Posted on 08/30/2014 7:31:59 AM PDT by marshmallow
William Dalrymple’s 1997 travelogue "From the Holy Mountain" is an excellent place to start for Westerners seeking to understand the devastating decline of Christianity in the Middle East.
The historian William Dalrymple is Britain’s most famous living travel writer. He is also a member of the Dalrymple clan, a celebrated Scottish family of three principal branches. William’s branch became Roman Catholic in the 19th century, and in the 20th both his Uncle John (“Old Jock”) and his brother John (“Young Jock”) were ordained Roman Catholic priests. Today “Young” Father Jock Dalrymple is the pastor of a parish church in Edinburgh.
It is not surprising, then, that William Dalrymple, whose attentions were previously focused on—and would subsequently be subsumed by—India, would become so entranced by the memoir of a sixth-century Christian saint that he undertook to follow his travels throughout the Middle East. St. John Moschos (550-619) visited several far-flung monasteries, fleeing from devastating Persian attacks, before writing his hagiographical The Spiritual Meadow. William Dalrymple’s journey comprised two short visits and the period stretching from June to December of 1994. The result was the modern classic From the Holy Mountain (1997), Dalrymple’s witness, not only to the survival (or loss) of places visited by Moschos, but to the plight of Christians in the Middle East. While the book is now nearly 20 years old, its significance has only grown as the situation of Middle Eastern Christians has worsened over the years.
Dalrymple writes, “What attracted me to The Spiritual Meadow in the first place was the idea that Moschos and [his companion] Sophronius were witnessing the first act in a process whose dénouement was taking place only now: that the first onslaught on the Christian East observed by the two monks was now being completed by Christianity’s devastating decline in the.........
(Excerpt) Read more at catholicworldreport.com ...
We are told that ‘Islam’ means ‘peace’. Why do not enterprising journalists ever think to ask Middle Eastern Christians their opinion about that?
God gives power and He takes it away. For his own, often inscrutable reasons.
I am looking at buying the book.
Good question. The Middle Eastern Christians and the Israeli Jews are the REAL experts about Islam.
ping
One of the very best books I have ever read. Western Christians didn’t care about Eastern Christians when it was written anymore than they do now. Some of us have been convinced for decades that you all simply want us gone.
BTW, the Spiritual Meadow is, or was, available on Amazon. Many of St. John Moschos’ stories were my bedtime stories as a child.
Muslims are for the systematic elimination of all Jews and Christians from their lands. Can you imagine if someone from this country stood up and called for the elimination of all Muslims from America?
At least with the Jews, that is those who live in Israel, they have a very powerful military force that the Muslims KNOW they better not mess around with, including the legendary “iron dome.”
As for the Christians, sadly, are pretty much are on their own.
As a Roman Catholic that has Hungarian and Italian roots that go back to the Cross, I agree with you. I repost this occasionally to remind us of the threat and need to work as brothers in Christ. I for one, care:
Two excerpts from Roger Crowley’s “1453” book on the fall of Constantinople:
May 27th, 1453: “Late in the afternoon the people of the city, seeking religious solace, converged for the first time in five months on the mother church of St. Sophia. The dark church which had been so conspicuously boycotted by the Orthodox faithful was filled with people, anxious, penitent, and fervent, and in the first time since the summer of 1064, in the ultimate moment of need, it seems that Catholic and Orthodox worshipped together in the city, and the 400 year old schism and the bitterness of the Crusades were put aside in a final service of intercession.”
Pope Pius, Mantua, 1459:
“We ourselves allowed Constantinople, the capital of the east, to be conquered by the Turks. And while we sit at home in ease and idleness, the arms of these barbarians are advancing to the Danube and the Sava. In the Eastern imperial city they have massacred the successor of Constantine along with his people, desecrated the temples of the Lord, sullied the noble edifice of Justinian with the hideous cult of Muhammad. They have destroyed the images of the mother of God and other saints, overturned their altars, cast the relics of the martyrs to the swine, killed the priests, dishonored women and young girls, even the virgins dedicated to the Lord, slaughtered the nobles of the city at the sultan’s banquet, carried off the image of our crucified Saviour to their camp with scorn and mockery amid cries of “That is the God of the Christians” and befouled it with mud and spittle. All this happened beneath our very eyes, but we lie in a deep sleep….Mehmer will never lay down arms except in victory or total defeat. Every victory for him a stepping-stone to another, until, after subjecting all the princes of the West, he has destroyed the Gospel of the Christ and imposed the law of his false prophet upon the whole world.
Why does this surprise anyone.
Religions come and go. Their “popularity” has been fickle for hundreds if not thousands of years.
They evolve, merge, take on characteristics of each other, and they are promoted by governments and movements. They are hijacked to support the ideology of the times.
And every one of themselves to be better than the rest. Most of them claim to hold THE best, fastest, way to salvation and everlasting light.
Christianity has had a great run. But, in some places in the world it is waning.
Islam comes and goes (usually as a result of a crusade or two.)
It’s how people work. Agree with it or not...this is the way the world has worked since societies were born.
Do these things and cruise (Cruz) into the White House.
In the southern parts of the world, the Christian faith is growing.
The fourth Crusade’s sacking of Constantinople was the biggest act of theft in history, and fatally weakened the Empire. Once the city fell to those bastard turkmen, europe realized a bit late how stupid they had been not to help.
As it will grow elsewhere in time. Times change. Religions really don’t.
has had do does did can could shall should will might may and must . . . fastest growing religion
The dead US Marines of Lebanon beg to disagree with you; when we were still a “Christian” country we supported them.
Without Western intervention, Constantinople would have fallen hundreds of years earlier.
In hindsight, we can see that it was inevitable; demographics favor those who have multiple wives. Would Europe today (with its large Muslim populations) intervene if Constantinople was being beseiged now? Looking at the Muslim purge of Christians from Iraq and Syria, I think we can safely assume Europe wouldn’t lift a finger.
Oh, really? Were they the same Marines that Nixon and his running dog Kissinger sent to protect the Orthodox Christians of Cyprus from the Republicans’ best friends the Mohammedan Turks? Oh, right, it was Nixon and Kissinger who gave the Turks the green light for the rape of Cyprus and the turning of our churches there into stables and public urinals!
No, it was Greece that allowed that. If not for western Christians Greece wouldn’t exist except as a Turkish province.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.