You should have put a sarcasm tag after your post. That is unless you were serious. You don’t have to have a “Red Cross” emplazoned on a sheild to be a “Christian Army”. The Catholic Church supported Orthodox Franks over Arian Visigoths centuries before Islam was even born as a Faith. Voila! Arianism is eventually crushed by force. Charlemagne executed pagan cheiftains who failed to convert to Christianity....this had nothing to do with Islam. In 392 (shortly after Christianity became the state religion of the Byzantines) Theodosius outlawed paganism. Over the next century force was used to drive all forms of Paganism out of the Empire until for all practical purposes it could not show itself in public.
Anyone who thinks thinks that Orthodox Christianity has spread (and remained dominant) SOLELY on the basis of its conversionary power is ignorant, delusional, or both.
The Teutonic Knights of centuries later did the same thing. But the author’s story is, as was said upthread, made up.
***The Catholic Church supported Orthodox Franks over Arian Visigoths centuries before Islam was even born as a Faith.***
Simply because a church supports an army does not mean that army is fighting Christ’s battles. All churches supported the USA in 1941.
Constantine had Christian troops not to spread the Gospel but to affirm his hold on the Empireship as Caesar. Long after he was dead Julian the Apostate tried to revive paganism and supress Christianity, He was later killed by Persian non-Christian invaders.
The Arians captured Gaul, Spain. It took ONE PRIEST to begin the disolving of the Arian empire. Within 100 years all of the Aryans were Trinitarians.
Not every battle was a religious one. Many were strictly political.
Meanwhile in the East, the Byzantines began to have serious problems with the followers of Mohammed when the king called for help from the West, and the Crusades were born.
***Theodosius outlawed paganism.*** And with it the sleezyness of the Pagan religions disappeared including the tossing of criminals to wild beasts along with Gladiator combats.
WHEN was the last time the emasculated priests of Attis had their blood letting ceremony when new converts whacked off very important parts of their bodies?
When was the last time the priests of Baal slaughtered infants.
When was the last time the Druids encased men in cages and burned them alive like ISIS does today.
There are times when a church cannot be neutral. Look what happened in Russia, China, Spain, Mexico in the 1930s.