigoths conquered the Vandal kingdom in Spain in 416. Thus all the areas of the north and west were Unitarian. Italy was allegedly Trinitarian, but more often subject to the Unitarians. In 418 the Franks settled in parts of Gaul. In the same year Theodoric I became king of the Visigoths. By 425 these so-called barbarians, who were actually Unitarian, for the most part had settled in the Roman provinces. The Vandals were in southern Spain, the Huns were in Pannonia, the Ostrogoths (and subsequently the Heruli) were in Dalmatia and the Visigoths and Suevi were in northern Portugal and Spain. The European Huns remained there in Pannonia until ca. 470 when they withdrew from Europe.

As we have seen above, the Huns appear to have moved into the steppes, becoming allies of the Khazars, and remained there until they occupied Pannonia again after 800, with the now officially Jewish Khazar support. The possibility can not be dismissed, that the Sabbatarians in Transylvania actually came in as part of the horde of the Huns from Khazaria and Levedia and had been part of the Eastern church established from the beginning by the apostles through the Parthian empire (cf. Grun, The Timetable of History, 3^rd ed., Touchstone, 1991, p. 30) (cf. also the foreword by Cox to R. Samuel Kohn, Sabbatarians in Transylvania, [1894], CCG Publishing, 1998)

In 425 Valentinian III became Western Roman Emperor under the guardianship of his mother Galla Placidia. Gaiseric (428-477) became king of the Vandals in that year.

In 429 the Picts and Scots were expelled from southern England by the Angles, Saxons and Jutes. In 457, at the battle of Crayford, the Jutes under Hengest defeated the Britons and occupied Kent where they remain. In the year 429 Aetius chief minister of Valentinian III became virtual ruler of the Western Roman Empire (429-454). In the same year Gaiseric founded the Vandal kingdom of North Africa. In 443 he took the last Roman possession in North Africa and Africa was under Unitarian domination again.

In 433 Attila (d. 453) became ruler of the Huns. In 436 the last Roman troops left Britain. In the same year the Huns destroyed the Burgundian Kingdom of Worms. The Burgundians were part of this major thrust into Europe that was made by the Anglo-Saxons and Lombards and the other tribes seemingly of the Parthian horde.

In 443 the Alemanni Germans (German Swiss) settled in Alsace.

In 453 Attila of the Huns died and Theodoric II (453-466) became king of the Visigoths until he was murdered by his brother Eric (466-484) who succeeded him. This was followed by the sack of Rome in 455 by the Vandals. The fact of the matter was that the Vandals were Unitarians. They destroyed the pagan idols given so-called Christian names considering them an abomination and breach of the second commandment. The term Vandalism comes from this act. The destruction was in fact the biblical exercise of power in destruction of heathen idols.

Theodoric the Great became king of the Ostrogoths from 471-526.

The Eastern Roman Emperors, over that time, were Theodosius II (d. 450), Marcian 450-457), Leo I (457-474). In 457 Childeric I (457-481) became king of the Salien Franks. In 460 the Franks captured Cologne. The Vandals also destroyed the Roman fleet of Cartagena in the same year.

The conflicts throughout Europe were basically over which tribe was to be entrenched in what fertile sector of Europe. Whilst they were Unitarians, they were also governed by uncommitted avaricious men and that was their undoing.

The last Western Roman emperors over that period from 461 were Severus (461-465); Athemius (to 467); Alybrius (to 473); Glycerius (to 474); Julius Nepos (to 475); and Romulus Augustulus (to 476). The Western Empire came to an end with the weakness of its rulers. The German Odoacer (433-493) captured and executed Orestes at Placentia and then executed his son Romulus Augustulus and was proclaimed king of Italy.

Thus the Western Roman Empire was brought to a close, with no established Catholic Church and no clear policy over Europe.

Suppression of the Eastern Sects

In 474 Zeno became Eastern Roman Emperor (474-491). The Trinitarian schools were more extensively developed in the Eastern empire from this time, with the Neo-Platonist model being established by Proclus becoming head of the Platonic academy in Athens in 476. The Trinitarian system had been formalised with the Council of Chalcedon in 451. The Egyptian Coptic Divisions date from this time. In 483 Pope Simplicius was succeeded by Felix III (-492). In 484 his excommunication of Patriarch Acacius of Constantinople led to the first schism of the Western and Eastern Trinitarian churches (484-519).

In 489 the Eastern Emperor Zeno destroyed the Nestorian Christian school at Edessa and built the church of St. Symeon Stylites around his pillar. In 491 the Armenian church severed connection with Byzantium and Rome and in 498 the Nestorians settled in Nisibis in Persia. The church that settled from Jerusalem in Armenia was not Trinitarian Diphysite and it was Sabbath-keeping. It also was the repository, at Edessa, of the Aramaic texts and the Peshitta version of the Bible, until it was suppressed. The Sabbath was spread as far away as China by the early church from the east (cf. paper General Distribution of the Sabbath-keeping Churches (No. 122)).

The popes at this time, from the death of Felix III, were Gelasius (492-496); and Anastasius II (to 498) and Symmachus (to 514). Gelasius introduced the Gelasian Missal, Book of prayers, chants and instructions for the celebration of the Mass. In 499 the synod of Rome issued a decree on papal elections and in 500, incense was introduced into the Trinitarian church services for the first time in any Christian church.

Persecution

In 476 Gaiseric king of the Vandals sold eastern Sicily to Theodoric king of the Visigoths. The Unitarians under Hunneric king of the Vandals began to take measures against the Catholics, where they had been exemplary in their tolerance until now, with the obvious exception of idolatry. The Unitarian/Trinitarian disputes now began to introduce persecution.

The Trinitarian or Catholic/Orthodox faction had in the main been weak and the Unitarians had sway. This was to change with the support of the Salien Franks. In 481 Childeric I died and was succeeded by his son Clovis (d. 511) who became the founder of the Merovingian power. In 484 Hunneric king of the Vandals was succeeded by his nephew Gunthamund (d. 496). In 486 Clovis defeated Syagrius the last Roman governor of Gaul. Rome no longer had power in Gaul.

Immediately prior to this, in Armenia, the revolt of Vahan Mamikonian took place from 481-484 and this success secured religious and political freedom for Armenia. This freedom also appears instrumental in helping the Sabbath-keeping church become established with the Paulicians in the Taurus Mountains. The Paulicians were still to be found in the east in the nineteenth century. This group was still operational in the twentieth century. Their descendants, numbering a million or more, were exterminated in the area of Armenia after the First World War. There were perhaps between a million and two million Sabbatarians exterminated after the outlawing of Bektashi Islam after 1927. This process of extermination continued up on through the Holocaust in Europe and on to 1953 and the death of Stalin.

Consolidation of Europe

At this time also (487-493) the Unitarian Ostrogoths began their conquest of Italy. Theodoric defeated the German Odoacer on the Isonzo River and again near Verona (489). In 493 Odoacer capitulated to the Ostrogoths and was murdered by Theodoric who then founded the Ostrogothic kingdom of Italy and married a sister of Clovis. The Ostrogoths occupied Malta from 494-534. In 500 Thrasamund married Theodoric’s sister and was given western Sicily as a dowry.

In the same year of 500 the German Marcomanni in Bohemia invaded Bavaria and, on their departure, the Czechs settled in Bohemia

In 493 Clovis married the Burgundian princess Clothilda, who converted him to Trinitarian Christianity in 496. He defeated the Alemanni near Strasbourg in 496 and was then baptised by his friend Remigius, or Remy, bishop of Rheims.

In 506 Alaric II established the Law code of Lex Romana Visigothorum but in 507 he was defeated and killed by Clovis in the Battle of Campus Vogladensis (Vouillé, close to Poitiers). Clovis then annexed the Visigothic kingdom of Toulouse. The Visigothic kingdom of Old Castille was to continue until 711. This area of Toulouse was to remain a major area of the Sabbatati or the Unitarian Sabbath-keeping church right up through the Albigensian Crusade and the Inquisition under the Counts of Toulouse.

The Visigoths were also called Bonosonians seemingly from Bonosus of Sardica who taught (from the Bible texts and histories) that Joseph and Mary had other children. This view appears to be the constant view of history, of the entire Sabbath-keeping church, based on the comments in the NT and the names of Christ’s four brothers included there and the mention of his sisters, and also from the church histories (Mat. 13:55; Mk. 6:3; cf. the paper The Virgin Mariam and the Family of Jesus Christ (No. 232)). Being classified with Marcellus and Photius we have the indication they were of the same mind re the Sabbath and the Law (cf. the paper General Distribution of the Sabbath-keeping Churches (No. 122), p. 2). The city of Sabadell in northern Spain is also derived from the Sabbatati or Sabbath-keepers.

The Visigoths were settled in Aquitaine from 418 as a force against the Vandals and Alans by the British Constantinus who established his seat at Arles. The British did not accept Catholicism until after the Synod of Whitby in 664 CE at Hilda's Abbey, where they met to discuss:

"the latest papal way of dating Easter as a symbol of Christian Rome's general authority. It may seem that the decision might have gone in favour of the Celtic or Irish Church with its own Easter; but the defenders of the outmoded Celtic date in the synod at Whitby had little real hope of success. The king (Oswiu) who presided over the synod was married to a queen (King Edwin's daughter, Eanfled) who, having been brought up in Kent, already observed the Catholic Easter" (David L. Edwards, Christian England, vol I. p.57).

Edwards claims that much of southern Ireland had accepted the new date for Easter. They were actually Quarto-decimans, keeping the Passover and Unleavened Bread and this is examined in the paper Origin of the Christian Church in Britain (No. 266) (cf. also the paper The Quartodeciman Disputes (No. 277)). Bishop Colman returned to Iona after resigning over the issue, although Chad and Cedd conformed as did Tuda the new Northumbrian bishop, himself a Southern Irishman, and the English Eata, Abbot of Lindisfarne, who had been trained by Aidan (Edwards, ibid.). It is a misrepresentation to say that this was merely a dispute over the date of Easter. The dispute was based on the keeping of the quarto-decimal Passover with its rotating Passover, or to adopt the pagan festival of Easter, named for Ishtar or Astarte, or Easter the Chaldean Goddess. This festival had a Friday Death and Sunday Resurrection theme and incorporated the spring festival of the deities Attis and Adonis, and another later one in the form of Dumuzzi or Tammuz mentioned by Ezekiel (at Ez. 8:14).

The changes included that of the Sabbath as well as the feasts including that of Tabernacles. In fact, it involved the eventual alteration of the entire Celtic calendar and the casting aside of the food laws. Edwards notes that they kept all these early Christian customs. The Northern Irish clung 'obstinately' to the former dates, as did Iona until 716 (ibid., cf. the paper The Origins of Christmas and Easter (No. 235); The Golden Calf (No. 222) and The Role of the Fourth Commandment in the Historical Sabbath-keeping Churches of God (No. 170)).

The method of setting the dates for 'Easter' established by Victorius of Aquitane was in fact only gradually adopted. Gaul only agreed to the new system in 541, probably as a result of the defeat of the Unitarians there, and Edwards acknowledges that on page 38. It is indeed ironic that the Celts have now become defenders of the system they fought so hard to resist. In fact, Ireland was given to England by the papacy in the twelfth century, purely to exterminate the last remnants of the Sabbatarian faith still being observed there. This situation was largely brought about by the conduct of the Irish kings of the time and a desire on the part of Catholics to stamp out the biblical faith in the north. A key figure in this intrigue was the famous Malachy bishop of Armagh (cf. the paper The Last Pope: Examining Nostradamus and Malachy (No. 288) for his major prophecy).

There was agreement at Whitby only then because of the Anglo-Saxon threat of war following from their conversion in 598 following Augustine's arrival in 597 (see Neill, S. Anglicanism, p.11). 10,000 Angles were converted at the pagan Christmas festival in Kent under their King Ethelbert. Britain was not fully Catholic until 716 CE although in 786 the first papal legates to arrive commented on the survival of pagan practices (ibid., p. 45). A letter from Alcuin to Etherhard, Archbishop of York, pointed out that some of the people were carrying magic amulets and 'taking to the hills, where they worship, not with prayer but with drunkenness' (from Edwards ibid.).

The Catholics established control of Central Spain. All Spain was under Unitarian domination from this time and the Visgothic kings of Toledo remained firmly so-called Arian with Arianism the State religion and the Bishop of Toledo Primate of Spain. From Christian Unitarianism and Islam, Spain became a repository for Sabbath keeping Jews and Christians alike until the Inquisition of the 13th century. (A curiosity of the Arian system was that the calendar started 38 years before the currently accepted date and continued until the 11th century). From 573 the country became progressively reunified and what was termed Arianism came under Roman control and domination. In 586 the Visigoths by and large became Catholic. By 590 Rome had forged its empirical system.

Historians differ and indeed the eminent Catholic Encyclopedia contradicts itself on the reasons for the occupation of North Africa in 427-429, with up to 80,000 troops under Genseric, but the Empress Placidia may well have sent the Visigoths and Vandals to Africa to oppose the revolt of Count Boniface in 427 CE. They were accompanied by Maximinius, a Unitarian Bishop. Augustine had to publicly defend the Athanasian sect in 428 CE. It is certain that the Unitarian Goths and Vandals were at war with the Athanasian (later Roman) Catholic faction in Rome, except for the peace of 435-439, from 429 and they occupied Rome in 455. This was ostensibly at the request of the Empress Eudoxia, who asked Genseric to free her from her hated marriage with the Emperor Petronius Maximus.

From this occupation and the Vandal's earlier march through Gaul one of the greatest myths of all time was perpetrated by the Athanasian or Catholic faction. The Vandals were Unitarians and hence iconoclastic and they despised the icons and idols of the fully emerged system in Rome and the syncretic adoption of the earlier pagan rites and statues. These they destroyed initially in Gaul in 409-411 and on arrival in Spain, in Africa, and again in Rome. They were branded as pagan barbarians and from this we derive the word vandalism, but in fact they were iconoclasts who despised the idolatry of the syncretics. They would have destroyed Rome because of what they perceived as idolatry, but relented at the request of Leo on 2 June 455.

Dr. Peter Heylyn (History of the Sabbath, London 1636, Part 2, para. 5, pp. 73-74) notes that Milan was Sabbath-keeping from ancient times following the eastern practices.

Meanwhile in 510 the Provence, the south-eastern part of France, went to the Italian Ostrogoths until 563. These facts explain why the Sabbatati were all over southern France, northern Spain, and northern Italy. Christianity observed the Sabbath up until the fifth century and at the time of Jerome (ca. 420) the devoutest Christian did ordinary work on Sunday (Dr. White, bishop of Ely, Treatise of the Sabbath Day, p. 219; cf. Augustine of Hippo, NPNF First Series, Vol. 1, pp. 353-354 and also General Distribution of the Sabbath-keeping Churches (No. 122), p. 2).

In 511 Clovis, king of the Franks, died and his kingdom was divided among his four sons Theodoric I (d. 534); Chlodomer (d. 524); Childebert I (d. 558) and Chlothar (d. 561) and they established courts at Soissons, Paris, Metz, and Orleans respectively. At this time also the convent at St Césaire at Arles was established. Monasticism was also to play a part in the Trinitarian expansions.

In 523 Thrasamund king of the Vandals died and was succeeded by Hilderic (to 530). In 524 Sigismund was killed by Chlodomer, son of Clovis I. The Ostrogoths erected the so-called Arian Baptistery now known as the Baptistery of S. Maria in Cosmedin, Ravenna in 525. However, in 526 Theodoric the Great died and was buried at Ravenna. His daughter Amalaswintha became regent of Italy (to 534).

In 527 Justinian I became Byzantine Emperor (to 565) and a series of reverses and fluctuations were to occur for the Goths and Vandals and hence the Unitarian church over the period up until 590. It is the most important turn of European history that the Franks became Trinitarians, as this fact helped to establish the Catholic Church in Europe. Without the Franks they would have been nothing. We will see this move now inexorably forward until the declaration of the Holy Roman Empire from 590 CE and this empire was to last 1260 years until it was disbanded in 1850.

Final Wars to the rise of Islam and the Holy Roman Empire

In 529 Justinian closed the 1,000-year old Greek school of philosophy at Athens. This action was allegedly directed at Paganism but it forced the syncretisation of the Neo-Platonists and effectively forced the professors to go to Persia and Syria where, from the next year onwards under Chosroes I (531-579), Persia reached new heights of learning. This was to move the centre of learning to what was to become the Islamic world, when it formed in the next century in reaction to the Trinitarian advances of Constantinople.

In 532 the Franks overthrew the kingdom of Burgundy, which had covered areas of France, Switzerland and Austria. Also the general Belisarius saved Justinian’s throne by putting down the Nika revolt in Constantinople. He was recalled the previous year after he had been dismissed for his defeat by the Persians. Constantinople was then rebuilt. In 533 Belisarius overthrew the Vandal kingdom and made North Africa a Byzantine Province. In 534 Toledo became the capital of the Unitarian Visigothic kingdom in Spain (to 711). In 535 Belisarius occupied the Ostrogothic kingdom of Italy and remained until 540. This action allowed Provence to go from the Ostrogoths to the kingdom of the Franks and Naples became part of the Byzantine Empire.

From 539 to 562 the Byzantine Empire was at war with Persia. The war enabled Totila of the Ostrogoths to end Byzantine rule in Italy in 540 and become king in 541 on the death of his uncle Hildebad (to 552). In 546 Totila entered Rome (leaving again in 547). In that year, Adouin the Lombard founded the new Lombard dynasty and extended his reign beyond the Save River. In 550 Totila re-conquered Rome and the Unitarians were back in power. In the same year the westward migration of the Turkish Avars began and the Slav tribes settled in Mecklenburg.

The Poles settled in western Galicia, and the Ukrainians settled in eastern Galicia. In the same year also, the Welsh were converted to Christianity by David and Sabbath-keeping became entrenched in Wales, where it was not to be fully expelled until the eleventh century. Married clergy continued until the twelfth century there. Columban, the Irish missionary in France and Italy (550-615), also dates from this year. Bells were used in churches in France for the first time from this year also, marking the syncretic Trinitarian influence through the Franks.

In 543 the writings of Origen were condemned by edict of Justinian. Even though Origen had quasi-Gnostic tendencies, his writings and Hexapla were also important. This act was part of the consolidation of the anti-Sabbatarian Trinitarian dogmas in the East. The Empress Theodora died in 548.

In 551 the Ostrogoth navy was defeated by the Byzantines. Totila king of the Ostrogoths was killed the following year by the Byzantines under the eunuch Narses (c. 478-c. 573) at the battle of Taginae. In 553 Narses then annexed Naples and Rome for Byzantine and he was appointed Exarch of Italy, becoming the highest military and civil authority. The throne of archbishop Maximian was also established at Ravenna in this year.

In 558 Clothar I son of Clovis reunited the kingdom of the Franks which lasted until 561 when it was again divided under his sons Charibert, Guntram, Sigebert and Chilperic. In 563 the Sabbatarian Celtic Missionary Columba, established himself on the Island of Iona and began to convert the Picts.

In 565 Justinian I died and was succeeded by his nephew Justin II (d. 578). The Lombards then drove the Byzantines from northern Italy to the south, but left them in Ravenna. Audoin was succeeded by his son Alboin who, helped by the Avars, destroyed the Gothic kingdom of the Gepidae on the lower Vistula, and in 568 founded a Lombard kingdom in northern and central Italy.

In 567 Leovigild king of the Visigoths (to 586) drove the Byzantines from Western Spain and conquered all Spain in 585. The Frankish kingdom was also partitioned in to Austrasia consisting of Lorraine, Belgium and the right bank of the Rhine and Neustria (France) and Burgundy.

In 570 the prophet as founder of Islam was born. In 572, war between Persia and the Byzantines again broke out and was continued under Chosroes II after his ascension in 590 to 628, and Islam was established by 632. By 632 the political divisions that will ultimately lead to WWIII were established.

In 573 Clothar’s sons Chilperic and Sigebert went to war.

In 590 Authari king of the Lombards was succeeded by Agilulf (d. 615) and pope Pelagius II was succeeded by pope Gregory I called the Great. He declared the Holy Roman Empire. In 591 Columbanus (b. 543) arrived in Brittany from Ireland. Gregory sent Augustine as missionary to England in 597 who baptised Ethelbert at Kent and commenced the Catholic system in Britain.

By 600 the invasions of western Europe were halted. In this same year the Khazars formed their empire between the lower Volga and the lower Don. The Czechs and Slovaks settled in Bohemia and Moravia and the Yugoslavs in Serbia. Europe had become more or less stabilised. However, one of the immediate results of this “progress” was that the monetary system in Italy was replaced by barter in the year 600 and small pox entered southern Europe from India via Asia Minor.

With the stabilisation of Europe, the Trinitarians consolidated the ruling hierarchy of Europe by the power of the Franks and the Angles and their own avarice. In 600 Gregory commenced the program for the peaceful conversion of the Jews. He then introduced picture books to replace the Bible for the illiterate. The Gothic Bible dates from ca. 351. The Bible was devalued, finally being effectively removed from the general public by Rome until after the dispersal of the Holy Roman Empire in 1850. In 603 the Lombards converted to Roman Catholicism. In 609 the Roman Pantheon was consecrated as the church of S. Maria Rotunda.

With the Consolidation of Europe, Trinitarianism then turned its eyes on Asia Minor. The advances of Europe and Byzantium saw the conditions emerge from the reaction that was to come in the form of Islam.

Trinitarian Christianity penetrated the Russian people at the end of the tenth century, from the Greek Orthodox structure at Constantinople. It may well be that this was entirely a political decision, in view of the fact that the Khazars in the south and through the Ukraine into Europe were all Sabbath-keeping Unitarians, both Jew and Christian. So also were the Bulgars who came in at the same time as the Huns in the tenth century. So also were the Paulicians relocated in Thrace under Constantine Capronymus in the eighth century and later by John Tsimiskes in the tenth century (cf. paper ibid. (No. 122). In fact, it may well be that all the decision making of the European Christian system has been based on political considerations that have nothing to do with the faith established by Jesus Christ and as revealed in the Bible texts.

During the 1260 years from 590 to 1850 the Roman Catholic Church has built its theology on false premises, based on Greek Philosophy and pagan systems of worship. Their adoption of the pagan Calendar threw Trinitarianism into conflict with every tribe and people that had, or read, or studied the Bible and the Law of God.

As a result, in order to preserve its authority, it introduced national and international systems of persecution and repression, which were to result in the extermination of millions of peaceful law abiding citizens over the continent of Europe and in Asia Minor (and later in the Americas). Its incursions into the Middle East in the so-called Crusades saw it inflame the hatred of Islam to the extent that it has now polarised over half the world. The twentieth century has seen this war advanced against a peaceful law abiding citizenry of Europe, with the deliberate mass extermination and genocide of the Jewish and Sabbath-keeping Christian people of Europe. This matter is further examined at The Holocaust Revealed.