Christianity's Valuable Contributions to Humanity: An Examination of Militant Atheism

[Nishant Xavier]

Angrboda: Christians and even hard-core Commies can actually get along if both sides reciprocate certain expected behaviors. So much more could Christians and Muslims if the Islamic leaders of that time had been willing; but they were not. Even today, 360 MN Christians are persecuted around the world (75% of all religious persecution), and around 70% of that persecution comes from Islamic Nations persecuting Christians. One of the Arguments the Popes have been taking up in recent times is that Muslims should enjoy full freedoms in the West, but Christians likewise in Muslim Countries should enjoy the same (The Golden Rule, do unto others as you would have them unto you, etc).

Real Crusade History, Continued:

Sacking of St Peter's

Naples herself had to beat off a Muslim attack in 837. But in 846 Rome was not to be so fortunate. On August 23rd 846, Arab squadrons from Africa arrived at Ostia, at the Tiber's mouth. There were 73 ships. The Saracen force numbered 11,000 warriors, with 500 horses.[6]

The most revered Christian shrines outside the Holy Land, the tombs of Sts Peter and Paul, were desecrated and their respective Basilicas were sacked, as was the Lateran Basilica along with numerous other churches and public buildings.

The very altar over the body of St Peter was smashed to pieces, and the great door of St Peter's Basilica was stripped of its silver plates. Romans were desolated and Christendom was shocked at the barbarism of the Muslim forces.

Three years later Pope Leo IV [847-855] formed an alliance with Naples, Amalfi and Gaeta, and when a Saracen fleet again appeared at the mouth of the Tiber in 849, the Papal fleet joined forces with its allies and they repelled the Muslim fleet which turned, and ran into a violent wind-storm that destroyed it, like Pharaoh's army long before.

Survivors were brought to Rome and put to work helping to build the Leonine Wall around the Vatican. Twelve feet thick, nearly forty feet in height and defended by forty-four towers, most of this wall, and two of the round towers, can be seen still by visitors to the Vatican. These defensive walls were finished and blessed by Pope Leo IV in 852.

Taranto in Apulia was conquered by Arab forces in 846. They held it until 880.

In 870 Malta was captured by the Muslims. In 871 Bari, the Saracens' capital on mainland Italy, was recaptured from the Muslims by Emperor Louis II, who in 872 was to defeat a Saracen fleet off Capua.

223 years from the First Crusade

At this point in our examination of the 'peaceful coexistence,' which is made much of by Muslim apologists, we are still two-hundred and twenty-three years away from the calling of the first Crusade. Perhaps readers may better understand, now, why Emperor Louis II, grandson of Charlemagne was absolutely convinced, in the ninth century, of the need for a Crusade. 'He was quite sure that Islam must be driven right out of Europe.'[7] But still there was no call for a Crusade.

I haven't spoken of Muslim attacks against the Byzantine Empire even though these, too, played a part in setting the stage for the Crusades. The much vaunted military might and political power of the Eastern Roman Empire carried with it responsibility for protecting the West from Muslim invaders. This it generally failed to do.

Constantinople had been attacked in 673, and then for the next five years Arab armies and fleets attempted unsuccessfully to break through the Byzantine defences. 'Greek Fire,' that mysterious substance that burned on water, destroyed the Muslim fleets and won the day for the defenders.

Then, in 717, the Muslims returned to the attack, emboldened by their successes in Spain.

Fate intervened, and like Charles Martel and his Franks at Poitiers in 732, emperor Leo the Isaurian [717-740] turned back the Muslim tide. Constantinople was saved - for a time. Leo, for all his military skills, was a usurper, and an iconoclast. Despite defeating the Muslims, his policies ultimately further weakened both the Western and Eastern Roman Empires.

In 870, when Bernard the Wise from Brittany wanted to visit Palestine he had to obtain a laissez-passer from Muslim authorities in Bari, on the Adriatic Coast.[8]

In 873 the Muslim forces devastated Calabria in southern Italy to the point that it was reduced to the state 'in which it had been left by the Great Flood' and the Saracens expressed their intention of destroying Rome, the city of the 'Petrulus senex,' 'the ineffective old man, Peter'.[9]

In 874 Pope John VIII did all he could to dissuade Amalfi, Naples, Benevento, Capua, Salerno, and Spoleto from forming a pragmatic alliance with the Saracens. Amalfi, Capua and Salerno alone heeded his pleas for Christian solidarity.

From the close of 876 Pope John VIII had been sending letters in all directions to obtain help against the Arab forces which were devastating southern Italy and even threatening Rome itself. He sought the aid of Duke Bosone of Milan whom Emperor Charles the Bald had appointed his legate in Northern Italy - to no avail. He wrote for cavalry horses to Alfonso III, king of Galicia in Spain; and for warships to the Byzantines, and from 876 until May 877 he sent numerous letters to the Frankish Emperor begging him to aid the Catholics in Italy.

The Emperor proved to be a frail reed, and in 879, upon his death, the Duke of Spoleto turned on the Pope. John VIII, unable to cope with both Saracens and Spoleto, at once, had to pay tribute of 25,000 mancuses annually to the Arabs. A silver mancus was worth roughly AUD$25. This situation lasted for two years.

In 881 the Muslim allies of the Neapolitans captured the fortress on the Garigliano [the ancient Liris] 14 km east of Gaeta close to Anzio, just north of Naples, and plundered the surrounding countryside with impunity for forty years.

Returning from a synod at Ravenna [February 882] Pope John VIII found, as he put it, that 'the Saracens are as much at home in Fundi [close to Rome, in Latium] and Terracina' [80 km SE of Rome] as in Africa. 'Though we were seriously unwell,' wrote the Pope, we went forth to battle with our forces, captured eighteen of the enemy's ships, and slew a great many of their men'.[10] Six hundred captives of the Saracens were liberated.

Syracuse fell to the Muslims in 878 after a nine-month siege from which few escaped alive. The Byzantine city was pillaged and destroyed. Its collapse freed-up more numerous bands of marauding Muslims to harry the Italian towns and cities.

880 saw victory over Saracen forces at Naples by Byzantine Commanders and also the arrival in waters off Rome of warships sent by the emperor Basil to give the Pope the means of defending 'the territory of St Peter'.[11]

Meanwhile, the Saracens had turned their attention again to southern France and northern Italy. They had taken Avignon in 734 and Marseilles in 838 and they were ravaging Provence and North Italy from their bases in the Alps. The most important of these bases was Fraxineto or Frejus, not far from Toulon, which they captured in 889.

They were displaced temporarily from their base in 942 by Hugh of Arles who had a Byzantine fleet harry them from the sea, while he attacked from land. Horace Mann comments[12] that it is symptomatic of the kind of pragmatic leaders who controlled the destiny of Europe at that time, that instead of wiping out this bloodthirsty band of Muslim invaders, Hugh allowed them to stay where they were on condition that they did all they could to prevent his rival as 'king of Italy,' Berengerius Marquis of Ivrea, from returning to Italy.

The latter managed to return from Germany to Italy in 945, and the Muslims were not to be expelled completely from their lair until 972 - almost one-hundred years after capturing Fraxineto - by a league of Italian and Provencal princes.

In the meantime they infested the passes of the Alps, robbing and murdering pilgrims on their way to Rome. In 921 a large band of Englishmen, on pilgrimage to the tombs of the Apostles in Rome, were crushed to death under rocks rolled down on them by Saracens in the passes of the Alps.[13]

174 years from the First Crusade

At this point in the alleged peaceful coexistence between Muslims and Christians, we are still one-hundred and seventy-four years away from the calling of the first Crusade to free the Holy Places.

Meanwhile, Muslim fleets sacked and destroyed Demetrias in Thessaly, Central Greece, in 902, and Thessalonica the second city of the Byzantine Empire fell to them in 904. Muslim armies took Hysela in Carsiana in 887, and Amasia, the metropolitan city of Pontus in Asia Minor.

... [rest later]