Replies

You wrote:

“Are you for real? Seriously? So you’re saying its perfectly alright that they raped, slaughtered, profaned the Hagia Sophia, and stole relics, icons gold church implements and everything else that wasn’t nailed down, and that ok by you?”

Nope. I’m just saying it ain’t the West that did it. And I think it’s a lot better for relics to be in the hands of Christians than Muslims who would have destroyed them - even if they were taken by theft. Better to be stolen and used by Christians, than to be destroyed by Muslims. Pope Innocent III condemned the actions of the crusaders:

“How, indeed, will the church of the Greeks, no matter how severely she is beset with afflictions and persecutions, return into ecclesiastical union and to a devotion for the Apostolic See, when she has seen in the Latins only an example of perdition and the works of darkness, so that she now, and with reason, detests the Latins more than dogs? As for those who were supposed to be seeking the ends of Jesus Christ, not their own ends, who made their swords, which they were supposed to use against the pagans, drip with Christian blood, they have spared neither religion, nor age, nor sex. They have committed incest, adultery, and fornication before the eyes of men. They have exposed both matrons and virgins, even those dedicated to God, to the sordid lusts of boys. Not satisfied with breaking open the imperial treasury and plundering the goods of princes and lesser men, they also laid their hands on the treasures of the churches and, what is more serious, on their very possessions. They have even ripped silver plates from the altars and have hacked them to pieces among themselves. They violated the holy places and have carried off crosses and relics.”

“The Byzantines kept the Persians, Turks and the Ottomans bottled up for centuries while getting nothing from Europe.”

1) The Persians were no threat to the West so what does it mean to be ‘bottled up’. 2) Turks? The Ottomans were Turks. The Seljuks were Turks. The Byzantines didn’t keep them bottled up. The Byzantines lost to them. The Turks spread across all of North Africa. How exactly is that bottling them up? The Byzantines didn’t keep the Ottomans ‘bottled up’ for even 150 years.

“Yeah they were pretty battered by the 1400, considering its lineage directly from the Roman empire to the 15th century.”

It was an old, tired empire well past its prime and on death’s door for 350 years.

“Yeah, Martel stopped the Muslims from coming through from Spain. But they let them get a foothold in Europe when they let Constantinople fall.”

They already had a foothold in Europe - Italy, Spain, Mediterranean islands.

“And the Fourth Crusade was sanctioned by the Church as was the Latin kingdom they set up was it not?”

No. The Fourth Crusade was not sanctioned to conquer Christian lands. The pope condemned the crusade for that. After the conquest of the old Byzantine empire, the pope decided to make the best of it. If it had worked, perhaps no Turkish conquest would ever have happened.

“And as far as the help they sent, they pillaged through the provinces until they finally bribed them to leave. You must surely see that a strong Byzantium was better for Europe than a conquered Istanbul.”

There was no strong Byzantium. If Byzantium was strong it would not only not have had to beg for help but it would have been so easily been done in by either crusaders or Muslims. Byzantium was weak. It was killed by Muslims in 1453. End of story.