Re-establish the Ottoman Empire?

[Dr Strangelove]

Originally posted by Ted Striker
They had New York and Chicago for a while till the Feds busted them up.

Tell that to the Irish!

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Ben Kenobi


You leave out the Orthodox, who were the majority of the Christians under the Turks. Perhaps if the Turks were so tolerant, we would not have so many problems today in that region.

Heck, even the Poles came to the rescue of Vienna from the Turks, so they can't be that bad.

Pity poor Obi Gyn, who has never heard of the Elector of the Palatinate and his Winter Queen, the Defenestration of Prague, the suppression of the Hussites, the Thirty Years' War.... friendly 'tolerant' Catholic Habsburgs at work.

Sack of Magdeburg anyone? *

The beastly Ottomans on the other hand had Solomon's Temple repaired and put a Jew in charge of the Holy Land. They also gave a home to all those Sephardi Jews expelled by the Habsburg kissing cousins in Spain.

As for being cosmopolitan, Istanbul had Vienna beaten hands down.

You're not studying history by any chance are you?

*
"Perhaps the most ghastly conflict in Europe before the slaughters of the twentieth century, the Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648), a complex religious, political, dynastic, and nationalist struggle the ultimately involved virtually every country on the continent, was marked by extraordinary atrocities by all concerned, perhaps the most famous of which was the Sack of Magdeburg, in 1631.

In November of 1630 a largely – but not exclusively – Catholic army in the service of the House of Hapsburg and the “Holy Catholic League” of the Holy Roman Empire, commanded by Imperial Marshal Johan Tilly and Gottfried zu Pappenheim invested the largely Protestant city of Magdeburg, on the Elbe in Central Germany. It was a difficult siege, for the garrison was strong and well supplied, and conducted an active defense, while the besiegers found great difficulty supplying themselves from local resources.

By May of 1631, the situation of the besiegers was growing desperate, having made little headway against the city’s defenses, short of food, and with a Swedish relief army approach under the redoubtable King Gustavus Adolphus II, the “Lion of the North.” Tilly and Pappenheim resolving to attempt to storm the city. On May 20, 1631, with the Swedish relief army still far off, the Imperialists stormed the city, amid great slaughter, with perhaps 30,000 dead, only about 5,000 of the inhabitants and garrison surviving. "

http://www.strategypage.com/cic/docs/cic66c.asp

[Shogun Gunner]

Originally posted by JohnT
While we're at it, why don't we remerge W. Virginia and Virginia. It's obvious that WV can't really support itself with its small, poor tax base... if it weren't for Robert Byrd, the state would've gone bankrupt decades ago.

Ummmm..... no thanks. We are fine over here in "East Virginia"

[Dr Strangelove]

IIRC the Turks sacked Buda-Pest and a number of other European cities at various times during their long reign. They like so many other conquerers knew how to use terror as an effective tactic. If they laid siege to your city you were given until a specified time to surrender or else. In order to make such a tactic work a commander has to be willing to follow up on his threat. There are a number of instances of Turkish willingness.

Remember also that the Turks expanded rapidly during the 15th and 16th century. By no means did they have sufficient population of their own to patrol such a huge empire. They had to rely on non-Turkish troopps to fill the bulk of their army and also had to use prominent locals to administer conquered lands. Tolerance was a necessity without which there could not have been an empire.

[Dr Strangelove]

Originally posted by Shogun Gunner


Ummmm..... no thanks. We are fine over here in "East Virginia"

Yeah, really. Don't bother yourself.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by JohnT
While we're at it, why don't we remerge W. Virginia and Virginia. It's obvious that WV can't really support itself with its small, poor tax base... if it weren't for Robert Byrd, the state would've gone bankrupt decades ago.

Only if Northern Virginia becomes its own state in WV's place. I don't want to be in the same state as WV

[Dis]

Originally posted by Shogun Gunner


Ummmm..... no thanks. We are fine over here in "East Virginia"

don't you believe in sharing the wealth? socialism for all.

Virginia is rich. West Virginia is poor. It's a small sacrifice to help other countrymen out

[lord of the mark]

Reunite Gondwanaland!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Ben Kenobi]

The protestants of the Austrian empire fled to British North America. Today they're known as the Church of the Bretheran. The "Old Salem" restoration project in Winston-Salem, North Carolina had a nice exhibit about the history of "The Moravians" when I last visited about 10 years ago. Some historians claim that the Moravians had up to 500,000 followers in Moravia, Bohemia, Austria and Poland. The Thirty Years War forced the survivors to move to Bavaria, where they were given encouragement, to continue moving west. Eventually they founded colonies in North America and Salem, North Carolina was one of their biggest. In time they changed their name and have blended in with the rest of the protestants

Actually, my church is composed of a combination of Mennonites and the Brethren, hence, the Mennonite Brethren. They originated in Russia, under the Czar Catherine the Great who offered them exemption from military service, and free land, so long as they agreed to settle and farm.

[Ben Kenobi]

Pity poor Obi Gyn, who has never heard of the Elector of the Palatinate and his Winter Queen, the Defenestration of Prague, the suppression of the Hussites, the Thirty Years' War.... friendly 'tolerant' Catholic Habsburgs at work.

Sack of Magdeburg anyone?

Right, as opposed to the 'friendly protestants'.

The Hussites, as Anabaptists, got it from the Lutherans and Calvinists just as much as from the Catholics, so the treatment is par for the course.

The beastly Ottomans on the other hand had Solomon's Temple repaired and put a Jew in charge of the Holy Land. They also gave a home to all those Sephardi Jews expelled by the Habsburg kissing cousins in Spain.

You ignore my point about the Orthodox Christians. I assume then you concede that the 'Cosmopolitan Istanbul' did not welcome Christians.

Just look at what they did with the Hagia Sophia.

[Ben Kenobi]

You're Catholic.:P

As catholic as the pope.

[Dr Strangelove]

Originally posted by Ben Kenobi


As catholic as the pope.

I thought you were a Mennonite in the process of converting to Catholicism to please your girlfriend, who eventually dumped you? So after she dumped you, you continued practicing her religion?

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Ben Kenobi

Right, as opposed to the 'friendly protestants'.

The Hussites, as Anabaptists, got it from the Lutherans and Calvinists just as much as from the Catholics, so the treatment is par for the course.

You ignore my point about the Orthodox Christians. I assume then you concede that the 'Cosmopolitan Istanbul' did not welcome Christians.

Just look at what they did with the Hagia Sophia.

Yet again, your usual slipshod approach to history and facts.

Weren't we comparing the Ottomans and the Habsburgs? Not Catholics and Protestants in Europe?

Still, let that tangent of yours go by, shall we?

I've ignored nothing about your 'point' regarding Orthodox Christians and Otooman treatment of them, but if you'd asked someone who actually knew something about the history ofthe Ottoman Empire, say, me, or chegitz, we couldhave told you how the tratement of Christians in the Ottoman Empire compared with the treatment of non-Catholic Christians in the Habsburg domains.

Did the Habsburgs accept national Czech or Bohemian Hussite churches?

Did they 'tolerate' anti-trinitarians?

No.

Let's contrast that with this from (a not overly Ottoman-friendly) site:

"History of the Orthodox Church
Aristeides Papadakis, Ph.D.

Religious Rights Under Islam

The new Ottoman government that arose from the ashes of Byzantine civilization was neither primitive nor barbaric. Islam not only recognized Jesus as a great prophet, but tolerated Christians as another People of the Book. As such, the Church was not extinguished nor was its canonical and hierarchical organization significantly disrupted. Its administration continued to function. One of the first things that Mehmet the Conqueror did was to allow the Church to elect a new patriarch, Gennadius Scholarius. The Hagia Sophia and the Parthenon, which had been Christian churches for nearly a millennium were, admittedly, converted into mosques, yet countless other churches, both in Constantinople and elsewhere, remained in Christian hands. Moreover, it is striking that the patriarch's and the hierarchy's position was considerably strengthened and their power increased. They were endowed with civil as well as ecclesiastical power over all Christians in Ottoman territories. Because Islamic law makes no distinction between nationality and religion, all Christians, regardless of their language or nationality, were viewed as a single millet, or nation. The patriarch, as the highest ranking hierarch, was thus invested with civil and religious authority and made ethnarch, head of the entire Christian Orthodox population. Practically, this meant that all Orthodox Churches within Ottoman territory were under Constantinople. The authority and jurisdictional frontiers of the patriarch, in short, were enormously enlarged. "

http://www.goarch.org/en/ourfaith/articles/article7053.asp

So Haghia Sophia was converted into a mosque- in effect, still retained as a house of worship, and architecturally, hardly altered.

Compare and contrast with the treatment of the Great Mosque at Cordoba:

"Emperor Charles V lamented the construction of the cathedral saying: "You have destroyed something unique in the world with something that can be found anywhere." "

http://archnet.org/library/sites/one-site.tcl?site_id=31

and:

"For almost 300 years Christians worshipped in this curious makeshift cathedral, but in 1523 the pressure to replace the mosque built up in a militant society that had banished both Jews and Arabs.

The cathedral chapter got permission to build. But what happened is remarkable.

In other cities like Seville, as the re-conquest squeezed the Muslims out, mosques were demolished and churches covered the sites.

In this case, a new cathedral was built inside the mosque.

It is a shock which visitors today are rarely prepared for. Carved out of the centre of the building, using perhaps 20-25 per cent of the mosque's floor space, is a Renaissance church that could be one of a dozen small churches in Rome."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/3673323.stm

"He dismounted and bent down to pick up a handful of earth, which he poured over his turban as an act of humility before God.

Inside the shrine which Greeks considered `the earthly heaven, throne of God's glory, the vehicle of the cherubim', a Turk proclaimed: `There is no God but Allah: Muhammad is his Prophet.' The cathedral of Haghia Sophia had become the mosque of Aya Sofya. As the Sultan entered, hundreds of Greeks who had taken refuge in the cathedral hoping to be saved by a miracle, were being herded out by their captors. He stopped one of his soldiers hacking at the marble floor, saying, with a conqueror's pride: `Be satisfied with the booty and the captives; the buildings of the city belong to me.' Below golden mosaics of Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary, Orthodox saints and Byzantine emperors, he prayed to Allah. "

http://www.library.cornell.edu/colldev/mideast/consttnp.htm

and:

"Even though it wasn't one of their own creations, we can thank the Ottoman sultans for keeping the structure in good repair. It is said they considered it one of the most beautiful mosques in their empire, and felt it was a source of great pride. That's not to say that there weren't some modifications. Part of the conversion from Christianity to Islam involved plastering over or painting away many of the Byzantine Christian icons, symbols, and other decorations. These were rediscovered during a renovation in the 1840's. The architects restored the symbols to their original splendor, then covered them up for safe keeping. They were discovered once again in the 20th century, and in 1964 made their first public appearance in more than five centuries."

http://www.glasssteelandstone.com/BuildingDetail.php?ID=249

http://www.focusmm.com/civilization/hagia/history.htm

http://www.greatbuildings.com/buildings/Hagia_Sophia.html

Now really, you shouldn't assume anything, as Bishop Augustine of Hippo could have told you:

" Do not presume: one of the thieves was damned."

How many different kinds of Christians did the Ottomans not only tolerate, but bring to Istanbul?

Jacobites, Maronites, Armenians, Georgians, Catholics, Protestants (Lutherans and Calvinists) Copts, Nestorians, Orthodox from the Greek community, from the various Balkan principalities and kingdoms, the Russian Orthodox, Samarians- in fact, so proud were the Ottomans of the ethnic and religious diversity of their Empire and Istanbul, THEY ADVERTISED IT.

In pictures, photographs, broadsheets, and so forth.

Now let's address the Hussites- I think your history is a wee bit shaky there. Care to give any details about major Hussite/Calvinist or Hussite/Lutheran conflicts, with dates and places?

Here's a hint- last of the Hussite Wars- 1478.

In any case, it's hardly bolstering a case for 'tolerant' Christianity, is it?

[Ben Kenobi]

I thought you were a Mennonite in the process of converting to Catholicism to please your girlfriend, who eventually dumped you? So after she dumped you, you continued practicing her religion?

catholic = universal

Catholic = Roman Catholicism.

[Ben Kenobi]

I thought you were a Mennonite in the process of converting to Catholicism to please your girlfriend, who eventually dumped you?

There was more to it than just to please her. I wouldn't have kept going, nor would I have attended other Catholic churches on my own without her if this were the case. Even in my RCIA classes, it was mostly me going without her, due to a schedule conflict.

So there's always been an attraction to Catholicism, even before I met her. When we started going out, that was part of it, things that I saw in her life that I lacked in mine.

I had hoped to continue being part of that life with her, and perhaps I shall in the future.

But for now, I'm still a member of the Mennonite Brethren, although my church is an hour and a half from where I live. I go when I can, though not every week, since that's three hours just to travel there and back.

When I don't go there, I go to a Catholic church, with some of my other Catholic friends, of whom I have been blessed with many.

Will I join the Catholic church? I don't know.

So after she dumped you, you continued practicing her religion?

Yep. Funny how life works, eh?