Posted on 06/07/2016 1:23:47 PM PDT by marshmallow
I think that you mean the 4th Crusade rather than the 7th. Although they started out as crusaders they were diverted from that task by the Byzantine Prince Alexios IV Angelos to act as mercenaries to reinstall his father, the deposed Emperor Isaac II, on the throne. The Latin empire in Constantinople was only established when Isaac and his son were deposed again the Latin mercenaries return to take the city in order to receive their promised payment.
To continue to present the actions of the former crusaders in establishing the Latin Empire as a perfidious action of the Latins/Catholics against the Greeks/Orthodox is to misrepresent history. The Eastern Empire was weakened by internal strife that had been going on for centuries. While the actions of the Latin mercenaries who were brought into the dynastic disputes of Constantinople by Byzantine princes exasperated the situation, it was not the cause of the fall of Constantinople. Additionally, to continually harp on this is to isolate the aid that the Eastern Empire also got from those Crusaders who fulfilled their mission and fought the Turks to protect Christendom. It is time to declare history to be history and not bring up old wounds for the sake of modern polemics.
“I think that you mean the 4th Crusade rather than the 7th.”
You are of course correct. In my feeble defense, I can tell you that ten minutes before I wrote “7th” I had been discussing the 7th Ecumenical council with a friend and the priest apropos of some of the icons at church.
I will stick with my assessment of the actions of the 4th Crusade. As you know, +JPII apologized for what they did. It also lead to the establishment of a “Latin Patriarchate” at Constantinople (and others throughout the Orthodox East, even in my family’s part of Greece, Morea) which were quickly recognized by Rome at the 4th Lateran Council. If I remember correctly, that Patriarchate was dissolved in either the 1950s or 60s!
These are historical and present day realities which may make little or no difference in the West, but a meaningful in the East.
Me also. A great place to confess ones sins and beg forgiveness.
The broadcast of the morning call to prayer from within Hagia Sophia is likely to reignite controversy over the use of the building, which was designated a museum in 1935 under Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of the modern Turkish Republic. Although the call to prayer has been played from Hagia Sophia’s minarets for the last four years, the muezzin has always chanted from a prayer room in the museum grounds rather than from inside the former mosque and cathedral.
Built as an Orthodox Christian basilica during the reign of Byzantine Emperor Justinian I in 537, the famous domed structure, known as Ayasofya in Turkish, was converted into a mosque following Sultan Mehmet II’s conquest of the city in 1453.
In recent years there have been calls to return the building to Muslim worship. Last month, the Greek government complained about the reciting of the Quran in Hagia Sophia during Ramadan – criticism the Turkish Foreign Ministry described as “unacceptable.” For the azan call that was televised in a July 2 program featuring Mehmet Görmez, the head of the Religious Affairs Directorate (Diyanet), Greek Foreign Affairs Ministry Spokesperson Efstratios Eftimiu said: “We express our intense concern and discomfort at yet another step that undermines the nature of Hagia Sophia as a monument of global cultural heritage and that obviously is not compatible with the principles that should govern a modern, secular state.”
http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/first-call-to-prayer-inside-istanbuls-hagia-sophia-in-85-years.aspx
This is bad news.
The Umayyad Mosque, in Damascus, is also a big tourist attraction.
BUT, there are imams there 24/7 gathered around a decorative 10’ tall obelisk that purportedly has the HEAD of St. John the Baptist.
Muslims believe that St. John was a holy man and so continue, after all this time, to pray at this memorial.
We saw that with our own eyes. We all had to take off our shoes, as one does when one enters a mosque.
My point: museum cum mosque or mosque cum museum. It really doesn't bother me.
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.