thomash wrote:
DOES NOBODY READ MY FUCKING POSTS? YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT EVENTS SEPARATED BY DECADES IF NOT CENTURIES (with some factual inaccuracies)
Events separated by decades and centuries? Yep, Sounds like the crusades to me, considering the 1st crusade began in 1904ish, and the 9th towards the middle of the 13th century, by definition the crusades spanned over many decades and centuries, what is your point? Why should events over long periods of time not be considered relevant when discussing the crusades?
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AND PERFORMED BY MULTIPLE DIFFERENT PEOPLE AS THOUGH THEY WERE REPRESENTATIVE OF THE WILL OF A SINGLE ENTITY. WHAT. THE. FUCK.
The definition of the crusades has never been limited to a single individual, why can't I use different people as examples to expose the crusades for the terror that was committed?
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Factual Errors:
- The Church itself actually did not force Scandinavians to convert to Christianity. They can thank their own Kings for that.
Right, because Pope Celestine III's call for a crusade against the pagans of Finnland, the baltic, old Prussia and the Eastern slav areas had nothing to do with Christian conquering of north east europe.
As for your comment on Scandanavian kings, its common knoweledge that many pagans lived side by side christians in these mixed communities who were mostly ruled by Christian kings. It was only under pressure from the Catholic Church and Crusade happy kings of the Holy roman empire who pressured them into totally destroying pagan Europe.
If it wasn't for the crusades or the Catholic church's empirical attitude, we could of well seen large untouched pagans communities in Scandinavia today.
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- The crusaders in the Baltic were generally not the same people as the crusaders in the Holy Land.
But they were undeniably a core part of the Crusades, no less real then what happened in the middle east. Crusades into north Eastern Europe where still under papal sanction with 'religious justification'.
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- The Byzantine Empire wasn't a whole lot friendlier to the crusaders than they were to the Empire.
The Byzantines weren't saints, people!So because they weren't "friendly", they deserved to be betrayed, conquered and divided amongst crusader warlords? There is no honour in what the crusaders did in Constantinople.
The Catholic crusaders, just like the muslims, had no right to the levant which was overwhelmingly Orthodox Christian for a long time
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- Most of the Byzantine Empire's problems and decline is generally attributed by historians to internal corruption. It's ironic that you describe the Western Europeans as corrupt when the Byzantines were the textbook case of corrupt, unnecessarily complex bureaucracy.
Right, internal corruption, im sure having your capital state betrayed then sacked and having your entire empire overrun by catholic crusader zealots for a couple of years isn't what coincidently led to there annexation by the ottoman empire shortly after. The Byzantines where to busy recovering from the crusaders to defend against the ottomans.
The balkans where the gateway into Europe, by fucking the east over the west Christian europeans only made it harder for themselves, and it took the Austrians, Polish and Hungarian people quite some time to drive back the ottomans. Only the muslims profited from the west taking advantage of the east.
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- The Knights Templar were originally founded as an extremely poor order intended to protect pilgrims. Conflating the later history of the institution with some sort of original intent (cruel and calculated expansionism) is kind of like saying that the modern U.S. government is exactly what the Founding Fathers intended.
I never
specifically accused the Knights Templar of anything, as I feel they as an order began with good intentions, but calculated expansion in practice was what we saw from the Catholic church who fueled these militant campaigns into the middle east. King Philip burning the Templars at the stake after he became jealous of there wealth is a perfect example of just how corrupt the church's influence was.