Wasn't Jesus the first 'satanic socialist'?
He was indeed Sun but hardly the last one, either, to emerge in the course of Christian history
"S
ex, revolution, or mysticism - what's the difference?". It was the same at the dawn of the second millennium, one thousand years ago:
Gregory VII - Medieval Studies - Oxford Bibliographies
Pope Gregory VII (1073–1085) was one of the most important and controversial popes of the Middle Ages....
So convinced have historians been of his importance that the term “Gregorian Reform” served for a century to describe the period in which Gregory lived...
As Archdeacon Hildebrand, he directed the affairs of the Roman Church at a crucial period of realignment, as a small group of international reformers removed the papacy from the grip of local aristocratic families, first in collaboration with the Emperor Henry III and later under the protection of the Norman princes who were carving out a territory for themselves in southern Italy. In pursuit of a purified Church, the reformers supported a group of radical protestors, the Patarenes, who sought to impose clerical celibacy on the clergy of Milan...This iconic struggle saw Gregory excommunicate Henry IV and release his subjects from their oaths to him in 1076 only to absolve him at Canossa in 1077 and, after the outbreak of a civil war in Germany, to depose him again in 1080. In the meantime, Henry IV had convened a synod of German bishops that denounced Gregory as “Hildebrand, false monk” and called on him to abdicate and another that deposed him and elected a new pope...
The quarrel between empire and papacy was the first such dispute since antiquity, and it resulted in a completely unprecedented war of words between the protagonists and their supporters. Its effects are still felt, not least in the idea that the separation of Church and State is desirable. Gregory VII continues to provoke lively debate, partly from a confessional standpoint, with Catholics tending to admire him and Protestants to denigrate him, or from a nationalistic perspective, with Germans seeing him as the destroyer of their nation and Italians regarding him as a hero of Italian autonomy. Even here, however, some Germans have not been able to restrain their admiration for Gregory, even while they deplore the effects of his policies; like Peter Damian, they see the pope as a “holy Satan.”
From, "
Civilization of the Middle Ages" by the historian Norman F. Cantor p.260-261:
"...In his Letter to Hermann of Metz, Pope Gregory contended that royal power was originated by murderers and thugs and that the state continued to bear the stamp of Cain. In the whole history of the world, he said, there were scarcely half a dozen kings who had avoided the damnation of their souls...Many simple and ordinary Christians, he said, were more certain recipients of divine Grace than were the mighty and powerful holders of royal power, who were the instruments of the devil...
Gregory concluded that the only legitimate power in the world resided in the priesthood, particularly in the Bishop of Rome as the vicar of Christ on Earth...He boldly asserted that the freedom of the Christian man consisted in the subjection of his selfish will to the divine ends that the papacy pursued in the world. Only a world order in which these doctrines were realized could be called just and right...
With an apocalyptic zeal he demanded a new right order that would fulfil the ideals of Christian justice and liberty...Nothing less than the total Christianitas (the application of his puritan ideals to all aspects of social life and to establish a unified Christian world system under the papacy) was acceptable....
His writings are full of references to the pauperes Christi, "Christ's poor ones", whose assistance he summoned and whose welfare he sought....He was on the side of the poor, the meek, the humble, and the downtrodden; he was the enemy of the rich, the proud and the powerful, whoever or whatever they might be. His hatred of the most powerful men in Europe was based upon a psychological and emotional sympathy for the underdog and hostility to their lords and oppressors.
Gregory's conception of Christian poverty was an attempt to read the Sermon on the Mount to the class-stratified society of the eleventh century. At the same time, his violent hatred of the leaders of contemporary society and the highly emotional concern for "Christ's poor ones" were probably symptoms of a paranoic hysteria and manifestations of a deep psychosis..."
Can Church Influence Explain Western Individualism? Comment on “The Church, Intensive Kinship, and Global Psychological Variation,” by Jonathan F. Schulz et al. – The Occidental Observer
Church policies directed against the power of secular elites focused on marriage as an essential battleground, including, besides rules on incestuous marriage, developing ideologies and enforcing social controls supporting monogamy.
Particularly important was enforcing consent as the basis of marriage. Consent in marriage promotes individualist marriage choice based on the characteristics of spouse rather than family strategizing in which one’s spouse is determined by parents, with the result that “the family, the tribe, the clan, were subordinated to the individual. If one wanted to marry enough, one could choose one’s own mate and the Church would vindicate one’s choice.[15]
The Church also developed ideologies of moral egalitarianism and moral universalism that undermined the ideology of natural hierarchy typical of the ancient world, and often encouraged the emerging cities as independent power centers opposed to the interests of feudal lords. Regarding the ideology of moral egalitarianism:
Canon law … had a strongly egalitarian tenor—status, which had been central to ancient law—was irrelevant. Ecclesiastical ideology thus facilitated the Western liberal tradition. Aristocrats and commoners had the same moral standing. Moreover, canon law was recruited to lessen the power of kinship groups by also rejecting the privileged status of testimony from family and friends (which had led to more powerful families getting favorable judgments). [From Chapter 5, 188; emphasis in original]