01/25/10

Spear King Day

Genseric, meaning Spear King, leader of the much-maligned Vandals, was one of the last Unitarian Christian leaders in the ancient world. Why AUR would want to celebrate the life of a man who sacked Rome, persecuted other Christians, and whose people gave us the word “vandalize”?

The bad reputation of Genseric and his Vandals is a good example of history being written by the victors.  This is not to say that they were saints, particularly by the moral standards of the 21st Century.  However, compared to the “ecclesiastical mafia” of Trinitarian saint Athanasius* or the cultic totalitarianism of Theodosius “The Great” who declared Nicene Christianity the only allowable religion in the Empire, Genseric was a bleeding-heart liberal.

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