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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Dayuhan who wrote (15819)	11/10/2003 10:08:10 PM
From: MSI	Respond to of 793669

An excellent book on that subject is Wm Manchester's "A World Lit Only By Fire". I'm in the middle of a chapter with a clear discourse of exactly what you describe: Here's a passage: "Medieval Christians, knowing the other cheek would be bloodied, did not turn it. Death was the prescribed penalty for hundreds of offenses, particularly those against property. The threat of capital punishment was even used in religious conversions... Charlemagne gave Saxon rebels a choice between baptism and immediate execution; when they demurred, he had 4,500 of them beheaded in one morning. "Every flourishing religion has been intermittently watered by the blood of its faithful, but none has seen more spectacular internecine butchery than Christianity. In A.D. 330 Constantine I, the first Roman emperor to recognize Jesus as his savior, made Constantinople the empire's second capital. Within a few years a great many people who shared his faith bagan to die there for their interpretation of it... over three thousand Christians died at the hands of fellow Christians -- more than all the victims in three centuries of Roman persecutions. On April 13, 1204, nearly nine centuries later, medieval horror returned to Constantinople when the armies of the Fourth Crusade, embittered by their failure to reach the Holy Land, turned on the city and massacred the inhabitants." that the political, economic, and scientific advancement of Europe were achieved in spite of the Christian religion, not because of it. The pretense that Christianity is in some way superior to Islam must be dropped: the West has advanced not because we had a better religion, but because we forced religion back into the church and fought to keep it there. That battle continues, and if we lose it our current troubles will seem insignificant by comparison with what we will get. Read Bill Joy's "The Future Doesn't Need Us" for expansion on that nugget of wisdom. Unlike the medieval sword we as a species now have the opportunity to wipe out many millions more at a stroke. "Bring 'em on!" isn't exactly a motto for survival in the day of bioterrorism and radiological weaponry. It's more of a suicide proclamation.

To: Dayuhan who wrote (15819)	11/10/2003 11:25:16 PM
From: Nadine Carroll	Respond to of 793669

. By the time there was any Western Civilization to influence, the line between Church and State was virtually unrecognizable. They may have been nominally separate entities, but for close to a thousand years the church remained the dominant political, social, and cultural influence in Europe. Not coincidentally, we remember that period as the dark ages. I presume you are talking about the Medieval Period. I can only guess that, because what you have just said about it, bears no resemblance to any history beyond what is commonly taught in grade school. Historians do not call 500 - 1500 the "Dark Ages"; they call 600 - 800 the Dark Ages, and consider that it was ended by Charlemagne and the Carolingian Renaissance. In Western Europe for most of the Medieval Period there was not one "State", but two: Pope and Emperor, plus all the other kingdoms and duchies, in which the rulers were working at centralizing and consolidating their power. And for most of the time, Pope and Emperor did not get on very well, as was only to be expected. Have you ever heard of the Diet of Worms? What was that about, if the the Church and State were one? The eventual deterioration of religious influence was driven not by the retreat of the church from political life, but by the deterioration of the church into complete politicization and corruption under the Renaissance popes No, it was brought about by the fracturing of religious influence in the Wars of Religion in the 16th and 17th century, and cemented by Peace of Westphalia in 1648. The Protestant Revolution was brought on by the corruption of the Church, the increasing power of the Emperor, who saw a chance to increase his power by protecting a heretic instead of handing him over to the Church, and ironically, by the developments of the medieval church itself, which in the formulations of St Thomas Aquinas, had empowered the position of individual thought. The Medieval period, particularly the high middle ages and period of tumult following the calamatous 14th century, made huge strides in literature, philosophy and science (for instance, when were clocks invented?), which are still the basis of Western civilization. The Middle Ages get a bum rap in beginning history books.