Could Christianity Have flourished without islam?
- Thread starter Constantinople
- Start date
Leo Caesius
Banned
Not "ceased to exist," but demographically overwhelmed by Slavs, Albanians, Vlachs, and others. The modern Hellenic Republic was basically a product of massive ethnic cleansing over the past two centuries. Look at Thessaloniki, which, for a long time, was its largest city - the city had a plurality of Jews, followed (I believe) by Bulgarians and then Muslims; Greeks came fourth.Greece was Slavic? Are you two trying to say that the ethnically Greek population ceased to exist, being replaced by Greek speaking Slavs?
I would like to confirm Leo's reference to Greece through the ages. In fact the Slavs ruled all but a few of the Aegean Islands of what is now Greece for quite some time.
As an added historical quirk, the Byzantines were strangely disinterested by the emperor who finally retook most of Greece but...
Additionally, the western(Catholic) Church managed to remain united until the 15th Century, despite the rivalries with Islam and the Orthodox Church, although it has been suggested that the church learned to mind some manners around the larger Christian powers(France, later Spain) as opposed to the smaller states.
The Muslims did have a few minor distractions from development beyond the Crusades. The political schisms starting in the 9th Century, the Turkish arrival in the 11th, the Mongols in the 13th, Timurlane in the late 14th...
Leo, did I miss anything?
As an added historical quirk, the Byzantines were strangely disinterested by the emperor who finally retook most of Greece but...
Additionally, the western(Catholic) Church managed to remain united until the 15th Century, despite the rivalries with Islam and the Orthodox Church, although it has been suggested that the church learned to mind some manners around the larger Christian powers(France, later Spain) as opposed to the smaller states.
The Muslims did have a few minor distractions from development beyond the Crusades. The political schisms starting in the 9th Century, the Turkish arrival in the 11th, the Mongols in the 13th, Timurlane in the late 14th...
Leo, did I miss anything?
I've thought it over and concluded that the answer is negative. Without Islam or some other rival faith Christianity probably dies out even earlier than it actually did in our 15th Century.
My there's a lot of generalizing going on here. Nice to see that even the kiloposters are fellow amateurs.
Anyway, Europe as we know it (ie: a peninsular, Rhine-centered civ) is a product of the Arab conquests of North Africa and their domination of the Mediterranean in the VII-XII centuries. Justinian's, ahem, 'handling' of Ostrogothic Italy may be just as seminal. Without these, the West would've been dominated by Italy and Spain, instead of France and Germany.
I know better than to blame or credit religion, any religion for, the success or failure of a civilization. I believe religion and the interpretation thereof, is effected more by politics and technology (I also consider how we view the universe to be a tool and, therefore, technology) than the other way around. The Medieval West Europeans weren't barbaric because they were Medieval Catholics. They were barbaric because they were barbarians. Why most (and I mean most) of Dar al-Islam was doing better than most (and I mean most) of Christendom, is a good question, but I cannot believe that differences between Yeshua's (and Paulus') and Muhammed's philosophies, especially since there weren't that many, was the make-or-braker. I suspect that simply the Arabs were more appreciative of Greaco-Persian acheivement than the Franks were of Greaco-Roman acheivement. Also, don't forget the leadership. If half the Frankish kings were of Charlemagne's calibre, things would've been very different for the West. Greater Arabia had many such leaders and excelled because of it.
Well, it's what my dull, ignorant mind thinks.
Anyway, Europe as we know it (ie: a peninsular, Rhine-centered civ) is a product of the Arab conquests of North Africa and their domination of the Mediterranean in the VII-XII centuries. Justinian's, ahem, 'handling' of Ostrogothic Italy may be just as seminal. Without these, the West would've been dominated by Italy and Spain, instead of France and Germany.
I know better than to blame or credit religion, any religion for, the success or failure of a civilization. I believe religion and the interpretation thereof, is effected more by politics and technology (I also consider how we view the universe to be a tool and, therefore, technology) than the other way around. The Medieval West Europeans weren't barbaric because they were Medieval Catholics. They were barbaric because they were barbarians. Why most (and I mean most) of Dar al-Islam was doing better than most (and I mean most) of Christendom, is a good question, but I cannot believe that differences between Yeshua's (and Paulus') and Muhammed's philosophies, especially since there weren't that many, was the make-or-braker. I suspect that simply the Arabs were more appreciative of Greaco-Persian acheivement than the Franks were of Greaco-Roman acheivement. Also, don't forget the leadership. If half the Frankish kings were of Charlemagne's calibre, things would've been very different for the West. Greater Arabia had many such leaders and excelled because of it.
Well, it's what my dull, ignorant mind thinks.
trajen777
Banned
When the Byz empire started its revival they had lost most of Greece to the slavs - after the reconquest they had a mass migration from Anatolia to Greece in about 890 under Nicophoris (sp). The slavs were generally peaceful or at least disorginized so they were Hellenized over the next 100 yrs
Nap,
I just got back from studying the medieval West at Oxford and I find your opinions on medieval times grotesquely exaggerated. As they say, "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing."
The primary impression I get about the medieval times is that the problem was not the Church being all powerful, but ineffective. It was not a conclusion I expected to make.
For example, the Church insisted that a valid marriage had to be consented to by both parties and that adultery by men was just as sinful as adultery by women. It was the secular nobility, many of whom were about as Christian as bin Laden, who were responsible for most of the outrageous behavior.
And on the matter of the Crusades, they started it. Muslim pirates harried Western Europe for centuries before the Crusades, and it wasn't until 1016 that said pirates were finally ejected from the Italian mainland.
And on the matter of cannibalism, it was eat the dead or starve. It's not like they deliberately killed Muslims to eat them.
I just got back from studying the medieval West at Oxford and I find your opinions on medieval times grotesquely exaggerated. As they say, "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing."
The primary impression I get about the medieval times is that the problem was not the Church being all powerful, but ineffective. It was not a conclusion I expected to make.
For example, the Church insisted that a valid marriage had to be consented to by both parties and that adultery by men was just as sinful as adultery by women. It was the secular nobility, many of whom were about as Christian as bin Laden, who were responsible for most of the outrageous behavior.
And on the matter of the Crusades, they started it. Muslim pirates harried Western Europe for centuries before the Crusades, and it wasn't until 1016 that said pirates were finally ejected from the Italian mainland.
And on the matter of cannibalism, it was eat the dead or starve. It's not like they deliberately killed Muslims to eat them.
Greece was overrun by Slavs at some point , but AFAIK , the Slavs never made it to the Peleopones or the Aegean islands.
I am not sure that sexual morality is the best yardstick to measure civilisational benefit. Yet even so, the church not only retained the Roman legal standard of consensual monogamous marriages, but also introduced some rather more interesting ideas that it could not enforce. Of course if we are to believe Freudian theory, it is a state of permanent sexual frustration that creates great civilisations. If that were true, we *could* credit the church with Western Civilisation, I guess, though it makes it hard to explain either modern Islam or sancient Greece
On a more serious note, we can be very thankful that the church was *not* more effective in most of the Middle Ages. In this regard I am not referring to the hoary myths of Romantic novelists (compulsive burning of all interesting books, virgins, and proto-Protestants), but to the political theology of the Vatican. The church in the high middle ages developed and championed a model of cohesive society that is truly Orwellian. Had they been able to make it stick, they would have effectively eliminated all forms of participatory government, the 'bonum commune' paradigm of government, elective kingship, and traditional concepts of privacy (very important in Germanic-based law codes), all of which have been pivotal to European development. It is, of course, quite clear that the idea of papal supremacy developed then was never goping to be effectively enforceable, but that didn't stop them from trying. Reading, say, Bernardo Gui (who, BTW, was not at all like he is portrayed in 'The Name of the Rose', but in many ways much scarier) is a salutary reminder what the church was unable to impose upoin this unfortunate continent.
Red Herring Alert. Serioous historians do not criticise or condemn the Crusades bewcause they were a military attack on Islam. Certainly not an unprovoked attack upon a defenseless, innocent victim. Warfare between Christian and Muslim states was the order of the day for many centuries, both on the large and the small scale, down to private enterprise (Benjamin of Tudela has interesting comments to make about the Genoese in this context). The Epic of Digenes Akritas is made of much the same stuff as the life of Tariq or, presumably, the unsung achievements of the sea captains of Pisa and Bari, Palermo and Mahdia. The point to the Crusades was that they, quite uniquely, involved an absolute authority of the spiritual realm promising an entirely disproportionate reward for something that the religion in question actually condemns. It was that the Crusaders were told lies (if we can believe our chroniclers, which is not always certain) and given explicit instruction on the authority of leaders who should have known better (Bernard of Clairvaux had read the Qur'an, so he has no business making the claims he did, or calling for the extermination or forcible conversion of all non-Christians). And finally, the practises of the Crusaders are frequently and rightly the subject of condemnation. Muslim raiders harried the coasts and cities of Europe (and received the same compliments in return when the military situation allowed), but there were established customs of war which did *not* allow for the inhabitants of a major city being deliberately and indiscriminately slaughtered. Neither did they usually involve the utter rejection of diplomacy or the refusal of ransoms. Such things did occasionally happen, but along the routes of the early Crusades they were systemic.
The Crusades were far more than just wars.
Actually, much evidence indicates it was precisely that. We do not have much written material about the 'tafuri', groups of religious extremists on the First Crusade who were responsible for many of these instances, but the sources we have differ very noticeably in their decriptions of hunger cannibalism (as during the Seljuq siege of Antioch) and tafur cannibalistic episodes. The best guess we have is that this was a type of gang ritual analogue. There is some mention of similar episodes (on both sides) in Spain prior to the First Crusade, but never on the scale described there. It is also not described in any later Crusades, while hunger was a relatively common occurrence on those.
I would have to say that declaring the Catholic church was united until the Reformation is a bit too simple to be accurate. Certainly there were no permenant schisms, but with the number of anti-popes that were running around at various times it strikes me as inaccurate to declare that the Catholics were truly united. Without the effect of a dangerous common foe posed by Islam the Western Schism might come much sooner than it did historically. On the other hand, without the problems caused by the Muslims the Byzantines might be able to hold onto Italy, in which case the Bishop of Rome never gains nearly as much power as he did in OTL, and caesaropapism is the rule of the day. That could lead to all kinds of interesting developments.
Carlton,
Most of the "cannibal Crusader" polemics refer to Antioch. I have not heard of the other things--could you point me in the direction of things to read?
My comments about "they started it" was more aimed at Nap, who (it seemed to me) was acting like the medieval Europeans were a bunch of book-burning savages and the medieval Muslims were benevolent, progressive, etc. It seemed to me that he was espousing the "Romantic novelist" view of things.
I am not attempting to claim the Crusades were "just wars." My point is that they were not an attempt by a bunch of violent religious maniacs to destroy the superior civilization of Islam, they were a reaction (however excessive and clumsy) to a series of attacks beginning centuries before that culminated in the disembowelment of the Byzantine Empire. Some of my reading suggested that the Popes and other leaders in Europe feared that if Constantinople fell, they were next.
Most of the "cannibal Crusader" polemics refer to Antioch. I have not heard of the other things--could you point me in the direction of things to read?
My comments about "they started it" was more aimed at Nap, who (it seemed to me) was acting like the medieval Europeans were a bunch of book-burning savages and the medieval Muslims were benevolent, progressive, etc. It seemed to me that he was espousing the "Romantic novelist" view of things.
I am not attempting to claim the Crusades were "just wars." My point is that they were not an attempt by a bunch of violent religious maniacs to destroy the superior civilization of Islam, they were a reaction (however excessive and clumsy) to a series of attacks beginning centuries before that culminated in the disembowelment of the Byzantine Empire. Some of my reading suggested that the Popes and other leaders in Europe feared that if Constantinople fell, they were next.
As to Greece and its Slavicness.
Generally, we don't have much idea. We do know that more or less, nobody lived there. It was a back water. What we do think, is that above Thermopylae, the population was likely primarily Slavonic, Avars/Slavs, Vlachs, and the like, by the 700s. Below Thermopylae, which forms a natural north south boundary, it likely retained being Greek.
On the main debate.
What it comes down to is that without Islam, the Eastern Roman Empire would have continued to survive. Heraclius probably doesn't go insane under the pressure, and we might have some kind of reconciliation that keeps Palestine, Syria, Egypt, and those areas under Roman control for a good while.
Given the continued wealth of Constantinople, it will continue to trade and build relationships with their neighbors. Indeed, without Islam, I'd venture a guess that the Renaissance comes earlier. Most of our learning on the classics came from Byzantine scholars fleeing Constantinople and the Empire as it collapsed, and they went to Italy, which by now had sizable Greek exile communities.
Generally, we don't have much idea. We do know that more or less, nobody lived there. It was a back water. What we do think, is that above Thermopylae, the population was likely primarily Slavonic, Avars/Slavs, Vlachs, and the like, by the 700s. Below Thermopylae, which forms a natural north south boundary, it likely retained being Greek.
On the main debate.
What it comes down to is that without Islam, the Eastern Roman Empire would have continued to survive. Heraclius probably doesn't go insane under the pressure, and we might have some kind of reconciliation that keeps Palestine, Syria, Egypt, and those areas under Roman control for a good while.
Given the continued wealth of Constantinople, it will continue to trade and build relationships with their neighbors. Indeed, without Islam, I'd venture a guess that the Renaissance comes earlier. Most of our learning on the classics came from Byzantine scholars fleeing Constantinople and the Empire as it collapsed, and they went to Italy, which by now had sizable Greek exile communities.
okay, I read one very long and detailed book on the First Crusade years ago, and the cannibalism is mentioned... however, it was more a matter of 'they were starving, so they dug some bodies out of a moslem cemetary and ate them'.... nothing about religious extremism so far as this event was concerned....
NapoleonXIV
Banned
Well, I am trying to be a romantic novelist, what do you expect?
My post, (way back when) was sort of reacting against the posts immediately before, which seemed to be saying that Islam had contributed little or nothing to the West and we would generally be better off without it.
True, everybody back in those days pretty much fought with everybody else and the Islamic kingdoms raided the Christian pretty incessantly. Nor am I really trying to argue that the Christians were the villians of the piece, the geopolitics of that time were every bit as complicated and certainly as morally ambiguous on both sides as our own.
However, that the Crusades were any sort of organized European response to Turkish pressure on the Byzantines is really a surprise to me. I think it would be to the Byzantines as well.
In the first Crusade the Byzantines had only asked for a few small contingents to reinforce their efforts in the Holy Land. The huge host that showed up was refused admission to Constantinople at first and only given Byzantine approval once they had signed documents promising basically not to turn on their allies.
The Fourth Crusade (or was it third?
I can never remember) must have really been mixed up if it was part of Europe's attempt to save Byzantium, for it is really difficult to see how they sought to do so by attacking Constantinople. It was they, not the Turks, who were the real destroyers of the Empire, they were the first to breach the walls, and to burn and loot the city. The remnant of Byzantium they left never really recovered anything even approaching its former strength.Strange, how it still took the Turks another two hundred years to finally 'disembowel' their hapless victim they had put under so much pressure for so long. One would almost think they were actually more in the nature of opportunistic advernturers who took what they could of a declining power, rather than an implacable menace bent on destroying the Eastern Empire.
Last edited:
I'm with Nap on the Crusades.
Alexius I only asked for mercenaries and volunteers to stabilize Anatolia, not armies to retake Jerusalem.
The Popes cared nothing for Byzantium, the mistrust of the Greeks was universal to the Popes.
Alexius I only asked for mercenaries and volunteers to stabilize Anatolia, not armies to retake Jerusalem.
The Popes cared nothing for Byzantium, the mistrust of the Greeks was universal to the Popes.
Must disagree on the claim that the Popes "cared nothing" for the Byzantines. The Great Schism was not that long before, and many of the Popes hoped that if the Crusaders defeated the Seljuks, the Byzantines would agree to the reunification of the Churches.
Also, the Byzantine Empire post-Manzikert pre-Crusade was in a VERY BAD position re: the Turks. One Turkish warlord occupied Smyrna and conducted piracy in the Aegean, while another was 120 miles from Constantinople. The Seljuk Empire as a whole did not want the Byzantine Empire weakened, but Turkish adventures seized control of most of Asia Minor and the Seljuks ultimately sent one of their princes to take control of the territory.
It is understandable that at that time, the Seljuks appeared more dangerous than they actually were.
The First Crusade enabled them to recover somewhat, since the Crusaders took Nicaea from the Turks and the Byzantines were able to get hold of the city before the Crusaders got to sack it.
The 4th Crusade was the one that sacked Constantinople, and they didn't initially set out to do that.
Also, the Byzantine Empire post-Manzikert pre-Crusade was in a VERY BAD position re: the Turks. One Turkish warlord occupied Smyrna and conducted piracy in the Aegean, while another was 120 miles from Constantinople. The Seljuk Empire as a whole did not want the Byzantine Empire weakened, but Turkish adventures seized control of most of Asia Minor and the Seljuks ultimately sent one of their princes to take control of the territory.
It is understandable that at that time, the Seljuks appeared more dangerous than they actually were.
The First Crusade enabled them to recover somewhat, since the Crusaders took Nicaea from the Turks and the Byzantines were able to get hold of the city before the Crusaders got to sack it.
The 4th Crusade was the one that sacked Constantinople, and they didn't initially set out to do that.
There is a book The Legend of Basil the Bulgar Slayer, which, in one chapter looks at the role of Basil II in the formation of modern Bulgarian identity.
The author provides an interesting account of a man travelling in the Balkans in the early 20th C. People seem to have had no ethnic identity at all - they just knew that their ancestors had been "free men", Christians and not Turks.
When the the new states were formed/expanded it seems that people picked a nationality - there are cases of brothers choosing separate groups.
The point about the Greeks being ethnically Slav is only a theory but must be true, Late Roman Greece was literally wiped out in the 6th/7th century outside a few enclaves.
Ironically though the modern population of Western Asia Minor is much the same ethnically as it was in the early 11th century. Which means there may be more Turks who are really Greeks than there are Greeks who are "really" Greeks.
Leo Caesius
Banned
Yes, I mentioned that during the brief stint I passed teaching at the world's one and only Ottoman Summer School, located on an island near Ayvalik. The Turks there weren't pleased. You will never meet more nationalistic Turks; they all had names like "Ozturk" ("Authentic Turk") which immediately set alarm bells ringing in my head. That, and the fact that the older members of the community still spoke Greek among themselves...
The older members spoke Greek....!!
I have never heard of that before, I assumed that they all left during the 20s. Or did more stay than we have been led to believe?
I had heard stories of Greeks returning, which is quite interesting.