Continued from last week…
There were three major centers of Christianity by
the year 150 AD, Antioch in Asia, Alexandria in Africa, and Rome in Europe.
These were called the patriarchates, or “father churches.” Jerusalem had been
levelled and replaced by the Roman city of Aelia Capitolina and Constantinople
didn’t yet exist. These three father churches were thought to be of special
distinction because of their founding by St. Peter, whom Jesus chose as leader of
the early Church. Peter had founded the church in Antioch, Syria and through
his delegate St. Mark was considered the founder of the church in Alexandria,
Egypt, but above all, the church founded by St. Peter and also by St. Paul was
Rome.
Peter and Paul had both died there and their
relics remained there. The early Christians considered the Roman church the
first of the churches as evidenced by St. Ignatius of
Antioch and St. Irenaeus
of Lyon. Around 650 AD, the armies of a new prophet swept out of the Arabian
Peninsula and in short order captured two of the original patriarchates, Alexandria
and Antioch and thus began the slow but steady erosion of Christianity in the
lands of its beginning. Rome, too, had been conquered by the Germanic tribes of
the west, but something else happened there. The conquerors were converted by
the conquered and soon there were mass baptisms of Germanic tribes into the
Roman Church. They may have become Christians, but the mass conversions meant
that they were not the most literate nor best educated of believers. Among
these new Christians, the Jews continued in their uneasy but useful position,
living their lives largely without threat to life and limb. (Note: I use the
world “largely.” There were certainly some incidents of major persecution
during the era, but nothing like what was to come.)
Christianity in the East held on under the new
rulers and their new religion. In fact, the invaders didn’t try to convert
them. The Christians paid a special tax and their governmental and technical
expertise was useful to the new masters. That started to change in around 900 AD. 300 years after the first Arab invasion of
Roman Christian territory, the great Christian centers, Egypt, Syria, Tunisia
started to become Arabized. Christians found themselves under increasing
pressure to convert to the new religion. There had been an increase during the
previous century in the persecution of those Christians still remaining in the
Holy Land and pilgrimage to the Christian shrines had been forbidden. In
addition to the increasing Arabic pressure, a central Asian people, the Turks
accepted the new religion and its prophet, and did so with the devotion of new
converts.
An ambassador from Constantinople arrived in Rome
in 1095 from the Byzantine/Roman emperor Alexius asking for help against these
new invaders, the Turks who were invading what was left of the old Roman
Christian empire. The pope called a council in Clermont in
France and urged the nobility of Europe to come to the aid of their Christian
brothers in the east in addition to the depredation of the Turkish invaders.
Around this same time, the Fatimid Caliph of
Cairo al-Hakim, (or Hakim the crazy to those who knew him well) under whose
jurisdiction the Holy Land fell, decreed that the Christians would no longer be
allowed to observe the feasts of Epiphany or Easter. Wine was outlawed not just
for Muslims but for Christians, which made the celebration of Mass impossible,
and wasn’t much appreciated by Jews either who use wine in their religious
rituals. In 1005, he ordered Jews and Christians to wear distinctive item of
clothing. In1009, al- Hakim ordered the destruction of the Holy Sepulcher in
order to end the Holy Fire
ceremony that he was sure was a fraud. Eventually all Christian religious
buildings in the Holy Land were confiscated or destroyed. The situation in the
Holy Land, and the Turkish juggernaut into the remaining Christian territory,
(which was only stopped in 1683 at the gates of Vienna,) finally woke up a
sleeping Christendom. The nobility of Europe “took the cross,” that is, they
pledged themselves to make pilgrimage to the holy sites. Access to the
Christian shrines could only be had by means of war with the rulers of the
east. The nobility of Europe prepared
for war. The peasants of Europe were not to be outdone by the nobility and felt
no need to prepare. God would help them! A holy (and probably looney) hermit
named Peter decided to act on the pope’s call to liberate the formerly
Christian lands of the east. He gathered 20,000 peasants together in Easter
1096 and declared a people’s crusade. They promptly started the march to
Jerusalem though they weren’t quite sure where Jerusalem was. This did not
strike them as a problem.
At one
point they seem to have been led by a goose. I quote Albert of Aachen, a
contemporary source:
“There was also another abominable wickedness
in this gathering of people on foot, who were stupid and insanely
irresponsible…They claimed that a certain goose was inspired by the Holy Ghost,
and a she-goat filled with no less than the same, and they had made these their
leaders for this holy journey to Jerusalem; they even worshipped them
excessively, and as the beasts directed their courses for them in their animal
way, many of the troops believed they were confirming it to be true according
to the entire purpose of the spirit.”
Things soon went from stupid to evil when the
goose died and was replaced by politicians. Peter the Hermit was
joined by Count Emicho of
Flonheim who knew a good thing when he saw it. The peoples crusade arrived in Germany in spring
1096, and promptly started slaughtering Jews, the reasoning being, “We don’t
have to wait until Jerusalem to kill the enemies of Christ, we’ve got plenty of
Jews right here in the Rhine valley.” In Speyer, Worms, Mainz and Cologne, Jews
died by the thousands despite the efforts by Catholic bishops to protect them.
Things changed for "We’re right. You’re wrong.” to “We’re right. You’re
dead.” When they finally got the Roman/Byzantine Empire, they were ambushed by
the Turks and what goes around comes around. Of the 20,000 only 3,000 survived.
The delicate balance ended. Jews became even useful to the moneyed interests of
the west. Now there was a way to cancel debts to Jewish moneylenders. Preach a
crusade and kill the Jews. How efficient!
Next
week: How odd of God to choose the Jews.
on to part 16
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