www.byzcath.org Forums General Discussions Town Hall The Year the Muslims took Rome

This is very interesting. I never knew that Rome also had to fight off Muslim invaders. Another interesting thing is that it talks about the iconostasis in the Basilica of St. Peter.


http://www.chiesa.espressonline.it/dettaglio.jsp?id=44479&eng=y

Why did Rome not get conquered and yet Constantinople did? Besides the fact that someone left the back door unlocked.

In the Pentarchy, only Rome is not in the hands of Islam, why?

The conquered populace which had been controlled by the Byzantine Empire was tired of their sometimes cruel dominance. They were not as willing to resist as Rome was. One theory, anyway.

CDL

???

The Goths and Vandals both sacked Rome, and the Italian peninsula except for the far south after the fall of Rome was under the control of the various Gothic tribes, both Pagan and Arian.

Rome has been since then variously sacked by the Arabs, the Normans, Germanic Knights, and most recently under French domination in the 19th century.

Constantinople fell for a number of reasons. It certainly never fully recovered from the sack of the city in 1204. It remains however the longest running Christian empire in the history of the world.

Numerous reasons. I would put geography at the head of the list.

Andrew

Not trying to start an argument here, but it seems as if when the other 4 of the Pentarchy broke from Rome (some won't agree with that statement,) they were overrun, subjugated, and forcebly converted by the Muslims. Not only that (I could be wrong) but none of the other Patriarchs of the Original Pentarchy even lives in countries that allow open worship, has their Patriarchal Names (Istanbul,) or has many Christians in the area. One could argue that the Pope lives in Vatican City and not in Rome, but he still has holdings in Rome, and the city is by no means hostile or indifferent to him. (I was there for a week, EVERYONE I met loved him! Unlike the week my wife and I spent in Ireland... ) Not only that but the state religion of Italy is Roman Catholicism. (Not always followed by the way)

Did you know... St. Peter's Basilica is the Church for the Patriarch of Constantinople when he comes to town. The Pope's Church (Cathedral of Rome) is actually St. John Lateran. I hope that this new meeting between Benedict and Bartholomew will bring about an Ecumenical Reunification Council, and that His Beatitude will be able to celebrate the Divine Litugry at the High Altar of St. Peter's Basilica once more!!!!!!!!!! I also believe that the reunification of the Church into One Body will bring about the reconversion of the whole Mediterranian and the whole ancient region that was once part of the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church will be so again.

Once again, not trying to start an argument here. I'm sort of thinking outloud (typing.) I also think that the rise of Hitler had something to do with the fact that the Protestant Revolt had a major foothold in Germany.

What are your opinions Forum?

I will be away for about 8 hours, my family is throwing a benefit for us. Our son Justin spent 3 weeks at Cardinal Glennon Children's Hospital and we have incurred about $200,000.00 in medical bills because of it. He'll be OK, if you were wondering. So I'll check this thread around midnight. Hope to hear from you all!!!

Whoever they are that wouldn�t agree with that statement, they would be right. Antioch and Jerusalem fell first to the Arabs well before the schism. They were right next door to the rising tide of Islam. Constantinople when it fell was in communion with Rome, the emperor having agreed in desperation to the union created by the meeting of western ecclesiastics held at Florence. All three cities fell to the Crusaders before coming under Ottoman control.

It is true that many areas in the Levant are losing their Christian populations. This is mostly a modern phenomenon, one unfortunately aided and abetted by the political-economic policies of the west. Asia Minor and Constantinople had a significant population of Orthodox Christians in to the 20th century for example. That changed with two major rounds of ethnic cleansing of Greeks by our good buddies and fellow NATO members the Turks. Look no further than Cyprus and Kosovo to see who the west is willing to side up with.

The shrinking populations of Christians in the Levant have nothing to do with the relation of those people to Rome. Were that true, the Melkites and Maronites would not be being pushed out as all the other groups are.

Also, Orthodoxy did not crumble under the yoke of Islam, it held out. Read about the history of the Greek, Serbian, Bulgarian and Romanian people. Orthodoxy persevered through centuries of the grinding inequity of the Millet system and periodic bouts of horrific violence.

I would also take issue that the areas surrounding the Pope of Rome are not hostile to that see. Western Europe has for the most part voluntarily surrendered its Christianity identity and is in very real danger through a combination of low native fertility rates and large scale immigration of becoming a heavily Islamic society. Frankly I think they need the East and its history, not the other way around.

Andrew

Dear Andrew you said:

"I would also take issue that the areas surrounding the Pope of Rome are not hostile to that see. Western Europe has for the most part voluntarily surrendered its Christianity identity and is in very real danger through a combination of low native fertility rates and large scale immigration of becoming a heavily Islamic society. Frankly I think they need the East and its history, not the other way around."

I say:

I have to agree with you here. Europe does need the East and it's history because frankly, the same policy that was used to conquer the Byzantine Empire, is being used today in Europe.

The English certainly shuddered when Princess Diana was going with Dodi Fayez, for had they married, any child that she would have had, (and she certainly wanted another one), would have been a half brother or sister to the future king. I'm sure that was Dodi's father's intent. A marriage would certainly have helped the acceptance and growth of Islam in Europe.

Now that policy of intermarriage was practiced in the Byzantine Empire. Many a princess, (or so I believe), was given to a sultan in marriage. No doubt out of necessity, but regardless, the relationship between Muslim and Byzantine had become quite cordial. As today, many an Orthodox at that time began to see the RCC as more of a threat.

It seems that a few centuries of Greek and Turk 'togetherness' in the Middle East, made the cultural differences between the Orthodox and Catholics appear greater than the difference in faith with the Muslims.

Zenovia

Maybe because Rome was under Divine protection to be the center of Worldwide Christianity.
Stephanos I

Uh yes, except for that period when the Pope moved to Avignon.

Andrew

Dear Andrew you said:

"I would also take issue that the areas surrounding the Pope of Rome are not hostile to that see. Western Europe has for the most part voluntarily surrendered its Christianity identity and is in very real danger through a combination of low native fertility rates and large scale immigration of becoming a heavily Islamic society. Frankly I think they need the East and its history, not the other way around."


Except for the Islamic immigration part the same could be said of the largest of all Orthodox church's the Russian Orthodox. They have the highest abortion rate in the world outside of China. And their fertility rates are on the scale of Europe they are just as cafeterai orthdox as the west is cafeterai catholic. We need each other no one side needs another more. Let's stop plaing that game already. Secualrism and consumerism is indiferentaism is killing off the faith in both tradition orthodox and catholic lands it is noting inherirant in the catholic or orthdox faith.

tobit, I didn't start this thread, the premise of which is basically an insult to Orthodox Christians.

Andrew

Dear Father,

I believe there is something to what you are saying and as an Orthodox Christian I take no insult in it.

Through my life God's Providence has shown me that to question His motives and His will for each one of us, both individually, and in the greater picture of collectively, is to lack humility.

I mourn Constantinople but accept His will, and rejoice that there is Rome, and I pray to the Archangel Michael for her protection from all evil and danger.

I pray also for unity, and in that blessed day of unity, may we once again show the secular world which we are all besieged and influenced by, the light of Christ, the influence of Christianity, and the strength of the spiritual life.

I pray for and end to the unique problems which tempt Orthodox Christianity and the unique problems which tempt Roman Catholicism...both struggling in different ways in the sea of secularism we sail in. May our joined forces of Christ pleasing love and forgiveness help us both stay afloat in that sea and may this refuge help to save souls which are otherwise drowning in despair, disillusionment, confusion and temptation. Amen.

In Christ,
Alice

Whoa!!! Time out here!!! This was not supposed to be an insult to the 200,000,000+ Orthodox out there. I wrote that it seems to me...

I'm suprised that no one commented about the part in the article that talked about the iconostasis in St. Peter's Basilica?

I know that the people of Western Europe are not friendly to the Pope. But in Italy, the State Religion is still Roman Catholicism and the people in Rome still love the Pope. I'm sure that there are people in Rome who don't like him, just as I'm sure that in Iran there are those who like George W Bush, but I never met anyone in Rome the whole time I was there who didn't like him. Even the immigrants who were there at least liked him and acknowleged that he was a good and holy man. I talked to many people when I was there. In contrast, my Irish "cousins" were very anti-Catholic, except for those at the Holy Shrine of Knock. I was surprised.

I will concede that the Pope no longer lives in Rome because of the Avignon fiasco. He was taken out of Rome because his predecessors didn't want to live there, so the Pope no longer lives in Rome. But all of the important Basilicas are still in his possession: St. John Lateran for the Pope; St. Peter's Basilica for the Ecumenical Patriarch; St. Paul outside the walls for the Patriarch of Alexandria; St. Mary Major for the Patriarch of Antioch; and St. Laurence outside the walls for the Patriarch of Jerusalem. Except for St. Peter's Basilica, the rest of the Patriarchal Basilicas are in the city of Rome.

As far as the other areas that were conquered before New Rome, they had their own theological difficulties before the mythical 1054 schism. It's just that this seems all too familiar to the Northern and Southern Kingdoms of Israel and Judah.

Also, note that they both fell.

Once again, this wasn't meant to be an insult to any Orthodox. I was just thinking outloud, and wanted some feedback. So don't take it as an insult or as me baiting anyone for an argument. But take it as a theological question. Why is the Pope still in "control" of his churches but the Ecumenical Patriarch had the greatest Church in Christendom taken away from him? Why is the Holy Land in the hands of Islam?

Once again Andrew posts the clearest, balanced picture. One doesn't need to read religious history to understand this, just study history!

It seems like many here speculate about an historical event and attach some kind of "significance" to it.

The Muslim attacks on Rome were sea raids, like piracy on a grand scale. Every major city along a seacoast had to deal with such issues, in the west that includes Marseille and Naples among others. Constantinople had to deal with K'yan Rus coming out of the north, Arabs and even Crusaders from the west all coming by sea.

The difference with the eastern cities was that they became surrounded or overrun from the landward sides. The only real approach to central Italy by land was from the north, and it seems everyone who could did come and attack Rome from the landward side. It was a very long and difficult approach for the Muslims though, they would have had to pass through Constantinople first! or break out of Spain in the west, pass through the Franks and cross the Alps like Hannibal.

The list of nations to attack Rome from the north and south reads like a Who's Who of European ancestry: The Visigoths, the Vandals, the Ostrogoths, the Moors. Later in history troops of the Holy Roman Empire of Charles V which included not only Lutherans from Germany but Roman Catholics from Germany and Spain sacked Rome. The French (Catholics?) did likewise even more recently.

There is nothing mystical about the fact that the Muslim sea raid did not result in a permanent conquest, the Vandals did the same several hundred years earlier and didn't stay either. As horrible as those events were they constitute piracy, not empire building.

The geography of central Italy may have had much to do with the rise of the Papacy as we know it, but the papacy could not have any influence over the geography.

+T+
Michael

Do we not ALL pray in Otce Nash...'deliver us from lukhavaho..' deliver us from the evil one...who is this evil one other than the accuser of the brethren. and who emboldies him more than the one who DOES evil. If you look at the 4th...?.. crusade that sacked Constantinople...the brigands who were employed as or diguised themselves as Christians were of the same ilk as the muslims themselves, ONLY they appeared as sheep but wolves underneath. Sometimes, I THINK< , God's mercy is severe, but has eternity in mind, though the chastisement of our sinful way is painful. May we not bow to the materialism and secularism of our western cultures. This may be a wolf of our own making. For one that is why I can NOW!! appreciate my Mother's reminder of Ukie Christmas and Easter...it is somehow Holy-er than the glitz of Wall St and the Santa's and the Bunny ah, was that energizer or the copper top..?...! Jes my 2 kopeks, S Bohom, mik

You�re asking a question with two levels of meaning. The practical reasons are obvious and the primary one as I mentioned before is geographic. The Byzantines were immediately adjacent to a popular religious movement that has violent conquest as a core ethic. When the Ottomans took the Queen City it was a natural expression of their power to remove the Great Church from the hands of the Christian populace and to make it a temple of their own. It of course also served the purpose of humiliating the newly conquered populace.

Why the church has not been returned to Christian worship can probably be chalked up to a few factors.

- The lack of military might and political cohesiveness among the subjected Christian populace of the Ottoman Empire to end Turkish rule on their own.
- A pronounced tendency of the western powers to favor a status quo in the Levant that included a stable Ottoman Empire, primarily for commercial reasons. You could probably look to such things as the holding of the pretender Cem for a sizable annual ransom by the French and then the Papacy in the 15th century, a willingness to go to war with the Russians to protect the Bosporus in the 19th century, and lack of support for the Megali Idea in the 20th century as particular plots along that line.
- The rise of extreme nationalism in the 20th century Turkish state which precludes the return of the Great Church to our Patriarch despite the fact that it is no longer debased as a Muslim worship site.

The second level of meaning is trying to divine the hand of providence in what has happened and that is not so obvious. I have heard the idea seriously proposed that the Fall of Constantinople was God�s judgment on the Byzantines (I mistakenly believed this thread was started with that idea behind it). Perhaps that is true, perhaps it is also true that faith is tested and forged in times of trial and tribulation. So maybe then there are those that would not see defeat in the 400 years of Ottoman domination the East survived, or in the fact that the Ecumenical Patriarch clings to his see in an ever increasingly hostile environment, but draw inspiration from these things.

There are many questions one could consider during this whole period.

- Why after the heights of Papal power achieved by Innocent III did the western church undergo significant internal division?
- Why did the Protestant Reformation happen?
- What gave rise to secularism, the stripping away of the Papal States and the end of the Papacy as a temporal power?

Like the other questions posed I�m sure one can come up with very practical and worldly reasons, the larger question of �why� is not so easy to identify.

Andrew