The Twilight of the Idols · Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
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Christianity destroyed the harvest we might have reaped from the culture of antiquity, later it also destroyed our harvest of the culture of Islam. The wonderful Moorish world of Spanish culture, which in its essence is more closely related to _us,_ and which appeals more to our sense and taste than Rome and Greece, was _trampled to death_(—I do not say by what kind of feet), why?—because it owed its origin to noble, to manly instincts, because it said yea to life, even that life so full of the rare and refined luxuries of the Moors! ... Later on the Crusaders waged war upon something before which it would have been more seemly in them to grovel in the dust,—a culture, beside which even our Nineteenth Century would seem very poor and very “senile.”—Of course they wanted booty: the Orient was rich.... For goodness’ sake let us forget our prejudices! Crusades—superior piracy, that is all! German nobility—that is to say, a Viking nobility at bottom, was in its element in such wars: the Church was only too well aware of how German nobility is to be won....
German nobility was always the “Swiss Guard” of the Church, always at the service of all the bad instincts of the Church; but it was _well paid for it all...._ Fancy the Church having waged its deadly war upon everything noble on earth, precisely with the help of German swords, German blood and courage! A host of painful _questions_ might be raised on this point German nobility scarcely takes a place in the history of higher culture: the reason of this is obvious; Christianity, alcohol—the two _great_ means of corruption. As a matter of fact choice ought to be just as much out of the question between Islam and Christianity, as between an Arab and a Jew. The decision is already self-evident; nobody is at liberty to exercise a choice in this matter. A man is either of the Chandala or he is _not ..._ “War with Rome to the knife! Peace and friendship with Islam”: this is what that great free spirit, that genius among German emperors,—Frederick the Second, not only felt but also _did._ What? Must a German in the first place be a genius, a free-spirit, in order to have _decent_ feelings? I cannot understand how a German was ever able to have _Christian_ feelings.
Here it is necessary to revive a memory which will be a hundred times more painful to Germans. The Germans have destroyed the last great harvest of culture which was to be garnered for Europe,—it destroyed the _Renaissance._ Does anybody at last understand, _will_ anybody understand what the Renaissance was? _The transvaluation of Christian values,_ the attempt undertaken with all means, all instincts and all genius to make the _opposite_ values, the _noble_ values triumph,... Hitherto there has been only _this_ great war: there has never yet been a more decisive question than the Renaissance,—_my_ question is the question of the Renaissance:—there has never been a more fundamental, a more direct and a more severe _attack,_ delivered with a whole front upon the centre of the foe. To attack at the decisive quarter, at the very seat of Christianity, and there to place _noble_ values on the throne,—that is to say, to _introduce_ them into the instincts, into the most fundamental needs and desires of those sitting there....
I see before me a possibility perfectly magic in its charm and glorious colouring—it seems to me to scintillate with all the quivering grandeur of refined beauty, that there is an art at work within it which is so divine, so infernally divine, that one might seek through millenniums in vain for another such possibility; I see a spectacle so rich in meaning and so wonderfully paradoxical to boot, that it would be enough to make all the gods of Olympus rock with immortal laughter,—_Cæsar Borgia as Pope._ ... Do you understand me? ... Very well then, this would have been the triumph which I alone am longing for to-day:—this would have _swept_ Christianity _away!_—What happened? A German monk, Luther, came to Rome. This monk, with all the vindictive instincts of an abortive priest in his body, foamed with rage over the Renaissance in Rome.... Instead of, with the profoundest gratitude, understanding the vast miracle that had taken place, the overcoming of Christianity at its _headquarters,_—the fire of his hate knew only how to draw fresh fuel from this spectacle. A religious man thinks only of himself.—Luther saw the corruption of the Papacy when the very reverse stared him in the face: the old corruption, the _peceatum originate,_ Christianity _no_ longer sat upon the Papal chair! But Life!
The triumph of Life! The great yea to all lofty, beautiful and daring things!... And Luther reinstated the Church; he attacked it The Renaissance thus became an event without meaning, a great _in vain!_—Ah these Germans, what have they not cost us already! In vain—this has always been the achievement of the Germans.—The Reformation, Leibniz, Kant and so-called German philosophy, the Wars of Liberation, the Empire—in each case are in vain for something which had already existed, for something which _cannot be recovered._ ... I confess it, these Germans are my enemies: I despise every sort of uncleanliness in concepts and valuations in them, every kind of cowardice in the face of every honest yea or nay. For almost one thousand years, now, they have tangled and confused everything they have laid their hands on; they have on their conscience all the half-measures, all the three-eighth measures of which Europe is sick; they also have the most unclean, the most incurable, and the most irrefutable kind of Christianity—Protestantism—on their conscience.... If we shall never be able to get rid of Christianity, the _Germans_ will be to blame.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.