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Fjordman : Will the Third Rome Fall to Islam?
From the desk of FjordmanI recently read the book The Reformation by Owen Chadwick, about the Protestant Reformation and the situation in 15th and 16th century Europe. It is fascinating to read about Western Europe during a period when it was genuinely dynamic, not the anemic and self-loathing continent it is now. But still, I was also struck by how many similarities there are between the situation then and now. This was also during a period of Muslim aggression, as the Turks made inroads into the Balkans and Central Europe, eventually threatening even Western Europe. Ironically, this period was also when the Greco-Roman heritage was rediscovered in the West. The classical heritage had been preserved in the East for a thousand years after the Western half of the Roman Empire collapsed, and with the pressures from Muslims, many Greek Byzantine scholars brought their texts with them to northern Italian cities such as Venice, thus fuelling the Renaissance. However, the overall picture was one of Western division. Spain, which was probably the strongest nation in Europe during the 16th century, was after expelling Muslims from their own peninsula in 1492 more interested in looking westwards to the Americas rather than eastwards to the expanding Ottoman Empire. Posted by: anonymous5089 2007-03-20 |
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