Summary and comments on Kammeier
In ‘Falsification of German History’, Kammeier analysed the church chancery diplomas:
In expert-agreed forgeries, the forgers exhibit a strange set of behavior - on the one hand they copy the template diligently, on the other hand, they had put no effort into pulling off a convincing forgery(wrong names, dates, seals, writing style). Thus these forgeries cannot be a ‘practical’ forgery (i.e.used for laying claim on deeds or titles) but they are created at a later date - during a grand falsification action.
In so-called ‘genuine’ diplomas, a general sense of chronological confusion can be seen throughout the centuries: dates jump back and forth, or are left out; successive dates are entered when it was physically impossible to travel so quickly in that short amount of time etc. Moreover, there are cases where the same event is recorded twice by involving different dates or characters (so-called reissues). All of these show that the chronology was made up, and none of the diplomas are truly genuine.
As for literary chronicles, a statistical impossibility is observed: the source, or so-called templates of the chronicles are often ‘lost’, while the ‘copies’ survive; moreover, the ‘copies’ often differ in the date and characters on the same event - the same situation exhibits by the diplomas mentioned above. The conclusion to be drawn in this: there is NO source document, the conflicting accounts were created consciously so that the events were put in ‘chronological suspension’ - the events cannot be pinned down on any exact date or even dynasty, because it would be be more convenient for the grand falsification action, indeed it is the only way, to ensure that the falsification would be successful.
History - chancery documents - of the (German) kings shows the same symptoms mentioned above, so they must be fabrications as well. And the same for papal history - up to the Renaissance times (15th century). Kammeier points to the Roman papal church as the source of the falsification action, which created the entire history of the Middle Ages in the ‘Renaissance’; as it is the only institution that has the power and resource capable of undertaking this Herculean task; and the goal is to justify the papal claims for the highest rule of the world.
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‘Second attack/New evidence’ has in a large part the same content as ‘the Falsification of the Middle Ages’, so I will not talk much about it. It should be mentioned that the book presents a few more pieces of evidence of the falsification: diplomas that transfer places which did not exist; documents signed by people already dead; documents that are addressed to a king who is not yet in reign etc.
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In ‘Falsification of the Middle Ages’, Kammeier develops his theory of the creation of the Catholic universal church post-1500AD (and its non-existence pre-1500AD).
It is important to note that Kammeier sets a cutoff point for fabricated history pre 1300; he deems the history from 1300 to 1500 to still be falsified but have some semblance of truth - because, in his view, it is more difficult to fabricate history as it gets closer to ‘modern times’. And he treats history post-1500 to be largely factual. I think this view is too optimistic, and the cutoff seems somewhat arbitrary. It is unclear to me whether Kammeier has examined records post-15th century, and confirmed that the ‘intentional contradictions’ that he identified abundantly in the records of the middle ages are not also present post-15th (or even 16th/17th century). Even if the records post-15th century are consistent, it is not still enough to rule out that the records are not simply pre-dated (consistently) so that they are push backward in time. Moreover, how many records dated to the ‘15th century’ is actually available in the 15th century, and not ‘re-discovered’ only in the 18th or 19th century?
But going back to Kammeier’s theory; he points to 3 main source of evidence: 1. the story of the papal transferral to Avignon in the 14th century contradicts common sense 2. Contradicting accounts of the decay of Rome means that Rome was nothing more than a village pre-1500 3. The abundance of ‘heretical’ congregations/churches shows there could not have been a universal dogma (or inquisition) during the Middle Ages - what is deemed ‘heretical’ are simply different regional sects since there was no universal dogma prior to 1500. Moreover, our knowledge of what the ‘heretics’ believed - which is strikingly not that different from the established dogma - must have come from a falsified tradition; the point of which is to conceal what the ‘heretics’ truly believed. On a side note, he necessarily rejects the historicity of the Crusades, as the universal church did not exist yet at the time.
In the last part of the book, Kammeier traces the origin of the universal dogma to the Paris University, which historical sources assert led in the areas of theology in 1300; but since there is still no universal church until 1500, the theological debates in Paris University must have been efforts to unify regional sects to form a central dogma institution - to form a universal church. The universal church expanded its power by subjugating the French king, and then to Germany and Italy - whose regional churches, hungry for power, claimed allegiance to the French universal church.
Here, compared to the first book, Kammeier’s theory suffers from the fact that he uses the falsified sources themselves to formulate his theory of ‘what actually happened’, thus it can only remain as conjecture. For example, do we even know that Philip IV and Henry VII actually exist - do ‘kings’ even exist at that time? Note, this is not a problem with Kammeier per se, but an issue of ‘truth’ itself - it is easy to expose fakes, but it is difficult to prove the truth. How close is his theory to the truth then, depends on whether there is any ‘truth’ contained in the ‘falsified’ sources - and that in turn, depends on when the ‘cutoff’ should be dated. So once again, Kammeier’s cutoff at ‘1300’ needs to be reconsidered.
In ‘Falsification of German History’, Kammeier analysed the church chancery diplomas:
In expert-agreed forgeries, the forgers exhibit a strange set of behavior - on the one hand they copy the template diligently, on the other hand, they had put no effort into pulling off a convincing forgery(wrong names, dates, seals, writing style). Thus these forgeries cannot be a ‘practical’ forgery (i.e.used for laying claim on deeds or titles) but they are created at a later date - during a grand falsification action.
In so-called ‘genuine’ diplomas, a general sense of chronological confusion can be seen throughout the centuries: dates jump back and forth, or are left out; successive dates are entered when it was physically impossible to travel so quickly in that short amount of time etc. Moreover, there are cases where the same event is recorded twice by involving different dates or characters (so-called reissues). All of these show that the chronology was made up, and none of the diplomas are truly genuine.
As for literary chronicles, a statistical impossibility is observed: the source, or so-called templates of the chronicles are often ‘lost’, while the ‘copies’ survive; moreover, the ‘copies’ often differ in the date and characters on the same event - the same situation exhibits by the diplomas mentioned above. The conclusion to be drawn in this: there is NO source document, the conflicting accounts were created consciously so that the events were put in ‘chronological suspension’ - the events cannot be pinned down on any exact date or even dynasty, because it would be be more convenient for the grand falsification action, indeed it is the only way, to ensure that the falsification would be successful.
History - chancery documents - of the (German) kings shows the same symptoms mentioned above, so they must be fabrications as well. And the same for papal history - up to the Renaissance times (15th century). Kammeier points to the Roman papal church as the source of the falsification action, which created the entire history of the Middle Ages in the ‘Renaissance’; as it is the only institution that has the power and resource capable of undertaking this Herculean task; and the goal is to justify the papal claims for the highest rule of the world.
*
‘Second attack/New evidence’ has in a large part the same content as ‘the Falsification of the Middle Ages’, so I will not talk much about it. It should be mentioned that the book presents a few more pieces of evidence of the falsification: diplomas that transfer places which did not exist; documents signed by people already dead; documents that are addressed to a king who is not yet in reign etc.
*
In ‘Falsification of the Middle Ages’, Kammeier develops his theory of the creation of the Catholic universal church post-1500AD (and its non-existence pre-1500AD).
It is important to note that Kammeier sets a cutoff point for fabricated history pre 1300; he deems the history from 1300 to 1500 to still be falsified but have some semblance of truth - because, in his view, it is more difficult to fabricate history as it gets closer to ‘modern times’. And he treats history post-1500 to be largely factual. I think this view is too optimistic, and the cutoff seems somewhat arbitrary. It is unclear to me whether Kammeier has examined records post-15th century, and confirmed that the ‘intentional contradictions’ that he identified abundantly in the records of the middle ages are not also present post-15th (or even 16th/17th century). Even if the records post-15th century are consistent, it is not still enough to rule out that the records are not simply pre-dated (consistently) so that they are push backward in time. Moreover, how many records dated to the ‘15th century’ is actually available in the 15th century, and not ‘re-discovered’ only in the 18th or 19th century?
But going back to Kammeier’s theory; he points to 3 main source of evidence: 1. the story of the papal transferral to Avignon in the 14th century contradicts common sense 2. Contradicting accounts of the decay of Rome means that Rome was nothing more than a village pre-1500 3. The abundance of ‘heretical’ congregations/churches shows there could not have been a universal dogma (or inquisition) during the Middle Ages - what is deemed ‘heretical’ are simply different regional sects since there was no universal dogma prior to 1500. Moreover, our knowledge of what the ‘heretics’ believed - which is strikingly not that different from the established dogma - must have come from a falsified tradition; the point of which is to conceal what the ‘heretics’ truly believed. On a side note, he necessarily rejects the historicity of the Crusades, as the universal church did not exist yet at the time.
In the last part of the book, Kammeier traces the origin of the universal dogma to the Paris University, which historical sources assert led in the areas of theology in 1300; but since there is still no universal church until 1500, the theological debates in Paris University must have been efforts to unify regional sects to form a central dogma institution - to form a universal church. The universal church expanded its power by subjugating the French king, and then to Germany and Italy - whose regional churches, hungry for power, claimed allegiance to the French universal church.
Here, compared to the first book, Kammeier’s theory suffers from the fact that he uses the falsified sources themselves to formulate his theory of ‘what actually happened’, thus it can only remain as conjecture. For example, do we even know that Philip IV and Henry VII actually exist - do ‘kings’ even exist at that time? Note, this is not a problem with Kammeier per se, but an issue of ‘truth’ itself - it is easy to expose fakes, but it is difficult to prove the truth. How close is his theory to the truth then, depends on whether there is any ‘truth’ contained in the ‘falsified’ sources - and that in turn, depends on when the ‘cutoff’ should be dated. So once again, Kammeier’s cutoff at ‘1300’ needs to be reconsidered.