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[Achilles The Myrmidon]

antonio62 wrote: Achilles The Myrmidon wrote: Eton wrote: Thanks for reiterating my point that Moorish Spain was light years ahead of the anti-semitic hellhole that followed their expulsion. Nice try.What i prove was the Spain was Christians land and that the muslims were the invaders...

Well why did the Crusaders have the right to invade the ME or was it all ok because the Pope said so. Did the Greeks have the right to invade Persia. Rome to invade Gaul. No they didn't but hey they did it anyway. All through history people have been invading other lands. I would still rather live under the Moors than the ''Spanish'' or any other Christian king for that matter. "The trigger for the First Crusade was Emperor Alexius I's appeal to Pope Urban II for mercenaries to help him resist Muslim advances into territory of the Byzantine Empire. Although the East-West Schism was brewing between the Catholic Western church and the Greek Orthodox Eastern church, Alexius I expected some help from a fellow Christian. However, the response was much larger, and less helpful, than Alexius I desired, as the Pope called for a large invasion force to not merely defend the Byzantine Empire but also retake Jerusalem.

When the First Crusade was preached in 1095, the Christian princes of northern Iberia had been fighting their way out of the mountains of Galicia and Asturias, the Basque Country and Navarre, with increasing success, for about a hundred years. The fall of Moorish Toledo to the Kingdom of León in 1085 was a major victory, but the turning points of the Reconquista still lay in the future. The disunity of the Muslim emirs was an essential factor, and the Christians, whose wives remained safely behind, were hard to beat: they knew nothing except fighting, they had no gardens and libraries to defend, and they worked their way forward through alien territory populated by infidels, where the Christian fighters felt they could afford to wreak havoc. All these factors were soon to be replayed in the fighting grounds of the East. Spanish historians have traditionally seen the Reconquista as the molding force in the Castilian character, with its sense that the highest good was to die fighting for the Christian cause of one's country."

You see ,my friend,the muslims attack first...

[Achilles The Myrmidon]

Eton wrote: Achilles The Myrmidon wrote: Eton wrote: The Moors never forced christians to convert to Islam, they were very respectful of other religions.
In anycase you are going into tricky territory because in my opinion Moorish influence lasted for 800 years and after that amount of time they were no longer invaders, they were born and raised there several generations over.
The Visigoths were invaders originally but now we call the Spanish.
How long do a people have to live in a territory before they can call it home? Listen,Eton or whetever the hell your mommy call you, Europe was and is the birthplace of the White Men.The savage ,barbarian Moorish have no f***ing bussines to invete to Spain.

If you like muslims so much maybe you should go and immigrand in a muslim country.They will treat you and your ass just the way you like it.And maybe when you and Hassan or Mohhament or whatever the hell your lovebird name will be live happy in a muslim country you would stop coming here and post any idiotic idea your litlle brain produce...

The truth wins out in the end. Prejudices are an ugly thing, and that is why you have just shot yourself in the foot. If you want to have a serious discussion about Arab culture in Spain then get back to me but leave the racism at the door. I dont think that a "man" like you,who already make a claim that a Nation must have pure blood,can call anyone else racist...

[Achilles The Myrmidon]

"No author works alone—even an author who creates a new world out of his own imagination. Born in 1892, J. R. R. Tolkien came of age in a dark, secular time. He responded in terms common to a group of English Christian writers—mostly Catholics and Anglo-Catholics—who upheld older, truer values against the dehumanizing trends of rationalist science and secular philosophy.

G. K. Chesterton, T. S. Eliot, Evelyn Waugh, and others all lit bold flames against the century's darkness. Tolkien's torch joined theirs as he turned to classical and Norse mythology and the timeless teachings of the church to forge a new "Christian myth."

Each of these "Christian humanists," including Tolkien, wrestled against the legacy of two men: Friedrich Nietzsche and Oscar Wilde.

Friedrich Nietzsche died, after twelve years of insanity, in the opening months of the new century. He was the most outspoken philosophical foe of Christianity in the late nineteenth century, and his ideas flourished in the twentieth. Convinced that Christianity was bankrupt, he proclaimed Schopenhauer's "will to power" and emphasized that only the strong ought to survive.

He maintained that Christian charity served only to perpetuate the survival of the weak and counterposed the idea of the "superman" (the Ubermensch) who would overcome human weakness and vanquish the meek. In Tolkien's mythical world, Nietzsche's shadow emerges in the "will to power" of the Enemy, most specifically in the designs of Sauron and Saruman but also in the ambitions of Boromir and Gollum.

Oscar Wilde died on November 30, 1900. The inheritor of the decadent romanticism of Byron and Baudelaire, he flouted traditional morality and was sentenced to two years in prison as a result of his scandalous homosexual affair with Lord Alfred Douglas.

Nietzsche's pride found deadly "fruition" in the Nazi death-camps and in the rise of the abortion clinics. Wilde's prurience flourished in the sexual "liberation" of the 1960s and beyond. Nietzsche died impenitent and insane; Wilde was received into the Catholic Church on his deathbed.

Against the influence of thinkers like these, the Christian humanists reacted.

G. K. Chesterton, the most important figure in the Christian literary revival in the early years of the century, fell under the spell of Wilde and the Decadents as a young man at London's Slade School of Art during the early 1890s. But he quickly recoiled in horror from the moral implications of their position.

Much of his early work, particularly his novel The Man Who Was Thursday, was a faith-founded attempt to clear the Wildean fog of the 1890s. Chesterton also crossed swords with the ghost of Nietzsche, refuting the neo-Nietzschean ideas of George Bernard Shaw and H. G. Wells. "Nietzsche's Superman is cold and friendless," Chesterton wrote in Heretics. "And when Nietzsche says, 'A New commandment I give to you, be hard,' he is really saying, 'A new commandment I give to you, be dead.' Sensibility is the definition of life." Chesterton's words, written more than ten years before the Bolshevik Revolution and almost thirty years before Hitler's rise to power, resonate with authenticated prophecy.

Those literary figures who have expressed a specific and profound debt to Chesterton as an influence on their conversions include C. S. Lewis, Ronald Knox, Dorothy L. Sayers and Alfred Noyes. Thus, without Chesterton, the world might never have seen the later Christian poetry of Noyes, the subtle satire of Knox, the masterful translation and commentary on Dante by Sayers, and the blossoming of Lewis's many talents.

If Chesterton, along with his friend Hilaire Belloc, were the giant figures of the Christian literary revival during the first twenty years of the century, the Christian literary catalyst in the next twenty years was undoubtedly T. S. Eliot.

Eliot's The Waste Land, published in 1922, is probably the most important poem of the twentieth century. Although misunderstood and misinterpreted by modernist and postmodernist critics, The Waste Land is Christian in its deepest layers of meaning. Eliot's reaction to Decadence is rooted in the same sense of disgust as Chesterton's, but whereas Chesterton alluded to the "diabolism" of Decadence, Eliot portrayed it in all its lurid, seedy detail.

Eliot's next major poem, "The Hollow Men" (1925), reiterates The Waste Land's depiction of modernity as vacuous and sterile. Following his open profession of Christianity in 1928, Eliot's poems become more overtly religious, more didactic and "preachy," and perhaps less accomplished as poetry.

Eliot strongly influenced the writers of his generation, including the young novelist Evelyn Waugh, who rose to prominence following the 1928 publication of his first novel, Decline and Fall. Two years later Waugh was received into the Catholic Church, and thereafter, his darkly sardonic and satirical novels could be described as prose reworkings of The Waste Land's fragmented imagery. Waugh's novel A Handful of Dust even took its title from a line in The Waste Land. Its plot could be seen as a tangential commentary on the disgust at Decadence Eliot had expressed in his great poem.

Waugh's 1945 masterpiece, Brideshead Revisited, is perhaps (setting aside The Lord of the Rings) the finest novel of the twentieth century. Though still akin to Eliot's "waste land" theme, its principal source of inspiration was a line from one of Chesterton's Father Brown stories about how the grace of God pulls back wayward sinners with "a twitch upon the thread." In this wonderful novel, Waugh wanders through the wayward world of Wildean debauchery, depicts its allure and futility with Eliotic precision, and finally emerges into the cheering charity and clarity of Chestertonian conversion. This one book thus embodies the full range of influences (negative and positive) that had animated British Christian authors in the 40 years previous.

If Chesterton and Belloc dominated the first twenty years of the twentieth century, and Eliot and Waugh the next twenty years, the century's middle years belong to C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien.

Lewis's manifold talents shine in a variety of writings—from the peripatetic Pilgrim's Regress and The Great Divorce, to space travel and children's stories, to works of straightforward Christian apologetics. Tolkien, for the most part, channeled his own considerable gifts in one direction only.

His "sub-creation," Middle-earth, was the labor of a lifetime, as Tolkien carved the narrative of The Lord of the Rings out of the rich substrate of The Silmarillion. In his mythical epic we see Sauron's "will to power" countered by the hobbits' humility, and we see the poison of the Dark Lord's decadence healed by the purity of relationships (for example, Aragorn and Arwen) in which eros is bridled by the charity of chastity.

Tolkien's mythical masterpiece stands as a pinnacle of achievement on the mountain range of the Christian humanists' writings. It may justly be classed with the most important poem, The Waste Land, and the finest novel, Brideshead Revisited, of the twentieth century. All three are faithful, profound responses to a dark time."

I hope no one here call Tolkien a racist...

[antonio62]

Achilles The Myrmidon wrote: antonio62 wrote: Achilles The Myrmidon wrote: Eton wrote: Thanks for reiterating my point that Moorish Spain was light years ahead of the anti-semitic hellhole that followed their expulsion. Nice try.What i prove was the Spain was Christians land and that the muslims were the invaders...

Well why did the Crusaders have the right to invade the ME or was it all ok because the Pope said so. Did the Greeks have the right to invade Persia. Rome to invade Gaul. No they didn't but hey they did it anyway. All through history people have been invading other lands. I would still rather live under the Moors than the ''Spanish'' or any other Christian king for that matter. "The trigger for the First Crusade was Emperor Alexius I's appeal to Pope Urban II for mercenaries to help him resist Muslim advances into territory of the Byzantine Empire. Although the East-West Schism was brewing between the Catholic Western church and the Greek Orthodox Eastern church, Alexius I expected some help from a fellow Christian. However, the response was much larger, and less helpful, than Alexius I desired, as the Pope called for a large invasion force to not merely defend the Byzantine Empire but also retake Jerusalem.

When the First Crusade was preached in 1095, the Christian princes of northern Iberia had been fighting their way out of the mountains of Galicia and Asturias, the Basque Country and Navarre, with increasing success, for about a hundred years. The fall of Moorish Toledo to the Kingdom of León in 1085 was a major victory, but the turning points of the Reconquista still lay in the future. The disunity of the Muslim emirs was an essential factor, and the Christians, whose wives remained safely behind, were hard to beat: they knew nothing except fighting, they had no gardens and libraries to defend, and they worked their way forward through alien territory populated by infidels, where the Christian fighters felt they could afford to wreak havoc. All these factors were soon to be replayed in the fighting grounds of the East. Spanish historians have traditionally seen the Reconquista as the molding force in the Castilian character, with its sense that the highest good was to die fighting for the Christian cause of one's country."

You see ,my friend,the muslims attack first...

True they were attacking Byzantium but it doesn’t really matter that they attacked them. What then happened was the Christian kings and the Pope decided to get involved in the conflict and try and recapture Jerusalem. So they weren't just going to keep the peace or to stop an aggressor they were going to try and invade the ME and capture Muslim lands. I'm not saying the Muslims had any right to conquer Byzantium but it wasn't right either for the Crusaders to try and conquer the Muslims lands.

Quote: Christians, whose wives remained safely behind, were hard to beat: they knew nothing except fighting, they had no gardens and libraries to defend, and they worked their way forward through alien territory populated by infidels


So you admit that the Muslims of the day had a greater culture than the Christians. The populated by infidels comment is a little disturbing to say the least have you ever heard of freedom of religion. It was some thing that at least the Muslims had.

[bob.appleyard]

Ah, I knew someone would come out with Urban II declaring the Crusades, and their professed humanitarian purpose. Good ol' Urban.

The curious thing about the Crusades is that a large proportion of them were aimed at fellow Christians. Perfect example of the pope playing politics. Is it any coincidence that the doctrine of papal overlordship (started by Leo IX, who was a member of the same party as Urban, and was the first crusading pope, by modern definitions) came at the same time as the Crusades?

Why did Bohemond Hauteville conquer Antioch, a Byzantine province? Was it to help out the Byzantines?

Why, upon capturing Jerusalem, were all the inhabitants (Jews, Christians and Muslims alike) butchered en masse?

Why, 100 years later, was Byzantium itself conquered by "pilgrims" (medieval term for crusaders), the population butchered, and the treasures of Constantinople stripped? Protecting Christianity from the ... Christians? I'm actually surprised you support this kind of behaviour, as it affected home turf, which you're obviously very defensive of.

This was no defense of the Holy Land. It was also rather a failure -- the thin strips of land conquered in the First Crusade never got any bigger, and were simply chipped away until nothing remained (except, of course, the Latin Empire of Constantinople, but then that got taken down too).

DON'T bring up the Crusades, be supportive, and think you can maintain any kind of moral credibility. They are a lesson in Western hypocrisy -- high ideals, dirty motives -- and they leave a bitter taste in the mouth of anyone who studies them, and certainly in the mouths of Muslims.

[antonio62]

They were Orthodox not Catholic.

[Dragoon]

Achilles The Myrmidon wrote: Eton wrote: The Moors never forced christians to convert to Islam, they were very respectful of other religions.
In anycase you are going into tricky territory because in my opinion Moorish influence lasted for 800 years and after that amount of time they were no longer invaders, they were born and raised there several generations over.
The Visigoths were invaders originally but now we call the Spanish.
How long do a people have to live in a territory before they can call it home? Listen,Eton or whetever the hell your mommy call you, Europe was and is the birthplace of the White Men.The savage ,barbarian Moorish have no f***ing bussines to invete to Spain.

If you like muslims so much maybe you should go and immigrand in a muslim country.They will treat you and your ass just the way you like it.And maybe when you and Hassan or Mohhament or whatever the hell your lovebird name will be live happy in a muslim country you would stop coming here and post any idiotic idea your litlle brain produce...

I've taken the liberty of reporting this post to the mods.

[Achilles The Myrmidon]

Dragoon wrote: Achilles The Myrmidon wrote: Eton wrote: The Moors never forced christians to convert to Islam, they were very respectful of other religions.
In anycase you are going into tricky territory because in my opinion Moorish influence lasted for 800 years and after that amount of time they were no longer invaders, they were born and raised there several generations over.
The Visigoths were invaders originally but now we call the Spanish.
How long do a people have to live in a territory before they can call it home? Listen,Eton or whetever the hell your mommy call you, Europe was and is the birthplace of the White Men.The savage ,barbarian Moorish have no f***ing bussines to invete to Spain.

If you like muslims so much maybe you should go and immigrand in a muslim country.They will treat you and your ass just the way you like it.And maybe when you and Hassan or Mohhament or whatever the hell your lovebird name will be live happy in a muslim country you would stop coming here and post any idiotic idea your litlle brain produce...

I've taken the liberty of reporting this post to the mods. Thanks :roll:

[Dragoon]

Achilles The Myrmidon wrote: Dragoon wrote: Achilles The Myrmidon wrote: Eton wrote: The Moors never forced christians to convert to Islam, they were very respectful of other religions.
In anycase you are going into tricky territory because in my opinion Moorish influence lasted for 800 years and after that amount of time they were no longer invaders, they were born and raised there several generations over.
The Visigoths were invaders originally but now we call the Spanish.
How long do a people have to live in a territory before they can call it home? Listen,Eton or whetever the hell your mommy call you, Europe was and is the birthplace of the White Men.The savage ,barbarian Moorish have no f***ing bussines to invete to Spain.

If you like muslims so much maybe you should go and immigrand in a muslim country.They will treat you and your ass just the way you like it.And maybe when you and Hassan or Mohhament or whatever the hell your lovebird name will be live happy in a muslim country you would stop coming here and post any idiotic idea your litlle brain produce...

I've taken the liberty of reporting this post to the mods. Thanks :roll:

Not only was it a blantant flame it was openly racist, both of which are against the rules of this forum.

[Achilles The Myrmidon]

Dragoon wrote: Achilles The Myrmidon wrote: Dragoon wrote: Achilles The Myrmidon wrote: Eton wrote: The Moors never forced christians to convert to Islam, they were very respectful of other religions.
In anycase you are going into tricky territory because in my opinion Moorish influence lasted for 800 years and after that amount of time they were no longer invaders, they were born and raised there several generations over.
The Visigoths were invaders originally but now we call the Spanish.
How long do a people have to live in a territory before they can call it home? Listen,Eton or whetever the hell your mommy call you, Europe was and is the birthplace of the White Men.The savage ,barbarian Moorish have no f***ing bussines to invete to Spain.

If you like muslims so much maybe you should go and immigrand in a muslim country.They will treat you and your ass just the way you like it.And maybe when you and Hassan or Mohhament or whatever the hell your lovebird name will be live happy in a muslim country you would stop coming here and post any idiotic idea your litlle brain produce...

I've taken the liberty of reporting this post to the mods. Thanks :roll:

Not only was it a blantant flame it was openly racist, both of which are against the rules of this forum. No problemo.Just so you know i am guy that likes to return favors...

[Dragoon]

Achilles The Myrmidon wrote: Dragoon wrote: Achilles The Myrmidon wrote: Dragoon wrote: Achilles The Myrmidon wrote: Eton wrote: The Moors never forced christians to convert to Islam, they were very respectful of other religions.
In anycase you are going into tricky territory because in my opinion Moorish influence lasted for 800 years and after that amount of time they were no longer invaders, they were born and raised there several generations over.
The Visigoths were invaders originally but now we call the Spanish.
How long do a people have to live in a territory before they can call it home? Listen,Eton or whetever the hell your mommy call you, Europe was and is the birthplace of the White Men.The savage ,barbarian Moorish have no f***ing bussines to invete to Spain.

If you like muslims so much maybe you should go and immigrand in a muslim country.They will treat you and your ass just the way you like it.And maybe when you and Hassan or Mohhament or whatever the hell your lovebird name will be live happy in a muslim country you would stop coming here and post any idiotic idea your litlle brain produce...

I've taken the liberty of reporting this post to the mods. Thanks :roll:

Not only was it a blantant flame it was openly racist, both of which are against the rules of this forum. No problemo.Just so you know i am guy that likes to return favors...

I doubt I would ever make a post like that, but if I do report it by all means.

[Achilles The Myrmidon]

Dragoon wrote: Achilles The Myrmidon wrote: Dragoon wrote: Achilles The Myrmidon wrote: Dragoon wrote: Achilles The Myrmidon wrote: Eton wrote: The Moors never forced christians to convert to Islam, they were very respectful of other religions.
In anycase you are going into tricky territory because in my opinion Moorish influence lasted for 800 years and after that amount of time they were no longer invaders, they were born and raised there several generations over.
The Visigoths were invaders originally but now we call the Spanish.
How long do a people have to live in a territory before they can call it home? Listen,Eton or whetever the hell your mommy call you, Europe was and is the birthplace of the White Men.The savage ,barbarian Moorish have no f***ing bussines to invete to Spain.

If you like muslims so much maybe you should go and immigrand in a muslim country.They will treat you and your ass just the way you like it.And maybe when you and Hassan or Mohhament or whatever the hell your lovebird name will be live happy in a muslim country you would stop coming here and post any idiotic idea your litlle brain produce...

I've taken the liberty of reporting this post to the mods. Thanks :roll:

Not only was it a blantant flame it was openly racist, both of which are against the rules of this forum. No problemo.Just so you know i am guy that likes to return favors...

I doubt I would ever make a post like that, but if I do report it by all means. Just check your Avatar.It says all about racism :evil:

[Dragoon]

Achilles The Myrmidon wrote: Just check your Avatar.It says all about racism :evil:

Eh...? Oh, that thing. Its a joke and hardly racist (last time I checked Christians weren't a "race"). I happen to find it funny and so I put it up as my avatar. Don't get twisted out of shape by it.

[bob.appleyard]

antonio62 wrote: They were Orthodox not Catholic.

Actually they were "Greek Christians". Catholics were "Latin Christians". Sorry, pedant attack. Those names came later. But I know what you mean.

At that point they did still consider themselves part of the same church, but there were enormous tensions. It's hardly a justification (if they were bothered about providing one). And Innocent III did express deep shock and regret at Constantinople falling. Whether that was affected or not is pretty difficlt to say, short of a stroll through the Vatican archives...