Religious Revolution during the Peace of the Twelfth Century (L'Uniona Homanus)

The Aegyptians and Zoroastrians
During the peace of the twelfth century people began to look for more meaning in their lives. This usually comes when there are not more pressing, practical matters at hand with which to occupy the minds of the ruling class and, in this case, the general population. One of these began in the city of Hierosolimitanum (Jerusalem). The entire Province of Judea was a crossroads not only of trade, but also of migration and most other transportation in the Roman Empire. This would form the influential religion of Angelic Gnosticism.

From the information existing in and those which were further developed in the areas of the Roman Empire during its long peace came a convergence of ideas in the city of Hierosolimitanum. The long alchemical knowledge of the Aegyptians grew into a respectable science long before the first stone building of the Tiber. The knowledge of what we now call chemistry was still closely connected and guarded by the religious community. The decline of the old religion of Aegypt after the loss of their independence to the Romans left the alchemists as the last believers in their country who had any status or respect. The documents and rituals of the Aegyptians were preserved in Aegypt but became less and less popular as the years progressed. The alchemists became an introverted group which did research and rituals together and in secret. As the scientific knowledge and interest grew after the reign of Emperor Carolus and further Emperors the Aegyptian alchemists began to submit their research into the public scientific newspapers transactions that were going on especially from North Africa to Parthia. The publicity that was received by the alchemists was a happy relief and they began to come out of the woodwork and began attending, if not making their own, Universities. The science of chemistry became a study based upon these Aegyptian mystics but the more devout religious members continued their rituals and religion despite their emergence into the public.

The place where they felt most accepted, other than their native land, was in Hierosolimitanum where the religious and the knowledgeable often came together. The Jewish people came to peaceful terms with the Aegyptian mystics and in the university of the city they made many discoveries into a study of the divine. The other science of the universe and nature which was conjoined with the religion of a religion that declines as the people began to move more freely and depend less on their community was the tradition of Astrology and Zoroastrianism in the Parthian provinces.

Zoroastrianism is based on the idea of duality and the battle between these forces as being the whole of nature. This is revealed and understood to effect humanity in the form of the position and movement of stars and planets. People of the eastern desert began to feel the influence of Rome even before it was made part of the Empire. The society of the kingdom became increasingly stratified into classes and nobility over recent years. Many of the military titles and positions of power, which used to be held by men who had worked their way from the bottom to the top by their strengths and abilities, were now held by the spoiled descendants of once great men. The same could be said of the current King and many of the more dependent satraps, which were like the governors of provinces underneath the King so that his power could be enforced in places which he could not be, and certainly about the high priests.

The High Priest of Ctesiphon, the leader of all the temples of Zoroastrianism, sat on the laurels of the older generations which were always studying the movement and the meaning of the heavens above. The appointments made by the King of Parthia to all the positions of power were made by nepotism or simply mechanically and without thought to regard for qualifications. There was no honor in the Parthian Kingdom at the time of the Roman invasion, which was prompted by a cowardly move from their and the Armenian Empire. The fall of the Zoroastrian religion was followed by an localization of the religion. It no longer looked towards the neglectful and heretical High Priest of Ctesiphon but to their own lower priests and perhaps themselves to learn of what was holy. The gods continued in a greater way than they did in Aegypt. The knowledge of the planets and how they relate to human knowledge quickly turned into a study of planetary motion and eventually led to the discovery of Gravitational forces. The apparent connection between the Zoroastrian religion and the study of the planets as well as the Aegyptian religion and knowledge of the interaction of chemicals in nature made both of them the religion and rituals of interest to the intellectuals of the Kingdom.

These were seen, by the majority of people, as simply a fancy of the intellectuals. However, once people began attending Universities in larger numbers in pursuit of the knowledge that had been growing in these buildings, they began to pick up an interest in the rituals of the Zoroastrian and Aegyptian religions. The also took these back to their hometowns, usually to the scorn of their community. The castaway intellectuals began to pour into the home countries of those religions, and especially in the provinces between these two, that is the province of Judea and of Syria to a lesser extend.

The last facet that was to be gained by the hierarchy among the intellectual and collegiate community, a small, introverted sect of the population, so that the astrological and alchemical rituals would become the major religion which it did. That facet was an appealing message.