This one is for you Caleb ;)
ISLAM
Deus vult (Classical Latin for “God wills it”) was the cry of the people at the declaration of the First Crusade by Pope Urban II at the Council of Clermont in 1095 when the Eastern Orthodox Church requested help in defence from the Seljuj Turkish invasion of Anatolia. After hundreds of years of uncalled for Muslim oppression and the persecution of thousands of innocent Christians in Europe by the entire Muslim population and armies, the Catholic Church stepped up to defend the Byzantine Empire under Pope Urban II. The original chant was Deus Vult, meaning, God wills it. Wills what? God wills the defense of the church because the gates of Hell shall not prevail against it. Had they not defended the Church, there would be no Christians alive and the Vatican would have been destroyed within a few years of advancing Muslim armies moving North.
With groups like ISIS forming and radical Muslims as well as random terror attacks, we are in a dark world. Thousands of our Christian brothers are being executed and tortured because they refuse to accept Allah. Their villages are attacked and their families are brutally murdered and this is happening DAILY. The media covers about 1% of anything that happens and move on with their stories. Let's say a terrorist has a bomb strapped to his chest and he runs into a church with over 1,000 parishioners attending Mass and you have a concealed carry. Is it a sin to shoot him before he kills anyone? This can be down-scaled too. What if two ISIS members run into your church and they go to slit the priest's throat? Do you fire at them without sinning? God said not to murder and to love our enemies right? His name was father Jacques Hamel and his throat was slit by ISIS members who ran into the church during Mass and this happened a few weeks ago in France. We are under attack and here is what we are permitted to do:
According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church we are allowed to fight back in self defense to save innocent lives. We can do what it takes to stop mass casualties.
Legitimate defense: (CCC)
2263 The legitimate defense of persons and societies is not an exception to the prohibition against the murder of the innocent that constitutes intentional killing. "The act of self-defense can have a double effect: the preservation of one's own life; and the killing of the aggressor. . . . The one is intended, the other is not."
2264 Love toward oneself remains a fundamental principle of morality. Therefore it is legitimate to insist on respect for one's own right to life. Someone who defends his life is not guilty of murder even if he is forced to deal his aggressor a lethal blow:
If a man in self-defense uses more than necessary violence, it will be unlawful: whereas if he repels force with moderation, his defense will be lawful. . . . Nor is it necessary for salvation that a man omit the act of moderate self-defense to avoid killing the other man, since one is bound to take more care of one's own life than of another's.
2265 Legitimate defense can be not only a right but a grave duty for one who is responsible for the lives of others. The defense of the common good requires that an unjust aggressor be rendered unable to cause harm. For this reason, those who legitimately hold authority also have the right to use arms to repel aggressors against the civil community entrusted to their responsibility.
2266 The efforts of the state to curb the spread of behavior harmful to people's rights and to the basic rules of civil society correspond to the requirement of safeguarding the common good. Legitimate public authority has the right and duty to inflict punishment proportionate to the gravity of the offense. Punishment has the primary aim of redressing the disorder introduced by the offense. When it is willingly accepted by the guilty party, it assumes the value of expiation. Punishment then, in addition to defending public order and protecting people's safety, has a medicinal purpose: as far as possible, it must contribute to the correction of the guilty party.
DISCLAIMER: I am not provoking Muslims. I am stating a fact. I am good friends with two Muslims and in no way trying to attack them. I talk to them daily and get along very well even when we are talking religion.
--> For a list of all 527 quotes from the Quran that talk about the punishments and murder of nonbelievers --> click here
CHECK OUT THIS ACCOUNT --> @islamunveiled ⬅️
Some say they can find peaceful quotes in the Quran. The only peaceful quotes are ones where if you already believe in Allah and ask for forgiveness he will forgive you. Anyone who does not believe should basically be killed and punished. Almost every other quote in the Quran is about killing us. Islam is from اسلام which means submission and essentially "all submission (to Allah)" This IS NOT PEACE. The word for peace is Salam or سلام
The religion is literally called (All Submission) ... Submit to who? Their god or we die. That's how it works. The radical Muslims are just Muslims who are devout. They follow scripture word for word. The peaceful ones are moderate and cannot follow the Quran literally. They must take it out of context and pick a select few quotes to believe and ignore the rest.
“Forbidden to you are: dead meat, blood, the FLESH OF SWINE, and that on which hath been invoked the name of other than Allah.”
[Al-Qur’an 5:3]
These should be the new uniforms for the Christian Militias. 🇻🇦 #squadgoals .
That means Muslims CANNOT HAVE BACON!!! That's right, we are Pork Eating Crusaders who like bacon. (Not trying to offend Muslims since two of my friends are but just saying that really stinks)
Summary of Muslim Aggression for the hundreds of years BEFORE Christians even started to defend themselves:
by Dr. Paul Stenhouse
(Multiple sources listed in endnotes)
Current wisdom would have it that 'five centuries of peaceful co-existence' between Muslims and Christians were brought to an end by 'political events and an imperial-papal power play,' that was to lead to a centuries-long series of so-called "holy-wars" that pitted Christendom against Islam, and left an enduring legacy of misunderstanding and mistrust.'[1]
A school textbook, Humanities Alive 2, for Year 8 students in the Australian State of Victoria, carries the anti-Christian/anti Western argument further:
""Those who destroyed the World Trade Centre are regarded as terrorists. Might it be fair to say that the Crusaders who attacked the Muslim inhabitants of Jerusalem were also terrorists?[2]""
Muhammad died in Medina on June 8, 632 AD. The first of the eight Crusades to free the Holy Places in Palestine from Muslim control, and offer safe passage to the Holy Land for Christian pilgrims, was called only in 1095. At the risk of sounding pedantic, the period in question is not 'five centuries,' but four-hundred and sixty-three years; and those years, we contend, were not characterized by 'peaceful coexistence'.[3]
Islam's attack on Christianity
For the Christian states bordering the Mediterranean, it was a four-hundred and sixty-three year period of regular, disorganized [and occasionally organized] bloody incursions by Muslim mainly Arab and Berber land and sea forces. These came intent on booty - gold, silver, precious stones and slaves - on destroying churches, convents and shrines of the 'infidels,' and on the spread of politico-religious Islam throughout Europe from their bases in the Mediterranean and the Adriatic.
At the time of Muhammad's death there were flourishing Christian and Jewish communities in Arabia, and throughout the major centres of the Persian Empire. The whole of the Mediterranean world on its European, Asian and African sides, was predominantly Christian.
It had taken only a few years for Muslim tribesmen from Arabia, inspired by Muhammad's revelations and example, to invade the Eastern Roman or Byzantine Empire whose emperors devoted more time to religious disputation than to defending their empire. In 633 Mesopotamia fell. After a few years the entire Persian Empire fell to the marauding Arab tribesmen who drove the young Persian emperor Yazdagird into the farthest reaches of his empire, to Sogdiana [Uzbekistan], where he was eventually murdered by his Tartar bodyguard in a miller's hut.
Damascus fell in 635, and Jerusalem capitulated five years after Muhammad died, in February 638.
The fall of Alexandria in 643 sounded the death knell of more than thousand years of Hellenic civilization that once enriched the whole of the Near East with its scholarship and culture. Henri Daniel-Rops claims that from the point of view of the history of civilization, Alexandria's fall was as significant as the fall of Constantinople to the Turks eight-hundred years later.[4]
Cyprus fell in 648-9 and Rhodes in 653. By 698 the whole of North Africa was lost.
Spain invaded
Less than eighty years after Muhammad's death, in 711, Muslims from Tangiers poured across the 13 km wide strait of Gibraltar into Spain. By 721 this Arab-Berber horde had overthrown the ruling Catholic Visigoths and, with the fall of Saragossa, set their sights on southern France.
By 720 Narbonne had fallen. Bordeaux was stormed and its churches burnt down by 'Abd al-Rahman ibn Abdullah al-Ghafiqi in early spring 732. A basilica outside the walls of Poitiers was razed, and 'Abd al-Rahman headed for Tours which held the body of St Martin [who died in 397] apostle and patron saint of the Franks.
He was to be defeated and killed by Charles Martel and his Frankish army on a Saturday in October, 732, one hundred years after Muhammad's death, on the road from Poitiers to Tours a defeat that was hailed by Gibbon and others as decisive in turning back the Muslim tide from Europe.
Attacks on France, however, continued, and in 734 Avignon was captured by an Arab force. Lyons was sacked in 743. It wasn't until 759 that the Arabs were driven out of Narbonne. Marseilles was plundered by them in 838.
Muslim incursions into Italy had been a feature of life from the early 800s. The islands of Ponza [off Gaeta] and Ischia [off Naples] had been plundered, and then, in 813 Civitavecchia, the port of Rome, whose harbour had been constructed by Trajan, was sacked by the Arabs.
In 826 the island of Crete fell to Muslim forces which retained it as their base until 961. From around 827 they then began nibbling at Sicily. They captured Messina and controlled the Strait of Messina by 842, and finally took the whole island in 859, after Enna fell to them.
In 836 the Neapolitans self-interestedly invited the Muslim forces to help them against the Lombards and set the stage for more than a century of Muslims raids along the Adriatic, involving the destruction of Ancona, and Muslim progress as far as the mouth of the Po. 'Saracen Towers'[5] south of Naples, built in the ninth century to warn locals of the approach of Arab fleets from Sicily and Africa still charm visitors to the Neapolitan coast.
Bari, now home to the relics of St Nicholas of Myra, the original 'Father Christmas,' fell to Khalfun, a Berber chieftan, by another act of treachery in 840. From 853-871 the notorious Muslim brigand al- Mufarraj bin Sallam, and his successor, another Berber named Sawdan, controlled all the coast from Bari down to Reggio Calabria, and terrorized Southern Italy. They even plundered the Abbey of St Michael on Mt Gargano. They claimed the title of Emir, and independence of the Emir in Palermo.
Sacking of St Peter's
Naples herself had to beat off a Muslim attack in 837. But in 846 Rome was not to be so fortunate. On August 23rd 846, Arab squadrons from Africa arrived at Ostia, at the Tiber's mouth. There were 73 ships. The Saracen force numbered 11,000 warriors, with 500 horses.[6]
The most revered Christian shrines outside the Holy Land, the tombs of Sts Peter and Paul, were desecrated and their respective Basilicas were sacked, as was the Lateran Basilica along with numerous other churches and public buildings.
The very altar over the body of St Peter was smashed to pieces, and the great door of St Peter's Basilica was stripped of its silver plates. Romans were desolated and Christendom was shocked at the barbarism of the Muslim forces.
Three years later Pope Leo IV [847-855] formed an alliance with Naples, Amalfi and Gaeta, and when a Saracen fleet again appeared at the mouth of the Tiber in 849, the Papal fleet joined forces with its allies and they repelled the Muslim fleet which turned, and ran into a violent wind-storm that destroyed it, like Pharaoh's army long before.
Survivors were brought to Rome and put to work helping to build the Leonine Wall around the Vatican. Twelve feet thick, nearly forty feet in height and defended by forty-four towers, most of this wall, and two of the round towers, can be seen still by visitors to the Vatican. These defensive walls were finished and blessed by Pope Leo IV in 852.
Taranto in Apulia was conquered by Arab forces in 846. They held it until 880.
In 870 Malta was captured by the Muslims. In 871 Bari, the Saracens' capital on mainland Italy, was recaptured from the Muslims by Emperor Louis II, who in 872 was to defeat a Saracen fleet off Capua.
223 years from the First Crusade
At this point in our examination of the 'peaceful coexistence,' which is made much of by Muslim apologists, we are still two-hundred and twenty-three years away from the calling of the first Crusade. Perhaps readers may better understand, now, why Emperor Louis II, grandson of Charlemagne was absolutely convinced, in the ninth century, of the need for a Crusade. 'He was quite sure that Islam must be driven right out of Europe.'[7] But still there was no call for a Crusade.
I haven't spoken of Muslim attacks against the Byzantine Empire even though these, too, played a part in setting the stage for the Crusades. The much vaunted military might and political power of the Eastern Roman Empire carried with it responsibility for protecting the West from Muslim invaders. This it generally failed to do.
Constantinople had been attacked in 673, and then for the next five years Arab armies and fleets attempted unsuccessfully to break through the Byzantine defences. 'Greek Fire,' that mysterious substance that burned on water, destroyed the Muslim fleets and won the day for the defenders.
Then, in 717, the Muslims returned to the attack, emboldened by their successes in Spain.
Fate intervened, and like Charles Martel and his Franks at Poitiers in 732, emperor Leo the Isaurian [717-740] turned back the Muslim tide.
Constantinople was saved - for a time. Leo, for all his military skills, was a usurper, and an iconoclast. Despite defeating the Muslims, his policies ultimately further weakened both the Western and Eastern Roman Empires.
In 870, when Bernard the Wise from Brittany wanted to visit Palestine he had to obtain a laissez-passer from Muslim authorities in Bari, on the Adriatic Coast.[8]
In 873 the Muslim forces devastated Calabria in southern Italy to the point that it was reduced to the state 'in which it had been left by the Great Flood' and the Saracens expressed their intention of destroying Rome, the city of the 'Petrulus senex,' 'the ineffective old man, Peter'.[9]
In 874 Pope John VIII did all he could to dissuade Amalfi, Naples, Benevento, Capua, Salerno, and Spoleto from forming a pragmatic alliance with the Saracens. Amalfi, Capua and Salerno alone heeded his pleas for Christian solidarity.
From the close of 876 Pope John VIII had been sending letters in all directions to obtain help against the Arab forces which were devastating southern Italy and even threatening Rome itself. He sought the aid of Duke Bosone of Milan whom Emperor Charles the Bald had appointed his legate in Northern Italy - to no avail. He wrote for cavalry horses to Alfonso III, king of Galicia in Spain; and for warships to the Byzantines, and from 876 until May 877 he sent numerous letters to the Frankish Emperor begging him to aid the Catholics in Italy.
The Emperor proved to be a frail reed, and in 879, upon his death, the Duke of Spoleto turned on the Pope. John VIII, unable to cope with both Saracens and Spoleto, at once, had to pay tribute of 25,000 mancuses annually to the Arabs. A silver mancus was worth roughly AUD$25. This situation lasted for two years.
In 881 the Muslim allies of the Neapolitans captured the fortress on the Garigliano [the ancient Liris] 14 km east of Gaeta close to Anzio, just north of Naples, and plundered the surrounding countryside with impunity for forty years.
Returning from a synod at Ravenna [February 882] Pope John VIII found, as he put it, that 'the Saracens are as much at home in Fundi [close to Rome, in Latium] and Terracina' [80 km SE of Rome] as in Africa. 'Though we were seriously unwell,' wrote the Pope, we went forth to battle with our forces, captured eighteen of the enemy's ships, and slew a great many of their men'.[10] Six hundred captives of the Saracens were liberated.
Syracuse fell to the Muslims in 878 after a nine-month siege from which few escaped alive. The Byzantine city was pillaged and destroyed. Its collapse freed-up more numerous bands of marauding Muslims to harry the Italian towns and cities.
880 saw victory over Saracen forces at Naples by Byzantine Commanders and also the arrival in waters off Rome of warships sent by the emperor Basil to give the Pope the means of defending 'the territory of St Peter'.[11]
Meanwhile, the Saracens had turned their attention again to southern France and northern Italy. They had taken Avignon in 734 and Marseilles in 838 and they were ravaging Provence and North Italy from their bases in the Alps. The most important of these bases was Fraxineto or Frejus, not far from Toulon, which they captured in 889.
They were displaced temporarily from their base in 942 by Hugh of Arles who had a Byzantine fleet harry them from the sea, while he attacked from land. Horace Mann comments[12] that it is symptomatic of the kind of pragmatic leaders who controlled the destiny of Europe at that time, that instead of wiping out this bloodthirsty band of Muslim invaders, Hugh allowed them to stay where they were on condition that they did all they could to prevent his rival as 'king of Italy,' Berengerius Marquis of Ivrea, from returning to Italy.
The latter managed to return from Germany to Italy in 945, and the Muslims were not to be expelled completely from their lair until 972 - almost one-hundred years after capturing Fraxineto - by a league of Italian and Provencal princes.
In the meantime they infested the passes of the Alps, robbing and murdering pilgrims on their way to Rome. In 921 a large band of Englishmen, on pilgrimage to the tombs of the Apostles in Rome, were crushed to death under rocks rolled down on them by Saracens in the passes of the Alps.[13]
174 years from the First Crusade
At this point in the alleged peaceful coexistence between Muslims and Christians, we are still one-hundred and seventy-four years away from the calling of the first Crusade to free the Holy Places.
Meanwhile, Muslim fleets sacked and destroyed Demetrias in Thessaly, Central Greece, in 902, and Thessalonica the second city of the Byzantine Empire fell to them in 904. Muslim armies took Hysela in Carsiana in 887, and Amasia, the metropolitan city of Pontus in Asia Minor.
The bishop of Amasia named Malecenus wanted to ransom those of his people who had been captured but knew that the Byzantine Emperor Leo VI would not help; so he appealed to Pope Benedict IV in Rome.
The Pope received him kindly, and gave him an encyclical letter addressed to all bishops, abbots, counts and judges and to all orthodox professors of the Christian faith asking them to show Malacenus every consideration, and to see him safely from one city to the next.
In 905 Pope Sergius III helped Bishop Hildebrand of Silva Candida restore some of the damage done to his See by the ravaging Saracens who had devastated the Church of Silva Candida in the neighbourhood of Rome.
In 915 Pope John X successfully created a Christian League with the help of Byzantine Admiral Picingli and his fleet. Even the bickering princes of southern Italy joined forces against the Saracens, along with King Berengarius and his armies from North Italy. The enemy were holed-up in their fortresses on the Garigliano near Gaeta, north of Naples. After three months of blockade, they tried to fight their way out only to be repelled by a victorious Christian force.
In 934 the Fatimid imam al-Ka'im planned an audacious invasion of Liguria led by Ya'kub bin Ishaq. The latter attacked Genoa that year, and took it in 935.
It wasn't until 972 that Duke William of Provence succeeded in driving the Saracens finally from the fastnesses of Faxineto. In 976 the Fatimid Caliphs of Egypt had sent fresh Muslim expeditions into southern Italy. Initially the German emperor Otho II , who had set up his headquarters in Rome, successfully defeated these Saracen forces, but in July 982 he was ambushed and his army was almost cut to pieces.
In 977 Sergius, Archbishop of Damascus, was expelled from his See by the Muslims. Pope Benedict VII gave him the ancient church of St Alexius on Rome's Aventine hill, and he founded a monastery there and placed it under Benedictine rule, with himself its first abbot.
The pontificate of Pope John XVIII [1003-1009] was marred by famine and plague and by marauding bands of Saracens who plundered the Italian coast from Pisa to Rome from bases on Sardinia.
By 1010 they had seized Cosenza in southern Italy. Then Sardinia fell to the Arabs in 1015, led by a certain Abu Hosein Mogehid [thus the Latin Chronicles]. I take this person to be Mujahid bin 'Abd Allah whom Arab sources credit with the invasion. The Saracen force based on Sardinia, over the next few years, torched Pisa, seized Luna in northern Tuscany, and ravaged the land. Pope Benedict VIII managed to assemble a fleet and challenged the Saracen chief who turned tail and fled to Sardinia, leaving his fleet at the mercy of the papal force which was victorious.
Mujahid bin 'Abd Allah then sent the Pope (Benedict VIII) a bag of chestnuts and a message that he would arrive in the following summer with as many soldiers as there were nuts in the bag. Benedict accepted the chestnuts and sent back a bag of rice: 'If your master,' he said to the astonished messenger, 'isn't satisfied with the damage he has done to the dowry of the Apostle, let him come again and he will find an armed warrior for every grain of rice'.
The Pope did not wait for an answer but carried the war into the enemy's territory. He co-opted the combined fleets of Pisa and Genoa and they sailed for Sardinia in 1017 only to find Mujahid in the act of crucifying Christians on Sardinia. The Muslim leader fled to Africa, and Sardinia was occupied by the Pisans. Mujahid kept trying to re-take Sardinia until 1050 when he was captured by the Pisans and the island was made over to them by the Pope.
Muslims from Spain sacked Antibes in 1003. They sacked Pisa in 1005 and 1016, and Narbonne in 1020.
Sometime around 1025 Pope John XIX granted the pallium [sign of Ecclesiastical jurisdiction] to Archbishop Peter of Gerona in northeast Spain, on condition that he redeemed Christian captives of the Saracens as he had promised the Pope when he had come on his 'ad limina' visit.
The First Crusade what made it a reality
The four-hundred and sixty-three years that elapsed between Muhammad's death in 632 and the calling of a Crusade to free the Holy Places in 1095 was not a time of 'peaceful co-existence' between Muslims and European or Byzantine Christians. Nor was it, for Christians living in Muslim-occupied territories. They enjoyed 'peace' only by keeping the lowest possible profile, paying the jizya, or head-tax, and accepting nonperson status in lands that had been Christian before the Muslim invaders arrived.
The new millennium saw the situation go from bad to worse. In 1009 the Fatimid Caliph of Egypt, abu-'Ali Mansur al-Hakim, ordered the destruction of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. The edict of destruction was signed by his Christian secretary ibn-'Abdun. The Muslims destroyed the Tomb of Jesus, the Dome and the upper parts of the Church until their demolition was halted by the great mound of debris at their feet. For eleven years Christians were forbidden even to visit the rubble or to pray in the ruins.
Shocked by the destruction of Christendom's holiest Shrine, Pope Sergius IV appealed for help to go to Palestine to rebuild it. His appeal fell on deaf ears.
At the beginning of the fifth century, two hundred years before Muhammad appeared, there were seven-hundred Catholic bishops in Africa.[14] Two hundred of them attended the Council of Carthage in 535 AD. By the middle of the 900s there were forty left. By 1050, as a result of 'peaceful coexistence,' there were only five left. In 1076 there were two. We learn this from a letter that Pope Gregory VII, 'Hildebrand,' wrote to Cyriacus, Archbishop of Carthage in June 1076. As three bishops are needed for the valid consecration of another bishop Gregory asked him to send a suitable priest to Rome who could be consecrated assistant bishop, so that he [Cyriacus] and Servandus, bishop of Buzea in Mauritania, and the new bishop could consecrate other bishops for the African Catholics.[15]
Gregory VII, on his deathbed in 1085, dreamt of forming a Christian League against Islam and said, 'I would rather risk my life to deliver the Holy Places, than govern the Universe'.[16]
It seems to have been the Seljuk Turkish capture of Jerusalem in 1076 that finally swung the balance, exhausted the patience of the European Christians, and fulfilled Gregory's wish. Pilgrimage to the Holy Places had became more difficult; a poll-tax was imposed on visitors. Those who dared journey there were harassed, robbed and some even enslaved.
At the Council of Piacenza summoned by Pope Urban II and held in March 1095, Byzantine delegates emphasized the danger facing Christendom from Muslim expansion, and the hardship facing Eastern Christians until the infidel be driven back.[17] They repeated an appeal made by Emperor Alexius to Robert of Flanders asking him to return to the East with some knights to assist the Byzantines in their struggle with the Muslims.
Towards the end of that same year, Urban II, at another Council held at Claremont in France, took up the suggestion, and urged Europe's Christians to 'Take the road to the Holy Sepulchre ... let each one deny himself and take up the Cross'. The Assembly rose to its feet and shouted 'God wills it'. (Latin: DEUS VULT)
Muhammad died on June 8, 632 AD. It had taken four hundred and sixty three years for Europe's Christians to combine their forces and rise up in defence of themselves and of their Faith.
Endnotes
[1] John Esposito, Islam: the Straight Path, 3rd ed. OUP, 1998, p. 58.
[2] See 'Civilizing influence of previous wars fought between East and West', The Weekend Australian, March 18-19, 2006.
[3] This article restricts itself to a brief discussion of these claims and counter claims. We plan future articles that will discuss other controverted issues like the collaboration, in the initial phase of Islamic expansionism after the death of Muhammad, with Muslim military forces, by Christians and others, for political and sometimes religious reasons. We will also look at the claim that the Crusades were anti-Islamic, put relations between the Crusaders and the Byzantines, and the sacking of Jerusalem and Constantinople in context. We will consider the degree to which ongoing anti-Catholic polemic since the 16th century has now become a weapon in the hands of radical Islamists.
[4] The Church in the Dark Ages, J.M. Dent and Sons, London, 1959, p.336.
[5] The term 'Saracen' is sometimes mistakenly derived from the Arabic Sharqi or 'Easterner'. St Jerome considered it to be the name the Arabs gave themselves, deriving their origins from Sarah, Abraham's free wife, rather than from Hagar, his slave. In many of the sources we have used, the term 'Agareni', or'Hagarines,' is found.
[6] Letter from Adelbert, Marquis of Tuscany and protector of the Papal territory of Corsica, to Pope Sergius II in Liber Pontificalis, n.xliv, ed. Farnesiana.
[7] Henri Daniel-Rops, The Church in the Dark Ages, ed. cit., p. 472.
[8] Quoted Runciman, A History of the Crusades, Cambridge University Press, 1951, vol. i, p. 43.
[9] See Horace Mann, The Lives of the Popes in the Early Middle Ages, 12 vols. Kegan Paul, London, 1906, vol. iii, p. 321.
[10] Epistle 334 fragment of a letter to the Emperor.
[11] Epistle 296 to the Byzantine Emperor Basil, August 12, 880 AD.
[12] op. cit., vol. 4, p. 10.
[13] Flodoard [894-966] Chronique de France 919-966, entry for 921.
[14] H. Daniel-Rops, The Church in the Dark Ages, ed. cit., pp. 340, 344.
[15] Register of Gregory VII, III, 19.
[16] H. Daniel-Rops, Cathedral and Crusade, J.M.Dent and Sons, London, 1957, p. 434.
[17] Steven Runciman, A History of the Crusades, ed. cit., vol. i, p. 105.
The Knights Templar were created by the Holy Father in 1099 AD after the First Christian Crusade against the Muslims because of the Pope s failure to unify Europe against the 400 year march of Muslims against Europe. He made this army of Knights independent of all European Kings and even independent of all European Bishops, because there was no unity of Kings or Bishops. The rationale, without unity, civilized countries would not come to each others aid.
When the Muslims attacked Eastern Europe the Kings of Western Europe refused to come to their aid. When the Muslims (Moors) attacked and occupied Spain, Portugal and Southern France, the Kings of Germany, Italy and England did not come to their aid. The civilized world was divided then as it is now. There were individual Knights who saw the dangers like the Knights of England who came to the aid of Isabelle of Spain, but the governments, Kings, did not. The Muslims were united but the Christians and the rest of the civilized world were not.
A 100 years before the First Christian Crusade, over 200 years after Mohamed, the Christians divided into Catholics and Orthodox, into an Eastern Christianity and a Western Christianity. The Pope ordered the First Crusade to save the separated Orthodox from the heavy persecution of the Muslims simply because they were brother Christians even if in schism and in hopes to unify the Christians again.
But the Crusaders did not respect the Orthodox and instead subjected them to might of the Crusade. The Holy Father did not have control over the Kings of Europe or the Crusade. To avoid this in the future he formed his own army, The Knights Templar.
Officially the Knights Templar was created after the recovery of Jerusalem from the Muslims after the first Christian Crusade in 1099 AD. But in truth the Knights existed from the first Century AD to defend the faithful and the Pope. Although not called Templars until 1099 AD, they existed to smuggle the saints and the most important relics of the Church out of the Holy Land and into Europe from just before the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD until 1099 AD.
Secret writings about people like King Arthur, the Knights of the Round Table, the Fisher King, and Knights like Percival, Gawain, Lancelot, and Robin Hood were in fact, Templars, but not called that until 1099 AD. Fiction stories like The True Story of the Holy Grail , written many years before the Templars, show many mysteries involving this order.
The Knights official name is the "Sovereign Order of Military Knights of St. John of Jerusalem and their sister order the Hospitallers." The Hospitallers built castles and protected them giving pilgrims places of refuge throughout the Holy Land and Europe.
Because of their vows of poverty, chastity, piety and obedience the Templars never lost a battle in over 1500 years going back to the First Century before they were called Templars. They also took vows to never surrender and never back away from a fight unless the odds were more than 10 to 1 against them.
The Knights were aided by cavalry, freres and chaplains. Each Knight had about 10 of these support aids. They invented banking by creating methods of travel without money (only notes of credit), and protecting peoples money in the castles. They invented Hospitals by caring for people in their Castles. They were involved in manufacturing, import and export and the protection of Christians. They owned a large fleet of ships and the entire island of Cyprus.
They built and owned Castles throughout the known world: 5 in the Middle East, 15 in France, 23 in the United Kingdom, 4 in Portugal, 2 in Spain, and 2 others for a total of 51 before they were suppressed. Most likely they also founded the country of Switzerland and its banking systems.
Until suppressed by the false charges King Philip of France at the Council of Vienna, the Templars had defeated the Muslims in every battle and had become the greatest power in Europe. They left the Holy Land because the kings of Europe would not support them. They defended Europe from the Muslims even when everyone else could not.
Although later found innocent of all charges by the Church, the Templars were suppressed by the Pope in 1303 AD and changed their name. They hid their treasures and a large fleet of ships.
Even after the suppression they fought the Muslims under new names: as Knights of Malta, Knights of St. John, Knights of Cyprus and the Knights of Austria. In the Fifteenth Century they defended the Island of Malta and defeated the Muslims at the battle of Lepanto under the Knight, Don Juan of Austria.
Today the Knights of Saint John are headquartered in Rome but their vast treasures of gold and relics are still kept secret. Only the Shroud of Turin found in the home of Jacques de Moley, the Grand Master of the Knights, on the month of their suppression has come to light, but most people believe to this day that the Knights Templar still have the Holy Grail and maybe even the treasures of Solomon.
The Muslim War Never Ended
The battle, although a great victory for Catholic Europe, did not end the threat of invasion, or completely break the power of the Ottoman Turks. More naval and land battles would follow in the years to come, and Vienna itself would come under attack again, and yet again.
Today, the long clash between Christendom and Islam is still evident in the political and ethnic geography of Europe, Africa, Byzantium, and north into Russia. The battle also extends, in varying degrees, throughout the Near and Far East, and the Islands of the Pacific as well.
Many Christian knights, soldiers, and sailors have died defending Christendom against the onslaughts of Islam down through the centuries. Today, the borders of many European countries, Canada, and the United States are practically wide open, and the old enemy is invited to come in and make himself at home. And many 'Christians' in the West are just too busy enjoying their material prosperity to be bothered with unpleasant history.
But the enemy has not forgotten history. He remembers it all too well, and he is still deadly serious about his religion. His goal over the years has not changed in the slightest, and he is very patient. The enemy within is now just biding his time.
A Muslim has to acknowledge that Allah sent Mohammed with the true religion so that it should rule over all the religions. The whole world would be subdued under the rule of Islam. These are the fundamentals of the religion that without them, one cannot be a Muslim. Islam is a religious civilization that engulfs the individual, society and nation. Muslims preach Islam as the rule of the world by. No Muslim will deny this, not even the best of them.
What happens if Jews and Christians don't want to live under the rules of Islam? Then Islam has to fight them and this fighting is called Jihad. Jihad means war against those people who don't want to accept the Islamic superior rule. That's jihad.
The world is described as Dar al-Islam (the house of Islam) - that's the place where Islam rules - and the other part which is called Dar al-Harb - the house of war. Not the "house of non-Muslims," but the "house of war." It is this house of war which as to be, at the end of time, conquered. The world will continue to be in the house of war until it comes under Islamic rule.
Every single Muslim is a soldier in this army. Every single Muslim that dies in fighting for the spread of Islam is a shaheed (martyr) no matter how he dies, because - and this is very important - this is an eternal word between the two civilizations. It's not a war that stops. This war is there because it was created by Allah. Islam must be the ruler. This is a war that will not end.
Wherever you have Islam, you will have war. What are the poor people in the Philippines being killed for? What's happening between Pakistan and India, in Somalia, in Sudan, in all of Africa?
The Divided World Today
Just like when the Muslims invaded and occupied Europe for 800 years, we again have a divided Western World, the Christian World. The United States has 6,000,000 Muslims living within their borders and all of them believe they live in Dar al-Harb - the house of war. They all believe that they are obligated to turn Western Society into an Islam Society. That is only 2% of the population but there are 4,000,000 illegals coming across the border of Mexico every year and who knows how many of them are Muslims.
In Europe it is even worse since they have a greater percentage of the population. Today there are violent conflicts between Muslims and the police in France each and every day, so much so that it does not even reach the news anymore. The Police cannot even give a traffic ticket in a Muslim area of France without being attacked by hundreds of Muslims. In England Muslim and English youth are fighting almost everyday and the Muslims want to change the date of the Olympics to accommodate their faith. Italy, German, Spain and Holland have the same problems.
The very fact of so many Muslims live in the West and all capable of terrorists acts results in an ipso facto blackmail of the governments. The West saw how the bombing of the railroads of Spain changed the election. As the American government tries to get international cooperation for the war on terror, they in fact get almost no cooperation, not abroad or at home. Russia, facing an even greater Muslim threat, will not give up its trade with Iran to put on sanctions, money before common sense. China trades with Korea and Iran and wants no sanctions, money before common sense.
For these reasons the United Nations is absolutely useless in the war against Islam. The United Nations does nothing and they do it very well. Before this year is out 1,500.000 Africans will die at the hands of Muslims and the UN will do nothing about it. Every year Catholics and other Christians are killed, beheaded, raped and made homeless by Muslims in every country where there is at least a single Muslim and the world does nothing about it but talk.
The American government, the only government in the world that wants to stop Jihad, is handicapped by politicians who want to win elections more than protect themselves or the world. In Iraqi 95% of all deaths come from people sent into the country from Iran and Syria and this will never stop until the war extends to Iran and Syria. Instead of facing the fact, American politicians want to get out, let the Iraqis die and a large nation to be formed (let us call it Persia) out of Iran, Iraqi and Syria. This nation will have the Atomic Bomb, train terrorists all over the world, and in time take over Saudi Arabia.
No unity in the world today just as it was in the first onslaught of the Muslims for 800 years.
Return of the Knights Templar
I think we need a return of the Knights Templar. Some will think this is not according to a good Catholics interpretation of Love . But Pope Saint Pius V was not sinning when he called for the first Christian Crusade.
The laws of physical force are:
1. Only for self protection
2. The protection of others from harm
3. Only the force needed to stop or protect from physical harm
4. No vengeance
5. No punishment.
However, it would also be a sin against love for us to stand by and allow someone to be harmed like we are doing in Darfur. It is a sin against love for us to allow priests and nuns to be killed all over the world and do nothing if we are capable of stopping it. Maybe right now we cannot.
But if the Knights Templar came back into the world again, many Western Governments, and many multimillionaires would not only back them with finances, but would use them in stead of using 18 to 25 year old soldiers with only 2 to 4 years of training. The voting public in Democratic Countries would rather finance them than see their own people come home in body bags.
The Knights Templar could move into any country in the world without the politics of treaties and government red tape. They would only operate as a protective army with no personal ambitions except to protect. They could move in and out at a moments notice from any place in the world.
Islamic radicals are instigating and perpetuating terrorist campaigns, insurgencies, civil wars, minority suppression, ethnic cleansing and/or genocide in Afghanistan, Algeria, Bangladesh, Belgium, Chad, Chechnya, Dagestan, Denmark, Egypt, Ethiopia, France, Gambia, Great Britain, India, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Kashmir, Kenya, Kosovo, Lebanon, Macedonia, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Netherlands, Niger, Nigeria, Pakistan, territories administered by the "Palestinian Authority," Philippines, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Somalia, Spain, Sudan, Syria, Tanzania, Thailand, Tunisia, Turkey, The United States of America, Yemen, and Zanzibar. The rest of the world is held hostage to fear.
Can any country help in all these countries? No! However, an International Army designed just for protection and nothing more could operate from many places and solve problems in a swift and complete way without considering what is politically correct or worrying about a terrorist retaliation.
I do not see the Holy Father publicly supporting such an army because too many Catholics living in Muslim countries would be in great danger. I believe, however, that the time will come when no other choice will present itself. It is time though for Catholics with some financial means to consider putting this together and to support again a military branch of the Knights of St. John.
Am I being radical? I do not think so. Many Catholics are waiting for God to do it. Others depend on prayer only. But all I read about Moral Theology is that we must use both prayer and action . God uses our hands to do His work. We must be our brother s keeper and not turn away with a look of compassion and a prayer. We must be the Good Samaritan and go to the aid of people in need especially to protect life, not only in abortion clinics but in countries where the innocent are being slaughtered just for not being Muslim.
If you've read this far, then maybe you too believe that it is time for the Knights Templar to come out of hiding.
Deus vult (Classical Latin for “God wills it”) was the cry of the people at the declaration of the First Crusade by Pope Urban II at the Council of Clermont in 1095 when the Eastern Orthodox Church requested help in defence from the Seljuj Turkish invasion of Anatolia. After hundreds of years of uncalled for Muslim oppression and the persecution of thousands of innocent Christians in Europe by the entire Muslim population and armies, the Catholic Church stepped up to defend the Byzantine Empire under Pope Urban II. The original chant was Deus Vult, meaning, God wills it. Wills what? God wills the defense of the church because the gates of Hell shall not prevail against it. Had they not defended the Church, there would be no Christians alive and the Vatican would have been destroyed within a few years of advancing Muslim armies moving North.
With groups like ISIS forming and radical Muslims as well as random terror attacks, we are in a dark world. Thousands of our Christian brothers are being executed and tortured because they refuse to accept Allah. Their villages are attacked and their families are brutally murdered and this is happening DAILY. The media covers about 1% of anything that happens and move on with their stories. Let's say a terrorist has a bomb strapped to his chest and he runs into a church with over 1,000 parishioners attending Mass and you have a concealed carry. Is it a sin to shoot him before he kills anyone? This can be down-scaled too. What if two ISIS members run into your church and they go to slit the priest's throat? Do you fire at them without sinning? God said not to murder and to love our enemies right? His name was father Jacques Hamel and his throat was slit by ISIS members who ran into the church during Mass and this happened a few weeks ago in France. We are under attack and here is what we are permitted to do:
According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church we are allowed to fight back in self defense to save innocent lives. We can do what it takes to stop mass casualties.
Legitimate defense: (CCC)
2263 The legitimate defense of persons and societies is not an exception to the prohibition against the murder of the innocent that constitutes intentional killing. "The act of self-defense can have a double effect: the preservation of one's own life; and the killing of the aggressor. . . . The one is intended, the other is not."
2264 Love toward oneself remains a fundamental principle of morality. Therefore it is legitimate to insist on respect for one's own right to life. Someone who defends his life is not guilty of murder even if he is forced to deal his aggressor a lethal blow:
If a man in self-defense uses more than necessary violence, it will be unlawful: whereas if he repels force with moderation, his defense will be lawful. . . . Nor is it necessary for salvation that a man omit the act of moderate self-defense to avoid killing the other man, since one is bound to take more care of one's own life than of another's.
2265 Legitimate defense can be not only a right but a grave duty for one who is responsible for the lives of others. The defense of the common good requires that an unjust aggressor be rendered unable to cause harm. For this reason, those who legitimately hold authority also have the right to use arms to repel aggressors against the civil community entrusted to their responsibility.
2266 The efforts of the state to curb the spread of behavior harmful to people's rights and to the basic rules of civil society correspond to the requirement of safeguarding the common good. Legitimate public authority has the right and duty to inflict punishment proportionate to the gravity of the offense. Punishment has the primary aim of redressing the disorder introduced by the offense. When it is willingly accepted by the guilty party, it assumes the value of expiation. Punishment then, in addition to defending public order and protecting people's safety, has a medicinal purpose: as far as possible, it must contribute to the correction of the guilty party.
DISCLAIMER: I am not provoking Muslims. I am stating a fact. I am good friends with two Muslims and in no way trying to attack them. I talk to them daily and get along very well even when we are talking religion.
--> For a list of all 527 quotes from the Quran that talk about the punishments and murder of nonbelievers --> click here
CHECK OUT THIS ACCOUNT --> @islamunveiled ⬅️
Some say they can find peaceful quotes in the Quran. The only peaceful quotes are ones where if you already believe in Allah and ask for forgiveness he will forgive you. Anyone who does not believe should basically be killed and punished. Almost every other quote in the Quran is about killing us. Islam is from اسلام which means submission and essentially "all submission (to Allah)" This IS NOT PEACE. The word for peace is Salam or سلام
The religion is literally called (All Submission) ... Submit to who? Their god or we die. That's how it works. The radical Muslims are just Muslims who are devout. They follow scripture word for word. The peaceful ones are moderate and cannot follow the Quran literally. They must take it out of context and pick a select few quotes to believe and ignore the rest.
“Forbidden to you are: dead meat, blood, the FLESH OF SWINE, and that on which hath been invoked the name of other than Allah.”
[Al-Qur’an 5:3]
These should be the new uniforms for the Christian Militias. 🇻🇦 #squadgoals .
That means Muslims CANNOT HAVE BACON!!! That's right, we are Pork Eating Crusaders who like bacon. (Not trying to offend Muslims since two of my friends are but just saying that really stinks)
Summary of Muslim Aggression for the hundreds of years BEFORE Christians even started to defend themselves:
by Dr. Paul Stenhouse
(Multiple sources listed in endnotes)
Current wisdom would have it that 'five centuries of peaceful co-existence' between Muslims and Christians were brought to an end by 'political events and an imperial-papal power play,' that was to lead to a centuries-long series of so-called "holy-wars" that pitted Christendom against Islam, and left an enduring legacy of misunderstanding and mistrust.'[1]
A school textbook, Humanities Alive 2, for Year 8 students in the Australian State of Victoria, carries the anti-Christian/anti Western argument further:
""Those who destroyed the World Trade Centre are regarded as terrorists. Might it be fair to say that the Crusaders who attacked the Muslim inhabitants of Jerusalem were also terrorists?[2]""
Muhammad died in Medina on June 8, 632 AD. The first of the eight Crusades to free the Holy Places in Palestine from Muslim control, and offer safe passage to the Holy Land for Christian pilgrims, was called only in 1095. At the risk of sounding pedantic, the period in question is not 'five centuries,' but four-hundred and sixty-three years; and those years, we contend, were not characterized by 'peaceful coexistence'.[3]
Islam's attack on Christianity
For the Christian states bordering the Mediterranean, it was a four-hundred and sixty-three year period of regular, disorganized [and occasionally organized] bloody incursions by Muslim mainly Arab and Berber land and sea forces. These came intent on booty - gold, silver, precious stones and slaves - on destroying churches, convents and shrines of the 'infidels,' and on the spread of politico-religious Islam throughout Europe from their bases in the Mediterranean and the Adriatic.
At the time of Muhammad's death there were flourishing Christian and Jewish communities in Arabia, and throughout the major centres of the Persian Empire. The whole of the Mediterranean world on its European, Asian and African sides, was predominantly Christian.
It had taken only a few years for Muslim tribesmen from Arabia, inspired by Muhammad's revelations and example, to invade the Eastern Roman or Byzantine Empire whose emperors devoted more time to religious disputation than to defending their empire. In 633 Mesopotamia fell. After a few years the entire Persian Empire fell to the marauding Arab tribesmen who drove the young Persian emperor Yazdagird into the farthest reaches of his empire, to Sogdiana [Uzbekistan], where he was eventually murdered by his Tartar bodyguard in a miller's hut.
Damascus fell in 635, and Jerusalem capitulated five years after Muhammad died, in February 638.
The fall of Alexandria in 643 sounded the death knell of more than thousand years of Hellenic civilization that once enriched the whole of the Near East with its scholarship and culture. Henri Daniel-Rops claims that from the point of view of the history of civilization, Alexandria's fall was as significant as the fall of Constantinople to the Turks eight-hundred years later.[4]
Cyprus fell in 648-9 and Rhodes in 653. By 698 the whole of North Africa was lost.
Spain invaded
Less than eighty years after Muhammad's death, in 711, Muslims from Tangiers poured across the 13 km wide strait of Gibraltar into Spain. By 721 this Arab-Berber horde had overthrown the ruling Catholic Visigoths and, with the fall of Saragossa, set their sights on southern France.
By 720 Narbonne had fallen. Bordeaux was stormed and its churches burnt down by 'Abd al-Rahman ibn Abdullah al-Ghafiqi in early spring 732. A basilica outside the walls of Poitiers was razed, and 'Abd al-Rahman headed for Tours which held the body of St Martin [who died in 397] apostle and patron saint of the Franks.
He was to be defeated and killed by Charles Martel and his Frankish army on a Saturday in October, 732, one hundred years after Muhammad's death, on the road from Poitiers to Tours a defeat that was hailed by Gibbon and others as decisive in turning back the Muslim tide from Europe.
Attacks on France, however, continued, and in 734 Avignon was captured by an Arab force. Lyons was sacked in 743. It wasn't until 759 that the Arabs were driven out of Narbonne. Marseilles was plundered by them in 838.
Muslim incursions into Italy had been a feature of life from the early 800s. The islands of Ponza [off Gaeta] and Ischia [off Naples] had been plundered, and then, in 813 Civitavecchia, the port of Rome, whose harbour had been constructed by Trajan, was sacked by the Arabs.
In 826 the island of Crete fell to Muslim forces which retained it as their base until 961. From around 827 they then began nibbling at Sicily. They captured Messina and controlled the Strait of Messina by 842, and finally took the whole island in 859, after Enna fell to them.
In 836 the Neapolitans self-interestedly invited the Muslim forces to help them against the Lombards and set the stage for more than a century of Muslims raids along the Adriatic, involving the destruction of Ancona, and Muslim progress as far as the mouth of the Po. 'Saracen Towers'[5] south of Naples, built in the ninth century to warn locals of the approach of Arab fleets from Sicily and Africa still charm visitors to the Neapolitan coast.
Bari, now home to the relics of St Nicholas of Myra, the original 'Father Christmas,' fell to Khalfun, a Berber chieftan, by another act of treachery in 840. From 853-871 the notorious Muslim brigand al- Mufarraj bin Sallam, and his successor, another Berber named Sawdan, controlled all the coast from Bari down to Reggio Calabria, and terrorized Southern Italy. They even plundered the Abbey of St Michael on Mt Gargano. They claimed the title of Emir, and independence of the Emir in Palermo.
Sacking of St Peter's
Naples herself had to beat off a Muslim attack in 837. But in 846 Rome was not to be so fortunate. On August 23rd 846, Arab squadrons from Africa arrived at Ostia, at the Tiber's mouth. There were 73 ships. The Saracen force numbered 11,000 warriors, with 500 horses.[6]
The most revered Christian shrines outside the Holy Land, the tombs of Sts Peter and Paul, were desecrated and their respective Basilicas were sacked, as was the Lateran Basilica along with numerous other churches and public buildings.
The very altar over the body of St Peter was smashed to pieces, and the great door of St Peter's Basilica was stripped of its silver plates. Romans were desolated and Christendom was shocked at the barbarism of the Muslim forces.
Three years later Pope Leo IV [847-855] formed an alliance with Naples, Amalfi and Gaeta, and when a Saracen fleet again appeared at the mouth of the Tiber in 849, the Papal fleet joined forces with its allies and they repelled the Muslim fleet which turned, and ran into a violent wind-storm that destroyed it, like Pharaoh's army long before.
Survivors were brought to Rome and put to work helping to build the Leonine Wall around the Vatican. Twelve feet thick, nearly forty feet in height and defended by forty-four towers, most of this wall, and two of the round towers, can be seen still by visitors to the Vatican. These defensive walls were finished and blessed by Pope Leo IV in 852.
Taranto in Apulia was conquered by Arab forces in 846. They held it until 880.
In 870 Malta was captured by the Muslims. In 871 Bari, the Saracens' capital on mainland Italy, was recaptured from the Muslims by Emperor Louis II, who in 872 was to defeat a Saracen fleet off Capua.
223 years from the First Crusade
At this point in our examination of the 'peaceful coexistence,' which is made much of by Muslim apologists, we are still two-hundred and twenty-three years away from the calling of the first Crusade. Perhaps readers may better understand, now, why Emperor Louis II, grandson of Charlemagne was absolutely convinced, in the ninth century, of the need for a Crusade. 'He was quite sure that Islam must be driven right out of Europe.'[7] But still there was no call for a Crusade.
I haven't spoken of Muslim attacks against the Byzantine Empire even though these, too, played a part in setting the stage for the Crusades. The much vaunted military might and political power of the Eastern Roman Empire carried with it responsibility for protecting the West from Muslim invaders. This it generally failed to do.
Constantinople had been attacked in 673, and then for the next five years Arab armies and fleets attempted unsuccessfully to break through the Byzantine defences. 'Greek Fire,' that mysterious substance that burned on water, destroyed the Muslim fleets and won the day for the defenders.
Then, in 717, the Muslims returned to the attack, emboldened by their successes in Spain.
Fate intervened, and like Charles Martel and his Franks at Poitiers in 732, emperor Leo the Isaurian [717-740] turned back the Muslim tide.
Constantinople was saved - for a time. Leo, for all his military skills, was a usurper, and an iconoclast. Despite defeating the Muslims, his policies ultimately further weakened both the Western and Eastern Roman Empires.
In 870, when Bernard the Wise from Brittany wanted to visit Palestine he had to obtain a laissez-passer from Muslim authorities in Bari, on the Adriatic Coast.[8]
In 873 the Muslim forces devastated Calabria in southern Italy to the point that it was reduced to the state 'in which it had been left by the Great Flood' and the Saracens expressed their intention of destroying Rome, the city of the 'Petrulus senex,' 'the ineffective old man, Peter'.[9]
In 874 Pope John VIII did all he could to dissuade Amalfi, Naples, Benevento, Capua, Salerno, and Spoleto from forming a pragmatic alliance with the Saracens. Amalfi, Capua and Salerno alone heeded his pleas for Christian solidarity.
From the close of 876 Pope John VIII had been sending letters in all directions to obtain help against the Arab forces which were devastating southern Italy and even threatening Rome itself. He sought the aid of Duke Bosone of Milan whom Emperor Charles the Bald had appointed his legate in Northern Italy - to no avail. He wrote for cavalry horses to Alfonso III, king of Galicia in Spain; and for warships to the Byzantines, and from 876 until May 877 he sent numerous letters to the Frankish Emperor begging him to aid the Catholics in Italy.
The Emperor proved to be a frail reed, and in 879, upon his death, the Duke of Spoleto turned on the Pope. John VIII, unable to cope with both Saracens and Spoleto, at once, had to pay tribute of 25,000 mancuses annually to the Arabs. A silver mancus was worth roughly AUD$25. This situation lasted for two years.
In 881 the Muslim allies of the Neapolitans captured the fortress on the Garigliano [the ancient Liris] 14 km east of Gaeta close to Anzio, just north of Naples, and plundered the surrounding countryside with impunity for forty years.
Returning from a synod at Ravenna [February 882] Pope John VIII found, as he put it, that 'the Saracens are as much at home in Fundi [close to Rome, in Latium] and Terracina' [80 km SE of Rome] as in Africa. 'Though we were seriously unwell,' wrote the Pope, we went forth to battle with our forces, captured eighteen of the enemy's ships, and slew a great many of their men'.[10] Six hundred captives of the Saracens were liberated.
Syracuse fell to the Muslims in 878 after a nine-month siege from which few escaped alive. The Byzantine city was pillaged and destroyed. Its collapse freed-up more numerous bands of marauding Muslims to harry the Italian towns and cities.
880 saw victory over Saracen forces at Naples by Byzantine Commanders and also the arrival in waters off Rome of warships sent by the emperor Basil to give the Pope the means of defending 'the territory of St Peter'.[11]
Meanwhile, the Saracens had turned their attention again to southern France and northern Italy. They had taken Avignon in 734 and Marseilles in 838 and they were ravaging Provence and North Italy from their bases in the Alps. The most important of these bases was Fraxineto or Frejus, not far from Toulon, which they captured in 889.
They were displaced temporarily from their base in 942 by Hugh of Arles who had a Byzantine fleet harry them from the sea, while he attacked from land. Horace Mann comments[12] that it is symptomatic of the kind of pragmatic leaders who controlled the destiny of Europe at that time, that instead of wiping out this bloodthirsty band of Muslim invaders, Hugh allowed them to stay where they were on condition that they did all they could to prevent his rival as 'king of Italy,' Berengerius Marquis of Ivrea, from returning to Italy.
The latter managed to return from Germany to Italy in 945, and the Muslims were not to be expelled completely from their lair until 972 - almost one-hundred years after capturing Fraxineto - by a league of Italian and Provencal princes.
In the meantime they infested the passes of the Alps, robbing and murdering pilgrims on their way to Rome. In 921 a large band of Englishmen, on pilgrimage to the tombs of the Apostles in Rome, were crushed to death under rocks rolled down on them by Saracens in the passes of the Alps.[13]
174 years from the First Crusade
At this point in the alleged peaceful coexistence between Muslims and Christians, we are still one-hundred and seventy-four years away from the calling of the first Crusade to free the Holy Places.
Meanwhile, Muslim fleets sacked and destroyed Demetrias in Thessaly, Central Greece, in 902, and Thessalonica the second city of the Byzantine Empire fell to them in 904. Muslim armies took Hysela in Carsiana in 887, and Amasia, the metropolitan city of Pontus in Asia Minor.
The bishop of Amasia named Malecenus wanted to ransom those of his people who had been captured but knew that the Byzantine Emperor Leo VI would not help; so he appealed to Pope Benedict IV in Rome.
The Pope received him kindly, and gave him an encyclical letter addressed to all bishops, abbots, counts and judges and to all orthodox professors of the Christian faith asking them to show Malacenus every consideration, and to see him safely from one city to the next.
In 905 Pope Sergius III helped Bishop Hildebrand of Silva Candida restore some of the damage done to his See by the ravaging Saracens who had devastated the Church of Silva Candida in the neighbourhood of Rome.
In 915 Pope John X successfully created a Christian League with the help of Byzantine Admiral Picingli and his fleet. Even the bickering princes of southern Italy joined forces against the Saracens, along with King Berengarius and his armies from North Italy. The enemy were holed-up in their fortresses on the Garigliano near Gaeta, north of Naples. After three months of blockade, they tried to fight their way out only to be repelled by a victorious Christian force.
In 934 the Fatimid imam al-Ka'im planned an audacious invasion of Liguria led by Ya'kub bin Ishaq. The latter attacked Genoa that year, and took it in 935.
It wasn't until 972 that Duke William of Provence succeeded in driving the Saracens finally from the fastnesses of Faxineto. In 976 the Fatimid Caliphs of Egypt had sent fresh Muslim expeditions into southern Italy. Initially the German emperor Otho II , who had set up his headquarters in Rome, successfully defeated these Saracen forces, but in July 982 he was ambushed and his army was almost cut to pieces.
In 977 Sergius, Archbishop of Damascus, was expelled from his See by the Muslims. Pope Benedict VII gave him the ancient church of St Alexius on Rome's Aventine hill, and he founded a monastery there and placed it under Benedictine rule, with himself its first abbot.
The pontificate of Pope John XVIII [1003-1009] was marred by famine and plague and by marauding bands of Saracens who plundered the Italian coast from Pisa to Rome from bases on Sardinia.
By 1010 they had seized Cosenza in southern Italy. Then Sardinia fell to the Arabs in 1015, led by a certain Abu Hosein Mogehid [thus the Latin Chronicles]. I take this person to be Mujahid bin 'Abd Allah whom Arab sources credit with the invasion. The Saracen force based on Sardinia, over the next few years, torched Pisa, seized Luna in northern Tuscany, and ravaged the land. Pope Benedict VIII managed to assemble a fleet and challenged the Saracen chief who turned tail and fled to Sardinia, leaving his fleet at the mercy of the papal force which was victorious.
Mujahid bin 'Abd Allah then sent the Pope (Benedict VIII) a bag of chestnuts and a message that he would arrive in the following summer with as many soldiers as there were nuts in the bag. Benedict accepted the chestnuts and sent back a bag of rice: 'If your master,' he said to the astonished messenger, 'isn't satisfied with the damage he has done to the dowry of the Apostle, let him come again and he will find an armed warrior for every grain of rice'.
The Pope did not wait for an answer but carried the war into the enemy's territory. He co-opted the combined fleets of Pisa and Genoa and they sailed for Sardinia in 1017 only to find Mujahid in the act of crucifying Christians on Sardinia. The Muslim leader fled to Africa, and Sardinia was occupied by the Pisans. Mujahid kept trying to re-take Sardinia until 1050 when he was captured by the Pisans and the island was made over to them by the Pope.
Muslims from Spain sacked Antibes in 1003. They sacked Pisa in 1005 and 1016, and Narbonne in 1020.
Sometime around 1025 Pope John XIX granted the pallium [sign of Ecclesiastical jurisdiction] to Archbishop Peter of Gerona in northeast Spain, on condition that he redeemed Christian captives of the Saracens as he had promised the Pope when he had come on his 'ad limina' visit.
The First Crusade what made it a reality
The four-hundred and sixty-three years that elapsed between Muhammad's death in 632 and the calling of a Crusade to free the Holy Places in 1095 was not a time of 'peaceful co-existence' between Muslims and European or Byzantine Christians. Nor was it, for Christians living in Muslim-occupied territories. They enjoyed 'peace' only by keeping the lowest possible profile, paying the jizya, or head-tax, and accepting nonperson status in lands that had been Christian before the Muslim invaders arrived.
The new millennium saw the situation go from bad to worse. In 1009 the Fatimid Caliph of Egypt, abu-'Ali Mansur al-Hakim, ordered the destruction of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. The edict of destruction was signed by his Christian secretary ibn-'Abdun. The Muslims destroyed the Tomb of Jesus, the Dome and the upper parts of the Church until their demolition was halted by the great mound of debris at their feet. For eleven years Christians were forbidden even to visit the rubble or to pray in the ruins.
Shocked by the destruction of Christendom's holiest Shrine, Pope Sergius IV appealed for help to go to Palestine to rebuild it. His appeal fell on deaf ears.
At the beginning of the fifth century, two hundred years before Muhammad appeared, there were seven-hundred Catholic bishops in Africa.[14] Two hundred of them attended the Council of Carthage in 535 AD. By the middle of the 900s there were forty left. By 1050, as a result of 'peaceful coexistence,' there were only five left. In 1076 there were two. We learn this from a letter that Pope Gregory VII, 'Hildebrand,' wrote to Cyriacus, Archbishop of Carthage in June 1076. As three bishops are needed for the valid consecration of another bishop Gregory asked him to send a suitable priest to Rome who could be consecrated assistant bishop, so that he [Cyriacus] and Servandus, bishop of Buzea in Mauritania, and the new bishop could consecrate other bishops for the African Catholics.[15]
Gregory VII, on his deathbed in 1085, dreamt of forming a Christian League against Islam and said, 'I would rather risk my life to deliver the Holy Places, than govern the Universe'.[16]
It seems to have been the Seljuk Turkish capture of Jerusalem in 1076 that finally swung the balance, exhausted the patience of the European Christians, and fulfilled Gregory's wish. Pilgrimage to the Holy Places had became more difficult; a poll-tax was imposed on visitors. Those who dared journey there were harassed, robbed and some even enslaved.
At the Council of Piacenza summoned by Pope Urban II and held in March 1095, Byzantine delegates emphasized the danger facing Christendom from Muslim expansion, and the hardship facing Eastern Christians until the infidel be driven back.[17] They repeated an appeal made by Emperor Alexius to Robert of Flanders asking him to return to the East with some knights to assist the Byzantines in their struggle with the Muslims.
Towards the end of that same year, Urban II, at another Council held at Claremont in France, took up the suggestion, and urged Europe's Christians to 'Take the road to the Holy Sepulchre ... let each one deny himself and take up the Cross'. The Assembly rose to its feet and shouted 'God wills it'. (Latin: DEUS VULT)
Muhammad died on June 8, 632 AD. It had taken four hundred and sixty three years for Europe's Christians to combine their forces and rise up in defence of themselves and of their Faith.
Endnotes
[1] John Esposito, Islam: the Straight Path, 3rd ed. OUP, 1998, p. 58.
[2] See 'Civilizing influence of previous wars fought between East and West', The Weekend Australian, March 18-19, 2006.
[3] This article restricts itself to a brief discussion of these claims and counter claims. We plan future articles that will discuss other controverted issues like the collaboration, in the initial phase of Islamic expansionism after the death of Muhammad, with Muslim military forces, by Christians and others, for political and sometimes religious reasons. We will also look at the claim that the Crusades were anti-Islamic, put relations between the Crusaders and the Byzantines, and the sacking of Jerusalem and Constantinople in context. We will consider the degree to which ongoing anti-Catholic polemic since the 16th century has now become a weapon in the hands of radical Islamists.
[4] The Church in the Dark Ages, J.M. Dent and Sons, London, 1959, p.336.
[5] The term 'Saracen' is sometimes mistakenly derived from the Arabic Sharqi or 'Easterner'. St Jerome considered it to be the name the Arabs gave themselves, deriving their origins from Sarah, Abraham's free wife, rather than from Hagar, his slave. In many of the sources we have used, the term 'Agareni', or'Hagarines,' is found.
[6] Letter from Adelbert, Marquis of Tuscany and protector of the Papal territory of Corsica, to Pope Sergius II in Liber Pontificalis, n.xliv, ed. Farnesiana.
[7] Henri Daniel-Rops, The Church in the Dark Ages, ed. cit., p. 472.
[8] Quoted Runciman, A History of the Crusades, Cambridge University Press, 1951, vol. i, p. 43.
[9] See Horace Mann, The Lives of the Popes in the Early Middle Ages, 12 vols. Kegan Paul, London, 1906, vol. iii, p. 321.
[10] Epistle 334 fragment of a letter to the Emperor.
[11] Epistle 296 to the Byzantine Emperor Basil, August 12, 880 AD.
[12] op. cit., vol. 4, p. 10.
[13] Flodoard [894-966] Chronique de France 919-966, entry for 921.
[14] H. Daniel-Rops, The Church in the Dark Ages, ed. cit., pp. 340, 344.
[15] Register of Gregory VII, III, 19.
[16] H. Daniel-Rops, Cathedral and Crusade, J.M.Dent and Sons, London, 1957, p. 434.
[17] Steven Runciman, A History of the Crusades, ed. cit., vol. i, p. 105.
The Knights Templar were created by the Holy Father in 1099 AD after the First Christian Crusade against the Muslims because of the Pope s failure to unify Europe against the 400 year march of Muslims against Europe. He made this army of Knights independent of all European Kings and even independent of all European Bishops, because there was no unity of Kings or Bishops. The rationale, without unity, civilized countries would not come to each others aid.
When the Muslims attacked Eastern Europe the Kings of Western Europe refused to come to their aid. When the Muslims (Moors) attacked and occupied Spain, Portugal and Southern France, the Kings of Germany, Italy and England did not come to their aid. The civilized world was divided then as it is now. There were individual Knights who saw the dangers like the Knights of England who came to the aid of Isabelle of Spain, but the governments, Kings, did not. The Muslims were united but the Christians and the rest of the civilized world were not.
A 100 years before the First Christian Crusade, over 200 years after Mohamed, the Christians divided into Catholics and Orthodox, into an Eastern Christianity and a Western Christianity. The Pope ordered the First Crusade to save the separated Orthodox from the heavy persecution of the Muslims simply because they were brother Christians even if in schism and in hopes to unify the Christians again.
But the Crusaders did not respect the Orthodox and instead subjected them to might of the Crusade. The Holy Father did not have control over the Kings of Europe or the Crusade. To avoid this in the future he formed his own army, The Knights Templar.
Officially the Knights Templar was created after the recovery of Jerusalem from the Muslims after the first Christian Crusade in 1099 AD. But in truth the Knights existed from the first Century AD to defend the faithful and the Pope. Although not called Templars until 1099 AD, they existed to smuggle the saints and the most important relics of the Church out of the Holy Land and into Europe from just before the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD until 1099 AD.
Secret writings about people like King Arthur, the Knights of the Round Table, the Fisher King, and Knights like Percival, Gawain, Lancelot, and Robin Hood were in fact, Templars, but not called that until 1099 AD. Fiction stories like The True Story of the Holy Grail , written many years before the Templars, show many mysteries involving this order.
The Knights official name is the "Sovereign Order of Military Knights of St. John of Jerusalem and their sister order the Hospitallers." The Hospitallers built castles and protected them giving pilgrims places of refuge throughout the Holy Land and Europe.
Because of their vows of poverty, chastity, piety and obedience the Templars never lost a battle in over 1500 years going back to the First Century before they were called Templars. They also took vows to never surrender and never back away from a fight unless the odds were more than 10 to 1 against them.
The Knights were aided by cavalry, freres and chaplains. Each Knight had about 10 of these support aids. They invented banking by creating methods of travel without money (only notes of credit), and protecting peoples money in the castles. They invented Hospitals by caring for people in their Castles. They were involved in manufacturing, import and export and the protection of Christians. They owned a large fleet of ships and the entire island of Cyprus.
They built and owned Castles throughout the known world: 5 in the Middle East, 15 in France, 23 in the United Kingdom, 4 in Portugal, 2 in Spain, and 2 others for a total of 51 before they were suppressed. Most likely they also founded the country of Switzerland and its banking systems.
Until suppressed by the false charges King Philip of France at the Council of Vienna, the Templars had defeated the Muslims in every battle and had become the greatest power in Europe. They left the Holy Land because the kings of Europe would not support them. They defended Europe from the Muslims even when everyone else could not.
Although later found innocent of all charges by the Church, the Templars were suppressed by the Pope in 1303 AD and changed their name. They hid their treasures and a large fleet of ships.
Even after the suppression they fought the Muslims under new names: as Knights of Malta, Knights of St. John, Knights of Cyprus and the Knights of Austria. In the Fifteenth Century they defended the Island of Malta and defeated the Muslims at the battle of Lepanto under the Knight, Don Juan of Austria.
Today the Knights of Saint John are headquartered in Rome but their vast treasures of gold and relics are still kept secret. Only the Shroud of Turin found in the home of Jacques de Moley, the Grand Master of the Knights, on the month of their suppression has come to light, but most people believe to this day that the Knights Templar still have the Holy Grail and maybe even the treasures of Solomon.
The Muslim War Never Ended
The battle, although a great victory for Catholic Europe, did not end the threat of invasion, or completely break the power of the Ottoman Turks. More naval and land battles would follow in the years to come, and Vienna itself would come under attack again, and yet again.
Today, the long clash between Christendom and Islam is still evident in the political and ethnic geography of Europe, Africa, Byzantium, and north into Russia. The battle also extends, in varying degrees, throughout the Near and Far East, and the Islands of the Pacific as well.
Many Christian knights, soldiers, and sailors have died defending Christendom against the onslaughts of Islam down through the centuries. Today, the borders of many European countries, Canada, and the United States are practically wide open, and the old enemy is invited to come in and make himself at home. And many 'Christians' in the West are just too busy enjoying their material prosperity to be bothered with unpleasant history.
But the enemy has not forgotten history. He remembers it all too well, and he is still deadly serious about his religion. His goal over the years has not changed in the slightest, and he is very patient. The enemy within is now just biding his time.
A Muslim has to acknowledge that Allah sent Mohammed with the true religion so that it should rule over all the religions. The whole world would be subdued under the rule of Islam. These are the fundamentals of the religion that without them, one cannot be a Muslim. Islam is a religious civilization that engulfs the individual, society and nation. Muslims preach Islam as the rule of the world by. No Muslim will deny this, not even the best of them.
What happens if Jews and Christians don't want to live under the rules of Islam? Then Islam has to fight them and this fighting is called Jihad. Jihad means war against those people who don't want to accept the Islamic superior rule. That's jihad.
The world is described as Dar al-Islam (the house of Islam) - that's the place where Islam rules - and the other part which is called Dar al-Harb - the house of war. Not the "house of non-Muslims," but the "house of war." It is this house of war which as to be, at the end of time, conquered. The world will continue to be in the house of war until it comes under Islamic rule.
Every single Muslim is a soldier in this army. Every single Muslim that dies in fighting for the spread of Islam is a shaheed (martyr) no matter how he dies, because - and this is very important - this is an eternal word between the two civilizations. It's not a war that stops. This war is there because it was created by Allah. Islam must be the ruler. This is a war that will not end.
Wherever you have Islam, you will have war. What are the poor people in the Philippines being killed for? What's happening between Pakistan and India, in Somalia, in Sudan, in all of Africa?
The Divided World Today
Just like when the Muslims invaded and occupied Europe for 800 years, we again have a divided Western World, the Christian World. The United States has 6,000,000 Muslims living within their borders and all of them believe they live in Dar al-Harb - the house of war. They all believe that they are obligated to turn Western Society into an Islam Society. That is only 2% of the population but there are 4,000,000 illegals coming across the border of Mexico every year and who knows how many of them are Muslims.
In Europe it is even worse since they have a greater percentage of the population. Today there are violent conflicts between Muslims and the police in France each and every day, so much so that it does not even reach the news anymore. The Police cannot even give a traffic ticket in a Muslim area of France without being attacked by hundreds of Muslims. In England Muslim and English youth are fighting almost everyday and the Muslims want to change the date of the Olympics to accommodate their faith. Italy, German, Spain and Holland have the same problems.
The very fact of so many Muslims live in the West and all capable of terrorists acts results in an ipso facto blackmail of the governments. The West saw how the bombing of the railroads of Spain changed the election. As the American government tries to get international cooperation for the war on terror, they in fact get almost no cooperation, not abroad or at home. Russia, facing an even greater Muslim threat, will not give up its trade with Iran to put on sanctions, money before common sense. China trades with Korea and Iran and wants no sanctions, money before common sense.
For these reasons the United Nations is absolutely useless in the war against Islam. The United Nations does nothing and they do it very well. Before this year is out 1,500.000 Africans will die at the hands of Muslims and the UN will do nothing about it. Every year Catholics and other Christians are killed, beheaded, raped and made homeless by Muslims in every country where there is at least a single Muslim and the world does nothing about it but talk.
The American government, the only government in the world that wants to stop Jihad, is handicapped by politicians who want to win elections more than protect themselves or the world. In Iraqi 95% of all deaths come from people sent into the country from Iran and Syria and this will never stop until the war extends to Iran and Syria. Instead of facing the fact, American politicians want to get out, let the Iraqis die and a large nation to be formed (let us call it Persia) out of Iran, Iraqi and Syria. This nation will have the Atomic Bomb, train terrorists all over the world, and in time take over Saudi Arabia.
No unity in the world today just as it was in the first onslaught of the Muslims for 800 years.
Return of the Knights Templar
I think we need a return of the Knights Templar. Some will think this is not according to a good Catholics interpretation of Love . But Pope Saint Pius V was not sinning when he called for the first Christian Crusade.
The laws of physical force are:
1. Only for self protection
2. The protection of others from harm
3. Only the force needed to stop or protect from physical harm
4. No vengeance
5. No punishment.
However, it would also be a sin against love for us to stand by and allow someone to be harmed like we are doing in Darfur. It is a sin against love for us to allow priests and nuns to be killed all over the world and do nothing if we are capable of stopping it. Maybe right now we cannot.
But if the Knights Templar came back into the world again, many Western Governments, and many multimillionaires would not only back them with finances, but would use them in stead of using 18 to 25 year old soldiers with only 2 to 4 years of training. The voting public in Democratic Countries would rather finance them than see their own people come home in body bags.
The Knights Templar could move into any country in the world without the politics of treaties and government red tape. They would only operate as a protective army with no personal ambitions except to protect. They could move in and out at a moments notice from any place in the world.
Islamic radicals are instigating and perpetuating terrorist campaigns, insurgencies, civil wars, minority suppression, ethnic cleansing and/or genocide in Afghanistan, Algeria, Bangladesh, Belgium, Chad, Chechnya, Dagestan, Denmark, Egypt, Ethiopia, France, Gambia, Great Britain, India, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Kashmir, Kenya, Kosovo, Lebanon, Macedonia, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Netherlands, Niger, Nigeria, Pakistan, territories administered by the "Palestinian Authority," Philippines, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Somalia, Spain, Sudan, Syria, Tanzania, Thailand, Tunisia, Turkey, The United States of America, Yemen, and Zanzibar. The rest of the world is held hostage to fear.
Can any country help in all these countries? No! However, an International Army designed just for protection and nothing more could operate from many places and solve problems in a swift and complete way without considering what is politically correct or worrying about a terrorist retaliation.
I do not see the Holy Father publicly supporting such an army because too many Catholics living in Muslim countries would be in great danger. I believe, however, that the time will come when no other choice will present itself. It is time though for Catholics with some financial means to consider putting this together and to support again a military branch of the Knights of St. John.
Am I being radical? I do not think so. Many Catholics are waiting for God to do it. Others depend on prayer only. But all I read about Moral Theology is that we must use both prayer and action . God uses our hands to do His work. We must be our brother s keeper and not turn away with a look of compassion and a prayer. We must be the Good Samaritan and go to the aid of people in need especially to protect life, not only in abortion clinics but in countries where the innocent are being slaughtered just for not being Muslim.
If you've read this far, then maybe you too believe that it is time for the Knights Templar to come out of hiding.
