January 04, 2017 Thursday
Bedtime Story
How the Great Schism Lead to the Fall of Constantinople
Lord Byron, father of Ada Byron is
notorious for his aristocratic excesses (much like the French monarchies),
numerous love affairs with both men and women and for incurring huge debts in
his life.
He was renowned for his personal beauty
being athletic, competent boxer and a good swimmer.
This is how he described himself, “I am
such a strange mélange of good and evil that it would be difficult to describe
me.”
He died very young at the age of 36 when
for no good reason he joined a war which was neither his nor did anyone compel
him to adopt as his.
When he was in his early to mid 30s the
Greeks were fighting the Ottoman Empire for independence.
Sometime in 1453 Constantinople which was
then the capital of Byzantine Empire was taken over by the invading army of the
Ottoman Empire.
The forces of Ottoman Empire was led by
Sultan Mehmud II, a very young emperor where as the army of the Byzantine
Empire was led by Emperor Constantine XI.
It was essentially a war between two religions
and cultures, between Islam and Christianity with one major tipping factor
being that the Christians themselves were long since divided themselves into
Latin West and Orthodox East.
This is not very different from the
Shia-Sunni schism in Islam that happened even before the Christian split.
Whereas Christianity took ten centuries to
develop its major cleavage, Islam was divided into two major sects almost
immediately after it originated following the death of its founder in 632 AD.
If not anything else, the study of various
religions that human apes have created would be enough for any sensible and
logical human ape to become disbeliever at least towards one specific religion
if not to the idea of god in general.
Yet human apes are fascinating creatures in
their tendency towards unpredictability and capriciousness.
Some of the greatest logicians like Alonzo
Church and greatest mathematicians like Ramanujan help deep and strong
religious faith.
Emperor Constantine XI was initially fooled
by the friendly diplomacy of Sultan Mehmud II and when he realized the true
intentions of the Ottomans he turned to Western Europe for help.
But now the price of the centuries of war
between the Eastern and Western churches had to be paid.
It was since the Great Schism of 1054 that
there was a total break of communion between the Latin Catholic Church and the
Eastern Orthodox Church.
The pope at this time was Nicholas V (born
as an average Italian ape Tommaso Parentucelli) and it was actually to him that
Emperor Constantine XI pleaded for help.
With this you should be able to imagine the
power of papacy and religion in those days.
Stay tuned to the voice of an average story storytelling
chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.com
Good night mon ami and my fellow cousin ape.
Advertisements
Another great educator and a teacher that I am aware of is
Professor Subhashish Chattopadhyay in Bangalore, India.
While I narrate stories, Professor Subhashish an electronic
engineer and a former professor at BARC, does and teaches real mathematics and
physics.
He started the participation of Indian students at the
International Physics Olympiad.
Do visit him here:
All his books can be downloaded for free through this link:
For edutainment and English education of your children, I
recommend this large collection of Halloween Songs for Kids:
No comments:
Post a Comment