World History, Chapter Seventeen

World History – Chapter Seventeen
Rome’s Final Defeat in the East and Europe is poised to conquer of the world

We didn’t have time in our last session but I want to give you some names worthy of note with regard to New Testament Christians living in the Medieval period or Dark Ages and a few more Jewish names of note so that, in the event you pursue your education further, you will have at least have heard of these people.

Moses Ben Nachman, also know as Nachmonides, and RaMaBaN, was a Spanish rabbi, philosopher, and biblical commentator born in Catalonia (the area around modern day Barcelona) in 1194. He argued that the central issue separating Christianity from Judaism was not the issue of Jesus as the messiah but whether or not Jesus was God. This is the dividing line between the two religions as per Nachman.

Isaac Abrabanel was called the last Jewish Aristotelian, in that he followed the Greek philosopher Aristotle’s lines of thinking, as did the Roman Catholic Church later. He was also very influenced by Christian Biblical interpretation. He was born in 1437 and believed the Messiah would arrive in 1503. He died in 1508 having seen his prophecy fail.

The Jewish mystic, Isaac Luria, was expelled along with the rest of Jewry from Spain in 1492. He was most famous as a believer in and follower of the Kabbala, studying the book of Jewish mysticism called the Zohar. It is from Kabbala that we find the origins of the Big Bang theory of the 20th century, as I explained in Class One. The similarity is too vivid to be dismissed as mere coincidence.

Among the Christians of note in the period were Arnold of Brescia who lived from 1110 to 1155 and came from Northern Italy, the heart of the many Anabaptist groups. Another word for groups or divisions is sects. He was condemned as a schismatic, someone who causes a schism, or a divide resulting from controversy, at the Synod of Lateran in 1139 and again at a Council of Sens in 1140. He was expelled from Italy and then from France and from there he went to Bohemia to preach, returned to Rome inciting a riot and was banished again as a heretic. He was hanged, his body burned, and his ashes thrown into the Tiber River. His great crime was that he was against infant baptism. He also did not believe in a church, any church, aligned with a state government. Separation of church and state, a hallmark of our Constitution, was a heresy to the Medieval Church (Roman Catholic).

Girolamo Savonarola who was born in 1452 and died in 1498 was an Italian reformer from Ferrara, Italy. He entered a Dominican monastery in 1474 studying the Bible and the writings of Augustine and could not deal with the contradictions between the two. He became a preacher in Florence and a harsh critic of the Church. Pope Alexander VI offered him a cardinal’s red hat but Savonarola said the only red hat he would accept was one made out of blood. He stayed a devout Roman Catholic, however, until his death by burning at the stake after being tortured for two months.


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Henry of Lausanne and Peter of Bruys, living in the late 11th century to early 12th , condemned baptism as a saving sacrament, the mass, and the use of images. Henry died in prison while Peter died at the burning stake.

There were many others during this time period of note that can be found in the works of Schaff and Foxe, as well as Latourette and Newman.

Now, on to the Black Death. In 1338 a horrible disease flared up in the Italian port city of Genoa with symptoms of hard, black boils which appeared under the arms and in the groin. Sufferers began to vomit blood. In three days or thereabouts they were dead. It was the beginning of something called the Black Death. It was the worst epidemic of many plague epidemics and even worse than the Plague of Justinian hundreds of years previous. Within the next fifty years, the Black Death or Bubonic Plague, which was its real name, killed more than 1/3rd of the population of Europe with outbreaks recorded in all the major countries of Europe over the next 500 years. At its height, more than 200,000 towns and villages in Europe were completely without one living human inhabitant.

Dried toads and goat urine were among the “cures” suggested, prescribed by quacks, well meaning and otherwise. Doctors often refused to treat the plague victims, knowing how infectious it was. Those groups who did not suffer as heavily from it, such as Jews, who followed the Old Testament cleanliness practices, were massacred as being the cause of it. No one knew anything about germs at the time but if they had followed the admonitions given in the Old Testament the outbreaks would have been less severe. Modern antibiotics and improved standards of public hygiene have virtually eliminated it from the world scene. The plague had a profound impact on politics, religion, folklore, economics, music, and art.

One of the most interesting sourcebooks on the plague is The Black Death, A Chronicle of the Plague, by Johannes Nohl. He reports that at Venice alone, a half million people died within two years. It has been estimated that this plague that spread through Europe killed 43,000,000. Other cities were depopulated by the plague such as Bristol, England, which had all communications with it severed during the outbreak to try and prevent its spread. It was often thought to be a punishment for sin, personal and national. It is believed that it was brought to Europe by ships containing rats which had infected plague carrying fleas on them.

Speaking of politics, William I of England consolidated his conquest between 1067 and 1071. He successfully stopped many Anglo-Saxon uprisings and even defeated a Danish backed force that had captured the city of York. In 1072 he invaded Scotland. In 1073 he reconquered the French province of Maine which he claimed. He then invaded Brittany but was forced to back off due to pressure from Philip I of France against whom he warred in 1087, accidentally being killed in the effort. His son, William II, took over and reigned until 1100 almost constantly fighting with his brother, Robert, who wanted

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the throne. The fourth son of William I, the Conqueror, was Henry I, who reigned from 1100 to 1135. He continued fighting with Robert until capturing him at the Battle of Tinchebrai. Henry declared himself Duke of Normandy and King of England, fighting a war with Louis VI of France.

Stephen, Henry’s nephew reigned from 1135 to 1154, fighting a constant battle with his cousin Matilda, Henry’s daughter. A truce was finally concluded at the Battle of Wallingford in 1154. Henry II began to rule in 1154. He was Matilda’s son and founded the important Plantagenet dynasty of Kings of England. Remember, all of these people spoke the French of the time and had roots in France. Although French speakers made up only 2% of the English population at any given time, they ruled until in the 1400’s the aristocracy began to act more like English than Anglo-Norman Kings. It took losing their territory in France to cut their ties with French soil.

Henry II was a capable ruler and married the famous Eleanor of Aquitaine, whose marriage to Louis VII of France, had been annulled. This made Henry II of England the largest landholder in France due to Eleanor’s family connections, thereby creating the cause for the Hundred Year’s War. Henry was usually at war with Louis, who was technically his lord, as being a landholder in France made the King of England a subject of the King of France. He invaded Wales and attempted to invade Ireland. He did suppress the last Anglo-Saxon revolt in 1174 which may have been inspired by his possible order of the murder of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas a’ Becket, by Norman knights. He constantly warred against his own sons; Henry, Richard, Geoffrey, and John who were always shifting alliances between brothers and their father and Philip II Augustus of France.

In 1199 Richard, who is said to have been the very epitome’ of the chivalrous knight, took over England as Richard I. He was known as Richard the Lionhearted, the hero of the Third Crusade, who spent more time away from England than actually ruling it. He also fought a war with Philip of France, winning his greatest battle at Gisors. He was succeeded by his brother, John, who ruled from 1199 to 1216. This is the era of the legend of Robin Hood and his Merry Men. It may have been based on a true story but it also might have been an accumulation of various legends.

John’s most famous contribution to real history was his compromise with the feudal barons of England in a document called the Magna Carta or Great Charter, which is a forerunner of our Constitution. This is one of the many documents that paved the way for Anglo-Saxon freedom and English inspired Republican government, a process of hundreds of years, which explains why no other culture, such as Russia, Arab, or Spanish has been able to duplicate it so successfully as America. The process of true freedom took nearly a thousand years and does not come overnight. The document was written in Latin and is rather vague but outlines concessions made by John to acknowledge freedoms that had already been granted by previous kings to the nobility. Like our Declaration of


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Independence, it was not drawn up to create new rights but to demand the sovereign’s acknowledgement and respect of already existing freedoms that he had stolen or ignored.

In Scotland, the Danes invaded in 1009 and 1010 with King Malcolm defeated by Swen Forkbeard at Nairn but the Danes withdrew. The next summer, Malcolm defeated Swen at the battle of Mortlack. Malcolm then invaded Northumbria and annexed some of its territory after the Battle of Carham in 1018. Macbeth, made famous by Shakespeare, seized the throne between 1040 and 1057 after killing King Duncan but was defeated by Duncan’s son, Malcolm, at the Battle of Dunsinane in 1054 which led to his death three years later.

Malcolm III reigned from 1057 to 1093 and fought with the English but was forced by William the Conqueror to submit to his authority. Rebelling, Malcolm was killed at the First Battle of Ainwick. David I ruled from 1124 to 1153 and helped Matilda in England with her efforts mentioned above. Malcolm IV had to surrender conquered English land to Henry II. William the Lion, Malcolm IV’s brother, ruled from 1165 to 1214 but was captured at the Second Battle of Ainwick and forced to pay ransom to the English King.

In Ireland, the tenth century opened up with Brian Boru High King defeating Mael Sechnaill II, former High King and the 12th century ended with a Norman Conquest with lots of internal squabbling and fighting in between.

Before England fell to the Normans, Harold of England had defeated and killed Harald III Hardraade, who had failed to conquer Denmark for his native Norway. A Dynastic Civil War ensued after the reign of the Danish king who fought him, Sweyn II Estridsen and his five sons had passed away. Valdemar I won the struggle and became known as the Great, ruling from 1157 to 1182. He was assisted by a famous statesman and religious leader named Absalon.

Valdemar expanded Danish influence in the Baltic Sea at the expense of the Swedes and Germans. His advisor, Absalon extended Danish control all the way to Estonia. From 1182 to 1202 Denmark was in full glory with Knud (Canute) IV ruling, still with Absalon as the principal advisor and strategist. He repulsed a German invasion and smashed an enemy fleet at the Battle of Strela.

In 1157 there was a Catholic Swedish invasion of pagan Finland by King Erik III who was accompanied by a Catholic Bishop from England named Henry who died in the effort and became Finland’s patron saint. Pope Alexander III issued a Papal Bull in 1172 encouraging the Swedes to force the Finns to submit to the Church.

France’s history at this time was entwined with the Norman-English Dynastic struggles and the land claims of the Norman-English kings in France. Louis VII inspired and participated in the Second Crusade to the Holy Land. He reigned between 1137 and 1180.


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Germany saw a gradual rise in imperial power under three able Holy Roman Emperors in the 11th century. There was Henry II, Conrad II, and Henry III. Then a struggle between Henry IV and Pope Hildebrand which the Pope won was followed by civil war, weakening the power of the emperors and strengthening the power of the Popes. Henry V continued the struggle with the Popes reigning from 1106 to 1125. The constant fighting between the empire left by Charlemagne which was supposed to serve the Church and the Pope and his loyal allies in France and Italy caused a weakening of German power and perhaps set the tone for the later willingness of Germany to embrace Protestantism during Luther’s time.

In 1138, Conrad III started the Hohenstaufen dynasty. He, along with his nephew, Frederick, participated in the Second Crusade. Frederick became Frederick I “Barbarossa” (Redbeard), the greatest of the Hohenstaufen kings. He had numerous successful military campaigns in Poland, Bohemia, and Hungary, as well as six expeditions to Italy. He was defeated at the Battle of Legnano in 1176. Later, he participated in the Third Crusade and was drowned in Cilicia in 1190.

Moving ahead in time we look at the first phase of the Hundred Years War. This war was actually a series of eight major conflicts between the royal houses of England and France lasting nearly 120 years, from 1337 to 1453. Four of these periods took place in the 14th century and four in the 15th. Although this series of wars started out as a typical feudal dispute, it had nationalistic importance that resulted in an English (Anglo) French rivalry that lasted for more than 5 ½ centuries. There were three main causes of the war;

1. The feudal relationship of the kings of France and England. As dukes of Aquitaine and barons of other French lands, the kings of England were vassals; as rulers of England, they were sovereign kings. The French kings rightly feared that the English rulers would try to consolidate their French lands with their English. The English kings hated being subordinate to the French.
2. The French and English kings were fighting over the commercial promise of the wealthy and industrial County of Flanders.
3. The French were helping by way of Scotland to stir up the almost constant wars in England.

An important battle was the Battle of Sluys on June 24, 1340, when an English fleet of 150 vessels fought a French fleet of 190 ships at the entrance of Sluys harbor and captured or sunk 166 of them. In 1338, Edward, King of England, proclaimed himself King of France also. This claim was accepted by Louis IV of Germany. In 1345 Edward raised a large expeditionary force to invade France and support his allies in that country. In his army were a great many archers, archery having become a significant English battlefield tactic. The English longbow was famous for its power and accuracy. King John had long ago ordered the English to practice archery at least twice a week by law.



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During his campaign in France he fought the French army which vastly outnumbered him at the Battle of Crecy on August 26, 1346 and making use of the English longbow his army slaughtered 1542 French knights including King John of Bohemia, between 10 and 20,000 soldiers, and thousands of horses. The English lost about 200 dead and wounded. Only 2 English knights died.

An interlude stopped the war for a time as the Black Death devastated both countries from 1347 to 1354 and a truce was called. But, mankind isn’t about to let a little thing like a plague killing millions of people to stop him from killing as many as he can so the war resumed in 1355. This time, Edward’s son, Edward, the Black Prince conducted a devastating raid into France with a relatively small force. A superior French force responded and the English retreated. Exhausted from retreating the English chose to stand and fight at Poitiers on September 19, 1356.

Once again, a hail of English arrows met the French knights. However, it is believed that if the French knights had continued forward they would have broken the English line. With arrows spent, the English and French engaged in hand to hand combat. Finally, an English force attacked the rear of the French line and they began to flee. The French lost over 5,000 killed or taken prisoner, the English 1,000.

The Black Prince died in 1376 and in 1396 the Peace of Paris was signed between Richard II of England and Charles VI.

Later, in 1415, an English king named Henry V invaded France. The most memorable battle there was the Battle of Agincourt where, on October 25, 1415, 5,000 heavily armored French knights fell under the English bowmen on a muddy field, encumbered by their heavy plate armor. The English reported only 13 soldiers or men-at-arms and 100 footmen had been killed.

In all of these wars the French had been bested by the English. But, in 1429 a 17 year old peasant girl named Joan of Arc convinced the Dauphin or Prince that she had a divinely inspired mission to drive the English out of France once and for all. Surprisingly, he put her at the head of an army whose function it was to try to relieve the city of Orleans. Even more surprisingly she did it, ending the myth of English invincibility by winning many more battles. Finally, she was captured and turned over to the English and was burned at the stake for religious reasons. Her Dauphin had betrayed her by not coming to her aid. Within 5 years of her death the French had recaptured Paris and a 5 year truce was signed. Two excellent books on Joan of Arc are Joan of Arc, Her Story by Regine Pernoud and Marie-Veronique Clin and Joan of Arc, A Military Leader by Kelly DeVries.

Back in England, after King John had been forced to sign the Magna Carta by his barons, a faction of English barons actually invited Louis, Dauphin of France in 1215 to be king of England. John proved to have more determination and skill than Robin Hood

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movies and books will grant him and he defeated an invasion by King Alexander of Scotland and rallying the English people to his side he cornered Louis and the barons who supported him in southeastern England , defeating them on land at Lincoln and on the sea at Sandwich.

Henry III’s reign saw the loss of a great much of the territory the English had in France and a civil war ensued led by Simon de Montfort between 1263 and 1265. There was almost constant civil war of some type until the abdication of Richard II in 1399.

So, now, keep in mind; Magna Carta, Crecy, Poitiers, Agincourt, William the Conqueror, Henry II, Eleanor of Aquitaine, and the Plantagenet Dynasty.

The conflict between the Church and the Holy Roman Empire reached a compromise at the Concordat of Worms in 1122 between Pope Calixtus II and the Emperor Henry V. Henry, who had forced his unfortunate father Henry IV, who had spent three days standing shoeless in the snow begging a Pope to reverse his excommunication from the Church back in 1076, to abdicate in 1105. Henry V gave up the right to invest or create bishops and abbots and recognized that only the Church had that right. Of course, most of the kings of Europe still continued to pick who would be a bishop in their territory.

Kings and Churchmen often collided on the subject of who would be Pope and there were those who backed one and then the other in bitter disputes over power. At times a Holy Roman Emperor like Frederick Barbarossa would make a Pope and at other times he would be forced to kiss a Pope’s feet, which Frederick did after the Battle of Legnano humbling himself as Henry II of England was forced to do when he walked barefoot to the tomb of Becket to receive discipline from the canons of Canterbury. The same Pope, Alexander III, caused both monarchs to humiliate themselves in these situations.

The Papacy was a constant swirl of plotters and diabolic intrigue and some of the worst of it was from the 11th to the 13th century. Dr. Ludwig Pastor’s 1906 work, The History of the Popes, Volume I, says it this way, “The disastrous struggle between the highest powers of Christendom, which began in the eleventh century and reached its climax in the thirteenth, was decided, apparently to the advantage of the Papacy, by the tragical downfall of the House of Hohenstaufen.” Please note how all historians equate the Christian in history before the Reformation as being synonymous with the Catholic in history. The Holy Roman Empire started by Charlemagne and the Papacy were constantly at odds and with the weakness of the empire the Popes had to look more to France for support. So began the 14th century or the 1300’s.

Clement V was a native of France. After being crowned Pope, afraid of the constant turmoil and warfare in Italy and influenced by the French King, Philip the Fair, he stayed in France and never set foot in Rome. He reigned as Pope from 1305 to 1314. His successor, John XXII, also from France, was elected after much controversy in 1316 with


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the Papacy or Holy See being vacant for two years. He took up permanent abode in Avignon, France just across the Rhone river from the French king like his predecessor.

When Clement V moved the Papacy to Avignon, Durant tells us there began the sixty eight years of “Babylonian Captivity” of the Popes. The papacy had freed itself from Germany but surrendered to France. Clement, according to Durant, was a weak tool of the French king, implying that the Avignon popes were tools of the French King. Dr. Pastor disagrees in his book if that is applied to all of the Avignon Popes, saying that the statements about the weakness of the Popes at Avignon are “unjust” although he does admit that Clement wasn’t a strong Pope. It was under Clement V that the Papal Bull calling on the King of France to destroy the Knights Templars was made.

Pastor tells us, though, that the move from the natural home of the Popes of Rome to France was a disaster for the Papacy. Obviously, he is a good Catholic as he laments how the Popes lost prestige while in France. It is true that it was strange for the Popes, who had so been used to rebuking kings and princes, were now almost subject to one.

The Holy Roman Emperor, Charles IV, with the excuse of freeing the Popes from the constant struggles between France and England, worked hard to bring the Papacy back to Rome. Urban V, Pope from 1362 to 1370 almost did just that. This emperor made a pilgrimage to Rome and unlike previous German leaders he formed a good relationship with the Papacy. Rome was in decay without the Popes and the Papal Palaces were in ruins. Urban went back to Avignon and died before any permanent move back to Rome could be accomplished. Gregory XI did move the Papacy back to Rome after much difficulty with those opposing the move and with much fanfare.

The next “great” event in Roman Catholic Church history is known as the Papal Schism of 1378 to 1417 when the plans for reforming the Church by Urban VI made Charles V of France angry and hoping to drag the Papacy kicking and screaming back to Avignon he supported some renegade cardinals in electing Robert of Geneva as Pope Clement VII. Once again, the Papacy was in a turmoil. The kings of various countries at war would align with the Pope that most suited their cause, of course.

One of the less endearing efforts of the Church in this period was the Inquisition which began as a way of dealing with heretics like you and I who viewed the scripture as their final authority and that man was not saved by the sacraments of any Church but by the grace of God through the Lord Jesus Christ. After 1227, Gregory IX set up several special inquisitores to pursue heresy. He favored the Dominican order of monks so heavily for this task that they became known as the “hunting dogs of the Lord”. The Dominicans were founded by Catholic Saint Dominic, a Spaniard born in 1170. The Inquisition is purely and uniquely a Catholic institution. The office of the Inquisition was changed to Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in 1965 after having been renamed
Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office in 1908. The current Pope, Benedict XVI, aka Joseph Ratzinger, was in charge of that office from 1981.

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The Medieval Inquisition, one of four, did its job. It stamped out Catharism in France and drove the Waldensians to the remotest hills, postponing the Reformation by three centuries. In Spain, the Inquisition played a minor role before 1300, according to Durant and Northern Italy contained many Bible believing Christians in spite of its efforts right up to the Reformation.

Durant says that Western Europe reached a pinnacle of art comparable with the Golden Ages of Athens and Rome in the 12th and 13th centuries. The Viking and Muslim raids had been defeated and the Crusades created a burst of creative energy bringing back many art forms from the Eastern Roman or Byzantine Empire and the Muslim world. Economies were booming from trade and artists and artisans were hired from the Greek and Muslim world to teach how and to adorn monasteries and churches with art and sculpture. A school of monastic art developed at the abbey of Monte Cassino, the protection of which cost so many American lives in World War II. When we get that far in history I’ll explain. Painting; mosaics, miniatures, and murals were beautiful and richly done and stained glass was a high art form. Sculpture came into its own as well with angels, devils, gargoyles adorning cathedrals, and depictions of Biblical figures being created.

The Catholic Cathedral’s creation was a special kind of art often taking generations to complete. The Gothic Cathedrals, as one style was called, with pointed arches and vertical construction meant to give an impression of height, are some of the most beautiful buildings ever constructed. There are several styles of cathedrals named by students of architectural history and many impressive examples of the Cathedral still existing throughout Europe.

Monks preserved Classic Greek and Roman Literature as well. Great universities arose in England and France providing a nesting place for Medieval thinkers like Abelard, Thomas Aquinas, Anselm, and Albertus Magnus. Greek philosophy, particularly Aristotle’s, was a powerful force within the thought world of Roman Catholic Europe. The mixing of philosophy with religion so focused on by Philo and Origen found its ultimate expression in the Medieval Roman Church. Skeptics, pantheists, and atheists contended with the Church for possession of the European mind. Contact with Islam further increased the Europeans interest in other ways of thinking besides the one approved by their priests.

Two of the great literary talents of the Middle Ages were Geoffrey Chaucer of Canterbury Tales fame and Dante Alighieri of The Divine Comedy.

It is time now to briefly discuss a topic of history that I have neglected; gold. Gold has played such a huge part in history that it can be taken for granted that the student of history understands how great an effect it has had on nations, kings, and popes. It is important to note that whether in the Crusades or in the Dynastic or Territorial struggles in Europe it was common to capture and ransom enemy knights for gold. Ransoming

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captives was a great way to raise money and the value of a captured knight in gold was far greater than his death. Saladin ransomed Christian captives when he retook Jerusalem. Richard the Lionhearted himself was taken for ransom in Europe, costing his people a fortune.

The economic consequences of the Black Death, according to Peter Bernstein’s The Power of Gold, was the exchange of gold and other wealth from the ownership of the massive amount of the dead to the hands of the few, living survivors. Barbara Tuchman, in her brilliant work on the 14th century, A Distant Mirror, wrote of this century of the Black Death, the Hundred Years War, and constant conflict as “a violent, tormented, bewildered, suffering, and disintegrating age, a time, as many thought, of Satan triumphant”.

With those brief comments on gold for now, let’s move on to the great conflict between the rising power of the Ottoman Turks and the Byzantine Empire, the results of which would send a flood of precious Bible manuscripts into Europe in preparation for the next great age to come; the Reformation.

In the middle of the 13th century the Seljuk Turks, who had been known by the Crusaders as simply the Turks, were overwhelmed by the Mongols, who we have previously discussed. Their core base in Anatolia, what is today the eastern part of Turkey, was destroyed. A new Turkish leader, Osman I (Othman), emerged into prominence in Anatolia. After establishing their supremacy over neighboring Turkish tribes, the Ottomans steadily whittled away at the declining Byzantine power and territory, taking advantage of the constant infighting and struggles within the empire. Near the middle of the 14th century the Ottomans gained a foothold in Europe and overran Thrace, Macedonia, Bulgaria, and much of Serbia. One thing they were unable to do was to take Constantinople where the last remaining power of Byzantium stood. Just as Constantinople was about to fall the Turks were smashed by the conqueror, Tamerlane, seemingly beyond hope but they rebuilt and came back.

The Turks had defeated Serbia at the Battle of Kosovo on June 20, 1389. This defeat by Muslim forces was a rallying cry 600 years later as the Serbs and Kosovars fought again, only this time the Serbs’ defeat came at the hands of a military alliance of the United States and the United Nations.

I want to give a review of what had been happening in the Byzantine Empire since the Constantinople was sacked by the Crusaders in 1204. I had told you in the last class that there were three important Crusades. Five more, at least, succeeded them and they also ended in disaster with the with the 4th Crusade being even more of a disaster for the declining Byzantine Empire. In 1204, after the capital’s fall to the Crusaders Count Baldwin of Flanders in France became Emperor Baldwin I of Constantinople for a year.
Theodore Lascaris became Emperor of Nicea, the largest remnant left of the Byzantine Empire, and Alexis Comnenus established the Empire of Trebizond. In 1205 Baldwin

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was captured and died in captivity after the Bulgarians defeated his army at the Battle of Adrianopole. Then, Alexius Comnenus and his brother, David, were defeated by Lascaris in a Civil War which saw the Seljuk Turks choose first one and then the other to support. Eventually, there was a three way war between Crusaders, Nicea, and Trebizond. This seesaw conflict continued until the Niceans seized Constantinople from the Latins (as European Crusaders were called) in 1261.

Another Civil War devastated the Byzantines between 1341 and 1347. The Ottoman Turks had become players now with the Seljuks destroyed and the Mongol menace withdrawing and got involved in this Civil War. The Mongols had crushed the Seljuk Turks at the Battle of Kosedagh in 1243. It is a testimony to how powerful the Byzantine Empire was that they did not fall permanently to so many adversaries at the time. There was a confused dynastic struggle until 1392 and the Turks took advantage of that.

Ottoman Turkish Emperor, Murad I, had captured Adrianople in 1365 and made it his capital and, after defeating a European crusader force the next year felt secure. He then conquered Bulgaria and created the Janissary corps. This elite body of almost all archers was composed of former Christians captured as children and raised to be fanatical Muslims. For more than 500 years the Janissaries would play a major role in Ottoman history. By comparison, the Mamelukes of Egypt were also Turkish slave soldiers and horse archers who first rose to prominence as warriors for the great Kurdish general Saladin, who retook Jerusalem from the Crusaders and then signed a treaty with Richard the Lion Hearted. They, too, eventually played an important role in Egypt’s history.

Then, for eight years from 1391 to 1399, the Ottoman Turks besieged Constantinople. The Byzantines were helped by a small force of volunteers under French marshal (general) Jean Bouciquaut, repulsing attacks on land and sea by Ottoman Emperor Bayazid I. The Byzantine emperor at the time, Manuel II, was capable enough but he only ruled over Constantinople, Thessalonika, and the Morean Peninsula (the Medieval name for the Peloponnesian Peninsula).

In 1422, Manuel repulsed another Turkish attack on his capital. His son, John VIII, conquered what part of the Morean that Byzantium didn’t have, from the Franks (French). John’s younger brother, Constantine Palaeologus or Constantine XI, succeeded him and invaded central Greece which was ruled by the Turks but was repulsed by Sultan Murad II.

Finally, one of the important moments of history takes place, one that you must remember. Between February and May of 1453, Mohammed II, called “The Conqueror”, laid siege to Constantinople with an army of more than 80,000 men and a siege train of over 70 heavy cannon, commanded by Urban, a Hungarian renegade. Constantine XI had less than 10,000 men at his disposal. The Turkish navy sealed off all hope of help from the sea. The great siege batteries consisting of 12 super-cannons known as


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superbombards which hammered at the many walls of the ancient city caused great destruction. A Venetian fleet tried to help but were driven off by the superior Turkish navy. Assault after assault hit the city. The last Roman emperor, the Byzantine emperor, Constantine, namesake of the founder of the city for Rome, fought on the walls until he, too, was killed. The city became property of the Turks and is now called Istanbul.

The Turks went on to conquer Greece and the entire Aegean Sea, also fighting a war with Venice from which Shakespeare derived the basis for his play, Othello. They even attacked Italy. The Turks won a great and decisive victory over the Venetians at the Battle of Lepanto in 1499. A flood of Greek monks and churchmen, along with thousands of Christian refugees flooded Western Europe bringing with them manuscripts that had been copied and used in the Greek and Syrian churches from the time that the Old Latin Bible was first penned in Antioch in the middle of the second century and even before; copies of copies of copies of the Greek original manuscripts of the Gospels, and the rest of the New Testament. The Hebrew Masoretic Text of the Jews, having reached its apogee in the 10th century was already known in Europe.

An interesting character of this time is a person that has come down to us as Dracula, or Vlad Tepes, called the Impaler by the Turks. Vlad ruled Wallachia, in what is now southern Romania on three separate occasions in the mid to late 1400’s. He is best known for his defeat of a Turkish invasion by destroying everything in the invaders path, pursuing a guerilla war against them, and then finally, according to legendary accounts, impaling thousands of Turkish soldiers. He is a great folk hero in present day Romania and is certainly worthy of further study but was hardly a huge player in the entire scope of history.

The niece of the last emperor of the Eastern Roman Empire who went down fighting with it was named Sophia. She married Ivan III, Grand Duke of Moscow, and Ivan claimed to be the heir of the Roman Empire and called Moscow, the Third Rome. Constantinople had often been called the New Rome and as I have noted before, the Muslims referred to this Greek empire as Rome, during the Crusades. The Byzantines were mainly Greek speaking and the dependence of the Roman Catholic Church on Latin led the Crusaders to be called Latins or Franks for the predominant French influence among them. This idea of Moscow being the Third Rome is of great interest to students of Bible Prophecy although most would consider the European Union as being the revived Roman Empire which many believe will dominate the end times, and even others refer to the United States of America as Rome revived. It is interesting that in the turmoil in Palestine recently and in the Middle East the diplomatic coalition of Russia, the European Union, the United States, and the United Nations is called the Quartet and all of them individually have been referred to as the revived Roman Empire by some Bible teacher at some time. Just file it away for future study.




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Now, we need to bring Western Europe up to this point in history before we move on to the Renaissance and Reformation. There is also much to report in Eastern Europe at this time. The desperate attempts to hold off the Mongol invasion of 1241 with Prince Henry of Silesia’s army smashed at the Battle of Liegnitz by Kaidu of the Mongols was not followed up by pursuit. Kadan, another Mongol general, attacked Hungary. King Bela of Hungary with 100,000 men fought the Mongols at the Battle of Sajo River and was smashed. The Mongols had all of Eastern Europe at their feet. They had defeated armies five times their strength. But, the death of the Emperor, Ogotai, forced, by Mongol law, all leaders to return home to elect a new khan, so Europe was spared.

Scotland’s history is fascinating at this time as there was a Scottish king named Alexander II who ruled from 1214 to 1249 who tried to take advantage of the barons’ revolt against King John that gave us the Magna Carta. He invaded England but was defeated near London by John. Alexander III, ruling from 1249 to 1286 drove Norwegians from the islands of western Scotland in the Battle of Largs in 1263. In 1290 a total of 12 different nobles claimed the crown. Foolishly, Edward I of England was asked to mediate and he gained recognition of English overlordship of Scotland, choosing John Baliol to be king.

John got into a dispute with Edward I and allied with France, resulting in Edward I declaring John’s right to the throne forfeited and claiming the throne of Scotland for himself. In 1296 England invaded Scotland and annexed it, defeating John at the Battle of Dunbar. It is then that William Wallace led an uprising that defeated the Earl of Warenne in the Battle of Cambuskenneth Bridge, raiding northern England afterwards in 1297.

In 1298, Edward I invaded Scotland and in spite of Wallace’s efforts to avoid a pitched battle with this superior force of up to 7,000 heavily armored cavalry, 3,000 light cavalry, and 15,000 infantry, Edward did manage to force him to fight. At the Battle of Falkirk in 1298, Wallace’s army was annihilated and he was later captured and executed in 1305.

In 1306 Robert Bruce, who was the grandson of one of an earlier claimant to the throne and had fought under Edward at Falkirk against Wallace, led a revolt from 1307 to 1314. At first, using guerrilla tactics he pushed the English back to where they only controlled Stirling, Dunbar, and Berwick. In order to rescue Stirling which Robert Bruce had put under siege, Edward took the field against him in 1314. Leading an army of nearly 60,000 men he met Robert Bruce and his much, much smaller army at a stream called Bannockburn. There, one of the most amazing battles in the British Isles took place in which The Battle Book by Byran Perrett tells us the Scots won a decisive victory which secured Scottish independence. Harper’s Encyclopedia of Military History claims losses for the English of at least 15,000 which Perrett disputes but both agree that it was a disaster for England. Sir Charles Oman in his The Art of War in the Middle Ages says that it was the worst loss every suffered by the English army in the Middle Ages.



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When Edward attempted another invasion Robert defeated him at the Battle of Byland in 1322. Scottish independence was formally recognized at Peace of Northampton in 1328. Robert died the year after that

The era of 1400 to 1455 in England was called the Lancastrian era as Henry IV seized the throne from Richard II. His son, Henry V, brought England to its height of power and prestige in the Middle Ages and inspired Shakespeare’s play of the same name but by 1450 there was growing disorder and unrest. Henry VI had intermittent periods of insanity which led to the rise of Richard, Duke of York elected as Protector by Parliament. Henry VI subsequently dismissed him from the government which led to a civil war called the War or Wars of the Roses for the color of the roses that represented Lancaster and rival York. The dismissal of Richard from the King’s Council, and the assumption of dictatorial powers by Henry’s queen Margaret and the Duke of Somerset started a revolt which included several powerful men lined up against the crown. When one of those powerful men, Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, was killed in battle his son named himself King Edward IV and then proceeded to crush the Lancastrians at the bloody, Battle of Towton. Edward realigned himself with Queen Margaret and was succeeded by his 12 year old son as Edward V. As if this wasn’t confusing enough another Richard, Duke of Gloucester, Edward IV’s younger brother then usurped the throne. The House of York which had defeated the House of Lancaster was now threatened by a series of uprisings including an invasion led by Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond, leader of the now revived Lancastrians. Richard III, whose army deserted him, was defeated at the Battle of Bosworth. Henry Tudor ascended the throne as Henry VII. At least Richard III had a Shakespeare play named after him.

One of the most interesting aspects of this civil war was the Battle of Towton on a snowy Palm Sunday in 1461. Contemporary chroniclers estimated the size of the armies at hundreds of thousands with the dead, mostly Lancastrians, being in the tens of thousands. Modern historians scoffed at this number much as they do at the number of dead at Aphek in 1 Kings 20:30 (AV) as if to say that people who had to be able to count chickens, pigs, and cows could not count corpses. Subsequent excavations at Towton since 1996, as revealed in the book Blood Red Roses, The Archaeology of a Mass Grave at Towton AD 1461, have uncovered the remains of the tens of thousands of men who were slaughtered at that battle. Modern, presumptuous, and arrogant historians strike out again in their impression of ancient and medieval historians as being simply stupid or worse, liars.

1485 and the crowning of the first Tudor king laid the foundations for four centuries of English glory as that nation proceeded to conquer much of the world.

I want to move on to a country that holds some importance as a nest for independent thought during the Reformation and the safe haven for John Calvin and his followers. During the early part of the 1400’s Switzerland had so perfected their infantry organization of pikemen, halberders, and crossbowmen that they became the leading

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military power in Europe. As infantry tactics came to take successes away from cavalry, first underscored by Edward III of England’s defeat of the French at Crecy, the Swiss became masters at defeating seemingly militarily superior forces. The Swiss did not attempt, however, foreign conquest, but used their invincibility against all comers to secure their own independence from foreign tyranny. They were ruthless on the battlefield and often slaughtered their enemies, so much so that battles were often over before they were fought. They saved themselves by being a nation of fierce warriors who weren’t interested in taking anyone else’s land but only in defending their own. Switzerland has become a byword for neutrality in many European wars and the Popes have traditionally been “protected” by a Swiss Guard at the Vatican, which is today more of a ceremonial force than anything else.

In 1454 a German printer named Johannes Gutenberg founded the modern publishing industry when he set the Latin Vulgate in lead alloy movable type and printed it on a wood printing press. Gutenberg was not the first to invent printing or movable type, however. The first experimenters with the printing process were the Sumerians, who cut into cylindrical stones, symbols representing a signature, and pressed the image into clay that was then baked. The technique of reversed characters being inked onto paper was first developed by the Chinese, who engraved images onto wood blocks as early as the eighth century. The first such book, The Diamond Sutra, was printed in 868. By the 11th century, both Chinese and Korean printers were using clay, word, bronze, and iron to develop movable type. The Chinese printer Pi Sheng was a leader in the field of setting individual ideograms in clay type.

The development of the printing press in Europe, though, had a huge significance. The Roman Catholic Church’s dominance over religious works with all unapproved manuscripts having to be copied laboriously by hand was ended. The printing press heralded a new age in freedom of thought and freedom of religion.

Some of the most significant inventions in the medieval period in Europe were the crossbow, introduced in France around 1050 and so effective its use was banned at various times as giving one side an unfair advantage over the other, as if war was a sport. Forks as eating implements were introduced to Europe through Venice in Italy from the Byzantine Empire around 1071 but were slow to gain acceptance as fingers were still the preferred utensil for many years.

The use of latitude and longitude measurements, in degrees, was introduced by an Anglo-Saxon scientist named Welcher of Malvern around 1120. In 1137 the abbey of St. Denis near Paris became the first major building to use flying buttresses which allowed the building of huge cathedrals. Coal is first mined in Newcastle, England in 1220, although it had been used as fuel in China since 1000BC. In 1250 returning Crusaders helped Europe convert to Arabic numerals and use the decimal system. In 1240 Roger Bacon introduced the use of lense to improve vision with eyeglasses appearing in Europe and China about the same time.

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In 1249, gunpowder is first mentioned in Europe in writings by scientist Roger Bacon while the first known gun, a small cannon, was built in China in about 1288. Edward III of England used cannon at the Battle of Crecy in 1346 although they didn’t have much bearing on the battle but by 1439 the French king Charles VII is using gunpowder artillery in a planned, systematic way. In 1450 the Dutch created the Harquebus which was the first firearm small enough to be carried and fired by a single person.

Around 1160 the French poet, Chretien de Troyes begins writing his romances based on the Arthurian legend after Geoffrey of Monmouth’s publication of his History of the Kings of Britain in 1135.

Around 1250 Albertus Magnus began applying Aristotle’s ideas on botany and biology to Europe. He classified plants and identified function in various parts. In 1269 William of Moerbeke translates Archimedes’ work into Latin. In 1452, Italian scientist, theoretician, and artist, Leonardo Da Vinci begins to believe in the marine origin of fossils. Why it would be thought as heretical is a mystery as anyone believing in a literal interpretation of Genesis and the Great Flood of the Bible would expect many fossils to have come from the see but he did not reveal his work publicly through 1519 due to that concern.

In 1250 Albertus Magnus discovers arsenic while sulfuric acid is discovered by an anonymous alchemist or someone who wanted to make gold by mixing of other elements in 1300.

As Europe began to discover scientific information both that it created and that it gleaned from other cultures’ previous work it began to develop particularly its military technology to a high degree. Constant warfare moved Europe ahead of almost every other culture group on earth in regard to military technology. However, two events we have already discussed prepared the way for the Reformation of mainstream Christianity; the invention of the printing press and the fall of Constantinople. Just as it took 425 years to complete Winchester Cathedral in England (finished in 1474) it took Europe awhile to get on its feet scientifically and catch up with the rest of the world.

A third factor was exploration and colonization of lands around the world which allowed for the spread of Christianity to distant lands. In 1402 Emperor Yung-Lo of China’s Ming Dynasty encouraged overseas exploration and conquest and his admiral, Cheng-ho’s fleet sailed as far west as the Red Sea, visiting Mecca and Egypt as well as Indonesia, Malaya, and Sri Lanka but this exploration was not capitalized on or exploited. At about the same time, in 1418, Prince Henry the Navigator of Portugal opened an observatory and school for navigation at Sagres on Cape St. Vincent, Portugal. His goal was to find a way around Africa in order to touch base with the rich trade of China. The same year, Portuguese navigators rediscovered Madeira, 360 miles directly west of Morocco and 540 miles southwest of Lisbon, the capital of Portugal. They had been discovered by the Romans and called the Purple Islands.

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In 1427, Portuguese navigator, Diogo de Sevilha discovered the Azores, an island chain 700 miles west of Portugal. By Prince Henry’s death in 1460, Portuguese explorers have sailed down the coast of Africa all the way to present day Gamba. In 1487 Bartholomeu Dias discovers the Cape of Good Hope, the southernmost tip of Africa, for Portugal. At the same time, King John II of Portugal, Prince Henry’s grand-nephew, organizes an expedition through the Mediterranean and the Red Sea under the leadership of Pero de Covilhao.

On October 12, 1492, Italian mariner Christopher Columbus, leading a fleet of three ships from Spain becomes the first European since the Vikings to reach the Americas, which we know of. Unlike the Vikings he will open the Americas up to exploration and colonization. Basque fishermen had been fishing off the Grand Banks off Newfoundland for a long time but no effort had been made to explore inland except possibly for a mention of a land called Bacalao, or the Land of Codfish, in some writings. Columbus’ second voyage left Cadiz, Spain in 1493 with 17 ships to explore Dominica, Puerto Rico, Cuba, and Jamaica. On a side note, as this was happening a great syphilis epidemic began to sweep Europe with those infected ordered to leave the city of Paris or be thrown into the Seine River.

In 1497, Italian navigator Amerigo Vespucci, exploring some of the coast of land touched by Columbus declares that this land is not Asia but a “new world”. America is named after him. In the same year, Italian mariner Giovanni Cabot (John Cabot) sailing for the English, reaches Newfoundland and Nova Scotia. He becomes the first European since the Vikings to reach the mainland of North America. Also in the same year, Portuguese navigator Vasco da Gama becomes the first European to round the Cape of Good Hope and goes on to India. Columbus’ third voyage takes place the next year. The genie is now out of the bottle, so to speak, and events are racing forward to Europe’s conquest of the world.

Portugal was obviously a pioneer in the early days of world exploration by the countries of Europe. The country of Portugal came into existence on the north bank of the Douro River in the 10th century as the Kingdom of Leon pressed the Moslems southward on the west coast of the Iberian peninsula. Separatist tendencies appeared early in the 12th century during the stormy reign of Queen Urraca of Castile and Leon. The strong Count Alfonso Henriques (1112-1185) won many victories over the Muslims, culminating in the 1139 Battle of Ourique. Alfonso then declared independence from his cousin, Alfonso VII of Castile and Leon, who reluctantly recognized him as King of Portugal in 1140. Alfonso continued to push the Muslims southward, capturing Lisbon and establishing Tagus as the southern boundary of Portugal in 1147. He was assisted in his efforts by Crusaders from England and the areas that would one day be called the Netherlands on their way to Palestine. Throughout the Middle Ages Portugal maintained incessant warfare with the North African Muslims who had conquered Spain called the Moors, sometimes in coordination with the Spanish kingdoms of Castile and Aragon. Wars against these Christian kingdoms were also frequent. It appeared for a brief time at the

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end of the 14th century that Portugal might fall to Castile but with English support at the Battle of Aljubarrota in 1385 and the following Treaty of Windsor an alliance was made between England and Portugal that has continued to this day. With Castile’s eventual success at driving out the Muslims, the era called the Reconquista was complete. Spain and Portugal were now wholly Catholic countries. The warlike culture of both countries pushed them to foreign conquest. Both countries were better poised to conquer the world from the sea than any other with powerful, experienced armies and skilled leadership.

The violent internal struggles that characterized the Iberian Peninsula were as brutal as the efforts to take the land back from the Muslims. A number of independent principalities and petty kingdoms arose in what is now called Spain. Castile rose to prominence and then declined as Aragon became powerful. In the early part of the 15th century Castile was wracked by virtual anarchy, while Aragon was the powerhouse of the Mediterranean world. The marriage of Ferdinand II of Aragon and Queen Isabella of Castile helped lead Spain to the preeminent global position of power. Jointly they conquered Granada, the last Muslim holdout in Spain. Then, they turned their sight to overseas expansion.

Next, we will begin the periods known as the Reformation and the Renaissance, two powerful events that still have a hold on the mind of the world.

It is now the late 1400’s on the 15th century. The Jews have been kicked out of Spain. The Inquisition is slaughtering Bible believers and New Testament Christian groups everywhere. The Roman Catholic Church is the dominant cultural and religious force in the European World. Islam is under the domination of the Ottoman Turks who have ended the long standing political empire of Rome that began with Rome’s founding in 753BC and ended with the eastern part of that empire, now called Byzantium, being killed along with its last emperor in 1453 at Constantinople. The Catholic Popes have claimed the mantle of emperor, a spiritual ruler ruling a temporal political world. But something is about to break, a force that sweeps Europe and the world, and changes all of the rules. Still, the concept of the state-church continues to dominate human political practice as it has done since before Babylon. In fact, in a way, Babylon is still a ghost that stands over all of these events as the modern nation states of Europe began to form from the Medieval, Feudal associations that swirled and boiled for a thousand years since the fall of the political Roman Empire in the west in 476AD.

Latest Reading

Late Victorian Holocausts, by Mike Davis. This is a very interesting book about how the policies of the British Empire made much worse conditions created by cyclical weather patterns in Deccan India leading to the death by starvation of disease of nearly 20 million people. This is also about how the policies of Western occupying governments caused widespread famine and death in China and how international monetary policy affected famine and negative social change in Brazil. Even discounting Davis' obvious anti-free market beliefs, the facts alone stand as a somber statement about the manipulation and exploitation of conquered countries and the massive destruction colonialism caused to the native inhabitants. Worth reading but not a great book.

Latest Reading

A Flag for the Matabele by Peter Gibbs, published by Frederick Muller Ltd., England, 1955. This was a very well written and unique history of the conquest of Rhodesia, first by a Zulu clan, then by the British Rhodes and company. The author insists that there was nothing racial about it but that if the natives had been blonde haired and blue eyed they would have gotten the same treatment from Rhodes. Gibbs lays out the actions of both sides in a realistic, dramatic, and sometimes even humorous way as history is often made as much by bungling and error as it is by deliberation and courage. Worth reading.

World History, Chapter Sixteen, revised

– Darkest before the Dawn in Europe
– Late Medieval period

“God Wills It!” was the battle cry of the First Crusade that the Roman Catholic Church sent to assault what is the “Holy Land” for three world religions; Palestine, and specifically the area of Jerusalem. A great source of information about the Crusades is Zoe Oldenbourg’s The Crusades. But, before we discuss the Crusades, I want to first explore the minds and the culture of the medieval men and women of Europe.

The majority of early Medieval Europe was completely rural with vast areas completely without towns or composed of only villages with a few hundred inhabitants or so an article by Georges Duby tells us in Social History of Western Civilization, edited by Richard M. Golden. The people in these small villages were completely involved in working fields and farms surrounding them. Even for those in the few larger, urban areas life was dominated by the seasons and by the produce of the ground. They were dependent on it for their wealth and their basic livelihood. The Roman Catholic Church ruled virtually unopposed throughout all of Europe with the exception of those small pockets of New Testament Christianity that survived amidst persecution and being hunted like wild game.

Therefore, the average medieval child was baptized as a baby, having made no profession of faith, nor even knowing what was happening to it and was immediately subject to the laws of “the Church”. Every child received a “Christian name”, usually the name of a bonafide Catholic saint. Saints for the Catholic Church were different than saints in the Bible. In the Old and New Testament all of God’s people are His saints;

“O fear the LORD, ye his saints: for there is no want to them that fear him.” Psalm 34:9

“And it came to pass, as Peter passed throughout all quarters, he came down also to the saints which dwelt at Lydda.” Acts 9:32

But, in the Roman Catholic mythology, any important person in the Church or martyr or even a pagan god brought over from the old religions would become, at the order of the Pope and the Church hierarchy, a godlike entity that would bestow blessings on those who prayed to him or her from the other side of death.

Surnames (added names) were of various origins and usually had to do with kinship (Arthur Johnson), occupation (Thomas Smith), a bodily or character feature (Agnes Redhead), or church oriented (Robert Litany).

There was an extremely high infant and childhood mortality rate so that many more children died early on than survived to adulthood. Families lived close together and cousins, aunts, uncles, and grandparents were always near to instruct, train, and raise the


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individual to be useful to their small society. Christian ethics, that is, Catholic ethics, were taught to every child of the Church and it wasn’t until the Crusades introduced some
of the baser elements of Oriental morality to Europe that some of the more egregious evils of the pagan world such as pederasty returned in full force much like how many new and old habits and morals came home from World Wars I & II, Korea, and Vietnam with returning servicemen that were alien to American tradition and custom. An example would be how the average American woman viewed the use of makeup before and after the experience of World War I.

With some men taking “holy orders” and entering a monastery, a home for monks, and women entering a convent as nuns, called a “nunnery” in some early literature, sexual custom became even more confused due to the unisex isolation. So much so that in 1177, Henry, Abbot (head of a monastery) of Clairvaux wrote of France that “ancient Sodom is springing up from her ashes”, as we are told by Durant in Volume 4 of The Story of Civilization entitled The Age of Faith.

Throughout Europe, in spite of the nominal adherence to the Church’s precepts and with the lack of the “born again” experience of the Bible and a daily relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ, promiscuity and sexual immorality were as common then as they are today. There were just no billboards, radios, television, or movies praising the virtues of sin.

Youth was brief and risky and marriage came early in Medieval Europe. A child of seven could consent to a betrothal, a commitment to marry, and engagements such as this were often made to protect the inheritance of property. One example that Durant gives us is a little girl named Grace de Saleby, who was married to a rich noble at age 4 who then died. At age 6 she was married to another who also died, and at age 11 she was married to a third. The union could be annulled at any time before the child was old enough to consummate the marriage, which for girls was usually 12 and for boys, 14. The consent of the parents was not necessary according to the Church (when I use a capital “C” I am referring to the Roman Catholic Church) if the children were of the age of consent which at times could have been 15 for girls. Marriage was often an economic necessity, a partnership designed to protect money or the rights to land. Not only the engagement but the wedding itself, the word coming from the Anglo-Saxon weddian, or promise, also being a pledge, was in many instances a financial relationship. Both state and church acknowledged a consummated union accompanied by a verbal pledge as a marriage even without a legal or ecclesiastical (church) ceremony.

It wasn’t until the Council of Trent in 1563, the great act of counter-reformation against Protestantism and the Anabaptist sects, that a priest was required to be present. Marriage between a Catholic and an unbaptized person was forbidden although marriages between Christians and Jews were not uncommon. The Church permitted separation for adultery or cruelty and this was called by the Latin divortium. But, not until Pope Innocent III refused to grant a divorce to Philip Augustus, the King of France, was the

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Church powerful enough in the realm of marriage to forbid local customs regarding actual divorce and remarriage. This will be an important matter when we get to the era of the Reformation in England.

Church beliefs were harsh on women. While many Church dictates made her not much more than a possession, other Catholic principles improved her status. To priests and theologians, much like the ancient Greeks, a woman was a “necessary evil”, a type of Eve who was accused of bringing man down and according to Thomas Aquinas, a famous Catholic theologian, still Satan’s preferred method of leading men to Hell. Civil law in the medieval period was even harsher than Church law for women, although some pagan cultures had given women more of a legal standing than during the age of the Church. Women could be beaten by their husbands, often could not give testimony in court, and a person was fined only half of what was expected for a crime against a man if a woman was the victim. Still, the Medieval Catholic mind was split on its opinion of women. Men worshipped her as a goddess in that they prayed to Mary, the Catholic incarnation of Ishtar not the simple but obedient Jewish maiden of the Bible, and yet spoke of the ideal woman as an obedient servant even while dreaming of her as a goddess. Knights fought over a lady’s handkerchief and poets’ wrote of woman’s virtue while monks tried to convince themselves of her inferiority.

There were, however, many noteworthy women in Medieval Europe. Eleanor of Aquitaine, Galla Placidia, Theodora, Irene, Anna Comnena, Heloise, etc. were famous in their time and after that.

Generally speaking, life in Medieval Europe was bleak, without much comfort, and very short. The home was simple, often with few windows, protected by wooden shutters, and heated by one or more fireplaces. Drafts came through many cracks in the walls. It was not uncommon to wear warm hats and fur indoors in the winter. Furniture, although often well made, was also rare in the home. Chairs were few and low backed and carpets were unusual before the 13th century. Usually a floor was strewn with rushes or straw and the common house would have smelled very bad by our standards today. Thick tapestries might be hung from a wall to cover a draft if the people were not among the most poor.

Cleanliness was not considered important and the early Roman Catholic disdain for the pagan baths of ancient Rome discounted their use or the care of the body at all as being carnal and worldly. Modern handkerchiefs were unknown as sleeves were used. The common person rarely, if ever, submersed him or herself in a bath. However, the people of the cities began to see public baths in the 12th century and it is said that Parisians of that century bathed more frequently than they did in the 20th. Another result of the Crusades was the public steam bath being introduced into Europe from the Middle East. Monasteries, feudal castles, and the homes of the wealthy had latrines that emptied into cesspools but the common man used an outhouse, many of which served more than one family. Chamber pots were unceremoniously dumped into the streets, sometimes from upstairs windows, and often with unpleasant effects for pedestrians walking below.

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The poor slept on beds of straw and all the sexes shared the same room, parents and children, as well.

As for entertainment, the rich might have jugglers, clowns, or musicians at a party. Playing cards were still unknown, gambling was sometimes forbidden by law, and sometimes not. Chess was even forbidden in France by Louis IX (9th) in 1254. Dancing, while being condemned by the clergy, was practiced by all classes. Sports revolved around practicing martial arts or hunting, for the most part. Tournaments of knightly, martial sports such as jousting and swordplay developed throughout the Medieval period. One of the more interesting books on that specific subject is called Tournaments, by Richard Barber and Juliet Barker.

So, this is a small bit of what life was like for the average person in Medieval Europe and it was only a little better for the wealthier. The Church dominated the thought life of medieval persons and plain survival from day to day occupied their actions. Comfort and personal hygiene were very rare commodities and not much regarded as important.

While historians credit Pope Urban II and Raymond of Saint-Gilles, the Count of Toulouse, with starting the First Crusade to take over the Holy Land from the Muslims for the Church, popular opinion credits Peter the Hermit. Supposedly, Jesus Christ appeared to him in a dream, giving him a letter addressed to the pope. He took the letter, which he himself obviously wrote, as the real Lord Jesus Christ has never called us to war in the flesh (2 Corinthians 10:3-5), and read it to the pope. A holy war was called, the Christian version of the Muslim Jihad, a Crusade, to “deliver” Jerusalem from the infidel. So, here we have an unregenerate medieval Pope answering a demonic vision and a forged letter to attack another group of unregenerate sinners in order to take something from them that belonged to neither, the city of Jerusalem. It is true that the Muslims were in control of the city of David politically but Jews and Christians of various stripes and persuasions did live there, usually peacefully, as well.

Peter the Hermit was apparently quite a preacher and very impressive in his behavior and his apparent holiness. He was sent as an ambassador to the Muslims and even impressed them with his piety. He also did the same with the emperor at Constantinople. Like many other wandering preachers of his day who had a large following, and there were many, just as today, celebrity Christians who could mesmerize a crowd with their oratory even if they were fakes, exhibitionists, or madmen, he was quite popular. His reputation was so great that the idea of a Crusade was accepted throughout Europe. Unlike many others loyal to the Church, Peter was even on friendly terms with the Jews of France, who sometimes supported his efforts.

As Peter’s followers, both common and knights and soldiers, gathered they moved eastward, acquiring an unsavory reputation for lawlessness and murderous behavior. Pitched battles broke out in Hungary and Belgrade had to be evacuated. Finally, after four months the motley “army” reached Constantinople with Peter leading his ragtag band of

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perhaps 50,000 singing psalms and carrying banners of the cross. Several thousand Jews perished in Germany as anti-Semites whipped up the mobs to a frenzy of hatred for the “Christ killers” as they were called. Hunger, accidents, fighting, and disease killed many of his followers but many more joined them in the lands through which they passed. What they needed at Constantinople were boats to cross the Bosporus. Their “army” consisted not only of pious men like Peter the Hermit but the Jew killer Emich of Leisingen and Volkamar who had unleashed their soldiers to kill Jews and Christians along the way. There were also honorable men like Walter Sans-Avoir, the Count of Tubingen, and Walter of Teck who lent an air of bravery and decency to the Crusaders.

The Emperor, Alexius Comnenus received Peter the Hermit and treated him with great respect but advised him to wait for the arrival of better armed troops. Before long, bands of Crusaders were burning and looting towns around Constantinople itself. The emperor finally gave them their boats just to get rid of what the Greeks called a rabble, told them to keep close to the shore, and promised to see them supplied with food. The barons of Europe were to be following with genuine armies and it was suggested that they wait for them but Peter insisted on pressing on. Christian villagers were slaughtered along the way and the emperor’s daughter, Anna Comnenus, leaves an account of children being spitted and roasted alive. One group of Crusaders did manage to take the Turkish castle of Xerigordon before the Turks slaughtered them to a man.

Peter the Hermit was losing control of his army. He went to Constantinople to try to persuade the emperor to provide military protection for his “army”. While he was away a Turkish sultan, Kilij Arslan, attacked the Crusader camp and killed all but about 3,000 people. This effort, today called, “the People’s Crusade”, was now over. Peter the Hermit and the survivors waited now for the arrival of the Barons of Catholic Europe. Eventually, several thousand knights under Raymond of Saint-Gilles, Godfrey of Bouillion, and Robert of Normandy, along with the Counts of Blois and Flanders, and Bohemond arrived. Anna Comnena estimated that there were 12,000 knights and 70,000 foot soldiers in this army that comprised the true First Crusade.

The European referred to all of the Muslim forces in the Middle East as “Turks” and “Saracens”. The Seljuk Turks were a dynasty and part of the larger Oghuz Turks that moved out of Central Asia to be a major force in the Middle East from the 11th to the 14th centuries. The term “Saracen” from the Greek word Sarakenoi and the Arabic Sharqiyyin, meaning “easterners” eventually came to be applied to all Arab Muslims. In Catholic writings it was said to mean those descended from Hagar, not from Sarah, as in Ishmael.

The Muslim forces in the Holy Land were not united. This was their great weakness. In the beginning, Crusaders from Western Europe and the Greek empire, still called Rome by the Muslims, being formerly the Eastern half of the Roman Empire, worked together with great success. But, after the capture of Nicea, where the Turks insisted on negotiating with the Greek general, considering the “King of Roum” to be the leader of all Christians there was a rift. Nicea once again belonged to Byzantium and all the

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European Crusaders could do was to move on. The Crusaders had been forced to swear allegiance to the Emperor to pass through his lands and all did so again for political reasons other than Tancred, Bohemond’s nephew. Again, the Greeks and the Latins, as the Europeans were called, agreed to work together. Alexius, the emperor, though, was using this force of what he thought of as barbarians to help him regain the territory his empire had lost to the Muslims.

The siege of Antioch lasted for seven and a half months, and in 1098, it was taken, and after that the Crusaders themselves were besieged in it so that they could not resume their march to Jerusalem until January of 1099. In spite of theses setbacks, the morale of the knights was unwaivering, for the most part, with some exceptions. The effort at this Crusade was seen by some as a way to show love and devotion to Jesus Christ and to earn their way to Heaven and by others as an opportunity for glory, riches, and conquest and by all, perhaps, a combination of these things. Once the Crusaders had taken Antioch and the head of the commander Yaghi-Siyan was presented to them, they were besieged by the relief force under the governor of Mosul, Kerbogha. The Crusaders were nearly beaten in this siege but a vision of the lance that pierced Christ’s side and the discovery of a piece of metal which a visionary named Peter Bartholomew claimed was that very lance head turned the tide. Even Muslim historians attributed the Crusader’s victory to the discovery of this piece of metal that was used as a holy relic and a sign. Rallying, they left the city and attacked the besieging forces and defeated them.

The Muslims generally called the Crusaders, “Franks”, or in Arabic, Firenj, for the dominate group, the French. The Germanic tribe that had settled in the area of France centuries before and dominated it was the Franks and the French retained this name during the Crusades.

The siege of Jerusalem lasted for a month and a day after which the Crusaders massacred the inhabitants in what historians consider to be one of the great war crimes of history. There is no explanation for it, as it served no military purpose. Rabid fanaticism, bloodlust, and mob frenzy have all been given as the cause. In any event, on July 15 and 16 of 1099 the Pope’s Army, and I will quote directly from Oldenbourg; “scoured the streets and alleys, gardens and courtyards, breaking down doors of houses and mosques and killing, killing all who fell in their path, no longer the soldiers, who had been killed first, but civilians, men, women, children, and old people.”

The Jews were shut up in their synagogue which was then set on fire. The entire Jewish community of Jerusalem died there. In the Al Aqsa Mosque and surrounding areas, thousands of Muslims were killed. Both Catholic and Muslim historians agree that the entire population was massacred, exterminated; Christian, Jew, and Muslim alike. Forty thousand people, at least, were slaughtered. On a side note, by way of observation from a point of view of being a Bible believer, this is the result of an ecclesiastical organization calling itself a church attempting to bring in the Kingdom of Heaven by armed force without the King, remembering that the weapons of our warfare are not

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carnal (2 Corinthains 10:4). As one modern preacher, Dr. Peter Ruckman has put it, “kingdom builders are bloody killers”.

Jerusalem was considered the third holiest city in Islam, next to Mecca and Medina. It was a place where it was believed in Islamic mythology that Muhammad ascended to Heaven from there to visit during a special event in his life called the Miraj. The city was called al-Quds or the Holy. The fall of Jerusalem was therefore a great triumph for Roman Catholic Christianity over Islam. It was a symbolic rather than a strategic victory. The two Muslim empires centered at Baghdad and Cairo had viewed Palestine as the frontier dividing them. Half the population was Christian and the loss of Jerusalem had more of a spiritual importance than a military one. The one thing that shocked the Persian and Egyptian centers of Islamic power the most was that, unlike the Greek Christians, the Latin Christians were extremely religiously intolerant.

Godfrey of Boullion was elected King of Jerusalem. He was a man of great and noble character and became a legend for his piety and religious devotion. On the other hand he was calculating, ambitious, and jealous of his authority. However, this characterization must be viewed from Catholic eyes. From the perspective of the New Testament it must be remembered that he is given much of the credit for the massacre at Jerusalem, as well. He refused the title of King but accepted a more righteous sounding title of “Advocate of the Holy Sepulcher”. Over the brief period of time that the Crusaders ruled a Frankish kingdom in Syria many of the knights became orientalized, some even adopting eastern dress and traditions. There was war between Crusader cities and alliance with Muslims against other Crusaders and Muslims. The politics were complicated and intertwined.

Although the Crusades were a military failure in that the last Frankish kingdoms fell to the Mamelukes, slave soldiers of Egypt, in 1291 they had a lasting effect on European culture and civilization. Literature and popular music were full of tales of this heroic but doomed enterprise for centuries. A great many cultural fashions and scientific advancements entered Europe due to the Crusades.

Many notable heroic figures on both sides were created by the Crusades which still intrigue our collective memories. There was Richard the Lion Hearted, King of England, and Saladin, the Kurdish Muslim general who retook Jerusalem and later signed a peace treaty with King Richard. The Frankish Kingdom of Jerusalem itself survived for 88 years and saw 8 kings. One of the greatest was a leper, Baldwin IV, who, if he had not been so ill, it is believed, would have changed history by keeping a firm grip on the holy city against Saladin. It is also believed that if the Crusaders had held on until Saladin’s death, six months after his treaty with Richard, they would have remained in power for perhaps many more decades before the Ottoman Turks, who we will discuss later, came to power.

There were many attempts at Crusade but three important ones. Some of the more pathetic efforts were the first “People’s Crusade” already mentioned and the “Children’s

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Crusade”, a terrible tragedy in itself. In 1212 a shepherd boy, near Chartres, France had a vision in which he insisted that Christ told him to gather all the children of Europe and walk down to the Mediterranean Sea, where God would dry it up like He did the Red Sea for Moses and “let the children seek for the holy cross”. An army of 13,000 of these waifs between 8 and 17 years old reached Marseilles, France from the Pyrenees, Brittany, and Germany. Since the sea did not dry up they went through the Alps to Genoa, Italy where their number was reduced from 13,000 to about 7,000. In the end, they were deceived into boarding ships for North Africa where the ones who weren’t drowned in shipwrecks were sold in the Muslim world for slaves.

The so called Fourth Crusade which occurred between 1200 and 1204 merely resulted in Constantinople being captured and since, Catholics were so in awe of relics, not only did the Crusaders slaughter a great many citizens of the city they brought back such important items as the head of St. Stephen, a thorn from the crown of thorns that was forced onto Christ’s head, the Lord’s towel with which He girded Himself with in John 13, one of John the Baptist’s arms, and the finger of Thomas that was thrust in Christ’s side (John 20:27). Along with these other phony relics they stole the head of James the Just, a tear that Christ shed, and some of His actual blood that was shed on the cross. Gullible people have been present in all ages. Frederick II led the Crusade which spoiled the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire. The last effort at Crusade was under Louis IX of France and it, too, was a monumental flop. The final stand of the Knights Templar and the Knights Hospitalers at Antioch can be found in Harold Lamb’s Iron Men and Saints . The siege of Acre in 1291, the last Catholic stronghold in the Holy Land, is best described in a book entitled The Flame of Islam.

Many thousands of Catholic civilians; men, women, and children wound up as either slaves or corpses on the way to glory. Like Islam, Latin Roman Catholicism holds a belief that it is destined to conquer the world and that the world is rightfully its possession, promised by God. The rider on the white horse of Revelation 6, which most evangelicals regard as the anti-Christ, has traditionally been viewed in Roman Christianity as Christ Himself spreading the gospel over the earth by conquest through the Church, although few would put it in exactly those terms after the Reformation.

A product of the Crusades were military orders such as the Knights Templar, Knights of St. John, and Knights Hospitaller. The Knights Templar make an interesting topic of independent study themselves and are the subject of a great many conspiracy theories having to do with the formation of semi-secretive societies such as the Freemasons. However, the Knights Templars were destroyed by a King Philip of France in 1307, probably in an attempt to take over the great wealth the order had made from banking and plunder. One story that comes down to us is that their ships which terrorized the Eastern Meditteranean Sea carried a red cross on the sails which was called the “pretty red” or “jolie rouge” in French. Some writers say that this has come down to us as the Pirates’
Jolly Roger flag of a skull and crossbones in various forms that struck fear in the hearts of merchant ships so many years later.

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Who were these knights? The economic and the political system of Medieval Europe was based on Feudalism. This was a system by which the warrior nobility had certain obligations to those above them in rank as their “lord” with the lower ranked person a “vassal” or servant all revolving around inheritable land called a fief or a fiefdom. The Knight in History by Frances Gies is an interesting sourcebook on the Medieval Knight. A knight, originally, was a person without great status who was raised above the common peasant by his ability to own an expensive suit of armor and a horse. Slowly, he became part of the nobility. Although they remained the lowest rank of the upper class being knighted became prized by nobility and even by royalty themselves.

The title of “Sir” along with the wearing of plate armor which we often associate with a knight came late. Chain mail was the dominant form of personal armor for most of the knight’s effective military usefulness. In England and America the appeal of the knight is based mostly on the popularity of the King Arthur legend which is most famous in its literary representation in such works as Thomas Malory’s 15th century work, Le Morte D’Arthur or The Death of Arthur. Although his work and others are based on the historical Briton warlord who fought against the Germanic invasions of the 5th and 6th century, after that it is pure invention, literary fiction, legend, and myth. Still, the Arthurian legend is a powerful messianic myth in western literature and is the yardstick by which all concepts of knighthood are measured. Arthur defeated the pagan enemies of his people, died, and will one day return to lead his people again in truth and righteous judgment. That is the essence of the myth. All people are looking for a messiah, most often the wrong one.

Another word that reverbrates in the history of the knight is “chivalry”. This is an ideal more than something that was practiced in fact. Medieval romantics had written about the knight being the sword arm of society, purposed to do right and seek justice, with a tradition going back to the Romans and then further back to the Bible, including King David and Judas Maccabeus as part of the knightly circle. However, it is clear that the concept of knight is a medieval invention. Rome had a class of “knights”, called equites or horsemen which were originally the cavalry wing of the Roman army and the source of its officers but during the period of the Republic they became politicians. This Roman equestrian order has no real connection to the medieval knight except in the mind of some historians and a few romantic novelists.

The medieval knight was first and foremost a soldier, as identified from the Latin term for him, miles, and the Anglo-Saxon cniht. He was always mounted; in most languages the words that replaced the Latin miles denoted horseman. There is the French chevalier, German ritter, Italian cavaliere, and Spanish caballero. Militarily the knight was an armored cavalryman devoted to his “lord” and to the Church, which controlled all aspects of medieval society on the surface, at least. The knight was a “soldier of Christ”, which
meant a soldier of the Roman Catholic Church, an idea first put forth by Pope Gregory VII. Under Church direction and approval the economic reason for many landless knights taking part in the Crusades was the prospect of acquiring estates, fiefdoms if you will, in

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the East, a pleasing payoff for fighting the enemies of God, or rather, his earthly representative, the Pope. As with the introduction of the stirrup to Europe, the cavalryman became a more effective warrior, with the approval and authority of the Pope, his actions became “spiritually” effective in the Church’s propagation of the kingdom of Heaven, not by the word of God but by the sharp edge of a sword or the point of a lance.

Chivalry was originally a warrior code and was later appropriated by the Church to include the duty of protecting and defending it from all comers. The medieval knights were first and foremost the armed wing of the Roman Catholic Church and the Pope, our modern romantic notions aside. Chivalry might be another possible topic for your independent study.

Now, turning to the strain of Christians who did not represent worldly power but the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ and His written word. Throughout Christian history, from the first and second century and beyond there were Christians who did not pursue worldly (temporal) power, who did not acknowledge the authority of any Pope or The Church, and adhered to a belief in salvation by grace through faith, and the authority of the written word of God, often in the form of the Old Latin or Vetus Latina Bible (not Jerome’s Latin Vulgate). How these various groups became merged into the Reformation churches is the subject of a later class. Some of the strongholds of these groups of New Testament Christians called heretics by The Church and treated as criminals were Ireland and Scotland before the Norman Conquest, the Piedmont region of northwestern Italy, Southern France, and various pockets throughout Europe.

Much of the information about these groups comes from their great enemy, Rome. The names they are given such as Donatists, Paulicians, Bogomils, Waldensians, Albigensians as well as any description of their practices are often dependent upon the bigotry of Roman Catholic writers and historians. It is hardly fair to call them all dissenters as they existed before there was ever any such thing as a Roman Catholic but it is fair to call them a minority that was hunted and scourged at least until the Reformation and sometimes beyond.

A conservative estimate of the number of non-Catholic Christians killed by the Church, based on various sources would be about 2,500,000 during the Medieval period making the Rome of the Popes a far more effective martyr making machine than pagan Rome. Some historians have claimed 5 million and some extreme writers have claimed 50 million. None of this is independantly verifiable. John Dowling’s 19th century work, An Introduction to the Critical Study of Ecclesiastical History, quoted in Schaff’s History of the Christian Church, claims that 1,000,000 Waldensians alone were martyred in France, others claim 36,000 Christians in Holland, 150,000 put to death by the Spanish
inquisition, and another 900,000 killed in various crusades such as the Albigensian Crusades where non-Catholic Christians to which were ascribed by Catholic writers all sorts of grossly heretical beliefs were slaughtered.

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Remembering the New Testament admonitions of the Lord Jesus Christ and writers such as Paul and understanding that no true follower of Christ would kill anyone for their beliefs even if in direct opposition to the gospel because the weapons of our warfare are not carnal or of the flesh, we can read a number of historical works that describe the slaughter of the Cathar sect of the French region of Languedoc in the Albigensian Crusades. One excellent work on this crusade is called The Yellow Cross by Rene’ Weiss. There are many others. The reason the Cathars were called Alibigensians by the Church was due to their strong affiliation with the town of Albi. When you read the descriptions of the practices and beliefs of these Christians, all often labeled “Anabaptists” for their rebaptizing of believing adults, try to picture what would happen if the state church of today were to decide that Independent Baptist or Assemblies of God churches’ practices were heretical and that belief in eternal security or speaking in tongues needed to be exterminated. Imagine what the propaganda would say that would be spread in the newspapers to justify the actions of the state church. We, here, are all united by our belief in salvation by grace through faith and the authority of scriptures, regardless of our differing forms of worship. We are united by our belief. We do not accept the authority of any Pope or any ecclesiastical organization calling itself a church particularly if it denies our freedom to worship as we feel directed by God and the Bible. We have that right in this country right now. There are no greater freedoms than the freedom of religion and of conscience allowed for by our Constitution and these should be held onto for the cherished principles they are. These Cathars and countless others were not afforded such a right. Be very thankful for the country in which you live. Just holding up a Bible and proclaiming Christ in downtown Baghdad can get you the same treatment, even under American military authority, that the Cathars received from the state church in the 13th century as Islam is the state religion of Iraq by their own constitutional dictates.

Anabaptist preachers like the French Olivetan, would go on to produce some of the greatest true Bibles of the Reformation such as Olivetan’s French Bible and Diodati’s Italian Bible and inspire the former Catholic’s Reina and Valera to produce the true Bible in Spanish, called the Reina-Valera, all in the 1500’s and 1600’s. But that is for a future class.
The Waldensians were another group of Anabaptists or Re-baptizers as the Church called them. There are many historical differences of opinion concerning the origin of the Waldensians or Valdenses. The Roman Catholic Church claims either that they derived their name, organization and beliefs from Peter (Valdo) of Lyons in France, or early historians say that they pre-dated Peter who probably acquired the name Valdo from his connection with the Valdese because that’s how many people obtained their last name in those days; after their occupation or location. These people were known as Vaudois and Valdenses in ancient writings pre-dating Valdo. Peter and his followers were first known as the Poor Men of Lyons, who were expelled from that city in the 1180s before they joined with the valley men of the Cottian Alps in northern Italy. Volumes have been written on both sides of this question and few agree. I believe that it is most likely that the French word for valley, vaux, gave rise to the nickname Vaudois, while the Italian

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vallis, likewise created Vallenses or Valdesi or Valdenses, all meaning "valley-men," referring to those who lived in the near and remote reaches of those valleys of the Cottian Alps lying within the Catholic dioceses of Milan and Turin. There is a famous 19th century work on them by Alexis Muston called Israel of the Alps.
The Roman Catholic Church, who steadily persecuted them through the centuries, as I said before, maintained that the Valdenses derived their origin, name and beliefs from Peter (Valdo) of Lyons. It is more probable that the Roman Catholic authors are as mistaken in their statement of the origin of the Valdese as in their statement of their heresies. It was not in Roman Catholic interests to admit they opposed a group which traced their history back to apostolic primitive Christianity in a purer tradition than the Roman of which, as I have pointed out, there were more than a few such groups around throughout the Middle Ages. The Valdese themselves trace their descent as a church to the time of Claude, Bishop of Turin in the ninth century. Those churches were probably the descendants-spiritual, if not lineal-of the many generations of believers in that area of northern Italy since the early days of the church. There was a line of bishops and leaders there, started by Ambrose, Bishop of Milan in the fourth century, who maintained independence from the Roman See, a reference to the authority and government of the bishop of Rome, and upheld the supremacy of Scripture in all things, including the gospel of justification by faith alone. Many of the successors of Ambrose through subsequent centuries held to the same doctrines.
Of these was Claude, "the most distinguished advocate of evangelical doctrines whom that age produced," who boldly resisted Roman innovations, "owned Jesus Christ as the sole Head of the church, attached no value to pretended meritorious works, rejected human traditions, acknowledged faith alone as securing salvation, ascribed no power to prayers made for the dead, maintained the symbolical character of the Eucharist, and above all, opposed with great energy the worship of images which he...regarded as absolute idolatry."(Muston’s Israel of the Alps). It is to this bishop the Valdenses claim their origin as a church, although spiritually, they could and often did, claim a descent as well from the evangelical groups preceding Claude, those groups led by the evangelical leaders after the time of Ambrose, and perhaps before Ambrose, back to the earliest Italian converts. Such early Christians are believed to have taken refuge from persecution in the Alps valleys where the traditional independence of these northern Italian bishoprics provided a protecting shield to those later to become known as the valley-men, the Valdenses.
The Noble Lesson (Nobla Leyczon) was the basic creed of Valdese beliefs. It dates itself within its text to the year 1100. This pre-dates Peter of Lyons, who with his followers, were chased from Lyons about 1186, when they joined the valley dwellers, the Valdese. (Lyons is situated in southeast France, west of the Italian border and the Cottian Alps.) The Lesson mentions the Vaudois (Valdense) as being already persecuted and as having already a well-known history. J.A. Wylie’s History of Protestantism (read it online free) is another reference work I would suggest for further study. The idiom of the

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Nobla Leyczon is that of the valleys, the Romance language, and not that of the idiom of Lyons, a French dialect, which it would have been if Peter (Valdo) and his Poor Men had authored it according to writer Judith Collins in her brief sketch entitled Heritage of the Waldensians from which I have borrowed heavily. No mention of Peter and his followers is found in the Lesson.
The courage and perseverance of the Valdense throughout their persecutions is a tale beyond the scope of this class but R.M. Stephens The Burning Bush and Henri Arnaud’s The Glorious Recovery by the Vaudois of Their Valleys. The severest campaigns against them filled the 13th through the 17th centuries, with short periods of rest now and then. To condense their sufferings into one inadequate paragraph, the nouns deceit, trickery, broken promises, flattery, threats, robbery, pillage, slow tortures, destruction, slaughter, exile might serve for a start. The Roman Catholic persecutors ripped limbs from live victims, dashed the heads of children against the rocks, marched fathers to their deaths with the heads of their sons around their necks; parents watched their children violated and murdered. Other tortures were too disgusting to describe. Women and children were thrown off high peaks to be dashed to pieces. Valdese taking refuge in caves were suffocated by fires lit at the cave mouths. Soldiers took refuge in Valdese homes, only to rise up and slaughter their hosts upon the given signal.
In J. A. Wylie's words:
“These cruelties form a scene that is unparalleled and unique in the history of at least civilized countries. There have been tragedies in which more blood was spilt, and more life sacrificed, but none in which the actors were so completely de-humanized, and the forms of suffering so monstrously disgusting, so unutterably cruel and revolting. The 'Piedmontese Massacres' in this respect stand alone. They are more fiendish than all the atrocities and murders before or since, and Leger may still advance his challenge to 'all travellers, and all who have studied the history of ancient and modern pagans, whether among the Chinese, Tartars and Turks, they ever witnessed or heard tell of such execrable perfidies and barbarities.
In a document Pastor Henri Leger carried from the Valdese to the Protestants of Europe, they wrote:
“Our tears are no longer of water; they are of blood; they do not merely obscure our sight, they choke our very hearts. Our hands tremble and our heads ache by the many blows we have received. We cannot frame an epistle answerable to the intent of our minds, and the strangeness of our desolations. We pray you to excuse us, and to collect amid our groans the meaning of what we fain would utter for the love of the Scriptures.”
All through their long history these valley dwellers, the Valdese, had owned, revered, obeyed their Scriptures. It was their main distinction to hold Scripture as their supreme authority. They translated the Bible (possibly from the Hebrew and the Greek) into their vulgar tongue, the Romance language, and laboriously made many copies of this Scripture for their disciples and used the Old Latin Bible as well and this while the rest of

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Europe was content with the Latin of the Catholic Jerome’s Latin Vulgate. Before Wycliffe thought of putting the Bible into the English of his day, the Valdese had their vernacular Bible. They memorized great portions of Scripture. One inquisitor in 1260 tells of meeting a pastor who recited the whole of Job, and of many others who memorized the whole of the New Testament. They copied other good writings; this was one of the tasks of the Valdese Pastors in order to instruct their disciples. Old bibliographies tell of many ancient manuscripts of spiritual treatises, poems, sermons, confessions, catechisms and the like according to Muston.
“With such a love of truth in a people, we are not surprised to learn that they founded their own little college for their Pastors, who ...were required to commit to memory the Gospels of St. Matthew and St. John, the general epistles, and a part of those of St. Paul.... During two or three successive winters [they were] trained to speak in Latin, in the Romance language, and in Italian. After this they spent some years in retirement, and then were set apart to the holy ministry by the administration of the Lord's Supper and by imposition of hands. Pastors were required to take their turn as missionaries. They went out two by two, a young man and an old one. Taking to the roads as peddlers, or as artisans, or as physicians, they carried the Bible in their hearts and minds. Stopping for the night in a remote cottage in the course of their travels, they would testify of the gospel and write out Scripture portions to leave with their hosts. A light and a blessing wherever they went! Very few were married, as their manner of life, travels, poverty, and the attendant dangers often precluded family life. They traversed Italy and had stations organized in many places with thousands of secret adherents in most of the towns. And not only Italy, but Valdese missionaries spread the Gospel over the greater part of Europe.” (Collins).Valdese missionaries evangelized Bohemia before the time of John Huss. In 1142 six of them were condemned and beaten in Oxford, England, thrown out of the city in mid-winter and left to perish. In Cologne, 1332, a Pastor, named Walter Lollard, was burned at the stake. From him came the nickname "Lollard" for English followers of Wycliffe.
“High up in the impenetrable remoteness of their highest mountains stands still today the small stone building of the college of the Pastors, in a tri-level construction to fit the slope. Modern travelers today draw in breath as they gaze at the smoke-blackened walls, the tiny windows, the fireplace, and the great slabbed table-top, said to be six to seven hundred years old. It is not hard to imagine the student-barbe seated around that huge stone slab. Today on the center of the slab is an open Olivetan Bible, and thereon hangs a tale.” (Collins)

At the time of the Reformation, the Valdese heard the news of its beginning and were encouraged to join in. They initiated a translation of the whole Bible into French with the help of a cousin of John Calvin, named Robert, who received the name of Olivetan, as did his Bible, due to the great effort he went through, paid for by the Waldensians themselves.

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Unfortunately, what is called the Waldensian Church today has become a member of the apostate World Council of Churches and no longer holds to the authority of the Bible but their mantle of having the Bible as their final authority passed on to the great reformers like Calvin and others he supported.

Many modern evangelical churches claim descent at some point from Jesus through the apostle John and his disciple Polycarp then eventually through the churches of the valley men, to churches in Wales, and then on to America. These claims are extremely controversial and would take much more time to trace for historical accuracy than we have here.

Two of the most notable names of “reformers” from the Middle Ages are Wycliffe and Huss. Jan Huss was a Protestant reformer born in Bohemia, now a part of the Czech Republic. The city of Prague might help you find it on the map as that city is almost in the geographical center of Bohemia. Jan Huss started a movement based on the actions of John Wycliffe in England which brought him into direct opposition to the Pope and the Church hierarchy. One of his more famous statements was his Indulgences, taken literally from the writings of Wycliffe which stated that no Christian bishop or pope had the right to take up the sword in the name of the Church but to pray for their enemies and those that would curse them. They objected to the temporal power of the Church in assigning life and death to theological issues. He was excommunicated in 1411 and burned at the stake in 1415. His followers became known as Hussites who actually followed the teachings of John Wycliffe strictly. Their cornerstone was freedom to preach the word of God.

Now, back to Wycliffe. From the 12th to the 14th century, Old English became Middle English. Our language fundamentally changed, particularly in spelling. For example, Old English cwen became Middle English queen. The narrow Germanic base of Old English began, as Middle English, to include Scandinavian, Latin, and French words. French, in particular, because Normans from France had invaded England and the royalty of England would speak French for several centuries, fighting many bloody wars over the land holdings they clung to in France and even stubbornly calling themselves kings of France. In the 13th century (1200’s) the Bible was translated into Anglo-Norman for the upper class to use. French words appearing in our traditional English Bible (KJB) have come down to us; crown, majesty, minister, prince, heir, trespass, prison, baptism, etc.

During the 14th and 15th centuries many Latin words were introduced such as antichrist, pope, priest, scribe, scorpion, conspiracy relic, idol, etc. etc. Many English words have their base in these other languages. English became a rich language, an international language and after 1450 Modern English began to appear in its purest and highest form, according to many linguists and language historians. There were many English Bibles before Wycliffe. I refer to Scott’s The Story of Our English Bible and Dore’s Old Bibles (which is actually two separate books using the same main title). According to Dore, the Lord Chancellor of England in the early 1500’s referred to the

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many old Bibles in English written before Wycliffe. Thomas Cranmer was said to have memorized the entire New Testament before he was burned at the stake. He penned the preface to a Bible version called the Great Bible.

John Wycliffe (spelled in many ways) lived from 1325 to 1384. He believed that a Bible written in English was as much Scripture as the originals and that translation could be inspired. He also is attributed with saying, “The clergy cry aloud that it is heresy to speak of the Holy Scriptures in English, and so they would condemn the Holy Ghost, who gave tongues to the Apostles of Christ to speak the word of God in all languages under heaven.” This is a quote attributed to him in a book he wrote in Latin by already mentioned historians. In Connolly’s The Indestructible Book he quotes Wycliffe saying that the Bible comes “from the mouth of God”. The Church did not approve of Bibles in the vernacular, that is, the language of the people, whether it be German, French, or English. Wycliffe’s belief in God’s preservation of His word angered the Catholic hierarchy. There are several great myths about Wycliffe’s work as a translator that come down to us in many traditional histories. One is that he wrote the first scriptures in English. Hasting’s Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics directs readers to numerous books documenting early English scriptures which I have told you about. Dr. Christopher De Hamel of Oxford, for 25 years the Curator of Medieval and Illuminated Manuscripts at Sotheby’s auction house in London, is quoted as stating that the earliest extant (still existing) Wycliffe Bible was obviously already copied from a previous English Bible and that he wasn’t so much translating as he was transcribing.

Wycliffe taught at Oxford for 35 years. He remained a Catholic all of his life but insisted, in opposition to Church teaching that the Bible must be available in English. He is called “the Morning Star of the Reformation”. I have already told you that he influenced Jan Huss and many others throughout Europe. A second myth is that Bibles in English were rare in the Medieval period. Just scanning Foxe’s Acts and Monuments can rid you of that myth. In Sir Thomas More’s A Dialogue Concerning Heresies written in 1529 he says that Bibles in English were not at all rare. De Hamel had said that quite often a Wycliffe Bible was the only book in a person’s household. Wycliffe’s followers, called Lollards, were quite common in 1300’s England. If you really want an eye opener about the numerous Bibles passed around in Wycliffe’s time read The Cambridge History of the Bible. It is clear that in spite of laws against even owning a copy of the Bible, particularly at this time, they were available.

Another myth you will hear and no doubt read is that Wycliffe used only the Latin Vulgate of Jerome to translate his English Bible. Included in this myth perpetrated by Catholic scholars and Protestant scholars who idealize the Roman Catholic Church is the incorrect statement that Wycliffe had no access to manuscripts in the original languages. In Wycliffe’s work On the Truth of the Holy Scripture, translated from the Latin by Ian Christopher Levy, as published in Western Michigan University’s Medieval Institute Publications, in 2001, Wycliffe refers to having access to Hebrew and Greek manuscripts by which he “corrected” Jerome’s Latin Vulgate. The Cambridge History of the Bible

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quotes Wycliffe stating that many Latin Bibles were completely false and that the current English Bibles were more accurate than Jerome’s Latin Bible. The confusion comes from the statement “made from the Latin Vulgate” which was added to the front page of the 1850 printed edition of Wycliffe’s Bible, edited by Frederic Madden and Josiah Forshall. The Cambridge History of the Bible questions the reliability of this edition, at any rate.

Foxe’s Acts and Monuments credits Wycliffe as depending on the Old Latin Bibles while many others add that he had Greek and Hebrew manuscripts, as well as earlier English Bibles in front of him. After Wycliffe died the Church had many of his books burned and his bones dug up and thrown into the river Swift, he had made them so angry.

Another anti-Catholic group you should hear about is the Bogomiles, who came up from Asia Minor into Bulgaria; the chief information we have on them is from their bitterest enemies- Rome. Schaff in his History of the Christian Church allows for no origin of the Bogomiles before the tenth century, forgetting that their spiritual ancestors (the Paulicians) came from the same place back in the sixth and seventh centuries. One of their outstanding pastors was a physician (medical doctor) named Basil, who was burned at the stake by the Greek Orthodox Emperor Alexander Comnenus I. The Bogomiles may have had some heretical ideas but they did believe that the Roman Catholic “mass” was a sacrifice to devils, that the early church fathers who contradicted the Bible were false prophets, that organized Roman Catholicism was Satanic, and, above all, that they would baptize no one but an adult believer. As far as any heretical beliefs the Catholic writers had to say about them, it was common for the Church to call anyone who they didn’t like an Arian or a Manichean. Information on the Bogomiles can be obtained from Robinson’s History of Baptism and Baker’s Summary of Christian History. Most, if not all of the books I refer to can be found, if not on amazon.com then by going to alibris.com. If you wish to purchase a book I have referred to and can’t find it, let me know and I’ll help you get it or lend you my copy once it’s returned from whomever has it. If I am referring to a work that contains a reference to another work I have mentioned I will alert you to that as well.

Every horrible torture that could be invented by the depraved nature of man was used by the Church at Rome against these dissenters and groups that had existed concurrently with Rome for centuries. In Geoffrey Abbotts’ Rack, Rope, and Red-Hot Pincers as well as Brian Innes’ The History of Torture you will find only a few of the many horrors
visited on those Christian groups who did not acknowledge the supremacy of the Roman Catholic Church in all matters spiritual and temporal. Millions were killed in the period from Justinian’s Code reinforcing the primacy of the bishop of Rome in the 500’s through the Reformation. I will not describe those horrors for this class but will leave it up to you to research further. We have yet to discover the Inquisition in all of its perverse glory which we will do later.

The state of the Jew in Catholic Europe was little better than the so-called heretic. There were many violent anti-Semitic laws established in the Middle Ages and periods of

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50 to 100 years of peace were interspersed with massacres and expulsions. In the Byzantine realm the Jews “enjoyed a harassed prosperity from the eighth to the twelfth century” according to Durant. In Europe itself, there were prosperous Jewish settlements in Germany by the 9th century and Jews in England by the late 600’s. Many more came with William the Conqueror and at first were protected by the ruling elite, their communities being outside of local authority and under the protection of the king. They were successful merchants and bankers and important to the ruling class, particularly. This protective barrier played a great part in the pogroms (actions against Jews including murder, confiscation of property, and exile) of the 12th century. Gaul had Jewish merchants from the time of Caesar and by 600 there were Jewish colonies in all the cities. They were, at times, persecuted mercilessly. But, they were useful to society as merchants, craftsmen, doctors, financiers, and even farmers. In spite of attacks, Jews in France knew a prosperity they would not know again after the 10th century until after the French Revolution.

Spanish Jews called themselves Sephardim and traced their origin to the tribe of Judah. After the conversion of King Recared, the Visigothic king, to Catholicism in the late 500’s life became more difficult for them. They, in turn, aided the Muslim conquest of Spain in hopes of better treatment, which, at times, did happen the way they hoped. Durant says that the main source of hostility toward the Jew may have been economic with religious differences used to cover the main reason. Two statements by the Jews at the crucifixion sealed their shoddy treatment by Roman Catholic Europe, however. John 19:15 determined what city would do its utmost to persecute them and Matthew 27:25 marked them for 2,000 years. However, no true Christian would ever hate or persecute the race of people God originally chose through which to give light to a dead world. Read John 4:22. The statement of Genesis 12:3 still applies by judging the events of history. Nations that hunted the Jew from mighty, gold loving Spain to Nazi Germany all met similar fates. That being said, the Third Council of the Lateran in 1179 forbade Christian midwives or nurses to minister to Jews. The Council of Beziers forbade the employment of Jewish doctors by Christians. The Council of Avignon in 1209 reinforced these proscriptions and added more such as ordering that “Jews and Harlots” (prostitutes) were not allowed to touch bread and fruit offered for sale. Of course, Jews and Christians were forbidden to marry and there is at least one account of someone being burned at the stake for doing so.

The Fourth Council of Lateran in 1215 ordered that Jews wear something on their clothing to distinguish themselves from Christians. This was enforced in various ways including a wheel or a circle of yellow cloth being ordered to be displayed prominently. Hitler would revive this practice. In England this was enforced in 1218. In 1219 it was enforced in France. Several Popes, however, were friendly to the Jews; among these were Eugenius III, Alexander III, and Innocent IV, who repudiated the legend of the ritual murder of Christian children by Jews. Modern evangelical Christians, aware of God’s plan for the Jewish people as evidenced by the formation of Israel in 1948 against all odds and their miraculous protection against overwhelming odds in several wars fought

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against them by their neighbors plus the clear, black and white statements in Revelation and other prophetic books about their conversion and Christ directed actions in the tribulation to come, pray for the Jewish people and the nation of Israel while still acknowledging that, for an individual, the future is hopeless for anyone, Jew or Gentile, who rejects the Lord Jesus Christ.

A long series of violent assaults on the Jewish communities of Europe began in earnest in the 12th and 13th centuries. Beginning roughly when the entire Jewish population of Belitz, near Berlin was burned alive on the charge that some of them had “defiled a consecrated Host”, which is to say that they may have touched a wafer that a priest had claimed was now the body of the Lord Jesus Christ, in 1243 to Edward I of England, in 1290, ordering all Jews to leave England immediately, Jewish persecution was the order of the day.

There were several important Jewish rabbis in the Middle Ages who left their mark on Jewish thinking and culture. One of the most famous was Moses Maimonides, who, according to Ronald Isaacs’ Every Person’s Guide to Jewish Philosophy and Philosophers, was the “foremost intellectual figure in medieval Judaism”. Commonly referred to as RaMBaM (an acronym for Rabbi Moses ben Maimon), he was born in 1135 in Cordova in Muslim Spain. A persecution or pogrom in 1148 forced his family to flee to various Spanish cities. In 1159 he settled in Morocco and then later to Cairo, Egypt, where, in 1168, he wrote his commentary on the oral law that I have explained earlier. His 14 volume work was called The Commentary on the Misnah. He, like Aristotle, the Greek philosopher, believed in the existence of an incorporeal God, that is, a God without a body. He believed that God created everything but denied even the possibility that He would come to earth and live among us as well as denying the Trinity by his interpretation of God’s oneness. He also, like a New Ager, believed that evil is not a positive force but rather a negative, simply the absence of God or His goodness. Evil, to Maimonides, was the denial of good. He, like Philo earlier, allegorized many of the literal statements of the Bible. You can hear him echoed in a modern Christian teacher saying, “What it really means is this or that…” rather than, “The Bible says this or that…” Like
Philo, I believe, Moses Maimonides made a connection between Greek philosophy and God’s words, which, I also believe, is a denial of God’s words.

In our next class I am going to discuss the Black Plague, the internal wars in Europe in the Medieval period, the Inquisition, literature, arts, and science in Medieval Europe, the rise of the Ottoman Turks, and the final fall of the Roman Empire in the East, called the Byzantine Empire.

This era of history is long and complex and there is no way that I would have time to include everything of importance. I am trying to give you some basics to consider, not expecting you to agree with my conclusions or to accept my basic premises. I would like you to consider the evidence of history that I put forward, do independent study, and


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along with reading your Bible, prayerfully seek the Holy Spirit’s guidance in understanding the great conflicting forces in history.

Remember, for everything God does, Satan has a counterfeit. Not being deceived by that counterfeit is a constant spiritual battle for Christians.

Latest Reading

Betrayers of Truth, Fraud and Deceit in the Halls of Science, by William Broad & Nicholas Wade, Simon & Schuster, New York, 1982, This is one of those rare and outstanding books that should be in every thinking person's library. Science, the religion of the last hundred plus years is not the logical, objective process we are told that it is. Scientists are not priests in white coats, dedicated to the purity of knowledge and the sanctity of truth. They are often led by vanity, blind ambition, mendacity, and greed. The fact that most people associated with science today claim that this is impossible only makes matters worse. Its a great book with lots of facts and authentication to back it up. It doesn't dismiss Science but the religion of Science is attacked greatly. READ THIS BOOK!!!