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

[Nishant Xavier]

Continued, and Completed: btw, check the ample footnotes and historical references in the article if you doubt the authenticity of one or more historical facts related. Also, if you think there are some factual historical errors in the article, name 2 or 3, pls. It'll be interesting to check.

King Richard the Lionheart of England, one of the Crusaders, when offered the Crown of Jerusalem, said: "I will not wear a Crown of Gold where Christ my King wore a Crown of Thorns". This man was not after power and wealth, nor driven by bloodlust, and it would be madness to think he was, any more than to think the Allies who liberated Germany from the Nazis on D-Day were. Read the history for yourself and then assess.

The bishop of Amasia named Malecenus wanted to ransom those of his people who had been captured but knew that the Byzantine Emperor Leo VI would not help; so he appealed to Pope Benedict IV in Rome.

The Pope received him kindly, and gave him an encyclical letter addressed to all bishops, abbots, counts and judges and to all orthodox professors of the Christian faith asking them to show Malacenus every consideration, and to see him safely from one city to the next.

In 905 Pope Sergius III helped Bishop Hildebrand of Silva Candida restore some of the damage done to his See by the ravaging Saracens who had devastated the Church of Silva Candida in the neighbourhood of Rome.

In 915 Pope John X successfully created a Christian League with the help of Byzantine Admiral Picingli and his fleet. Even the bickering princes of southern Italy joined forces against the Saracens, along with King Berengarius and his armies from North Italy. The enemy were holed-up in their fortresses on the Garigliano near Gaeta, north of Naples. After three months of blockade, they tried to fight their way out only to be repelled by a victorious Christian force.

In 934 the Fatimid imam al-Ka'im planned an audacious invasion of Liguria led by Ya'kub bin Ishaq. The latter attacked Genoa that year, and took it in 935.

It wasn't until 972 that Duke William of Provence succeeded in driving the Saracens finally from the fastnesses of Faxineto. In 976 the Fatimid Caliphs of Egypt had sent fresh Muslim expeditions into southern Italy. Initially the German emperor Otho II , who had set up his headquarters in Rome, successfully defeated these Saracen forces, but in July 982 he was ambushed and his army was almost cut to pieces.

In 977 Sergius, Archbishop of Damascus, was expelled from his See by the Muslims. Pope Benedict VII gave him the ancient church of St Alexius on Rome's Aventine hill, and he founded a monastery there and placed it under Benedictine rule, with himself its first abbot.

The pontificate of Pope John XVIII [1003-1009] was marred by famine and plague and by marauding bands of Saracens who plundered the Italian coast from Pisa to Rome from bases on Sardinia.

By 1010 they had seized Cosenza in southern Italy. Then Sardinia fell to the Arabs in 1015, led by a certain Abu Hosein Mogehid [thus the Latin Chronicles]. I take this person to be Mujahid bin 'Abd Allah whom Arab sources credit with the invasion. The Saracen force based on Sardinia, over the next few years, torched Pisa, seized Luna in northern Tuscany, and ravaged the land. Pope Benedict VIII managed to assemble a fleet and challenged the Saracen chief who turned tail and fled to Sardinia, leaving his fleet at the mercy of the papal force which was victorious.

Mujahid bin 'Abd Allah then sent the Pope a bag of chestnuts and a message that he would arrive in the following summer with as many soldiers as there were nuts in the bag. Benedict accepted the chestnuts and sent back a bag of rice: 'If your master,' he said to the astonished messenger, 'isn't satisfied with the damage he has done to the dowry of the Apostle, let him come again and he will find an armed warrior for every grain of rice'.

The Pope did not wait for an answer but carried the war into the enemy's territory. He co-opted the combined fleets of Pisa and Genoa and they sailed for Sardinia in 1017 only to find Mujahid in the act of crucifying Christians on Sardinia. The Muslim leader fled to Africa, and Sardinia was occupied by the Pisans. Mujahid kept trying to re-take Sardinia until 1050 when he was captured by the Pisans and the island was made over to them by the Pope.

Muslims from Spain sacked Antibes in 1003. They sacked Pisa in 1005 and 1016, and Narbonne in 1020.

Sometime around 1025 Pope John XIX granted the pallium [sign of Ecclesiastical jurisdiction] to Archbishop Peter of Gerona in northeast Spain, on condition that he redeemed Christian captives of the Saracens as he had promised the Pope when he had come on his 'ad limina' visit.

The First Crusade what made it a reality

The four-hundred and sixty-three years that elapsed between Muhammad's death in 632 and the calling of a Crusade to free the Holy Places in 1095 was not a time of 'peaceful co-existence' between Muslims and European or Byzantine Christians. Nor was it, for Christians living in Muslim-occupied territories. They enjoyed 'peace' only by keeping the lowest possible profile, paying the jizya, or head-tax, and accepting nonperson status in lands that had been Christian before the Muslim invaders arrived.

The new millennium saw the situation go from bad to worse. In 1009 the Fatimid Caliph of Egypt, abu-'Ali Mansur al-Hakim, ordered the destruction of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. The edict of destruction was signed by his Christian secretary ibn-'Abdun. The Muslims destroyed the Tomb of Jesus, the Dome and the upper parts of the Church until their demolition was halted by the great mound of debris at their feet. For eleven years Christians were forbidden even to visit the rubble or to pray in the ruins.

Shocked by the destruction of Christendom's holiest Shrine, Pope Sergius IV appealed for help to go to Palestine to rebuild it. His appeal fell on deaf ears.

At the beginning of the fifth century, two hundred years before Muhammad appeared, there were seven-hundred Catholic bishops in Africa.[14] Two hundred of them attended the Council of Carthage in 535 AD. By the middle of the 900s there were forty left. By 1050, as a result of 'peaceful coexistence,' there were only five left. In 1076 there were two. We learn this from a letter that Pope Gregory VII, 'Hildebrand,' wrote to Cyriacus, Archbishop of Carthage in June 1076. As three bishops are needed for the valid consecration of another bishop Gregory asked him to send a suitable priest to Rome who could be consecrated assistant bishop, so that he [Cyriacus] and Servandus, bishop of Buzea in Mauritania, and the new bishop could consecrate other bishops for the African Catholics.[15]

Gregory VII, on his deathbed in 1085, dreamt of forming a Christian League against Islam and said, 'I would rather risk my life to deliver the Holy Places, than govern the Universe'.[16]

It seems to have been the Seljuk Turkish capture of Jerusalem in 1076 that finally swung the balance, exhausted the patience of the European Christians, and fulfilled Gregory's wish. Pilgrimage to the Holy Places had became more difficult; a poll-tax was imposed on visitors. Those who dared journey there were harassed, robbed and some even enslaved.

At the Council of Piacenza summoned by Pope Urban II and held in March 1095, Byzantine delegates emphasized the danger facing Christendom from Muslim expansion, and the hardship facing Eastern Christians until the infidel be driven back.[17] They repeated an appeal made by Emperor Alexius to Robert of Flanders asking him to return to the East with some knights to assist the Byzantines in their struggle with the Muslims.

Towards the end of that same year, Urban II, at another Council held at Claremont in France, took up the suggestion, and urged Europe's Christians to 'Take the road to the Holy Sepulchre ... let each one deny himself and take up the Cross'. The Assembly rose to its feet and shouted 'God wills it'.

Muhammad died on June 8, 632 AD. It had taken four hundred and sixty three years for Europe's Christians to combine their forces and rise up in defence of themselves and of their Faith.