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Monasteries and Madrassas: Five Myths About Christianity, Islam, and the Middle Ages
Crisis ^ | July 26 , 2006 | H. W. Crocker III

Posted on 09/02/2006 8:14:14 AM PDT by Petrosius

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To: dangus
I find your conclusions overly simplistic and easily refutable. Study of the human spinal vertebrae and other bones show that life in 1200 AD was every bit as brutal as it was during the Renn. Era. I've actually seen and studied these artifacts myself.

BTW, there are two particual and notable Renn.exceptions to take note of; the spread of bubonic plague due imported by visits to those refined and enlightened muslims, India and China. More importantly the mini-Ice Age which occured in the 1290's prior to the arrival of the plague which made food extremely scarce. Famine was a constant threat particularly in France where farmers were not allowed to grow the new world potato. So, frenchmen died on a regular schedule for generations. Some scientist's claim that we would all be speaking French now if not for the deaths of millions of french due to famine and plague.

I just saw a program on the H channel which discussed the widespread famines, which set-up the people of Europe for the ravages of the plague.

61 posted on 09/03/2006 7:12:56 PM PDT by STD (Rough Sailing Directly Ahead)
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To: stripes1776

A two-hundred years old baby is pretty old, and I see that the Reformation gave birth mainly to state churches each dominated by princes. I call this caesaropapalism. Some Presbyterians managed to maintain a certain distance from state control: the Scottish kirk for instance. But there was nothing tolerant about the Kirk. Elsewhere, in Catholic as well as Protestant Europe, the Church became part of the political establishment. In France the crown controlled appointments to the episcopacy; In Spain and Austria liberal despots sat on the throne, who sought to reduce papal authority to a formality. The French Revolution came close to wrecking the Catholic Church in general, with revolutionary governments confiscating its material assets and threatening the very existence of the papacy. Ironically, the papacy was rescued by the Orthodox Russians and the Protestant English. It was in the 19th Century that the papacy gained the functional control over the international Church which It enjoys now. Beginning with Pius IX the papacy became less and less attached to politics and even its reference for aristocratic government, and has set its cap against political solutions. The infatuation of many liberal priests with r liberation theology was challenged successfully by John Paul II, who forbade priests to hold political office. The present pope has tenatively set himself against the liberalism of the Democratic Party, which many American clergy were attracted to. The political views of many American Catholics are not greatly different from those
of Americans evangelicals.


62 posted on 09/03/2006 8:07:58 PM PDT by RobbyS ( CHIRHO)
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To: AlbionGirl; stripes1776

English Martyrs

Those who suffered death in England for the Catholic Faith and for the primacy of the Roman Pontiff, from 1535 to 1681. The total number of them is over 600; of these, fifty-four were beatified in 1888 and nine more in 1895; 247 others had their cause of beatification introduced in 1886, and were declared Venerable; the remainder (about 286), though they all died heroically, led such retired and obscure lives that there is very little known about them, which fact has hindered even the introduction of their cause. The following is a complete alphabetical list of all the English Martyrs, under their last names. Those who have been beatified, canonized, or declared venerable have separate articles. In a few cases nothing is known of the martyr except his name.
New Catholic Dictionary

**Now talk to me how the Protestants brought us religious freedom.**

63 posted on 09/03/2006 9:24:03 PM PDT by Petrosius
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To: RobbyS
A two-hundred years old baby is pretty old, and I see that the Reformation gave birth mainly to state churches each dominated by princes.

Your side lost. Get over it.

64 posted on 09/03/2006 9:28:35 PM PDT by stripes1776
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To: STD

It was, indeed weather which triggered famines, plagues and Protestantism. The drastic swings in population broke the system of the clerical class: When the population cavitated, children were needed to tend land, not join the religious, so that population of religious dropped precipitously. The lords lost control of vast expanses of land, lacking the population to maintain it. When population growth resumed, a middle class of non-manor-bound people emerged, who then became highly envious of the vast expanses of unused, church-owned land. They also disregarded the feasts in the pursuit of wealth, and were seeking to acquire new land with the money they made from their economic advantage. The Church for them represented a reason for an inability to acquire land, a source of condemnation for their money-centered lifestyles, and a rival political power; it had to be destroyed for them to truly prosper, and indeed, England, Holland, and Switzerland, the most Protestant lands, also became the most wealthy.

Incidentally, the arrival of the first ice-age-induced food shortages began happening around the first half of the 1300s. The Christian conquest of the Roman Empire occurred in 325 AD. The gap between the creation of Christian kingdoms of Earth and the Acts of God which resulted in the destruction of this kingdom? 1 millennium.

But seriously, I'm not meaning to positively construct a post-millennial world-view, only hint at its possibility. If you have some numbers to toss my way, or more specific explanations of what sort of brutality is inferred from spinal vertebrae, I would be very interested to read them.


65 posted on 09/03/2006 9:29:12 PM PDT by dangus
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To: Petrosius

Yes, and for the record, I've seen "martyrs" used by Protestants to describe, simply, all victims of sectarian violence. The Catholic Church uses the word "martyr" in a much more restrictive sense, as one who dies purely for love of Christ, as victim of uninstigated violence. Mary, Queen of Scots, is not listed as a martyr, for instance, even though, for instance, the Catholic Encyclopedia (which is NOT authoritative) says of her:

>> There can be no question that she died with the charity and magnanimity of a martyr; as also that her execution was due, on the part of her enemies, to hatred of the Faith. <<

The suspicion of deeds which were evil, even though committed for the cause of Catholicism, for now, disqualifies her from being recognized as a martyr; as the Catholic Encyclopedia also says of her:

>>Pope Benedict XIV* gives it as his opinion that on these two heads no requisite seems wanting for a formal declaration of martyrdom, if only the charges connected with the names of Darnley and Bothwell could be entirely eliminated ("Opera omnia", Prato, 1840, III, c.xiii, s. 10). <<

For the record, when King John I led all of England into apostasy, the punishment from the Catholic Church was not to make war against him, but merely to issue an interdiction denying he and his subjects communion.

(*Note: Benedict XIV, not the current pope, Benedict XVI. The Catholic Encyclopedia is based not on established fact as recognized by the Roman Catholic Church, but largely apon popular impressions of history as known in the Protestant-dominated Anglosphere of 1915, which is when it was written; I can only infer from her absence among lists of English martyrs that subsequent Popes did not manage to exonerate her with sufficient confidence to declare her martyrdom.)


66 posted on 09/03/2006 9:45:10 PM PDT by dangus
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To: AlbionGirl

Aw, how nice... The English king allowed the refugees he exiled from his land to settle in the wilderness 3000 miles away across a treacherous ocean voyage. So kind a master was he.

Incidentally, he gave them nothing. He permitted them a place to stake a claim. Big difference.


67 posted on 09/03/2006 9:50:35 PM PDT by dangus
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To: stripes1776

>> The point is that an article about reform in Islam was also a Catholic screed against Protestants. Really a cheap shot. <<

Not really. Protestant gained its foothold in Europe, in part, by opposing the moneys being raised by the Catholic Church to defend civilization from the Islamic horde. For instance, 90 out of 95 of Martin Luther's thesis had to do with the sale of indulgences. He lied and said he had been to Rome and saw all the wicked and decadent ways this was being spent. But his basic ignorance of the geography of Rome disproves he was ever there. The real use of most of the money raised was to build a navy. But Luther knew that the lords who allied themselves with him could be militarily victorious if the Catholic church was preoccupied with Islam.


68 posted on 09/03/2006 10:01:42 PM PDT by dangus
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To: dangus
For instance, 90 out of 95 of Martin Luther's thesis had to do with the sale of indulgences.

This is America. It was founded by Protestants. So now you are free to give your money to whomever you want. So, be my guest, and indulge all you want.

69 posted on 09/03/2006 10:11:20 PM PDT by stripes1776
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To: Mr. Lucky

You badly misread the first source. It said "further years of life expected at age 21." The result was 43.14, for a total age of over 64 years. But of course, many died before age 21.

This site gives a life expectancy of 48 for 1278:
http://www.stanford.edu/~moore/history_health.html

That's not bad, considering the high infant mortality rate. That article also suggests that if one survived early childhood, one would be likely to survive into one's 70s.

The truth is that the modern perspective of the Middle Ages comes from the conditions of their calamitous, 14th-century closure, not those of the Middle Ages themselves.


70 posted on 09/03/2006 10:14:26 PM PDT by dangus
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To: stripes1776

>> It goes without saying, that the Protestants bestowed upon the Catholics a grace as it relates to their allowing Catholics in, that Catholics would have never afforded Protestants. Never! <<

>> Excellent point. I am glad to hear your experience of coming to America. It makes these posts worthwhile. And as for C.S. Lewis, he is one of my favorites: his writing on Christianity, his fiction, his literary criticism, his historical studies of the literature of the Middle Ages and Renaissance. <<

Except the point is entirely false. The Catholic Church has always seperated Church and State, and given non-Christian rights to live in Catholic states; it was, for instance, post-Reformation England which slaughtered the supposed "witches." The Inquisition, blamed for the abuses of state for which it was actually founded to prevent, only resulted in 3,000 deaths... every single one of them someone who claimed to be Catholic.

Meanwhile, America was founded by various Protestant religious groups and by Catholics. Given that no group was dominant, freedom of religion was given to all. However, not much time passed at all before religious freedom was denied Catholics. Sadly, the nullification of un-Constitutional restrictions of religious liberty became the foundation of the modern Left's judicial war on religion.

The foundations of America's Natural Law Constitution are explicitly based on the works of Catholic theologians like St. Thomas Aquinas and Augustine, and are entirely antithetical to both the religious nationalism of the Church of England and the doctrine of Utter Depravity of John Calvin.


71 posted on 09/03/2006 10:23:51 PM PDT by dangus
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To: Petrosius
First, we're talking about the U.S., not England and Bloody Mary and the rest of it all. Are the Protestants who were burned at the stake not part of this whole sordid history? Do they not make your sorrowful list?

I'm not going to bother to go find the number of Protestants burned at that stake, or those who had their tongues cut out before they went to the stake, so they couldn't recite the Psalms. Or meniton the abonimnable St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre which was conducted by pigs, sent straight from hell by statan: "Fiends behind the Crucifix."

Tit for tat isn't going to work. The fact remains that Protestants established the United States, and they gave Catholics a nice little tract of land from which they established themselves and flourished, regardless of difficulites and persecution that they encountered. They flourished! You're a testament to that.

72 posted on 09/04/2006 5:27:22 AM PDT by AlbionGirl
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To: stripes1776

your generalisations are wrong. Prove any of the unqualified statements you are making


73 posted on 09/04/2006 7:25:06 AM PDT by Cronos ("Islam isn't in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant" - Omar Ahmed, CAIR)
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To: stripes1776

well, no, the Puritans were, to some extent, like Wahabbis -- they tore down and committed sacrilege against chruchs and Godly persons -- witness the hordes of Cromwell who gouged out the eyes of Christ in cathedrals in england. That's just like the Wahabbis destroying the tombs of Mohammed and his family


74 posted on 09/04/2006 7:28:12 AM PDT by Cronos ("Islam isn't in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant" - Omar Ahmed, CAIR)
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To: dangus

Dear dangus,

"Given that no group was dominant, freedom of religion was given to all."

That's not true. Many of the original English colonies restricted the rights of various religious groups, or denied any rights at all to those not members of the right religious sect. The freedoms established by Catholics in Maryland, by Friends in Pennsylvania, and by Baptists in Rhode Island were not universally enjoyed throughout the colonies.

And, in Maryland, once the Protestants predominated over the founding Catholics, freedom of religion was trampled and revoked for nearly a century, showing that no good deed goes unpunished.

It is a trampling of historical knowledge to state that freedom of religion came from Protestantism. The truth is that the kernel of the principle of freedom of religion is part and parcel of Catholic theology, much of which passed into the philosophies of assorted folks, both Catholic and Protestant. The truth is that religious freedom was brought forth upon this American continent by the efforts of both Catholics and Protestants, but always in opposition and defiance of Protestant authorities.

The English colonists who fought for religious freedom in the English colonies were at all times fighting for their freedom against Protestants.


sitetest


75 posted on 09/04/2006 7:31:11 AM PDT by sitetest (If Roe is not overturned, no unborn child will ever be protected in law.)
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To: vladimir998

Good post -- the ages from 450 to 1000 was a success -- the Church kept civilisation alive, converted the Saxons, Franks, Friesians, Slavs, Bulgars, Magyars, Vikings etc, kept the Muslims at bay and helped set the foundation for the modern world. These weren't the dark ages


76 posted on 09/04/2006 7:31:56 AM PDT by Cronos ("Islam isn't in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant" - Omar Ahmed, CAIR)
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To: AlbionGirl
The fact remains that Protestants established the United States, and they gave Catholics a nice little tract of land from which they established themselves and flourished, regardless of difficulites and persecution that they encountered. They flourished! You're a testament to that.

They flourished despite, not because of, the actions of the Protestant majority, for the most part.

77 posted on 09/04/2006 7:33:15 AM PDT by Pyro7480 ("Love is the fusion of two souls in one in order to bring about mutual perfection." -S. Terese Andes)
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To: Nihil Obstat

Hey, the Protestants allowed the Catholics to live in dhimmitude, didn't they? Just like in England. The Catholics should have been grateful...... /sarc


78 posted on 09/04/2006 7:43:32 AM PDT by Cronos ("Islam isn't in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant" - Omar Ahmed, CAIR)
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To: sitetest

I meant freedom of religion being given to all at the signing of the Constitution... I think I made the point that previously, it had not been.


79 posted on 09/04/2006 8:34:15 AM PDT by dangus
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To: dangus
Life in England, c. 1200: Life expectancy: 60 years old Average numbers of workdays per week: just over 3.

Life in England, after the "Rennaissance (Rebirth)," "Enlightenment," etc. Life expectancy: 30 years old Average number of workdays per week: Over 6.

Life expectancy in 1250 in pre-industrial England was about slightly over 30 years at birth. It fell to almost 20 during the latter half of the 14th century (due to plague) and then rose to about 35 in the latter half of the 15th century, declined a bit and wound up, by the first half of the 18th century, a bit ahead of what it was in 1250.
80 posted on 09/04/2006 8:47:11 AM PDT by aruanan
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