Christianity and Islam

Posted on 9/29/06 in Church of Greece,Europe - West,Greek history,Greek Library,Islam,Orthodox Christianity
Reference Address: http://www.ellopos.com/blog/?p=93

When the time of the Fall was near, and the Emperor was after Western help which he never received, Byzantines, people and clergy, just were saying that “we prefer the turkish turban from the latine tiara”, remembering what Byzantium suffered with the sack of Constantinople by papal crusaders in 1204; compared with that, a spiritual rather than material damage, even Turkish atrocities seemed better. Here follow excerpts from a text by Photis Kontoglou explaining some points of the aversion of Byzantium for papacy, and the relative sympathy for Islam, despite even islamic violence.

So long as Orthodoxy exists in the hearts of people, this aversion will increase as the Orthodox clergy (the genius heads of it) turn to a union with Papacy, a union that will end with the destruction of Orthodoxy and all Christianity as such, leaving faith to be an object of vain scientific observation and equally vain keep of some customs by the clergy, a living reality in the hearts of only a few, absent from society as such, as happens already in the West.

To the text: Kontoglou, Christianity and Islam

Cf. The Islamic View of Late Byzantium, by Nadia Maria El-Cheikh