American Minute with Bill Federer
How Ottoman invasion from the East spread Renaissance to the West
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Caliph Umar
fought alongside of Mohammed in nearly all his battles.
Umar's
daughter Hafsa was one of Mohammed's wives.
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Waging jihad,
Umar
conquered enormous areas, including:
- Eastern Roman Empire
- Mesopotamia,
- parts of Persia,
- Egypt,
- Palestine,
- Syria,
- North Africa,
- Armenia,
- Anatolia
- Damascus, and
- Jerusalem.
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Muslim pirates terrorized the
Mediterranean,
blockading trade.
This caused an economic disaster in
Roman Europe
by diminishing products moving from North
Africa and the Middle East to Rome.
An important item no longer shipped was
papyrus
-- reeds from the Nile delta which were used for paper in Europe.
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The sudden shortage of paper resulted in a decline of writing, literacy, and fewer books being written.
This was a key factor in the beginning of
THE DARK AGES.
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The
world's largest and oldest library
was in Alexandria, Egypt.
Accounts given by:
- Persian traveler Abd-Al-Latif of Baghdad (1162-1231),
- Jamal Ad-din Al-Kufti (1169-1248), and
- Syrian prelate Bar Hebraeus (1226-1286)
reported that when
Caliph Omar
was asked in 642 AD what to do with the books in the library, he told his commander Amr bin al-Ass:
"Touching the books you mention, if what is written in them agrees with the Qur'an, they are not required; if it disagrees, they are not desired. Destroy them therefore."
The account continued that the library books were burned to heat the city's bath-houses for six months.
Other libraries in
Babylon, Syria
and
Greece
met similar fates.
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Recent accounts, such as
Breitbart News,
April 13, 2016, reported this behavior continuing:
"ISIS militants also raided the Central Library of Mosul to destroy all non-Islamic books.
'These books promote infidelity and call for disobeying Allah,' announced a militant to the residents. 'So they will be burned.'"
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In 711 AD, Umayyad Muslim leader
Tariq ibn Ziyad
led Islamic crusaders across the
Strait of Gibralta
r, which was named for him.
"Gibraltar"
is from the Arabic "
Jebel Tariq,"
the
Mount of Tariq.
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Muslim crusaders rode on
Arabian horses with stirrups and light scimitar swords,
while Spaniards were fighting on foot with heavy swords.
In ten years, they conquered all of Spain.
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Pope Gregory III
put out a plea for help and
Charles Martel
stopped the Islamic advance just outside of Paris at the
Battle of Tours
in 732 AD, just 100 years after the death of Mohammed in 632 AD.
Will and Ariel Durant wrote in
The Lessons of History
(1968):
"The defeat of the Moslems at
Tours
(732) kept France and Spain from replacing the Bible with the Koran."
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The Song of Roland,
the oldest surviving major work of French literature, commemorated the Muslim ambush and annihilation of part of
Charlemagne's army
at the
Battle of Roncevaux
in 778 AD.
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This is similar to
The Song of El Cid,
the oldest preserved Castilian epic poem, which commemorated the Castilian hero
El Cid's Reconquista of Spain
from the Muslim Moors in 1094.
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In 832 AD,
Muslim Caliph Al-Ma'mun
of the Abbasid Dynasty ordered raiders to seek out
Pharaohs' tombs for plundering.
They broke into the
Great Pyramid of Giza
in search of treasure.
The destruction of Egyptian history was so thorough that within a few generations, Egyptians had no memory of who built the Great Pyramids.
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Fundamental Muslims also destroyed:
- City of Ani in Armenia;
- Buddhist statues in Afghanistan;
- Assyrian Museum;
- Egyptian rioters trashing mummies;
- Ancient Syrian and Chaldean churches dating back to the time of the Apostles;
- Ayotollah Khomeini's attempt to destroy Cyrus' ancient Persian palace at Persepolis;
- the graves of the Prophet Jonah and the Prophet Daniel in Nineveh (Mosul, Iraq) were blown up by ISIS militants on July 24, 2014.
An Islamic Hadiths stated:
"Abu'l-Hayyaj al-Asadi told that 'Ali (b. Abu Talib) said to him ...
Do not leave an image without obliterating it, or a high grave without leveling it. This hadith has been reported by Habib with the same chain of transmitters and he said: Do not leave a picture without obliterating it." (Hadith Bk 4, No. 2115)
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As the "rightly guided" Muslim
Caliphs
conquered
North Africa
and the
Middle East,
it further interrupted Mediterranean trade,
economically devastating Rome and Byzantium.
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In 846 AD, just 46 years after
Charlemagne
was crowned Holy Roman Emperor in Rome's old
St. Peter's basilica, 11,000 Muslim attacked.
They
sacked Rome,
looted old St. Peter's basilica and St. Paul Outside the Wall Church,
desecrating the graves of both St. Peter and St. Paul.
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As a result,
Pope Leo IV built a wall, 39 feet high, all around the Vatican
to keep the Muslim invaders out. It took four years to complete the wall.
In 849 AD, Muslims
Saracen raiders
set sail from
Sardina
with a fleet to
invade Rome.
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Pope Leo
rallied the cities of Amalfi, Gaeta and Naples to send ships to block the
mouth of the Tiber River near Ostia.
Muslims attacked. The fighting was fierce, when suddenly
a violent storm arose,
dividing the Christians fleet from the Muslim attackers in the
Battle of Ostia.
Christian ships were able to make it back to port and weather the storm, but the
Muslim ships were severely damaged and scattered.
When the storm subsided, the remaining Muslim ships were easily captured.
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Calls for the
Crusades
can be traced to 1009, when
“Mad Caliph” Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah
ordered the
Church of the Holy Sepulchre
in Jerusalem
destroyed.
Pilgrims returning from the Holy Land shared reports of
Muslim persecution and cruelty toward "dhimmi" Christians.
In 1057, the
Norman Viking adventurer Robert Guiscard
took control of
Calabria
in the
"toe of Italy"
and
fought against the Muslims of Sicily.
In 1071, the Muslims delivered
a major defeat to the Byzantine Christians
at the
Battle of Manzikert
and took control of all but the coastlands of Asia Minor.
In desperation, the
Byzantine Emperor Alexius I Comnenus
humbled himself and sent ambassadors to the
Council of Piacenza
in March of 1095,
appealing for help from his religious rival, the Roman Catholic Pope.
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With
Spain
exuberant after driving the Muslims from
Toledo
and
Leon
by 1085,
Pope Urban
II
gave an impassioned plea at the
Council of Clermont
in
1095 for Western leaders to help their Byzantine Christians brethren
, whom Muslims
"compel to extend their necks and then, attacking them with naked swords, attempt to cut through the neck with a single blow." (Robert the Monk,
Medieval Sourcebook,
Fordham University.)
The First Crusade
began in 1097. In the next two centuries there were a total of
9 major Crusades
to
return the Holy Land to its pre-Islamic inhabitants.
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After the
Crusades
ended, in the 1300s, the Muslim jihad conqueror
Tamerlane killed 17 million across central Asia,
annihilating Christianity and leaving
pyramids of skulls in Delhi, India.
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In 1400s, as Muslims invaded
Byzantium.
When the
Ottoman Muslims sacked Constantinople
in 1453, it
ended the land trade routes from Europe to India and China.
This led
Columbus
to looking for a sea route, beginning
THE AGE OF DISCOVERY.
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As
Ottoman Muslims
invaded the
Greek Byzantine Empire,
they destroyed
churches, libraries, museums, artwork,
and
graves of the Christian saints.
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Greeks scholars
fled west to
Florence, Italy,
reintroducing their
Greek art, architecture and philosophy to western Europe.
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This led to a flood of
Greek treasures,
art and literature hurriedly carried to
Florence, Italy.
This re-interest in Greek culture is called
THE RENAISSANCE.
President Obama referred to this while giving a speech in Egypt, June 4, 2009:
"It was Islam ... paving the way for Europe's Renaissance."
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Jean-Jacques Rousseau
(1712-1778), considered the
Father of the French Revolution,
owned a dog named "Sultan."
Rousseau
wrote in
Discourse on the Arts and Sciences
(1750, translated by Ian Johnston):
"Europe had fallen back into the barbarity ... A revolution was necessary to bring men back to common sense, and it finally came from a quarter where one would least expect it. It was the stupid Muslim, the eternal blight on learning, who brought about its rebirth among us.
The collapse of the throne of Constantine carried into Italy the debris of ancient Greece. France, in its turn, was enriched by these precious remnants. The sciences soon followed letters. To the art of writing was joined the art of thinking."
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In retrospect, Islam was instrumental in bringing about
"The Dark Ages"
when they conquered
Egypt,
cut off trade across the
Mediterranean
and held back the ships of
papyrus;
and Islam was instrumental in
"The Renaissance"
when they
invaded Greece
and
destroyed Greek culture,
causing scholars to
flee to Italy.
In fact, the very concepts of
"Europe"
and
"Christendom"
took shape in response to the Islamic invasion, as previously Europe viewed itself as innumerable independent kingdoms.
This was similar to the 13 American colonies having to work together against the King of England, giving birth to the concept of the "united" States.
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As the
wealth of Greek Byzantine Empire flowed into Florence,
Italy, many were made rich, most notably the families of
Medici
and
Borgia,
who financed artists
Michelangelo
and
Leonardo DaVinci.
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Condemning the rising materialism and sensualism in
Florence
was the preacher
Savonarola.
He led a notable Christian revival till he was excommunicated, tortured and executed.
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Greek scholars
also
fled west
with their
Greek
Septuagint Old Testament, Greek
New Testament,
and
other ancient Greek Biblical manuscripts.
Soon,
western European scholars, like Erasmus
-- a friend of
Martin Luther
-- began translating the
Bible
not just from Latin, but from
Greek.
This interest in the original New Testament language of
Greek
contributed to
THE REFORMATION.
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In 1517,
Martin Luther
began the
Reformation
by posting Ninety-Five Theses, or debate questions, on the Wittenberg Church door in Saxony, Germany.
Different German kings became
Lutheran
or
"Reformed Christian"
and broke away from the
Catholic Holy Roman Empire.
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In 1529, a hundred thousand
Ottoman Muslim
warriors surrounded
Vienna, Austria,
under the command of
Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent.
He sent suicide bombers at the gates and had miners tunnel under the walls.
Miraculously,
Vienna
was saved by torrential freezing rain which fell for weeks, resulting in sickness among
Suleiman's
troops.
Suleiman
abandoned the attack and left, but not before beheading 4,000 Christian hostages.
He attempted to attack
Vienna
again in 1532, but was turned back, resulting in him turning his focus to conquering the Shi'a Muslims of
Persia (Iran)
in 1534.
Suleiman
annexed most of the
Middle East
and huge areas of
North Africa,
including the
Barbary States of Tripoli, Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco.
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Catholic Spain
used the
gold from the New World
to finance the
defense of Europe against the Ottoman invasion.
Holy Roman Emperor
Charles V of Spain,
fought
Suleiman's
ships which attacked the southern coasts of Europe.
In 1535,
Charles
won a victory against the Muslims at
Tunis.
But like the West's political disunity prior to the fall of the Byzantine Empire,
France
decided in 1536 to begin
allying itself with Muslim Sultan Suleiman
against
Spain's Charles V.
As a result,
Charles V
was forced to sign a humiliating treaty with the
Ottomans,
allowing them to gain naval dominance on the
Mediterranean Sea.
Later notable
battles
against the
Ottomans
include:
- Siege of Malta, September 11, 1565;
- Battle of Lepanto, October 7, 1571;
- Battle of Vienna, September 11, 1683;
- Battle of Zenta, September 11, 1697.
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STATEMENTS FROM LEADERS
To fully understand how seriously Europe felt threatened, it is insightful to read quotes from notable leaders.
As recorded in
Luther's Works-American Edition,
55 volumes (Philadelphia: Fortress; St. Louis: Concordia, 1955-1986, vol. 46:170-171),
Martin Luther
stated:
"The Turk is the rod of the wrath of the Lord our God ... If the Turk's god, the devil, is not beaten first, there is reason to fear that the Turk will not be so easy to beat ... Christian weapons and power must do it ...
(The fight against the Turks) must begin with repentance, and we must reform our lives, or we shall fight in vain.
(The Church should) drive men to repentance by showing our great and numberless sins and our ingratitude, by which we have earned God's wrath and disfavor, so that He justly gives us into the hands of the devil and the Turk."
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Luther
wrote in
Preface to Book of Revelation
(1530):
"2nd woe ... the 6th [evil] angel, the shameful Mohammed with his companions, the Saracens, who inflicted great plagues on Christendom, with his doctrine and with the sword."
In
On War Against the Turk
(1529),
Luther
wrote:
"The Turk is the very devil incarnate ... The Turk fills heaven with Christians by murdering their bodies."
In
Luther's Works
(3:121-122),
Luther
wrote:
"Yet it is more in accordance with the truth to say that the Turk is the Beast, because he is outside the church and openly persecutes
Christ."
Luther
wrote (Tischreden, 1532, Weimer, ed., 1, 330):
"The Turk is the flesh of Antichrist ... (which) slaughters bodily by the sword."
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John Calvin
wrote to Philip Melanchthon in 1543
(Selected Works of John Calvin: Tracts & Letters,
I:373):
"I hear of the sad condition of your Germany! ... The Turk again prepares to wage war with a larger force. Who will stand up to oppose his marching throughout the length and breadth of the land, at his mere will and pleasure?"
Calvin
wrote in
Commentary of 2nd Thessalonians:
"Since Mohammed was an apostate, he turned his followers, the Turks, from Christ ... The sect of Mohammed was like a raging overflow, which in its violence tore away about half of the Church."
Calvin
wrote in
Commentary on Daniel:
"Turks have spread far and wide, and the world is filled with impious despisers of God."
John Calvin
wrote in
Sermons on Timothy & Titus:
"The Turks at this day, can allege and say for themselves: 'We serve God from our ancestors!' -- It is a good while since Mahomet gave them the cup of his devilish dreams to drink, and they got drunk with them. It is about a thousand years since cursed hellhounds were made drunk with their follies -- Let us be wise and discreet! -- For otherwise, we shall be like the Turks and Heathen."
Calvin
wrote in
Institutes of the Christian Religion
(Book II, Chapter VI):
"For even if many men once boasted that they worshiped ... the Maker of heaven and earth, yet because they had no Mediator it was not possible for them truly to taste God's mercy, and thus be persuaded that he was their Father ...
So today the Muslim Turks, although they proclaim at the top of their lungs that the Creator of heaven and earth is God, still, while repudiating Christ, substitute an idol in place of the true God."
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John Wesley,
the founder of Methodism, wrote in
The Doctrine of Original Sin
(1817, p. 35; Works, 1841, ix. 205):
"Let us now calmly and impartially consider what manner of men the Mahometans in general are ... Men who have but a moderate share of reason, cannot but observe in his Koran ... the most gross and impious absurdities ...
Who can swallow such absurdities as divinely revealed. Mahometans not only condemn all who cannot swallow them to everlasting fire; not only appropriate to themselves the title of ... true believers: but even anathematise ... all their brethren ... who contend for a figurative interpretation."
Wesley
continued:
"That these men then have no knowledge or love of God is undeniably manifest, not only from their gross, horrible notions of him, but from their not loving their brethren ... Mahometans will butcher each other by thousands ... Why is it that such numbers of Turks and Persians have stabbed one another in cool blood?
Truly, because they differ in the manner of dressing their head. The Ottoman vehemently maintains ... that a Mussulman should wear a round turban ... whereas the Persian insists upon his liberty of conscience, and will wear it picked before.
So, for this wonderful reason ... they beat out each other's brains from generation to generation."
Wesley
concluded:
"Ever since the religion of Mahomet appeared in the world, the espousers of it, particularly those under the Turkish emperor, have been as wolves and tigers to all other nations; rending and tearing all that fell into their merciless paws, and grinding them with their iron teeth ...
Numberless cities are razed from the foundation, and only their name remaining ... Many countries which were once as the garden of God, are now a desolate wilderness ... Such was, and is at this day, the rage, the fury, the revenge, of these destroyers of humankind!"
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Jonathan Edwards,
first President of Princeton, wrote in
A History of the Work of Redemption
(1739):
"Those mighty kingdoms of Antichrist and Mohammed ... trampled the world under foot ... Great works of the devil ... swallowed up the Ancient Roman Empire ... Satan's Mohometan kingdom (swallowed) the Eastern Empire."
Jonathan Edwards
stated in
The Fall of Antichrist
(1829, NY: S. Converse pub., part vii, p. 395):
"By the false prophet ... here an eye seems to be had to Mahomet, whom his followers call the great prophet of God. Revelation 16:13"
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Two centuries before the Reformation, in 1258,
Thomas Aquinas
wrote
Summa contra Gentiles
(translated by Anton C. Pegis, University of Notre Dame Press, 1975). He wrote in Book 1, Chapter 6:
"Mohammed ... seduced the people by promises of carnal pleasure to which the concupiscence of the flesh goads us ... and he gave free reign to carnal pleasure.
In all this, as is not unexpected, he was obeyed by carnal men. As for proofs of the truth of his doctrine, he brought forward only such as could be grasped by the natural ability of anyone with a very modest wisdom. Indeed, the truths that he taught he mingled with many fables and doctrines of the greatest falsity.
He did not bring forth any signs produced in a supernatural way, which alone fittingly gives witness to divine inspiration ...
On the contrary, Mohammed said that he was sent in the power of his arms -- which are signs not lacking even to robbers and tyrants ... Those who believed in him were brutal men and desert wanderers, utterly ignorant of all divine teaching, through whose numbers Mohammed forced others to become his followers by the violence of his arms ...
He perverts almost all the testimonies of the Old and New Testaments by making them into fabrications of his own, as can be seen by anyone who examines his law. It was, therefore, a shrewd decision on his part to forbid his followers to read the Old and New Testaments, lest these books convict him of falsity ... Those who place any faith in his words believe foolishly."
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Voltaire
(1694-1778) wrote the play
Fanaticism, or Mahomet,
explaining to Pope Benedict XIV, August 17, 1745:
"Your holiness will pardon the liberty taken by ... this performance written in opposition to the founder of a false and barbarous sect. To whom could I with more propriety inscribe a satire on the cruelty and errors of a false prophet."
Voltaire
wrote to Frederick II of Prussia, December 1740, referring to Muhammad:
"But that a camel-merchant should stir up insurrection in his village; that in league with some miserable followers he persuades them that he talks with the angel Gabriel; that he boasts of having been carried to heaven, where he received in part this unintelligible book, each page of which makes common sense shudder;
that, to pay homage to this book, he delivers his country to iron and flame; that he cuts the throats of fathers and kidnaps daughters; that he gives to the defeated the choice of his religion or death: this is assuredly nothing any man can excuse, at least if he was not born a Turk, or if superstition has not extinguished all natural light in him."
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Montesquieu
wrote in
The Spirit of the Laws
(1748):
"Moderate government is most agreeable to the Christian Religion, and a despotic government to the Mahometan ...
While the Mahommedan princes incessantly give or receive death, the religion of the Christians renders their princes ... less cruel ...
It is the Christian religion that ... has hindered despotic power ...
From the characters of the Christian and Mahometan religions, we ought, without any further examination, to embrace the one and reject the other:
The Mahometan Religion, which speaks only by the sword, acts still upon men with that destructive spirit with which it was founded."
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Scottish philosopher
David Hume
(1711-1776) wrote in
Of the Standard of Taste
(1760):
"Followers of the Qur'an insist on the excellent moral precepts interspersed through that wild and absurd performance.
It is to be supposed, that the Arabic words, which correspond to the English, equity, justice, temperance, meekness, charity ... must always be taken in a good sense; and it would have argued the greatest ignorance, not of morals, but of language, to have mentioned them with any epithets, besides those of applause and approbation.
But would we know, whether the pretended prophet had really attained a just sentiment of morals? Let us attend to his narration; and we shall soon find, that he bestows praise on such instances of treachery, inhumanity, cruelty, revenge, bigotry, as are utterly incompatible with civilized society.
No steady rule of right seems there to be attended to; and every action is blamed or praised, so far only as it is beneficial or hurtful to the true believers."
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THE PEACE OF AUGSBURG
The most powerful man in the Western World was
Charles V
of Spain.
Being the Catholic Holy Roman Emperor, he exercised controlled over most of Europe, as well as areas in the Americas and the Philippines.
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Charles V
was faced with a double dilemma:
1) Protestant Reformation on one hand;
2) Muslim invasion on the other hand.
As the Turks rapidly advanced up the Danube River,
Charles V
of Spain decided to strike a deal with the Protestants.
In 1532, an initial truce was negotiated in Nuremberg. Then in 1555,
Charles V
negotiated the monumental
Peace of Augsburg.
Eric W. Gritisch wrote in
Martin-God's Court Jester: Luther in Retrospect
(Philadelphia: Fortress, 1983, p. 69-70):
"Afraid of losing the much-needed support of the German princes for the struggle against the Turkish threat from the south, Emperor Charles V agreed to a truce between Protestant and Catholic territories ...
Thus the Lutheran movement was, for the first time, officially tolerated and could enjoy a place in the political sun of the Holy Roman Empire."
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The Peace of Augsburg
in 1555, which was the first treaty to recognize Protestants, contained a little Latin phrase that had enormous repercussions across Europe:
"curios regio eius religio,"
which meant "whose is the reign his is the religion."
In other words, the
Peace of Augsburg
allowed each king to decide what would be believed in his kingdom, as long as they worked together with Catholic Spain to stop the Islamic invasion of Europe.
If someone did not believe the way their king did, they fled, with some eventually fleeing to the shores of America.
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American Minute is a registered trademark of William J. Federer. Permission is granted to forward, reprint, or duplicate, with acknowledgment.
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Schedule Bill Federer for informative interviews & captivating PowerPoint presentations: 314-502-8924
wjfederer@gmail.com
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