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Hey everyone I've been away awhile working on my youtube channel and trying to get my personal life in order not to mention raising my newborn son who is now coming along and growing nicely. And my wife has been trying to find new work as well and I've been helping her out there too. I decided to kick off my blog again with an article I've been meaning to write about literacy and reading and how the Christian faith influenced this growth. My interest in the article peaked after being referred to a book about the Byzantine Romans and...

I have been on Free Republic since October 1998. In that time, I have posted 302 articles and 30,397 replies. But I've only written two books and the second one is now available. I am posting a notice about it here because I suspect it may be of interest to my fellow FR denizens. If you like ancient history, action, battles, an epic scope, and a touch of romance, you'll probably enjoy this book. It also celebrates the classical Christian virtues: courage, piety, obedience, and humility. I wrote it specifically with teenaged boys in mind, because most of what is...

Since the late 11th century, Western merchants, primarily from the Italian city-states of Venice, Genoa and Pisa, had started appearing in the East. The first had been the Venetians, who had secured large-scale trading concessions from Byzantine emperor Alexios I Komnenos. Subsequent extensions of these privileges and Byzantium's own naval impotence at the time resulted in a virtual maritime monopoly and stranglehold over the Empire by the Venetians.[3] Alexios' grandson, Manuel I Komnenos, wishing to reduce their influence, began to reduce the privileges of Venice while concluding agreements with her rivals: Pisa, Genoa and Amalfi.[4] Gradually, all four Italian cities...

The Grand Strategy of the Byzantine Empire by Edward N. Luttwak Belknap Harvard, 498 pp. Civilization in the city of Rome was extinguished by the year 476, but scholars today recognize that the Roman Empire continued to thrive in its eastern capital of Constantinople, in what we call the Byzantine Empire. As Edward Luttwak notes, the Byzantines did not use the word "Byzantine." They called themselves Romans, and their enemies called them Romans as well. The Byzantine Empire carried on Roman traditions of civilization, commerce, law, and education for nearly a thousand years until they met a heroic end...

The text of the film “The fall of an empire—the Lesson of Byzantium” Archimandrite Tikhon (Shevkunov) Russian winter landscape. A church. A snowstorm. Narrator. Hello. In 1453, the Byzantine Empire fell. Let us now take a look at how this happened. Islamic chant weaves into the gusts of freezing wind. Instanbul. The muezzin continues his prayer, amplified by a loudspeaker. The noise of a market place in a Middle Eastern city. Turkish conversation. Narrator. This city was once called Constantinople; six centuries ago it was the capital city of what was without exaggeration one of the greatest civilizations in world...

Discovering the Greek side of Istanbul The Maiden Tower That Ä°stanbul is a real treasure chest for history, art and architecture freaks is no secret. Its colorful mosaic of historical city structures -- mosques, churches, synagogues, palaces, castles and towers -- reflects the many, many social and cultural influences of a number of foreign communities that have left their indelible footprints across the city throughout its long history. The oldest settlement on the land that is now Ä°stanbul was, however, Greek. Already, in 685 B.C., settlers from the ancient Greek town of Megara chose to colonize the town of Chalcedon,...

Byzantium - the English Connection By Steven Lowe In 330 AD, when Britain was still a Roman possession and the ancestors of the English race had not yet appeared on the scene, Emperor Constantine the Great built a new capital for the Roman Empire. The great new city was built on the site of the old Greek port of Byzantion. With typical lack of modesty, the Emperor re-named it Constantinople, after himself. For over 11 centuries it was the capital of the Empire we now call Byzantium – the richest, most powerful in Christendom. It was the largest and most...

Bulgarian Archaeologists Discover Unique Medieval Byzantine Seal Archaeology | August 21, 2009, Friday Bulgarian archaeologist, Prof. Kazimir Popkonstantinov, has discovered a unique medieval seal at the site of the Knyazhevski (i.e. "Princely") Monastery near the Eastern city of Varna. The seal is dated back to the 10th century and belonged to the Byzantine dignitary Antonius, who was an imperial protospatario in Constantinople. Antonius had correspondence with a representative of the Knyazhevski Monastery, who is believed to have been the Bulgarian Knyaz (i.e. king) Boris I (r. 852-889 AD) himself. The team of archaeologist Popkonstantinov from the University of Veliko Tarnovo...

Review: How the Byzantines Saved Europe Posted by JOHN COURETAS on MONDAY, AUGUST 17, 2009 The Oxford Handbook of Byzantine Studies. Edited by Elizabeth Jeffreys, John Haldon, Robin Cormack. Oxford University Press (2008)Byzantium: The Surprising Life of a Medieval Empire by Judith Herrin. Princeton University Press (2008) Ask the average college student to identify the 1,100 year old empire that was, at various points in its history, the political, commercial, artistic and ecclesiastical center of Europe and, indeed, was responsible for the very survival and flourishing of what we know today as Europe and you’re not likely to get the...

Osprey Media. - Peterborough Examiner - Ontario, CA [Emperor] Constantine's Last WalkJunior Fiction winner Local News - Wednesday, July 11, 2007 @ 00:00 By Erik Blackthrone O'Barr Grade 9 Peterborough Collegiate The cannon fire grew closer with each thundering belch of rock and iron, as the walls of Constantinople, wonders of the world that had never been breached save for treachery, groaned under the strain. Buildings crackled with scorching heat, set ablaze by pitch- covered arrows. The shouts and screams of the dying echoed in the empty streets of the once great city. And Constantine XI Palaiologos, last Emperor of...

Aug 14, 2009 From church to mosque: Istanbul’s forgotten Byzantine heritage Is it a church? Is it a mosque? Is it a museum? Aya Sofya (Hagia Sophia, the Church of Divine Wisdom) may be one of İstanbul's most famous buildings, but it's also one that suffers from an acute identity crisis, having started life as the great sixth century church of the Emperor Justinian, before becoming a mosque after the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453 and then a museum in 1935 after Mustafa Kemal Atatürk declared the Turkish Republic. Something similar happened to Chora, near Edirnekapı, which also kicked...

Martin Revis Mosaic icon of Saint Stephen, c. 1108-1113. Image: Courtesy of Royal Academy of Arts. London (ENI). The Antioch chalice, regarded by some as the Holy Grail, the cup used by Christ at the Last Supper, is attracting the attention of about 6000 visitors each day at an exhibition in London depicting 1000 years of the Byzantine Empire. "Byzantium 330-1453" runs at Britain's Royal Academy of Arts until 22 March. It displays icons, ivories, gold and silver metalwork, wall paintings and other artefacts brought to London from across Europe, the United States, Russia, Ukraine and Egypt. They tell...

A new investigation could end many of the speculations about the works of El Greco and the man himself. A hand-written annotation to a book, similar to the glosses of Saint Emilianus, found in Spain in a copy of Lives of the most excellent architects, painters and sculptors by Giorgio Vasari, has led Nicos Hadjinicolau, a researcher from the Institute of Mediterranean Studies, to conclude that the artist – contrary to popular belief– was a defender of Byzantine art.

The Byzantine Empire lasted for more than 11 centuries, from AD330-1453. At various times, it incorporated most of Europe, including the Balkans, and Turkey, parts of North Africa, and the Middle East. Predominantly Greek-speaking and Christian, its power superseded that of the Roman Empire. The imperial capital was Constantinople, formerly Byzantium, today Istanbul, a city that wielded considerable power until it was eventually conquered by the Ottoman Turks. Some 300 of the greatest treasures of the Byzantine Empire are currently on display at the Royal Academy of Arts in London ...in an exhibition put together in collaboration with the Benaki...

Lasting some 11 centuries from the foundation of the city of Constantinople, today's Istanbul, on the site of the Greek city of Byzantium by the Roman emperor Constantine in 330 CE to its final defeat at the hands of the Ottomans in 1453, at its height the Byzantine Empire took in the whole of the eastern Mediterranean and stretched from Anatolia and the Balkans to Egypt and north Africa. It always styled itself the heir of the Roman Empire and of classical civilisation as a whole. Examples of Byzantine architecture can still be seen in Istanbul in the shape of...

It’s a safe bet that most of you reading these words have been to a professional football game. Many of you—particularly those who live in Philadelphia—have probably witnessed the occasional brawls between the home crowd and those foolish enough to wear an opposing team’s colors. A few of you, I dare say, have been involved in such altercations. But how often have you witnessed football fans actually kill opposition partisans? Well, perhaps I should qualify that by saying American football fans. When was the last time you heard of agitated sports nuts rioting in the streets and burning down half...

For some time now, years actually, my family and friends have been trying to get me to write fictional stories for publication. For a long time I resisted that notion because I write non-fiction and to tell you the truth I haven’t really considered fiction to be nearly as important an effort as non-fiction since I was a kid. But they’ve kept at me, and to tell you the truth I ain’t as opposed as I used to be to the idea, and in some sense I’ve even warmed to the proposal. The idea doesn’t automatically revolt me like it...

“It is possible to govern based on an approach that is distinctly different from one of coercion, force and injustice,” wrote Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad recently in an open letter he thoughtfully scribed for the benefit of the American people. “It is possible to sincerely serve and promote common human values, and honesty and compassion. It is possible to provide welfare and prosperity without tension, threats, imposition or war.” These statements sound almost reasonable until it is remembered that they came from the pen of an individual whose repressive regime funds proxy paramilitary forces and outright terrorist groups in Iraq,...

Pope Benedict XVI has visited one of Turkey's most famous mosques in what is being seen as an attempt to mend relations with the Muslim community. During his tour of the Blue Mosque in Istanbul, the pontiff paused in silent prayer alongside senior Muslim clerics. It marks only the second papal visit in history to a Muslim place of worship. Earlier, the Pope visited the nearby Hagia Sophia Museum - a site heavy with Christian and Muslim symbolism - drawing around 150 protesters. The Pope spent half an hour in Hagia Sophia, a domed complex that was once a Christian...

Modern society obsessively avoids suffering, risk and danger. It secures everything with seatbelts and safety rails, air conditions the summer heat, prints warnings on coffee cups and advises that that safety glasses should be used while working with hammers. Certainly such precautions have prevented misfortune. However, since heroism and excellence are born from confronting rather than avoiding suffering and peril, the mania for safeguards has also diminished the notion of these qualities. This is unfortunate since only those intrepid souls who confront danger, endure suffering and overcome obstacles merit mention in the annals of history. A shining example is the...

It seems a typical scene of urban decay: abandoned buildings, crumbling walls, trash and broken wine bottles. Yet it's more than 1,500 years old. Engineers uncovered these ruins of an ancient Byzantine port during drilling for a huge underground rail tunnel. Like Romans, Athenians and residents of other great historic cities, the people of Istanbul can hardly put a shovel in the ground without digging up something important. But the ancient port uncovered last November in the Yenikapi neighborhood is of a different scale: It has grown into the largest archaeological dig in Istanbul's history, and the port's extent is...

The European Union Parliament is pressuring the Turkish Government to restore Saint Sophia Cathedral from a museum into a Greek Orthodox Church. However the Parliament has set a requirement of 1.000.000 signatures on a petition before it makes this conversation a prerequisite for Turkey's admission into the European Union. You are requested to cast your vote by logging on to the link above. This is an opportunity for each of you to have an impact on world events. Get as many Greek Orthodox, other Orthodox and Christian friends of yours to sign the petition and make history.

The Greek and Roman churches Two cheers, two saints Dec 2nd 2004 From The Economist print edition Argument about a gesture from west to eastBones of contention WHEN Pope John Paul II visited Greece three years ago, letters to Greek newspapers were full of smouldering indignation about his indecent haste. Did this self-invited guest not realise that less than 800 years had passed since the sack of Constantinople in 1204? In that year an army of western Christians desecrated the Christian east's holiest cathedral and imposed their rule over the Byzantine Greeks. In the Orthodox world, such sentiments are not...

I had previously posted the following APOCALYPSE: The Historicist Intepretation and will use it as a guide for modification. APOCALYPSE: The Historicist Intepretation author speculated that Revelations Chapter 11 referred to The French Revolution (The death and resurrection of the Two Witnesses) Revelations 11:3 And I will give power unto my two witnesses, and they shall prophesy a thousand two hundred and threescore days, clothed in sackcloth. with his reason being: Those 1260 days, symbolizing 1260 years according to the "day-year" principle, are generally thought to refer to the time span during which the Roman Catholic Church was the most...

Volume 51, Number 9 · May 27, 2004 Review Eastern Glory By Ingrid D. Rowland Byzantium: Faith and Power (1261–1557) Catalog of the exhibition edited by Helen C. Evans an exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York,March 23–July 4, 2004. Metropolitan Museum of Art/Yale University Press, 658 pp., $75.00; $50.00 (paper) 1. ...O sages standing in God's holy fire As in the gold mosaic of a wall, Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre, And be the singing-masters of my soul. Consume my heart away; sick with desire And fastened to a dying animal It knows...