VATICAN CITY, JULY 1, 2008 (Zenit.org).- A study of the famous 4th Crusade of the 13th century -- which was called to rescue Jerusalem from Islam but resulted instead in a sack of Christian Constantinople -- has been published by the Vatican (order here).
The Vatican Publishing House has released a volume collecting the addresses in various languages from a conference held in 2004 on the 4th Crusade. That year was the 800th anniversary of the crusade that went awry. The 13th-century event is considered to have cemented the Great Schism with the Orthodox that had occurred in 1054.
The 2004 conference was organized by the Pontifical Committee of Historical Sciences, in collaboration with the Institute of Byzantine History of the University of Athens and the Institute of Byzantine and Neo-Greek Studies of the University of Vienna.
The volume is titled "The 4th Crusade Revisited" and it has an interdisciplinary scope, including considerations of the political, anthropological and theological implications of the crusade.
Monsignor Walter Brandmuller, president of the pontifical committee, wrote in the prologue that the volume was edited with the intention of "contributing to the completion of the historians' great project and to the purification of memory, which has been indicated by the path that has to lead to the coexistence of men, nations and religions, characterized by reciprocal understanding and benevolence."
He said the congress welcomed the invitation of the Pope, convinced that a "serious and impartial writing of history" without prejudices and based in "rigorous historical method" would be an indispensable tool in reaching this goal.
The volume brings together texts prepared by people of various nations and religious creeds, seeking what they call the step from suspicion to truth in charity
Tuesday, July 1, 2008
Vatican book on Fourth Crusade published
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
Major props to the Vatican!
ReplyDeleteComBox Hero: Ridgerunner on "The Sack of Constantinople"... is a post I offered over at TBC... To obsess further still about 1204, like it just happened to your grandma, and my grandpa was there... Well it speaks to a "fly trapped in the amber of the Imperium" mentality that is sad.
Too much of Byzantine Christianity is predicated on a nostalgia for a secular state that is long, long gone.
A can of worms is just about right. There's precious little the Vatican can say to mollify the East on this, except begging for forgiveness, again and again and again......
ReplyDeleteNo matter how you cut this up, the truth of the history here is sad. Apologies having been made and almost a millennium having passed since the event should be enough to quell the outrage. If you add in that the vast majority of Orthodox had no relatives there (it was Constantinople and not Kiev, Moscow, of Antioch) to whom should Catholic keep apologizing... the now Muslim Turks?
ReplyDeleteI mean I can sympathize with the Orthodox who believe that the Fourth Crusade weakened the Byzantine Empire to such an extent that it never recovered and set up its fall to the Ottomans and hundreds of years of Muslim oppression which lasts to this day. Personally, I believe that it would have fallen anyway and it's all just a matter of time. And it was also the scheming within the Imperial family which brought the whole thing about, although what the Latins did after Constantinople fell was a blasphemous disgrace, justly condemned by the reigning pontiff at the time.
ReplyDeleteBut the thing that gets me is how personally they take this (as if there grandmother was there) and how little they are willing to accept the apology offered and are willing, in Christian charity, to grant forgiveness. This, I don't get.
I beleive contradistinction to the "Evil Franks" is simply part of the Greek Culture that is mythical in its vivid memory of an event from 42 generations ago. My grandpa didn't defile your grandmother. The oldest living relative I ever remember meeting was my Great Grandmother who was born around 1884.
ReplyDeleteBut at the heart of the matter is something that is as interesting to notice as it could be telling: Catholics simply don't "do theology" from a standpoint of contradistinction. You can read 100 books by Catholics about Catholic thought, and very possibly have less than 5 of them take to task seriously and comprehensively non-Catholic sects and churches. (Of course if you are reading an apologetics work, this won't hold up!)
But if you pick up 100 Orthodox written books... How many could you get through before coming up with "Unlike in the west" or some other notation to how we are definately wrong, somewhat jesuitical, and should always be remembered for what "we" did in 1204?
Why is so much of what Orthodoxy is predicated on what it is not is so many places where it is explained? Why is it so essential to "pee in our Wheaties" and talk about how wrong we are to justify how right they are?
On the question of why much of modern Orthodox literature is about what Orthodoxy is not instead of what it is... I don't know. Even the best writers do this. Even Schmemann's are filled with this sort of discourse and I keep reading and reading waiting for a "cataphatic" statment.
ReplyDeleteLet me take a stab at it. It is true that much of Orthdox writing over the last century or two makes frequent use of contrasts with both Protestantism and Catholicism. There are several reasons for this, including (but not limited to) the following:
ReplyDelete1. The influence that Protestant and Roman Catholic doctrine and praxis have had on the Orthodox Church at certain times and in certain places. Fr. Schmemann frequentely lamented the influence of what he called "school theology" on Orthodox thinking. I understand this "school theology" to mean approaching Christianity as a set of rational propositions to be studied rather than as a life of prayer and worship, lived in union (however imperfect) with God.
2. The encroachment of Protestant missionaries into traditionally Orthodox countries, with the accompanying proseletyzing. No need to elaborate further on that (I think).
3. The expansion of Orthodoxy into the west, and the accompanying interest in Orthodoxy by those who are western (here defined as Roman Catholic and Protestant) Christians. When we Orthodox are asked questions by non-Orthodox, these questions are frequently framed in the following manner: What is the difference between the Orthodox view of (fill in the issue) and my church's. It's awfully hard to answer these questions without saying something like "unlike the (x) church/tradition, we do not believe (y); instead, we have always taught ....
We Orthodox would love to just simply state what we believe without any reference to other faith traditions (the cataphatic approach that Joseph mentioned)--but this is next to impossible when many Christian terms are used very differently by the dominant religious groups in the west. For example, when we say that Christians are saved by grace, we mean something very different than do western Christians.
By the way, I think Metropolitan Kallistos Ware does a good job of explaining Orthodoxy cataphatically in his book The Orthodox Church, which I am guessing Joseph has read. I have seen other books that do this, but they are admittedly few and far between.
I realize that this has been a somewhat long (and perhaps rambling) response, but I hope it has been helpful. I would love to clarify the response and/or
answer any other questions you might have.
In short, we Orthodox often define our beliefs in contrast to other Christians' because we have to.
Fr. James Early
Bless Father. Thank you for the comment!
ReplyDelete1. school theology
I've read his intro to liturgical theology. He is both complementary of the Roman scholarship on the topic, while he also believes there was a narrowing of an understanding of Tradition that failed to incorporate the act of worship sufficiently as a source of wisdom. The oft quoted "lex orandi lex credendi" model.
2. Protestant proselytism
One fears for ones stomach on pondering the Lutheran "Divine Liturgy" advanced in the Ukraine.
3. Inter-lingual blockage
Understandable. I simply think the evangelical dynamic is marred by setting up (as often as not) Western-belief straw men to knock down that either do not reflect the fullness of a Western belief or draw a parody of a historical belief no longer held or never held as it is presented. In the end you produce through the catechumenate a group of people more disposed to speak against Catholicism than for the fruits of Orthodoxy.
I have indeed read that book as well as "An Introduction to Orthodoxy" that both do a wonderful job of explaining the faith. I simply often find myself curious about a topic and am walked down a via negativa path more perplexed than before. Said another way, if I walk into a maze and am taken down every wrong turn before arriving at my goal my head is filled with more memories of empty hedgerows than the cheese at the maze's end. I quite possibly need to find a directed program to use. The St. Stephen's course was not what I expected but the Athanasius program was rather good. :)
Joseph,
ReplyDeleteI suggest that when you want to explore a topic related to Orthodoxy in depth, go and ask an Orthodox priest for some recommended resources. I would be happy to help you in this regard, although I am no expert in all areas of Orthodoxy.
On a side note, have you already made your visit to Houston? If so, I'm sorry I missed meeting you.
Surely! Shoot an email to me: byztex at gmail dot com. I don't have your email or I'd email you first.
ReplyDeleteYes, we couldn't make it to vespers on Saturday, but did stop by for fellowship on Sunday. The humidity down there is outrageous, but I narrowly survived the short trips from the car to my destinations. We should be back in town in August. Hope to see you then.