#Byzantine Papacy

[shamsaddinmegalommatis]

Benedict XVI and today's Muslims opposite Manuel II Palaeologus and his Turkic Interlocutor

Or why I defended Pope Benedict XVI in 2006 against the thoughtlessly irascible Muslims 

When a Muslim writes an Obituary for the Catholic Church's sole Pope Emeritus…

Table of Contents

I. From Joseph Ratzinger to Pope Benedict XVI

II. The theoretical concerns of an intellectual Pope

III. Benedict XVI: A Pope against violence and wars

IV. Manuel II Palaeologus and the Eastern Roman Empire between the Muslim Ottoman brethren and the Anti-Christian Roman enemies

V. The unknown (?) Turkic mystic interlocutor and the Islamic centers of science and reason that Benedict XVI ignored

VI. Excerpt from Benedict XVI's lecture given on the 12th September at the University of Regensburg under title 'Faith, Reason and the University–Memories and Reflections'

VII. The problems of the academic-theological background of Benedict XVI's lecture

VIII. Benedict XVI's biased approach, theological mistakes, intellectual oversights and historical misinterpretations

IX. The lecture's most controversial point

X. The educational-academic-intellectual misery and the political ordeal of today's Muslim states

Of all the Roman popes who resigned the only to be called 'Pope Emeritus' was Joseph Ratzinger Pope Benedict XVI (also known in German as Prof. Dr. Papst), who passed away on 31st December 2022, thus sealing the circle of world figures and heads of states whose life ended last year. As a matter of fact, although being a head state, a pope does not abdicate; he renounces to his ministry (renuntiatio).

Due to lack of documentation, conflicting sources or confusing circumstances, we do not have conclusive evidence as regards the purported resignations of the popes St. Pontian (235), Marcellinus (304), Liberius (366), John XVIII (1009) and Sylvester (105). That is why historical certainty exists only with respect to the 'papal renunciation' of six pontiffs; three of them bore the papal name of 'Benedict'. The brief list includes therefore the following bishops of Rome: Benedict V (964), Benedict IX (deposed in 1044, bribed to resign in 1045, and resigned in 1048), Gregory VI (1046), St Celestine (1294), Gregory XII (1415) and Benedict XVI (2013).

I. From Joseph Ratzinger to Pope Benedict XVI

Benedict XVI (18 April 1927 – 31 December 2022) was seven (7) years younger than his predecessor John Paul II (1920-2005), but passed away seventeen (17) years after the Polish pope's death; already on the 4th September 2020, Benedict XVI would have been declared as the oldest pope in history, had he not resigned seven (7) years earlier. Only Leo XIII died 93, back in 1903. As a matter of fact, Benedict XVI outlived all the people who were elected to the Roman See.

Benedict XVI's papacy lasted slightly less than eight (8) years (19 April 2005 – 28 February 2013). Before being elected as pope, Cardinal Ratzinger was for almost a quarter century (1981-2005) the prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which was the formal continuation of the Office of the Holy Inquisition, and therefore one of the most important sections ('dicasteries'; from the Ancient Greek term 'dikasterion', i.e. 'court of law') of the Roman administration ('Curia').

A major step toward this position was his appointment as archbishop of Munich for four years (1977-1981); Bavaria has always been a Catholic heavyweight, and in this regard, it is easy to recall the earlier example of Eugenio Pacelli (the later pope Pius XII), who was nuncio to Bavaria (and therefore to the German Empire), in Munich, from 1917 to 1920, and then to Germany, before being elected to the Roman See (in 1939). Before having a meteoric rise in the Catholic hierarchy, Ratzinger made an excellent scholar and a distinct professor of dogmatic theology, while also being a priest. His philosophical dissertation was about St. Augustine and his habilitation concerned Bonaventure, a Franciscan scholastic theologian and cardinal of the 13th c.

II. The theoretical concerns of an intellectual Pope

During his ministry, very early, Benedict XVI stood up and showed his teeth; when I noticed his formidable outburst against the 'dictatorship of relativism', I realized that the German pope would be essentially superior to his Polish predecessor. Only in June 2005, so just two months after his election, he defined relativism as "the main obstacle to the task of education", directing a tremendous attack against the evilness of ego and portraying selfishness as a "self-limitation of reason".

In fact, there cannot be more devastating attack from a supreme religious authority against the evilness of Anglo-Zionism and the rotten, putrefied society that these criminals diffuse worldwide by means of infiltration, corruption, mendacity, and simulation. Soon afterwards, while speaking in Marienfeld (Cologne), Benedict XVI attacked ferociously all the pathetic ideologies which indiscriminately enslave humans from all spiritual and cultural backgrounds. He said: "absolutizing what is not absolute but relative is called totalitarianism". This is a detrimental rejection of Talmudic Judaism, Zohar Kabbalah, and Anglo-Zionism.

It was in the summer 2005 that I first realized that I should study closer the pre-papal past of the Roman Pontiff whom St Malachy's illustrious Prophecy of the Popes (12th c.) described as 'Gloria olivae' (the Glory of the olive). I contacted several friends in Germany, who extensively updated me as regards his academic publications, also dispatching to me some of them. At the time, I noticed that my Christian friends already used to question a certain number of Cardinal Ratzinger's positions.

But, contrarily to them, I personally found his prediction about the eventuality of Buddhism becoming the principal 'enemy' of the Catholic Church as quite plausible. My friends were absolutely astounded, and then I had to narrate and explain to them the deliberately concealed story of the Christian-Islamic-Confucian alliance against the Buddhist terrorism of the Dzungar Khanate (1634-1755); actually, it took many Kazakh-Dzungar wars (1643-1756), successive wars between Qing China and the Dzungar Khanate (1687-1757), and even an alliance with the Russian Empire in order to successfully oppose the ferocious Buddhist extremist threat.

Finally, the extraordinary ordeal of North Asia {a vast area comprising lands of today's Eastern Kazakhstan, Russia (Central Siberia), Northwestern and Western China (Eastern Turkestan/Xinjiang and Tibet) and Western Mongolia} ended up with the systematic genocide of the extremist Buddhist Dzungars (1755-1758) that the Chinese had to undertake because there was no other way to terminate once forever the most fanatic regime that ever existed in Asia.

Disoriented, ignorant, confused and gullible, most of the people today fail to clearly understand how easily Buddhism can turn a peaceful society into a fanatic realm of lunatic extremists. The hypothetically innocent adhesion of several fake Freemasonic lodges of the West to Buddhism and the seemingly harmless acceptance of Buddhist principles and values by these ignorant fools can end up in the formation of vicious and terrorist organizations that will give to their members and initiates the absurd order and task to indiscriminately kill all of their opponents. But Cardinal Ratzinger had prudently discerned the existence of a dangerous source of spiritual narcissism in Buddhism.

III. Benedict XVI: A Pope against violence and wars

To me, this foresight was a convincing proof that Benedict XVI was truly 'Gloria olivae'; but this would be troublesome news! In a period of proxy wars, unrestrained iniquity, and outrageous inhumanity, a perspicacious, cordial, and benevolent pope in Rome would surely be an encumbering person to many villainous rascals, i.e. the likes of Tony Blair, George W. Bush, Nicolas Sarkozy, and many others so-called 'leaders'. The reason for this assessment of the situation is simple: no one wants a powerful pacifier at a time more wars are planned.

At the time, it was ostensible to all that a fake confrontation between the world's Muslims and Christians was underway (notably after the notorious 9/11 events); for this reason, I expected Benedict XVI to make a rather benevolent statement that evil forces would immediately misinterpret, while also falsely accusing the pacifist Pope and absurdly turning the uneducated and ignorant mob of many countries against the Catholic Church.

This is the foolish plan of the Anglo-Zionist lobby, which has long served as puppets of the Jesuits, corrupting the entire Muslim world over the past 250 years by means of intellectual, educational, academic, scientific, cultural, economic, military and political colonialism. These idiotic puppets, which have no idea who their true and real masters are, imagine that, by creating an unprecedented havoc in Europe, they harm the worldwide interests of the Jesuits; but they fail to properly realize that this evil society, which early turned against Benedict XVI, has already shifted its focus onto China. Why the apostate Anglo-Zionist Freemasonic lodge would act in this manner against Benedict XVI is easy to assess; the Roman pontiff whose episcopal motto was 'Cooperatores Veritatis' ('Co-workers of the Truth') would apparently try to prevent the long-prepared fake war between the Muslims and the Christians.

IV. Manuel II Palaeologus and the Eastern Roman Empire between the Muslim Ottoman brethren and the Anti-Christian Roman enemies

And this is what truly happened in the middle of September 2006; on the 12th September, Benedict XVI delivered a lecture at the University of Regensburg in Germany; the title was 'Glaube, Vernunft und Universität – Erinnerungen und Reflexionen' ('Faith, Reason and the University – Memories and Reflections'). In the beginning of the lecture, Prof. Dr. Ratzinger eclipsed Pope Benedict XVI, as the one-time professor persisted on his concept of 'faith', "which theologians seek to correlate with reason as a whole", as he said. In a most rationalistic approach (for which he had been known for several decades as a renowned Catholic theologian), in an argumentation reflecting views certainly typical of Francis of Assisi and of Aristotle but emphatically alien to Jesus, Benedict XVI attempted to portray an ahistorical Christianity and to describe the Catholic faith as the religion of the Reason.

At an early point of the lecture, Benedict XVI referred to a discussion that the Eastern Roman Emperor Manuel II Palaeologus (or Palaiologos; Μανουήλ Παλαιολόγος; 1350-1425; reigned after 1391) had with an erudite Turkic scholar (indiscriminately but mistakenly called by all Eastern Roman authors at the time as 'Persian') most probably around the end of 1390 or the first months of 1391, when he was hostage at the Ottoman court of Bayezid I. In the historical text, it is stated that the location was 'Ancyra of Galatia' (i.e. Ankara).  

This Eastern Roman Emperor was indeed a very controversial historical figure; although undeniably an erudite ruler, a bold diplomat, and a reputable soldier, he first made agreements with the Ottomans and delivered to them the last Eastern Roman city in Anatolia (Philadelphia; today's Alaşehir, ca. 140 km east of Izmir / Smyrna) and then, after he took control of his ailing kingdom thanks to the sultan, he escaped the protracted siege of Constantinople (1391-1402) only to travel to various Western European kingdoms and ask the help of those rather reluctant monarchs (1399-1403).

At the time, all the Christian Orthodox populations, either living in the Ottoman sultanate or residing in the declined Eastern Roman Empire, were deeply divided into two groups, namely those who preferred to be ruled by Muslims (because they rejected the pseudo-Christian fallacy, evilness and iniquity of the Roman pope) and the fervent supporters of a Latin (: Western European) control over Constantinople (viewed as the only way for them to prevent the Ottoman rule); the former formed the majority and were called Anthenotikoi, i.e. 'against the union' (: of the Orthodox Church with the Catholics), whereas the latter constituted a minority group and were named 'Enotikoi' ('those in favor of the union of the two churches').

V. The unknown (?) Turkic mystic interlocutor and the Islamic centers of science and reason that Benedict XVI ignored

Manuel II Palaeologus' text has little theological value in itself; however, its historical value is great. It reveals how weak both interlocutors were at the intellectual, cultural and spiritual levels, how little they knew one another, and how poorly informed they were about their own and their interlocutor's past, heritage, religion and spirituality. If we have even a brief look at it, we will immediately realize that the level is far lower than that attested during similar encounters in 8th- 9th c. Baghdad, 10th c. Umayyad Andalusia, Fatimid Cairo, 13th c. Maragheh (where the world's leading observatory was built) or 14th c. Samarqand, the Timurid capital.

It was absolutely clear at the time of Manuel II Palaeologus and Bayezid I that neither Constantinople nor Bursa (Προύσα / Prousa; not anymore the Ottoman capital after 1363, but still the most important city of the sultanate) could compete with the great centers of Islamic science civilization which were located in Iran and Central Asia. That's why Gregory Chioniades, the illustrious Eastern Roman bishop, astronomer, and erudite scholar who was the head of the Orthodox diocese of Tabriz, studied in Maragheh under the guidance of his tutor and mentor, Shamsaddin al Bukhari (one of the most illustrious students of Nasir el-Din al Tusi, who was the founder of the Maragheh Observatory), before building an observatory in Trabzon (Trebizond) and becoming the teacher of Manuel Bryennios, another famous Eastern Roman scholar.  

The text of the Dialogues must have been written several years after the conversation took place, most probably when the traveling emperor and diplomat spent four years in Western Europe. For reasons unknown to us, the erudite emperor did not mention the name of his interlocutor, although this was certainly known to him; if we take into consideration that he was traveling to other kingdoms, we can somehow guess a plausible reason. His courtiers and royal scribes may have translated the text partly into Latin and given copies of the 'dialogues' to various kings, marshals, chroniclers, and other dignitaries. If this was the case, the traveling emperor would not probably want to offer insights into the Ottoman court and the influential religious authorities around the sultan.

Alternatively, the 'unknown' interlocutor may well have been Amir Sultan (born as Mohamed bin Ali; also known as Shamsuddin Al-Bukhari; 1368-1429) himself, i.e. none else than an important Turanian mystic from Vobkent (near Bukhara in today's Uzbekistan), who got married with Bayezid I's daughter Hundi Fatema Sultan Hatun. Amir Sultan had advised the sultan not to turn against Timur; had the foolish sultan heeded to his son-in-law's wise advice, he would not have been defeated so shamefully.

Benedict XVI made a very biased use of the historical text; he selected an excerpt of Manuel II Palaeologus' response to his interlocutor in order to differentiate between Christianity as the religion of Reason and Islam as the religion of Violence. Even worse, he referred to a controversial, biased and rancorous historian of Lebanese origin, the notorious Prof. Theodore Khoury (born in 1930), who spent his useless life to write sophisticated diatribes, mildly formulated forgeries, and deliberate distortions of the historical truth in order to satisfy his rancor and depict the historical past according to his absurd political analysis. Almost every sentence written Prof. Khoury about the Eastern Roman Empire and the Islamic Caliphate is maliciously false.

All the same, it was certainly Benedict XVI's absolute right to be academically, intellectually and historically wrong. The main problem was that the paranoid reaction against him was not expressed at the academic and intellectual levels, but at the profane ground of international politics. Even worse, it was not started by Muslims but by the criminal Anglo-Zionist mafia and the disreputable mainstream mass media, the likes of the BBC, Al Jazeera (Qatari is only the façade of it), etc.

I will now republish (in bold and italics) a sizeable (600-word) excerpt of the papal lecture that contains the contentious excerpt, also adding the notes to the text. The link to the Vatican's website page is available below. I will comment first on the lecture and the selected part of Manuel II Palaeologus' text and then on the absurd Muslim reaction.

VI. Excerpt from Benedict XVI's lecture given on the 12th September at the University of Regensburg under title 'Faith, Reason and the University–Memories and Reflections'

I was reminded of all this recently, when I read the edition by Professor Theodore Khoury (Münster) of part of the dialogue carried on - perhaps in 1391 in the winter barracks near Ankara - by the erudite Byzantine emperor Manuel II Paleologus and an educated Persian on the subject of Christianity and Islam, and the truth of both.[1] It was presumably the emperor himself who set down this dialogue, during the siege of Constantinople between 1394 and 1402; and this would explain why his arguments are given in greater detail than those of his Persian interlocutor.[2] The dialogue ranges widely over the structures of faith contained in the Bible and in the Qur'an, and deals especially with the image of God and of man, while necessarily returning repeatedly to the relationship between - as they were called - three "Laws" or "rules of life": the Old Testament, the New Testament and the Qur'an. It is not my intention to discuss this question in the present lecture; here I would like to discuss only one point - itself rather marginal to the dialogue as a whole - which, in the context of the issue of "faith and reason", I found interesting and which can serve as the starting-point for my reflections on this issue.

In the seventh conversation (διάλεξις - controversy) edited by Professor Khoury, the emperor touches on the theme of the holy war. The emperor must have known that surah 2, 256 reads: "There is no compulsion in religion". According to some of the experts, this is probably one of the suras of the early period, when Mohammed was still powerless and under threat. But naturally the emperor also knew the instructions, developed later and recorded in the Qur'an, concerning holy war. Without descending to details, such as the difference in treatment accorded to those who have the "Book" and the "infidels", he addresses his interlocutor with a startling brusqueness, a brusqueness that we find unacceptable, on the central question about the relationship between religion and violence in general, saying: "Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.”[3] The emperor, after having expressed himself so forcefully, goes on to explain in detail the reasons why spreading the faith through violence is something unreasonable. Violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul. "God", he says, "is not pleased by blood - and not acting reasonably (σὺν λόγω) is contrary to God's nature. Faith is born of the soul, not the body. Whoever would lead someone to faith needs the ability to speak well and to reason properly, without violence and threats... To convince a reasonable soul, one does not need a strong arm, or weapons of any kind, or any other means of threatening a person with death...".[4]

The decisive statement in this argument against violent conversion is this: not to act in accordance with reason is contrary to God's nature.[5] The editor, Theodore Khoury, observes: For the emperor, as a Byzantine shaped by Greek philosophy, this statement is self-evident. But for Muslim teaching, God is absolutely transcendent. His will is not bound up with any of our categories, even that of rationality.[6] Here Khoury quotes a work of the noted French Islamist R. Arnaldez, who points out that Ibn Hazm went so far as to state that God is not bound even by his own word, and that nothing would oblige him to reveal the truth to us. Were it God's will, we would even have to practice idolatry.[7]

Notes 1 to 7 (out of 13)

[1] Of the total number of 26 conversations (διάλεξις – Khoury translates this as “controversy”) in the dialogue (“Entretien”), T. Khoury published the 7th “controversy” with footnotes and an extensive introduction on the origin of the text, on the manuscript tradition and on the structure of the dialogue, together with brief summaries of the “controversies” not included in the edition;  the Greek text is accompanied by a French translation:  “Manuel II Paléologue, Entretiens avec un Musulman.  7e Controverse”,  Sources Chrétiennes n. 115, Paris 1966.  In the meantime, Karl Förstel published in Corpus Islamico-Christianum (Series Graeca  ed. A. T. Khoury and R. Glei) an edition of the text in Greek and German with commentary:  “Manuel II. Palaiologus, Dialoge mit einem Muslim”, 3 vols., Würzburg-Altenberge 1993-1996.  As early as 1966, E. Trapp had published the Greek text with an introduction as vol. II of Wiener byzantinische Studien.  I shall be quoting from Khoury’s edition.

[2] On the origin and redaction of the dialogue, cf. Khoury, pp. 22-29;  extensive comments in this regard can also be found in the editions of Förstel and Trapp.

[3] Controversy VII, 2 c:  Khoury, pp. 142-143;  Förstel, vol. I, VII. Dialog 1.5, pp. 240-241.  In the Muslim world, this quotation has unfortunately been taken as an expression of my personal position, thus arousing understandable indignation.  I hope that the reader of my text can see immediately that this sentence does not express my personal view of the Qur’an, for which I have the respect due to the holy book of a great religion.  In quoting the text of the Emperor Manuel II, I intended solely to draw out the essential relationship between faith and reason.  On this point I am in agreement with Manuel II, but without endorsing his polemic.

[4] Controversy VII, 3 b–c:  Khoury, pp. 144-145;  Förstel vol. I, VII. Dialog 1.6, pp. 240-243.

[5] It was purely for the sake of this statement that I quoted the dialogue between Manuel and his Persian interlocutor.  In this statement the theme of my subsequent reflections emerges.

[6] Cf. Khoury, p. 144, n. 1.

[7] R. Arnaldez, Grammaire et théologie chez Ibn Hazm de Cordoue, Paris 1956, p. 13;  cf. Khoury, p. 144.  The fact that comparable positions exist in the theology of the late Middle Ages will appear later in my discourse.

VII. The problems of the academic-theological background of Benedict XVI's lecture

It is my conviction that Benedict XVI fell victim to the quite typical theological assumptions that Prof. Dr. Ratzinger had studied and taught for decades. However, the problem is not limited to the circle of the faculties of Theology and to Christian Theology as a modern discipline; it is far wider. The same troublesome situation permeates all the disciplines of Humanities and, even worse, the quasi-totality of the modern sciences as they started in Renaissance. The problem goes well beyond the limits of academic research and intellectual consideration; it has to do with the degenerate, rotten and useless mental abilities and capacities of the Western so-called scholars, researchers and academics. The description of the problem is rather brief, but its nature is truly ominous.

Instead of perceiving, understanding, analyzing and representing the 'Other' in its own terms, conditions and essence and as per its own values, virtues and world conceptualization, the modern Western European scholars, researchers, explorers and specialists view, perceive, attempt to understand, and seek to analyze the 'Other' in their own terms, conditions and essence and as per their own values, virtues and world conceptualization. Due to this sick effort and unprecedented aberration, the Western so-called scholars and researchers view the 'Other' through their eyes, thus projecting onto the 'Other' their view of it. Consequently, they do not and actually they cannot learn it, let alone know, understand and represent it. Their attitude is inane, autistic and degenerate. It is however quite interesting and truly bizarre that the Western European natural scientists do not proceed in this manner, but fully assess the condition of the object of their study in a rather objective manner.

In fact, the Western disciplines of the Humanities, despite the enormous collection and publication of study materials, sources and overall documentation, are a useless distortion. Considered objectively, the Western scientific endeavor in its entirety is a monumental nothingness; it is not only a preconceived conclusion. It is a resolute determination not to 'see' the 'Other' as it truly exists, as its constituent parts obviously encapsulate its contents, and as the available documentation reveals it. In other words, it consists in a premeditated and resolute rejection of the Truth; it is intellectually barren, morally evil, and spiritually nihilist. The topic obviously exceeds by far the limits of the present obituary, but I had to mention it in order to offer the proper context.  

It is therefore difficult to identify the real reason for the magnitude of the Western scholarly endeavor, since the conclusions existed in the minds of the explorers and the academics already before the documentation was gathered, analyzed, studied, and represented. How important is it therefore to publish the unpublished material (totaling more than 100000 manuscripts of Islamic times and more than one million of cuneiform tablets from Ancient Mesopotamia, Iran, Canaan and Anatolia – only to give an idea to the non-specialized readers), if the evil Western scholars and the gullible foreign students enrolled in Western institutions (to the detriment of their own countries and nations) are going to repeat and reproduce the same absurd Western mentality of viewing an Ancient Sumerian, an Ancient Assyrian, an Ancient Egyptian or a Muslim author through their own eyes and of projecting onto the ancient author the invalid and useless measures, values, terms and world views of the modern Western world?

As it can be easily understood, the problem is not with Christian Theology, but with all the disciplines of the Humanities. So, the problem is not only that a great Muslim scholar and erudite mystic like Ibn Hazm was viewed by Benedict XVI and Western theologians through the distorting lenses of their 'science', being not evaluated as per the correct measures, values and terms of his own Islamic environment, background and civilization. The same problem appears in an even worse form, when Ancient Egyptian, Sumerian, Assyrian-Babylonian, Hittite, Iranian and other high priests, spiritual masters, transcendental potentates, sacerdotal writers, and unequaled scientists are again evaluated as per the invalid and useless criteria of Benedict XVI, of all the Western theologians, and of all the modern European and American academics.

What post-Renaissance popes, theologians, academics, scholars and intellectuals fail to understand is very simple; their 'world' ( i.e. the world of the Western Intellect and Science, which was first fabricated in the 15th and the 16th c. and later enhanced progressively down to our days) in not Christian, is not human, and is not real. It is their own delusion, their own invalid abstraction, their abject paranoia, and their own sin for which first they will atrociously disappear from the surface of the Earth (like every anomalous entity) and then flagrantly perish in Hell.

Their dangling system does not hold; they produced it in blood and in blood it will end. Modern sciences constitute a counter-productive endeavor and an aberration that will terminally absorb the entire world into the absolute nothingness, because these evil systems were instituted out of arbitrary bogus-interpretations of the past, peremptory self-identification, deliberate and prejudicial ignorance, as well as an unprecedented ulcerous hatred of the 'Other', i.e. of every 'Other'.

The foolish Western European academic-intellectual establishment failed to realize that it is absolutely preposterous to extrapolate later and corrupt standards to earlier and superior civilizations; in fact, it is impossible. By trying to do it, you depart from the real world only to live in your delusion, which sooner or later will inevitably have a tragic end. Consequently, the Western European scholars' 'classics' are not classics; their reason is an obsession; their language and jargon are hallucinatory, whereas their notions are conjectural. Their abstract concepts are the manifestation of Non-Being.

VIII. Benedict XVI's biased approach, theological mistakes, intellectual oversights and historical misinterpretations

Benedict XVI's understanding of the Eastern Roman Empire was fictional. When examining the sources, he retained what he liked, what pleased him, and what was beneficial to his preconceived ideas and thoughts. In fact, Prof. Dr. Papst did not truly understand what Manuel II Palaeologus said to his Turkic interlocutor, and even worse, he failed to assess the enormous distance that separated the early 15th c. Eastern Roman (not 'Byzantine': this is a fake appellation too) Emperor from his illustrious predecessors before 800 or 900 years (the likes of Heraclius and Justinian I) in terms of Christian Roman imperial ideology, theological acumen, jurisprudential perspicacity, intellectual resourcefulness, and spiritual forcefulness. Benedict XVI did not want to accept that with time the Christian doctrine, theology and spirituality had weakened.

What was Ratzinger's mistake? First, he erroneously viewed Manuel II Palaeologus as 'his' (as identical with the papal doctrine), by projecting his modern Catholic mindset and convictions onto the Christian Orthodox Eastern Roman Emperor's mind, mentality and faith. He took the 'Dialogues' at face value whereas the text may have been written not as a declaration of faith but as a diplomatic document in order to convince the rather uneducated Western European monarchs that the traveling 'basileus' (βασιλεύς) visited during the period 1399-1403.

Second, he distorted the 'dialogue', presenting it in a polarized form. Benedict XVI actually depicted a fraternal conversation as a frontal opposition; unfortunately, there is nothing in the historical text to insinuate this possibility. As I already said, it is quite possible that the moderate, wise, but desperate Eastern Roman Emperor may have discussed with someone married to a female descendant of the great mystic Jalal al-Din Rumi (namely Bayezid's son-in-law, adviser and mystic Emir Sultan). Why on Earth did the renowned theologian Ratzinger attempt to stage manage a theological conflict in the place of a most peaceful, friendly and fraternal exchange of ideas?

This is easy to explain; it has to do with the absolutely Manichaean structure of thought that was first diffused among the Western Fathers of the Christian Church by St Augustine (in the early 5th c.). As method of theological argumentation, it was first effectively contained, and it remained rather marginal within the Roman Church as long as the practice introduced by Justinian I (537) lasted (until 752) and all the popes of Rome had to be selected and approved personally by the Eastern Roman Emperor. After this moment and, more particularly, after the two Schisms (867 and 1054), the Manichaean system of thinking prevailed in Rome; finally, it culminated after the Renaissance.

Third, Benedict XVI tried to depict the early 15th c. erudite interlocutor of the then hostage Manuel II Palaeologus as a modern Muslim and a Jihadist. This is the repetition of the same mistakes that he made as regards the intellectual Eastern Roman Emperor. In other words, he projected onto the 'unknown', 15th c. Muslim mystic his own personal view of an Islamist or Islamic fundamentalist. Similarly, by bulldozing time in order to impose his wrong perception of Islam, he fully misled the audience. As a matter of fact, Islam constitutes a vast universe that Prof. Dr. Papst never studied, never understood, and never fathomed in its true dimensions.

In fact, as it happened in the case of the Eastern Roman Emperor, his interlocutor was intellectually weaker and spiritually lower than the great figures of Islamic spirituality, science, wisdom, literature and intuition, the likes of Nasir al-Din al-Tusi, Al Qurtubi, Mohyi el-Din Ibn Arabi, Ahmed Yasawi, Al Biruni, Ferdowsi, Al Farabi, Tabari, etc., who preceded him by 150 to 500 years. But Benedict XVI did not want to accept that with time the Islamic doctrine, theology and spirituality had weakened.

The reason for this distortion is easy to grasp; the Manichaean system of thinking needs terminal, crystallized forms of items that do not change; then, it is convenient for the Western European abusers of the Manichaean spirit to fully implement the deceitful setting of fake contrasts and false dilemmas. But the 15th c. decayed Eastern Roman Orthodoxy and decadent Islam are real historical entities that enable every explorer to encounter the multitude of forms, the ups and downs, the evolution of cults, the transformation of faiths, and the gradual loss of the initially genuine Moral and vibrant Spirituality. This reality is very embarrassing to those who want to teach their unfortunate students on a calamitous black & white background (or floor).

All the books and articles of his friend, Prof. Theodore Khoury, proved to be totally useless and worthless for the Catholic theologian Ratzinger, exactly because the Lebanese specialist never wrote a sentence in order to truly represent the historical truth about Islam, but he always elaborated his texts in a way to justify and confirm his preconceived ideas. Prof. Khoury's Islam is a delusional entity, something like the artificial humans of our times. Unfortunately, not one Western Islamologist realized that Islam, at the antipodes of the Roman Catholic doctrine, has an extremely limited dogmatic part, a minimal cult, and no heresies. Any opposite opinion belongs to liars, forgers and falsifiers. As a matter of fact, today's distorted representation of Islam is simply the result of Western colonialism. All over the world, whatever people hear or believe about the religion preached by Prophet Muhammad is not the true, historical, religion of Islam, but the colonially, academically-intellectually, produced Christianization of Islam.  

Fourth, in striking contrast to what the theologian Ratzinger pretended through use of this example or case study (i.e. the 'discussion'), if Benedict XVI shifted his focus to the East, he would find Maragheh in NW Iran (Iranian Azerbaijan) and Samarqand in Central Asia. In those locations (and always for the period concerned), he would certainly find great centers of learning, universities, vast libraries, and enormous observatories, which could make every 15th c. Western European astronomer and mathematician dream. But there he would also find, as I already said, many Muslim, Christian, Buddhist and other scholars working one next to the other without caring about their religious (theological) differences. This situation is very well known to modern Western scholarship, but they viciously and criminally try to permanently conceal it.

This situation was due to the cultural, intellectual, academic, mental and spiritual unity that prevailed among all those erudite scholars. Numerous Western European scholars have published much about Nasir el-Din al Tusi (about whom I already spoke briefly) and also about Ulugh Beg, the world's greatest astronomer of his time (middle of the 15th c.), who was the grandson of Timur (Tamerlane) and, at the same time, the World History's most erudite emperor of the last 2500 years. However, post-Renaissance Catholic sectarianism and Western European/North American racism prevented the German pope from being truthful at least once, and also from choosing the right paradigm.

IX. The lecture's most controversial point

Fifth, if we now go straight to the lecture's most controversial point and to the quotation's most fascinating sentence, we will find the question addressed by Manuel II Palaeologus to his erudite Turkic interlocutor; actually, it is rather an exclamation:

- «Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached»!

This interesting excerpt provides indeed the complete confirmation of my earlier assessments as regards the intellectual decay of both, Christian Orthodoxy and Islam, at the time. Apparently, it was not theological acumen what both interlocutors were lacking at the time; it was historical knowledge. Furthermore, historical continuity, religious consciousness, and moral command were also absent in the discussion.

The first series of points that Manuel II Palaeologus' Muslim interlocutor could have made answering the aforementioned statement would be that Prophet Muhammad, before his death, summoned Ali ibn Abu Taleb and asked him to promise that he would never diffuse the true faith by undertaking wars; furthermore, Islam was diffused peacefully in many lands outside Arabia (Hejaz), notably Yemen, Oman, Somalia, and the Eastern Coast of Africa. In addition, there were many Muslims, who rejected the absurd idea of the Islamic conquests launched by Umar ibn al-Khattab and actually did not participate.

We have also to take into consideration the fact that, in spite of the undeniable reality of the early spread of Islam through invasions, there has always been well-known and sufficient documentation to clearly prove that the Aramaeans of Mesopotamia, Syria and Palestine, the Copts of Egypt, and the Berbers of Africa, although fully preserving their Christian faith, preferred to live under the rule of the Caliphates and overwhelmingly rejected the Eastern Roman imperial administration, because they had been long persecuted by the Constantinopolitan guards due to their Miaphysite (Monophysitic) and/or Nestorian faiths.

On another note, the Eastern Roman Emperor's Muslim interlocutor could have questioned the overall approach of Manuel II Palaeologus to the topic. In other words, he could have expressed the following objection:

- «What is it good for someone to pretend that he is a follower of Jesus and evoke his mildness, while at the same time violently imposing by the sword the faith that Jesus preached? And what is it more evil and more inhuman than the imposition of a faith in Jesus' name within the Roman Empire, after so much bloodshed and persecution took place and so many wars were undertaken»? 

Last, one must admit that the sentence «Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new!» would have been easily answered by an earlier Muslim mystic of the Golden Era of Islam. Actually, this statement is islamically correct and pertinent. The apparent absence of a spectacular response from the part of Manuel II Palaeologus' Muslim interlocutor rather generates doubts as regards the true nature of the text. This is so because he could have immediately replied to Bayezid I's hostage that not one prophet or messenger was sent by God with the purpose of 'bringing something new'; in fact, all the prophets from Noah to Jonah, from Abraham to Jonah, from Moses to Muhammad, and from Adam to Jesus were dispatched in order to deliver the same message to the humans, namely to return to the correct path and live according to the Will of God.

Related to this point is the following well-known verse of the Quran (ch. 3 - Al Imran, 67): "Abraham was neither a Jew nor a Christian but he was (an) upright (man), a Muslim, and he was not one of the polytheists". It is therefore odd that a response in this regard is missing at this point.

It is also strange that, at a time of major divisions within Christianity and more particularly among the Christian Orthodox Eastern Romans, the 'unknown' imperial interlocutor did not mention the existing divisions among Christians as already stated very clearly, explicitly and repeatedly in the Quran. Examples:

"You are the best community ever raised for humanity—you encourage good, forbid evil, and believe in Allah. Had the People of the Book believed, it would have been better for them. Some of them are faithful, but most are rebellious". (ch. 3 - Al Imran, 110)

"Yet they are not all alike: there are some among the People of the Book who are upright, who recite Allah’s revelations throughout the night, prostrating in prayer".

(ch. 3 - Al Imran, 113):

To conclude I would add that elementary knowledge of Roman History, Late Antiquity, and Patristic Philology would be enough for Benedict XVI to know that

- in its effort to impose Christianity on the Roman Empire,

- in its determination to fully eradicate earlier religions, opposite religious sects like the Gnostics, and theological 'heresies' like Arianism,

- in its resolve to exterminate other Christian Churches such as the Nestorians and the Miaphysites (Monophysites),

- in its obsession to uproot Christian theological doctrines like Iconoclasm and Paulicianism, and

- in its witch hunt against Manichaeism, …

… the 'official' Roman and Constantinopolitan churches committed innumerable crimes and killed a far greater number of victims than those massacred by Muslim invaders on several occurrences during the early Islamic conquests.

So, when did the Christian Church encounter Reason and when did it cease to be 'unreasonable' according to the theologian Pope Ratzinger?

One must be very sarcastic to duly respond to those questions: most probably, the Roman Church discovered 'Reason' after having killed all of their opponents and the so-called 'heretics' whose sole sin was simply to consider and denounce the Roman Church as heretic!

If Benedict XVI forgot to find in the Quran the reason for the Turkic interlocutor's mild attitude toward the hostage Manuel II Palaeologus, this is a serious oversight for the professor of theology; he should have mentioned the excerpts. In the surah al-Ankabut ('the Spider'; ch. 29, verse 46), it is stated: "And do not argue with the followers of earlier revelation otherwise than in a most kindly manner".

Similarly, the German pope failed to delve in Assyriology and in Egyptology to better understand that the Hebrew Bible (just like the New Testament and the Quran) did not bring anything 'new' either; before Moses in Egypt and before Abraham in Mesopotamia, there were monotheistic and aniconic trends and traits in the respective religions. The concept of the Messiah is attested in Egypt, in Assyria, and among the Hittites many centuries or rather more than a millennium before Isaiah contextualized it within the small Hebrew kingdom. Both Egypt and Babylon were holy lands long before Moses promised South Canaan to the Ancient Hebrew tribes, whereas the Assyrians were the historically first Chosen People of the Only God and the Assyrian imperial ideology reflected this fact in detail. The Akkadian - Assyrian-Babylonian kings were 'emperors of the universe' and their rule reflected the 'kingdom of Heaven'.

If Etana and Ninurta reveal aspects of Assyrian eschatology, Horus was clearly the Egyptian Messiah, who would ultimately vanquish Seth (Satan/Antichrist) at the End of Time in an unprecedented cosmic battle that would usher the mankind into a new era which would be the reconstitution of the originally ideal world and Well-Being (Wser), i.e. Osiris. There is no Cosmogony without Eschatology or Soteriology, and nothing was invented and envisioned by the Hebrews, the Greeks and the Romans that had not previously been better and more solemnly formulated among the Sumerians, the Akkadians - Assyrian-Babylonians, and the Egyptians. There is no such thing as 'Greco-Roman' or 'Greco-Christian' or' Greco-Judaic' civilization. Both, Islam and Christianity are the children of Mesopotamia and Egypt.

And this concludes the case of today's Catholic theologians, i.e. the likes of Pope Benedict XVI or Theodore Khoury; they have to restart from scratch in order to duly assess the origins and the nature of Christianity before the serpent casts "forth out of his mouth water as a river after the woman, that he may cause her to be carried away by the river". All the same, it was certainly Prof. Ratzinger's full right to make as many mistakes as he wanted and to distort any textual reference he happened to mention.

X. The educational-academic-intellectual misery and the political ordeal of today's Muslim states

Quite contrarily, it was not the right of those who accused him of doing so, because they expanded rather at the political and not at the academic level; this was very hypocritical and shameful. If these politicians, statesmen and diplomats dared speak at the academic level, they would reveal their own ignorance, obscurantism, obsolete educational system, miserable universities, nonexistent intellectual life, and last but not least, disreputable scientific institutions.

The reason for this is simple: not one Muslim country has properly organized departments and faculties endowed with experts capable of reading historical sources in the original texts and specializing in the History of the Eastern Roman Empire, Orthodox Christianity, Christological disputes and Patristic Literature. If a Muslim country had an educational, academic and intellectual establishment similar to that of Spain or Poland, there would surely be serious academic-level objection to Benedict XVI's lecture. It would take a series of articles to reveal, refute and utterly denounce (not just the mistakes and the oversights but) the distorted approach which is not proper only to the defunct Pope Emeritus but to the entire Western academic establishment; these people would however be academics and intellectuals of a certain caliber. Unfortunately, such specialists do not exist in any Muslim country.

Then, the unrepresentative criminal crooks and gangsters, who rule all the countries of the Muslim world, reacted against Pope Benedict XVI at a very low, political level about a topic that was not political of nature and about which they knew absolutely nothing. In this manner, they humiliated all the Muslims, defamed Islam, ridiculed their own countries, and revealed that they rule failed states. Even worse, they made it very clear that they are the disreputable puppets of their colonial masters, who have systematically forced all the Muslim countries to exactly accept as theirs the fallacy that the Western Orientalists have produced and projected onto them (and in this case, the entirely fake representation of Islam that theologians like Ratzinger, Khoury and many others have fabricated).

If Ratzinger gave this lecture, this is also due to the fact that he knew that he would not face any academic or intellectual level opposition from the concerned countries. This is so because all the execrable puppets, who govern the Muslim world, were put in place by the representatives of the colonial powers. They do not defend their local interests but execute specific orders in order not to allow

- bold explorers, dynamic professors, and impulsive intellectuals to take the lead,

- proper secular education, unbiased scientific methodology, intellectual self-criticism, free judgment, and thinking out of the box to grow,

- faculties and research centers to be established as per the norms of educationally advanced states, and

- intellectual anti-colonial pioneers and anti-Western scholars to demolish the racist Greco-centric dogma that post-Renaissance European universities have intentionally diffused worldwide.

That is why for a Muslim today in Prof. Ratzinger's lecture the real problem is not his approach or his mistake, but the impermissible bogus academic life and pseudo-educational system of all the Muslim countries. In fact, before fully transforming and duly enhancing their educational and academic systems, Muslim heads of states, prime ministers, ministers and ambassadors have no right to speak. They must first go back to their countries and abolish the darkness of their ridiculous universities; their so-called professors are not professors.

Here you have all the articles that I published at the time in favor of Benedict XVI; the first article was published on the 16th September 2006, only four days after the notorious lecture and only one day after the notorious BBC report, which called the Muslim ambassadors to shout loud:

-----------------------------

Download the obituary in PDF:

#Bayezid I #Benedict XVI #Benedict XVI Obituary #Benedict XVI's speech on Islam #Byzantine Empire #Byzantine Papacy #Byzantinists #Catholic Church #Constantinople #Constantinopolitan Popes #Manuel II Palaeologus #Manuel II Paleologus #Maragheh #Megalommatis #Orthodox Christianity #Ottoman Empire #Regensburg lecture #relativism #Renaissance #renuntiatio #Rome

[whencyclopedia]

Robert Guiscard

Robert Guiscard (1015-1085) was a Norman knight best known for conquering much of Southern Italy and Sicily during the 11th century. His many exploits include the expulsion of the Byzantines from Italy, support of a reformist papacy, and laying the foundations for a new Norman Kingdom to emerge in Sicily c. 1130.

Continue reading...

#Sicily #RobertGuiscard #HistoryFacts #History

[baublecoded]

“Foxe would delight Henry by showing him a 110-page Latin dossier explaining the ‘true difference between royal and ecclesiastical power’. A momentous document whose scruffy, uninviting appearance belies its significance, it is headed ‘Ex sacris scripturis et authoribus Catholicis’ (‘Compiled from Holy Scriptures and Catholic Authors’) and known today as the ‘Collectanea satis copiosa’ (‘Sufficiently plentiful collections’). Evolving from the ‘King’s Book’ and then marshalling new sources culled from biblical texts, the Church Fathers, the decrees of Church Councils, Roman law, Anglo-Saxon laws and national histories and chronicles, it made the bold argument that the pope was merely the Bishop of Rome. As such, his jurisdiction did not extend beyond his own diocese, whereas the King of England was the ‘Vicar of Christ’ in his kingdom. According to the dossier, Henry’s ‘lawful’ powers were just as ‘imperial’ as those of the early Byzantine emperors, notably Constantine the Great and Justinian, or the Old Testament rulers David and Solomon (Henry’s favourite kings were David and Solomon, and he could quote verbatim from the Old Testament and the Code and Institutes of Justinian). Should he choose to reappropriate his regal powers, he might appoint his own bishops instead of merely nominating candidates to the pope, and he could reform the monasteries. He might then also empower the Archbishop of Canterbury, or else a panel of bishops, to investigate and reach a verdict on his ‘scruples of conscience’, with no appeal allowed. None of this, Foxe argued, would make Henry schismatic like Luther. He would merely be ‘restoring’ to himself legitimate royal rights which, historically, Anglo-Saxon and Norman kings had exercised, and which the papacy had usurped. (Some of the dossier’s claims were true, although their historical contexts could be misunderstood; others were twisted to prove what its compilers wanted the king to believe.) Only Henry II in late 1169 at the height of his quarrel with Archbishop Thomas Becket had dared to make claims like these, and he had been forced to make amends after the appalling scandal of Becket’s murder.”

— John Guy & Julia Fox, Hunting the Falcon: Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn and the Marriage That Shook Europe

#henry ii #thomas becket #henry viii #historian: john guy #historian: julia fox

[patricia-von-arundel]

Why is all medieval horror set in 1348???

Other things happened in a thousand years besides the Black Death.

(Hell, why not set it during the plague of Justinian? 6th century Byzantine horror is just waiting to happen. Or the Cadaver Synod. Or the fucking Crusades! Any of them! St. Vitus' Dance. The King's Evil (scrofula) or leprosy. Holy Roman Emperors versus the papacy. Thomas Becket! The Hapsburgs. England's Edward II. Or Richard II (who supposedly ate his own fingers while starving to death). Edgar Ætheling.)

...Then again, I suppose one of the most famous figures in horror comes from the Middle Ages.

Y'know, that guy who liked sticking people on poles. Well known for being into torture.

Son of a dragon.

Vlad Tepes.

Dracula.

[richo1915]

The new era opened with the second restoration of Orthodoxy after the somewhat ineffectual efforts of Leo V and Theophilos to reintroduce iconoclasm.

It continued with an increasingly successful offensive against the Arabs in the east. Relations with the west, Or at least with the papacy, were embittered by the schism between the Churches of Rome and Constantinople, resulting from the deposition of the Patriarch Ignatios and the appointment in his place of the Patriarch Photios in 858.

The dispute that followed was, like that between the temporal rulers of east and west, symptomatic of a much deeper divergence of ideologies. It was aggravated rather than soothed by the work of Christian missionaries among the Slavs who had settled in the lands that lay between the two worlds of east and west, in Moravia, Serbia, Macedonia and Bulgaria.

The christianisation of the Slavs became a race between Frankish missionaries from Rome and the west and Byzantine missionaries from Constantinople and the east. Mutual accusations were made of spreading false doctrine in theology and practice among the innocent heathen.

This was the first demonstration of the new and vigorous offensive policy of Basil I. Agents political and spiritual followed the flag into Dalmatia; and it was constituted as a new theme or military zone of the empire, covering the maritime towns and the islands.

Basil wisely conceded that the towns should go on paying tribute primarily to the leaders of the various Slav tribes in their hinterland and only nominally to Byzantium.

His spiritual agents, however, pacified the Slavs with the Christian message and made them less hostile to the Christian Roman Empire. The Serbs and the Slavs of the south were rapidly converted to Orthodox Christianity. The Croats in the north, however, were finally to be won over to the Roman form of the faith by missionaries sent to them by the papacy and the Franks.

#book #byzantium and venice #bloody christians #the balkans #still trouble today because of christianity

[lightdancer1]

Starting a new series of books:

These include a strong focus on aspects of history of the Muslim world with medieval Iran, modern Afghanistan, and the Crusades through Muslim eyes first (and what I've just started on now). There will also be a book on the Sikhs written by one and one on the campaign of Second Bull Run.

But first, this one which has its complement with the one I've started now and is one of the many books written on one of the great medieval European clashes, the holy wars called the Crusades. From the 1090s to the 1290s the Papacy engineered an effort at a pan-European holy war to send the knights to go bother the Seljuk Sultanate rather than rampaging and inconveniencing people in Europe, not least the Pope.

An ultimate reality of the Crusades is that the first succeeded by virtue of what to a secular historian is extremely precisely calibrated wonderful timing and even then it was a near-run thing. Even a secular history would look at cases like the Siege of Antioch and note that these were events that a more openly religious era would unhesitatingly see either as divine favor (the Christian view) or 'God hates us because we fucked up' (the Muslim view, insofar as they acknowledged it at all). That one Crusade was an exception in an otherwise consistently unbroken pattern of failure on smaller and larger scales culminating in the rise of the Mamluk Sultanate that quite literally drove the Crusaders into the sea.

Another factor is that the divisions among the Seljuks and Abbasids that contributed so heavily to the rise of Outremer correspondingly saw Outremer in turn spur the very unity it had succeeded by the absence thereof, first under the Abuyyids (aka Saladin and company) and then under the Mamluks.

Of course as the history I've just started with a reread, essentially, from a broader and more nuanced perspective than with this book the first time would note the Muslim world even in the early decades of the 11th Century was much broader than the Levant alone. And one of the key aspects of the age, the rise of the Mongol Empire and its geographic reality that the people who suffered from it the most were Muslims, Chinese, and East Slavs, was utterly unconcerned with the bloodbaths and butcheries between Seljuks and successors and the various Crusader states.

There is also the reality that the ethnocultural history of 200 years of Christian holy wars and Muslim holy wars in response reflects the kind of diversity one would expect, with the eyes of history differing greatly on the era and the relative strengths and weakness of Christian and Muslim leaders. The world of the Comnene era when the Byzantine Empire was still strong versus the one in the wake of 1204 when the Fourth Crusade dealt it a blow that started the doomsday clock to its ultimate collapse stands as one example, as does the world with the strong Sultans of Mesopotamia versus the one after Hulagu Khan turned Baghdad into a scene of horrors.

9/10.

#lightdancer comments on history #book reviews #medieval european history #medieval islamic history #crusades

[de-sterren-nacht]

it irritates me to no end that the eastern roman empire gets referred to by the completely ahistorical term "byzantine empire" just to preserve this cultural idea thats been central to western historiography for over a millennium that rome collapsed with no successors, and had to be restored by the papacy and the holy roman empire. they still called themselves romans (to be precise Ῥωμαῖοι or Rhōmaîoi in medieval greek) and maintained the legal and societal structure that also existed in the western roman empire by the time of the sacking of rome in 476. they were a continuation of the roman empire in every conceivable sense besides total territorial control, which they even managed to achieve once, and never again primarily because by the time they might have wanted to or been able to reconquer the west, they had the significantly more immediate threat of muslim conquerers directly south of them to deal with, a threat that continued to exist until it finally collapsed them in the late 15th century

#incoherent rambling #historyposting

[subjects-of-the-king]

The Role of the Church in the Societies of Medieval Europe, Part Two

An original essay of Lucas Del Rio

Note: This is the second half of an essay I wrote for this blog. The topic is religion in medieval Europe and the effects of the religious establishment on European society in that era. I previously wrote and posted the first portion, which was essentially an introduction, at an earlier date. In this introductory opening, two ideas were covered. First, it briefly explained what the essay intended to cover, and second, there was some information about the evolution of organized religion in Europe leading up to the medieval Church. Part Two goes on to examine this institution in that era. Note that “the Church” in this essay refers to that of the Christian religion since it was the dominant religious institution of medieval Europe. Usage of the word in this manner is not meant to imply that other religions are less valid.

           The last years of the Roman Empire, which had seen Christianity officially adopted as its religion, saw the Catholic Church become much more structured and vastly expand its reach. However, the still young Church would soon go on to experience a series of tests following the dawn of the medieval era. While Christianity had been spreading immensely, one early test was certainly the fall of Rome in 476. With the ultimate destruction of the long enduring empire, the political establishment that had become the foundation of Catholicism was now extinct. At the time, it could have been seriously predicted that the Catholic Church, too, was headed towards extinction. It may have seemed that, before long, the Church would go the way of Greek and Roman polytheism and therefore cease to have an influence over Europe. This, of course, is not what happened, as later in the Middle Ages, the Church would be bigger and more powerful than ever. Key to the survival of Christianity was the fact that the religion remained strong in parts of the former empire. For example, the Byzantine Empire, an offshoot of the old Roman Empire that it outlived by almost one thousand years, retained many Christians.

           In order to remain relevant with the Roman Empire having been destroyed, Christianity needed to maintain a robust presence throughout the lands once ruled by Rome. The religion had a tradition of missionaries traveling to preach ever since its earliest days, and this custom continued into the Middle Ages. Since the “barbarians” who invaded and defeated the empire held religious beliefs of their own, these religions were introduced into the regions that they settled. For a time, therefore, new forms of “pagan” religions, and there were many, became dominant in some lands once held by the Romans. Christian missionaries, however, remained active with gradually rising success. As the number of Christians grew, so did the power of the papacy, which in turn increased the ability of the Church to win new converts. A key development occurred during the 700s, when the Carolingian Dynasty, of which Charlemagne is the most well-known today, united the Franks and then expanded further to form a major empire. Charlemagne and the other Carolingian monarchs promoted Christianity with support of the pope. Over time, “pagan” religions became rare in most of Europe, but some of their beliefs and rituals continued despite the Church considering them to be heresy. In the British Isles, for example, it was still common for locals to believe in spirits that represented various aspects of nature.

           It was an accomplishment on the part of the Church that Christianity would not only survive the fall of Rome but also greatly strengthen. The religion did not, however, eliminate all of its competition despite the decline in what it deemed paganism. Early in the Middle Ages, a new religion emerged that came to challenge the supremacy of the Catholic Church. This religion, founded by the avowed prophet Muhammad in 610, was Islam. Muhammad was born in 570 in Mecca, a city located in a region of the Arabian Peninsula that was distant from Europe. Despite this distance, many modern historians believe that Mecca at this time was a key destination in trade routes. Such trade routes may have been utilized not only by the Arabs but also by the Byzantine Empire, India, and peoples living in parts of Africa. Mecca had already been a center of pilgrimage by Arab polytheists, so once Muhammad began preaching Islam, the locals were swift to use violence against the newly converted Muslims. Islam and its followers would not be crushed, as it found sanctuaries elsewhere in Arabia. A series of wars were fought on the peninsula where the Muslims, sometimes outnumbered, were victorious again and again.

Islam had won numerous converts amongst the Arabs once Muhammad died in 632, although it had not yet had a major effect on the Christian world. Within only a few years, the Muslims, who at this point were still united under a single Caliphate, had conquered parts of the Byzantine Empire. Next, areas of the Middle East and North Africa where many Christians had lived now joined the Caliphate. Disputes, some of them violent, as to who should be the leaders of Islam created setbacks, but growth was able to resume once the Umayyad Dynasty assumed power. It was under this dynasty that Islam arrived in Europe. The Visigoths, one of the Germanic tribes that helped destroy the Roman Empire, had ruled the Iberian Peninsula, or modern Spain and Portugal, since the 400s. During their time ruling this region, they ceased to be “pagan” and adopted Christianity. This Visigothic Kingdom, while indeed conquered by Muslims, in a way destroyed itself. King Roderic is said to have sexually assaulted a daughter of a member of the Visigothic nobility, and this noble conspired with Moorish General Tariq ibn-Ziyad to betray the monarch and establish Islamic leadership over the Iberian Peninsula.

The conquest of Iberia by the Moors in 711 startled the kings and queens of Europe, especially those of whom were Christians expecting Muslims to attempt further military expansion. This indeed happened, as the Umayyad Caliphate went on to conquer parts of the country that was then called Gaul, or modern France. A turning point occurred in 732 at the Battle of Tours. In this battle, a force sometimes claimed to have been four hundred thousand soldiers of the Caliphate that were led by Abdul Rahman Al Ghafiqi faced off against the aforementioned Carolingian Empire. Fighting on the latter side, this force commanded by Charles Martel, was likely fewer than thirty thousand troops. Against the odds, the Carolingian Franks were victorious, and Abdul Rahman Al Ghafiqi died in battle. It was certainly not the final clash between the Christian and Islamic worlds in medieval times, as evidenced by the Crusades that would come centuries later. However, the Umayyad Caliphate would not make any further advances into Europe, and in 750, it crumbled in a civil war.

Halting the expansion of Islamic rule in Europe was another triumph for the Catholic Church. An exception was on the Iberian Peninsula, where such leadership, which went through many stages, continued until the end of the Middle Ages. The Muslims who controlled the region often did so with many positive effects, however. Early on, Christianity was generally tolerated, and there are known examples of Christians and Muslims intermarrying. Religious freedom was initially a right, and Christians communities were often even granted a degree of autonomy. Aside from the policy of religious toleration, the Moors were known for innovation in science and scholarship. In the year 1054, however, the Almoravid Dynasty came to power, and these new rulers proved less accepting of both Jews and Christians. There had been Christian hostility towards the occupying Muslims from the beginning, with some of the Christians believing Muhammad to have been the prophesized beast from the bible. Known as “the Reconquista,” Christians started fighting to retake lands held by Muslims. This process was greatly accelerated by 1212 once King Alfonso VIII of Castile and his allies had conquered large amounts of formerly Moorish lands. As Christian territory grew, so, too, did the persecution of Muslims, especially after the creation of the Spanish Inquisition in 1480.

After the Kingdom of Grenada fell in 1492, Spain was now a united Christian state. This was yet again a victory for the Catholic Church, which was easily the most powerful institution in Europe by this point. At the same time, there had also been events in the later years of the Middle Ages that were not kind to it. One such event occurred all the way back in 1054. In this year, disputes between opposing factions split Christianity into the Catholic and Orthodox Churches in western and eastern Europe, respectively. It would not be the last time that the authority of the Catholic Church was questioned, as Europe would go on to see an increasing number of accused “heretics” and their sects accusing it of rampant corruption.

Catholicism in the centuries that followed the Middle Ages experienced the Reformation. Various Protestant branches of Christianity became the majority in countless places in Europe that had once been strictly Catholic. The allegations of corruption within the Catholic Church were by no means unfounded, for popes at the top as well as lowly monks both often used the Church as a tool for money, power, and prestige. Like all religious institutions, however, the medieval Church was capable of both good and bad. On positive notes, it promoted scholarship, provided educational opportunities, and serviced the poor at a time when all of these things were few. While there can be endless discussions of the medieval Church, it defined Europe in the Middle Ages perhaps more than anything else.

#battle of tours #british isles #byzantine #charlemagne #crusades #essay #europe #franks #history #information #institution #medieval #middle ages #moors #part two #reconquista #rome #spain #society #theology

[rhetoricandlogic]

Absolute Monarchs: A History of the Papacy - J. J. Norwich

2,000 Years of Popes, Sacred and Profane

By Bill Keller

July 7, 2011

John Julius Norwich makes a point of saying in the introduction to his history of the popes that he is “no scholar” and that he is “an agnostic Protestant.” The first point means that while he will be scrupulous with his copious research, he feels no obligation to unearth new revelations or concoct revisionist theories. The second means that he has “no ax to grind.” In short, his only agenda is to tell us the story.

And he has plenty of story to tell. “Absolute Monarchs” sprawls across Europe and the Levant, over two millenniums, and with an impossibly immense cast: 265 popes (plus various usurpers and anti­popes), feral hordes of Vandals, Huns and Visigoths, expansionist emperors, Byzantine intriguers, Borgias and Medicis, heretic zealots, conspiring clerics, bestial inquisitors and more. Norwich man­ages to organize this crowded stage and produce a rollicking narrative. He keeps things moving at nearly beach-read pace by being selective about where he lingers and by adopting the tone of an enthusiastic tour guide, expert but less than reverent.

A scholar or devout Roman Catholic would probably not have had so much fun, for example, with the tale of Pope Joan, the mid-ninth-century Englishwoman who, according to lore, disguised herself as a man, became pope and was caught out only when she gave birth. Although Norwich regards this as “one of the hoariest canards in papal history,” he cannot resist giving her a chapter of her own. It is a guilty pleasure, especially his deadpan pursuit of the story that the church, determined not to be fooled again, required subsequent papal candidates to sit on a chaise percée (pierced chair) and be groped from below by a junior cleric, who would shout to the multitude, “He has testicles!” Norwich tracks down just such a piece of furniture in the Vatican Museum, dutifully reports that it may have been an obstetric chair intended to symbolize Mother Church, but adds, “It cannot be gainsaid, on the other hand, that it is admirably designed for a diaconal grope; and it is only with considerable reluctance that one turns the idea aside.”

If you were raised Catholic, you may find it disconcerting to see an institution you were taught to think of as the repository of the faith so thoroughly deconsecrated. Norwich says little about theology and treats doctrinal disputes as matters of diplomacy. As he points out, this is in keeping with many of the popes themselves, “a surprising number of whom seem to have been far more interested in their own temporal power than in their spiritual well-­being.” For most of their two millenniums, the popes were rulers of a large sectarian state, managers of a civil service, military strategists, occasionally battlefield generals, sometimes patrons of the arts and humanities, and, importantly, diplomats. They were indeed monarchs. (But not, it should be said, “absolute monarchs.” Whichever editor persuaded Norwich to change his British title, “The Popes: A History,” may have done the book a marketing favor but at the cost of accuracy: the popes’ power was invariably shared with or subordinated to emperors and kings of various stripes. In more recent times, the popes have had no civil power outside the 110 acres of Vatican City, no military at all, and even their moral authority has been flouted by legions of the faithful.)

Norwich, whose works of popular history include books on Venice and Byzantium, admires the popes who were effective statesmen and stewards, including Leo I, who protected Rome from the Huns; Benedict XIV, who kept the peace and instituted financial and liturgical reforms, allowing Rome to become the religious and cultural capital of Catholic Europe; and Leo XIII, who steered the Church into the industrial age. The popes who achieved greatness, however, were outnumbered by the corrupt, the inept, the venal, the lecherous, the ruthless, the mediocre and those who didn’t last long enough to make a mark.

Sinners, as any dramatist or newsman can tell you, are more entertaining than saints, and Norwich has much to work with. If you paid attention in high school, you know something of the Borgia popes, who are covered in a chapter succinctly called “The Monsters.” But they were not the first, the last or even the most colorful of the sacred scoundrels. The bishops who recently blamed the scourge of pedo­phile priests on the libertine culture of the 1960s should consult Norwich for evidence that clerical abuses are not a historical aberration.

Of the minor 15th-century Pope Paul II, to pick one from the ranks of the debauched, Norwich writes: “The pope’s sexual proclivities aroused a good deal of speculation. He seems to have had two weaknesses — for good-­looking young men and for melons — though the contemporary rumor that he enjoyed watching the former being tortured while he gorged himself on the latter is surely unlikely.”

Sexual misconduct figures prominently in the history of the papacy (another chapter is entitled “Nicholas I and the Pornocracy”) but is hardly the only blot on the institution. Clement VII, the disastrous second Medici pope, oversaw “the worst sack of Rome since the barbarian invasions, the establishment in Germany of Protestantism as a separate religion and the definitive breakaway of the English church over Henry VIII’s divorce.” Paul IV “opened the most savage campaign in papal history against the Jews,” forcing them into ghettos and destroying synagogues. Gregory XIII spent the papacy into penury. Urban VIII imprisoned Galileo and banned all his works.

Most of the popes, being human, were complicated; the rogues had redeeming features, the capable leaders had defects. Innocent III was the greatest of the medieval popes, a man of galvanizing self-­confidence who consolidated the Papal States. But he also initiated the Fourth Crusade, which led to the wild sacking of Constantinople, “the most unspeakable of the many outrages in the whole hideous history of the Crusades.” Sixtus IV sold indulgences and church offices “on a scale previously unparalleled,” made an 8-year-old boy the archbishop of Lisbon and began the horrors of the Spanish Inquisition. But he also commissioned the Sistine Chapel.

Even the Borgia pope Alexander VI, who by the time he bribed his way into office had fathered eight children by at least three women, is credited with keeping the imperiled papacy alive by capable administration and astute diplomacy, “however questionable his means of doing so.”

By the time we reach the 20th century, about 420 pages in, our expectations are not high. We get a disheartening chapter on Pius XI and Pius XII, whose fear of Communism (along with the church’s long streak of anti-Semitism) made them compliant enablers of Mussolini, Hitler and Franco. Pius XI, in Norwich’s view, redeemed himself by his belated but unflinching hostility to the Fascists and Nazis. But his indictment of Pius XII — who resisted every entreaty to speak out against mass murder, even as the trucks were transporting the Jews of Rome to Auschwitz — is compact, evenhanded and devastating. “It is painful to have to record,” Norwich concludes, “that, on the orders of his successor, the process of his canonization has already begun. Suffice it to say here that the current fashion for canonizing all popes on principle will, if continued, make a mockery of sainthood.”

Norwich devotes exactly one chapter to the popes of my lifetime — from the avuncular modernizer John XXIII, whom he plainly loves, to the austere Benedict, off to a “shaky start.” He credits the popular Polish pope, John Paul II — another candidate for sainthood — for his global diplomacy but faults his retrograde views on matters of sex and gender. Norwich’s conclusion may remind readers that he introduced himself as a Protestant agnostic, because whatever his views on God, his views on the papacy are clearly pro-­reformation.
“It is now well over half a century since progressive Catholics have longed to see their church bring itself into the modern age,” he writes. “With the accession of every succeeding pontiff they have raised their hopes that some progress might be made on the leading issues of the day — on homosexuality, on contraception, on the ordination of women priests. And each time they have been disappointed.”

#John Julius Norwich #Absolute Monarchs #mahreviews #long post

[cruger2984]

THE DESCRIPTION OF POPE SAINT GREGORY II Feast Day: February 11

Pope St. Gregory II was the 89th pope in the Church and ruled for more than 15 years. Known for fighting with the Byzantine emperor of the time, he would influence later popes and the amount of power that they had. The Church recognizes him as a saint due to the miracle associated with him.

Born Gregorius Sabellus circa 669, the future Pope St. Gregory II was a member of the wealthy Savelli family in Rome. His parents were Honesta and Marcellus. Sent to help with the papal court at a young age, he worked under Pope Sergius I and became the treasurer of the court. He was later ordained as a subdeacon and then made a deacon. This led to him working in the Vatican Library and eventually controlling the institution.

When Pope Constantine died, the Church quickly elected Gregorius as the new pope. He then choose the name Gregory II. To help with the issues facing the Walls of Rome, the pope sent men to repair the broken areas. Rainfall made the task nearly impossible as it caused the nearby river to flood, but he would then send more men to stop the flowing waters and continue work on the Walls. Gregory II would also send men to do missionary work in Germany and other countries as a way to bring new followers to the Church.

Much of the papacy of Pope St. Gregory II goes hand in hand with the rule of Emperor Leo III. Leo passed a new rule that increased taxes, but that rule would eliminate the reserves that the Church had. Gregory fought back, which would lead to the emperor dropping the rule but continue his opposition to the papacy. Leo II would later make it illegal for anyone to own or have icons relating to a saint and issued other orders to rule in Rome. The emperor was even involved in a conspiracy to murder the pope. This would cause stress to the pope and lead to his eventual death.

The issues that Gregory had with Leo III took their toll on his body. He suffered from stress, which was exacerbated by his advanced age. He was likely in his early '60s when he died several years after surviving an assassination attempt. The Catholic Church had Pope Gregory II buried in Saint Peter’s Basilica but later lost the records that show the location of his tomb. To honor his contribution and support, the Church canonized him as Pope St. Gregory II.

#random stuff #catholic #catholic saints #pope gregory ii #pope st. gregory ii

[orthodoxadventure]

Hi Emma! Glory to Jesus Christ!

I’m Jordan. I’m also Catholic and am also thinking of (more likely) a transition to the Byzantine Catholic tradition or (less likely but still possible) orthodoxy. I wanted to ask how you have arrived where you are, and what draws you to orthodoxy and what caused your initial inquiry? I’m having a tough time navigating this. Sorry if you’ve already answered this!

Hello Jordan! Glory to God! For me, the reason why Orthodoxy over Byzantine Catholicism is that Byzantine Catholicism actually causes more issues than it solves - for me at least. For example, Byzantine Catholicism recognises Saints that are in the Orthodox Church that the Roman Catholic Church does not recognise - which just fundamentally does not make sense to me. How can there be Saints that are rejected by one part of the Church, but honoured by another part of the Church? Byzantine Catholicism also does not address any issue that one might have with the Papacy, or with any of the Dogmas put forth by the Roman Catholic Church. If I could be happy in the Catholic Church, then I would've happily stayed in the Roman Catholic Church. But I wasn't, so I couldn't. And by trying to reach towards Eastern Catholicism, I realised the extent of the problem for me.

From my experience attending a Byzantine Catholic Church, these Churches very much serve the nationalist community. As in, the Ukrainian Catholic Church (which is one I attended with a Ukrainian friend of mine) aims to serve the Ukrainian community rather than the Community as a whole. And while these accusations are of course levelled against the Orthodox Church, these accusations are simply misguided whereas this is not true for the Byzantine Catholic Churches which exist with the explicit intent to serve those communities.

Having spent time reading about the early Church, all I can really describe the feeling is as though I was reading about the Orthodox Church. And my attempts to understand those feelings, led me closer to Orthodoxy and further from Catholicism to the point that I began having issues with other aspects of the Catholic faith. My first time attending a Divine Liturgy could only be described as reaching the fulfilment of what I had been searching for in the faith. That attending Novus Ordo, Latin Masses, Byzantine Catholic Liturgies just never filled. And this continues to be the case. The Divine Liturgy has been a source of great strength to me, even though I am unable to commune. And likewise the intercession of the Saints, particularly Saint Xenia of Saint Petersburg, has been of such immense strength and comfort to me.

But also one of my biggest reasons for Orthodoxy, is that as much as I didn't want to leave Catholicism, it felt like something I must do. Something that I must properly examine and confront. Because it had been something I constantly pushed away. I didn't want to be Orthodox. I loved Catholicism, I adored it. It meant so much to me. It was the faith that really saved my life. But it wasn't where I felt God was leading me to. And all that time spent in prayer, all the time hoping to get closer to God, felt like it was leading me towards Orthodoxy. And as much as I might have cried and kicked against it, I was still very much praying to be led towards God and it was a prayer that God was answering.

I would really recommend, in your situation to attend an actual Orthodox Divine Liturgy to experience it. As well as read two books by Kallistos Ware: The Orthodox Church and The Orthodox Way if you haven't already. All three of these things were incredibly helpful to me on my journey. And you might find them helpful to you, even if it is just to affirm to yourself that Catholicism is where the faith is for you. I would also reach out to an Orthodox Priest, and explain your situation to him. Because we all have our own circumstances, and he would be best suited to advise you with regards to your situation and circumstances.

May God bless and guide you on the journey, wherever it takes you!

[brookstonalmanac]

Events 6.30

296 – Pope Marcellinus begins his papacy. 763 – The Byzantine army of emperor Constantine V defeats the Bulgarian forces in the Battle of Anchialus. 1422 – Battle of Arbedo between the duke of Milan and the Swiss cantons. 1521 – Spanish forces defeat a combined French and Navarrese army at the Battle of Noáin during the Spanish conquest of Iberian Navarre. 1559 – King Henry II of France is mortally wounded in a jousting match against Gabriel, comte de Montgomery. 1598 – The Spanish held Castillo San Felipe del Morro in San Juan, Puerto Rico having been besieged for fifteen days, surrenders to an English force under Sir George Clifford, Earl of Cumberland. 1632 – The University of Tartu is founded. 1651 – The Deluge: Khmelnytsky Uprising: The Battle of Berestechko ends with a Polish victory. 1688 – The Immortal Seven issue the Invitation to William, which would culminate in the Glorious Revolution. 1703 – The Battle of Ekeren between a Dutch force and a French force. 1758 – Seven Years' War: Habsburg Austrian forces destroy a Prussian reinforcement and supply convoy in the Battle of Domstadtl, helping to expel Prussian King Frederick the Great from Moravia. 1794 – Northwest Indian War: Native American forces under Blue Jacket attack Fort Recovery. 1805 – Under An act to divide the Indiana Territory into two separate governments, adopted by the U.S. Congress on January 11, 1805, the Michigan Territory is organized. 1859 – French acrobat Charles Blondin crosses Niagara Falls on a tightrope. 1860 – The 1860 Oxford evolution debate at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History takes place. 1864 – U.S. President Abraham Lincoln grants Yosemite Valley to California for "public use, resort and recreation". 1882 – Charles J. Guiteau is hanged in Washington, D.C. for the assassination of U.S. President James Garfield. 1886 – The first transcontinental train trip across Canada departs from Montreal, Quebec. It arrives in Port Moody, British Columbia on July 4. 1892 – The Homestead Strike begins near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. 1900 – A savage fire wrecked three steamships docked at a pier in Hoboken, New Jersey. Over 200 crew members and passengers are killed, and hundreds injured. 1905 – Albert Einstein sends the article On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies, in which he introduces special relativity, for publication in Annalen der Physik. 1906 – The United States Congress passes the Meat Inspection Act and Pure Food and Drug Act. 1908 – The Tunguska Event, the largest impact event on Earth in human recorded history, resulting in a massive explosion over Eastern Siberia. 1912 – The Regina Cyclone, Canada's deadliest tornado event, kills 28 people in Regina, Saskatchewan. 1916 – World War I: In "the day Sussex died", elements of the Royal Sussex Regiment take heavy casualties in the Battle of the Boar's Head at Richebourg-l'Avoué in France. 1921 – U.S. President Warren G. Harding appoints former President William Howard Taft as Chief Justice of the United States. 1922 – In Washington D.C., U.S. Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes and Dominican Ambassador Francisco J. Peynado sign the Hughes–Peynado agreement, which ends the United States occupation of the Dominican Republic. 1934 – The Night of the Long Knives, Adolf Hitler's violent purge of his political rivals in Germany, takes place. 1936 – Emperor Haile Selassie of Abyssinia appeals for aid to the League of Nations against Italy's invasion of his country. 1937 – The world's first emergency telephone number, 999, is introduced in London. 1944 – World War II: The Battle of Cherbourg ends with the fall of the strategically valuable port to American forces. 1953 – The first Chevrolet Corvette rolls off the assembly line in Flint, Michigan. 1956 – A TWA Super Constellation and a United Airlines DC-7 collide above the Grand Canyon in Arizona and crash, killing all 128 on board both airliners. 1959 – A United States Air Force F-100 Super Sabre from Kadena Air Base, Okinawa, crashes into a nearby elementary school, killing 11 students plus six residents from the local neighborhood. 1960 – Belgian Congo gains independence as Republic of the Congo (Léopoldville). 1963 – Ciaculli bombing: a car bomb, intended for Mafia boss Salvatore Greco, kills seven police officers and military personnel near Palermo. 1966 – The National Organization for Women, the United States' largest feminist organization, is founded. 1968 – Pope Paul VI issues the Credo of the People of God. 1971 – The crew of the Soviet Soyuz 11 spacecraft are killed when their air supply escapes through a faulty valve. 1972 – The first leap second is added to the UTC time system. 1974 – The Baltimore municipal strike of 1974 begins. 1977 – The Southeast Asia Treaty Organization disbands. 1985 – Thirty-nine American hostages from the hijacked TWA Flight 847 are freed in Beirut after being held for 17 days. 1986 – The U.S. Supreme Court rules in Bowers v. Hardwick that states can outlaw homosexual acts between consenting adults. 1989 – A coup d'état in Sudan deposes the democratically elected government of Prime Minister Sadiq al-Mahdi and President Ahmed al-Mirghani. 1990 – East and West Germany merge their economies. 1994 – During a test flight of an Airbus A330-300 at Toulouse–Blagnac Airport, the aircraft crashes killing all seven people on board. 2007 – A Jeep Cherokee filled with propane canisters drives into the entrance of Glasgow Airport, Scotland in a failed terrorist attack. This was linked to the 2007 London car bombs that had taken place the day before. 2009 – Yemenia Flight 626, an Airbus A310-300, crashes into the Indian Ocean near Comoros, killing 152 of the 153 people on board. A 14-year-old girl named Bahia Bakari survives the crash. 2013 – Nineteen firefighters die controlling a wildfire near Yarnell, Arizona. 2013 – Protests begin around Egypt against President Mohamed Morsi and the ruling Freedom and Justice Party, leading to their overthrow during the 2013 Egyptian coup d'état. 2015 – A Hercules C-130 military aircraft with 113 people on board crashes in a residential area in Medan, Indonesia, resulting in at least 116 deaths. 2019 – Donald Trump becomes the first sitting US President to visit the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea). 2021 – The Tiger Fire ignites near Black Canyon City, Arizona, and goes on to burn 16,278 acres (6,587 ha) of land before being fully contained on July 30.

#Events

[edward-sonbati]

The Early Coptic Papacy: The Egyptian Church and its Leadership in Late Antiquity - A Review

In this volume, renowned scholar of Egyptian and Arabophone Christianity Stephen J. Davis explores how the ancient Egyptian Church’s hierarchy came to develop in the first centuries A.D., as well as how the shepherds of the late antique Coptic Church leveraged notions of apostolicity, orthodoxy, resistance, exile, and persecution to solidify their authority over the Egyptian Christian faithful. While this book covers the history of the Coptic Church from its inception to the Arab conquest in the 7th century, for the purposes of this review we will be focusing primarily on the events following the council of Chalcedon to the Rashidun invasion of Egypt, discussing any events antedating 451 only where necessary to provide needed historical context. 

Davis begins chapter four by discussing the aftermath of the council of Chalcedon and the banishment of Dioscorus to Gangra. The author speaks of the endeavor to create a rival Imperial or “Melkite” Church as a form of imperialism or “ecclesiastical colonialism.” While I’d normally be hesitant to project contemporary postcolonial theory onto 5th century Imperial Church politics, I think Davis for the most part does so appropriately and effectively. The fact of the matter is that following Chalcedon, the majority of the native Egyptian faithful as well as Egypt’s domestic bishoprics continued to recognize Dioscorus and his anti-Chalcedonian successors as the legitimate heirs of both the Markan throne and the Alexandrian Church’s theological heritage. Thus, the attempt by the Emperor Marcian’s loyalists to install Proterius instead of a popularly-backed anti-Chalcedonian from the school of Dioscorus and Cyril was an effort on the part of an out-of-touch colonial aristocracy to form a “new elite system” to contest with “local, institutional leadership.” Thus, the Coptic Church post-Chalcedon can thus rightly be described as a colonized community under the hegemony of the Imperial Byzantine establishment.

I also quite enjoyed the concise but informative survey of Coptic Church history after the deposition of Dioscorus. Casual readers of post-Chalcedon Church history might be tempted to think of the schism as crystallizing overnight, with two separate ecclesial communities forming immediately in the wake of the council. This is not at all the case, as Davis rightly notes. Instead, partisans and opponents of the council competed for the same bishoprics throughout the empire, with the anti-Chalcedonian Patriarch Theodosius I being the last Alexandrian bishop to be recognized by both sides in the mid-6th century. Many Coptic Patriarchs sought compromise with the other side, including Peter Mongus who signed Zeno’s henoticon in an attempt to reestablish communion with the other major eastern sees, by effectively ignoring Chalcedon and the Tome of Leo. Later anti-Chalcedonians would agree to reunion on the basis of Cyrus’ “monothelite” pact of union. In many such cases, extremists on both sides of the divide opposed their hierarchs’ conciliations. One such movement, the acephalites or “headless ones,” counted among their ranks the future Antiochian Patriarch Severus and the Church historian Zacharias Rhetor - both of whom were associated with this movement while they were still laymen. 

Davis also documents intra-ecclesial conflicts within the Church of Alexandria during this time. In addition to the schism between the miaphysites and dyophysites, the anti-Chalcedonian leadership faced many internal divisions within their own ranks. For one, the dispute between Severus of Antioch and Julian of Halicarnassus throughout their shared exile in the Egyptian desert led to a devastating rift within both the Coptic Church and the wider anti-Chalcedonian Orthodox communion of Churches. The “Gaianites,” followers of the popular Julianist/Aphthartodocetist Patriarch Gaianus formed a rival hierarchy to the imperially-backed Severan Patriarch Theodosius. The Gaianites existed as a separate hierarchical structure from the mainstream Severan-Theodosian Coptic Church well into the 8th century.

Davis also talks about internal sub-schisms within the Severan-Theodosian faction. The death of the perenially exiled Theodosius in Constantinople led to a power vacuum which gave rise to four rival claimants to the Markan throne: 

The Severan-Theodosian bishop Peter IV, whom the Coptic Church considers to be the legitimate successor to Theodosius to this day

The Chalcedonian bishop John

The Gaianite-Julianist bishop Dorotheus 

Another Severan-Theodosian named Theodore, whom the anti-Chalcedonian bishop of Antioch Paul tried to install, much to the ire of the local Egyptian bishops

After the death of Peter IV, a schism broke out between Peter’s successor, the Syrian-born Alexandrian Patriarch Damian, and his Antiochian counterpart Peter Callinicus. Damian accused Callinicus of being a tritheist, while the latter accused Damian of Sabellianism. This schism lasted for the better part of 30 years, until their successors Anastasius and Athanasius mended the rift based on a mutually declared statement of faith. This, only for Pope Damian’s extreme loyalists to elect an antipope in response to the rapprochement between Antioch and Alexandria.

Davis briefly discusses the civil strife and palace intrigue that led to the Persian invasion of Egypt during the first half of the 7th century. While the Persians generally treated the Christians harshly, some sources indicate that they were more conciliatory towards the anti-Chalcedonian populace than the Byzantines. In any case, the Byzantines shortly retook Egypt in 629 under the leadership of Heraclius. Cyrus is then installed as Chalcedonian Patriarch of Alexandria, while also wielding significant civic authority. Cyrus attempts to broker a reconciliation between anti-Chalcedonians and Chalcedonians on the basis of the monothelite pact of union. While this attempted reunion was partially successful, it was resisted by no less a figure than the renowned Coptic monastic Samuel of Kalamun, who rejected the pact out of solidarity with the exiled Coptic Patriarch Benjamin. The solidarity between the monastic communities of the Coptic Church and their exiled Patriarchs is a recurring theme throughout Coptic history, as Davis notes throughout this volume. Indeed, Coptic Patriarchs from Athanasius to Theophilus to Cyril would often draw on monastic support in the face of opposition from their theological and political opponents. 

This then brings us to what is arguably the most consequential event in the history of the Egyptian Church (alongside the council of Chalcedon): the Arab conquest of 641. While it was traditionally believed by some historians that the Copts welcomed the Arabs as liberators from their Byzantine-Chalcedonian hegemons, the historical data paint a much more nuanced picture. It is true that Amr Ibn Al-As, the Arab military commander in charge of the Egyptian military campaign, did grant certain concessions to the Coptic Patriarch Benjamin. He returned property to the Egyptian Church that was previously seized by the Byzantines and allowed him to come out of imperially imposed exile and freely administer the affairs of his Churches. That said however, many Coptic writers, including the chronicler and bishop John of Nikiu describe the Arabs as oppressors who brought upon the Copts a heavy “yoke” comparable to that of the biblical Pharaoh. 

Worth noting is that there existed a strong cultural continuity with Egypt’s Greco-Roman heritage for quite some time after the Rashidun invasions. The Arabs, for instance, retained Greek as the official language for imperial account books and did not integrate into wider Egyptian society for at least the first two centuries after the fall of Alexandria, remaining for the most part cloistered in their army barracks. Many Copts also seemed to mistakenly assume that the Arabs would eventually leave, just like the Persians had done shortly before. 

Davis is, as I said, a world class scholar of Egyptian and Arabic-speaking Christianity. He is known for such works as “Coptic Christology in Practice” as well as a translation of the medieval Copto-Arabic text “Disputations Over the Fragment of the Cross.” He is also the editor of the new series “Christian Arabic Texts in Translation” and has served as academic dean of the Evangelical Theological Seminary in Cairo. Davis’ work is a must have for anyone interested in Coptic Christianity and the history of the ancient Egyptian Church. Davis’ meticulous research methods present the history of the late antique Alexandrian Church in a concise and accessible manner, without sacrificing precision and detail. I particularly enjoyed his summary of the very complicated (and even convoluted) history of the Coptic Church post-Chalcedon. Wracked with political intrigue, imperial persecution, and divisions both across and within confessional lines, it can be difficult for the student of Church history to keep track of all the different creeds, confessions, and rival claimants to the Patriarchate during this turbulent period of time. Nevertheless, Davis manages to do so quite successfully, giving us a clear overview of the rival lines of episcopal succession, as well as the historical backdrop of Byzantium’s loss of Egypt to both the Persians and eventually the Rashidun invaders. 

By studying Davis’ work, one can also draw certain parallels between events in the late antique Egyptian Church and contemporary Coptic Church history, particularly in the life of the late Pope Shenouda III. For instance, Demetrius’ attempted suppression of Origen’s pedagogic activities is similar to the conflict between the late Pope Shenouda and the scholar George Bebawi. In both cases, the bishop of Alexandria leverages his episocopal power to strictly define what “Orthodoxy” is in the face of what is perceived to be a lay teacher overstepping his authority. 

Similarly, Theophilus’ attempt to consolidate monastic support while isolating Isidore and the tall brothers is comparable to the state of relative marginalization the monks of St. Macarius’ monastery experienced in the wake of the dispute between Pope Shenouda and Father Matthew the Poor. Likewise, the exile of many Egyptian Popes like Athanasius, Dioscorus, Timothy Aelurus, Theodosius, and Benjamin on account of pressure from the governmental authorities is a recurring historical theme that played out in the life of Pope Shenouda as recently as the Sadat era in the 1980s.

[emmajonesrefhistory]

Lateran Palace

I chose this place because it was in Rome which was a place that we went to.

The Lateran Treaty was signed here. The treaty said that the Vatican would be an independent state under the Holy See. This is an ancient palace of the Roman Empire and later the papal residence in southeast Rome for about 1000 years. As the Byzantines grew less able to help the Lombard incursions, the papacy became more independent of the Empire.

It was also right next to the Sancta Scala. And I did not realize that it was the papal home since the 4th century until the popes moved to the Vatican.

[ianb2003]

Aix-la-Chapelle Cathedral:

 I chose this Cathedral because Charlemange played an important role in creating Western Europe. He centralized the Frankish territory and was even crowned Holy Roman Emperor by the Pope. What amazes me the most about Charlemagne was his ability to create almost a mini Renaissance during The Dark Age. 

Charlemagne was a Christian and as he grew in power, he had close ties to the Papacy. Charlemagne wanted to strengthen the church, improve clergy’s skills and morals, and standardize worship practices. Charlemagne had ecclesiastical power and he combined state and church powers together. His main goal was to use his power and influence to strengthen Christian morals. 

I was surprised at the large octagonal dome that oversees the cathedral. This was the first Cathedral I had ever seen. This octagonal dome represents the combination of the West’s spiritual revival as well as the unification of the West. In addition, the dome combines Byzantine and classical styles. The octagonal dome and overall structure of this cathedral became the most influential Church building style in all of Western Europe. 

[claireelizabethlancaster]

Blog Post 2: The Pantheon as the 8th Wonder of the World

There is simply so much to say about the Pantheon; it will be difficult to explain its significance and beauty in 300 words or less, but I will try. First and foremost, the Pantheon deserves to be the 8th Wonder of the World because it is a tribute to the long and rich Roman history. The Pantheon has been a place of worship for almost two millennia, yet it has evolved along with the religious traditions of Rome; originally a temple dedicated to the pagan gods of Rome, it transformed into a Christian church in 609 when Pope Boniface IV received permission from Byzantine emperor Phocas. This transition is, in and of itself, significant because it was the first pagan temple to be consecrated as a Christian church. Furthermore, the transition allowed the Pantheon to survive through the upheavals of Rome and into the 21st century because the papacy had the resources to repair and maintain the structure. I say all of this to make one point clear: the Pantheon is invaluable because it reflects and makes tangible the religious transitions that occurred through thousands of years. More specifically, perhaps, the Pantheon memorializes the spread of Christianity and embodies the pervasiveness of religion. 

Second, the Pantheon is notable because it is a testament to Roman ingenuity and architectural innovation. The design of the structure is intriguing, particularly in regard to the dome; the dome measure 142 feet in diameter, and the concrete thickness lessens as it rises, going from 21 feet thick at the base to 4 feet thick at the top. This construction technique lightened the load and, consequently, the weight stress. For over a thousand years, this dome remained the largest dome of any kind in the world, and, now, it remains the largest unsupported dome anywhere. 

Third, the Pantheon’s influence extends far beyond Rome, and its impact should be recognized and honored. The builders’ early experimentation with dome construction makes the Pantheon important within architectural history. Furthermore, the dome and portico combination has influenced Western architectural design; for instance, American structures modeled after the Pantheon include the US Capitol, the Jefferson Memorial, and the National Gallery. Finally, the innovative combination of Greek and Roman styles within the Pantheon has been replicated in many other structures, particularly European structures.