Earlier this week I completed and uploaded Episode Four in The War on Christianity series. Episode Four is Part 1 of 2 in Three Case Studies, an account of the decline of Christianity in regions of the world where it had once been the dominant religion. To keep the episodes under 25 minutes, Episode Four is focused on two regions only, the Holy Land (Middle East to the secular world) and North Africa. Next week I will upload Episode Five, which carries the story into the decline of Christianity in Asia Minor.
Watch the Video of Episode Four Listen to the Podcast of Episode Four
Because the story traces the Church over 19 centuries, in Episode Four, and later in Episode Five, I have used the Pivotal Events device to explain only the most critical moments in the Church’s transition from majority to minority status, with applicable and, I hope, interesting illustrations from the religious art of both the Eastern and Western Christian traditions. The fate of Christianity in both areas is intricately and inseparably intertwined with the rise and decline of the Byzantine Empire and the rise of a new religion, Islam, in the 7th C. A.D. The first Christian emperor, Constantine the Great, and his mother, St. Helen, played major parts in the story. He for his bold decisions and her for her patronage of the Church in the Holy Land. The illustration is statue of Constantine the Great, bearing the legend “by this sign conquer,” in front of York Minister, England, where Constantine declared himself emperor in 306 A.D. The interconnection with the fate of the Byzantine Empire comes back into focus in Episode Five, with my account of the decline of Christianity in Asia Minor (now generally known as Anatolia, part of eastern Turkey), between the 11th C. and the present day.
Even though Christianity lost its influence over civil government in the Holy Land and North Africa in the spread of Islam in the 7th C., culminating in absolute control over North Africa by the time of the Ummayad Moslem conquest of Algeria in 698 A.D., Christians were allowed to practice their religion, albeit under stringent controls, between the end of the 7th C. and the 14th C. In fact, they remained the majority religion in Egypt all the way to the 14th C. The final decline to under 10% of the population of Egypt is owed to the rise of a political side of Islam after the fall of the Byzantine Empire in 1453 A.D.
Silent testimony to the absolute decline of Christianity in North Africa is the early 20th C. photograph of the remains of the Basilica of St. Cyprian of Carthage, built in the 6th C. under the patronage of the Byzantine Emperor Justinian, who also sponsored the Monastery of St. Catherine at Sinai and commissioned the monastery’s Christ Pantokrator icon, the oldest known icon of Jesus Christ. In the 4th C., the height of Christian influence in Algeria and the rest of North Africa, there were said to be over 160 Christian churches near Carthage. Today, there are only a handful in the whole country and the former Roman Catholic Cathedral of St. Louis, built by France in the late 1880s A.D., is now a “cultural center,” featuring live performances where devout Catholics once prayed. Will Christianity become a quaint reminder of cultural history in Europe at the end of the 21st C., like the remains of the Basilica of St. Cyprian of Carthage were in the early 20th C.?
Next week, I will upload Episode Five, completing the Three Case Studies, and also bring you news of a new development in the AIC Bookstore publications, just in time for Christmas.
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Glory be to God for all things! Amen!
The War on Christianity series has been reorganized, with the addition of at least two and possible three new episodes that will provide a better bridge between Episode One, which examined the nature of the threat using actual examples of violence from around the world in A.D. 2016 and 2017, and the teaching episodes intended to offer self-defense through knowledge of Church doctrine and through the actual application of traditional teachings.
Episode Thirty-one, the last episode in the Second Series, celebrates St. Catherine of Alexandria, formerly a favorite saint but in the last 300 or so years relegated to near fictional status. Among the saints of the early 2nd millennium, largely as the result of the Crusades in the Holy Land and the Western discovery of her story, she was widely popular. Her name endures today in various colleges, islands, and mountain ranges named in her honor. A strong tradition in the Eastern Church is that her remains are interred at the Monastery of St. Catherine, Sinai, built in the 6th C. under orders by, and sponsorship of, Emperor Justinian. There are many schools named after her, including St. Catherine’s here in Richmond, Va. She is the Patron Saint of Virgins and all young women. She met her death by beheading around 305 A.D. The illustration is a detail in tempera and gilt on velum of the death of St. Catherine which I extracted from a larger work from the Menologion of Basil II, a form of service book with a Synaxarion of over 400 martyrs prepared for the incumbent Archbishop of Constantinople in the late 10th C. The original is in the Vatican Library. The illustration and the larger work from which it was extracted are included in the video.
The episode features a short introduction placing the events in the historical context of the history of the Church of England from the 1620s through the accession of Elizabeth, with one picture each of Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary I and Elizabeth I. After that is a brief biography of Hugh Latimer, Nicholas Ridley, and Thomas Cranmer. The very popular work, commonly called John Foxe’s Book of Martyrs but officially titled Acts and Monuments, is the source for many of the illustrations of the trial and executions. I’ve left the gruesome details out of this Blog entry, instead posting the attached colorized illustration by Joseph Martin Kronheim of Plate V, Latimer Before the Council, taken from an 1887 A.D. edition of Foxe’s famous work
St. Francis of Assisi, celebrated on October 4th (Episode Twenty-five), is one of the most popular, or at least one whose name is widely recognized, among the Western Church saints. No matter what you think about him, you can say without reservation that he was unique. He anticipated by many centuries the environmentalist movement, wrote a poem which was turned into a hymn in the 20th C. in the Church of England tradition, (All Creatures of Our God and King. trans. William R. Draper, 1925 A.D.; and he can be found in many gardens, both public and private, in the form of a diminutive statue. I’m unconvinced that he would have appreciated becoming a small garden ornament! The illustration is the central detail I extracted from a larger work showing scenes in his life. The source provided no details about either the artists, but I suspect it was not long after St. Francis’ lifetime, probably in the 13th C St. Francis’ poem is the basis for Hymn No. 777 in the AIC Bookstore publication, The St. Chrysostom Hymnal, in which Draper’s translation is set to the arrangement of the German/Lutheran hymn, Lasst uns erfreuen. He lives on in the memory of the Western Church in the Blessing of the Animals service, usually celebrated on his feast day in October each year.
recognition than he receives in the modern world. He is called “the blessed” because the modern Anglican world no longer designates faithful Christians as “saints,” probably thinking it is too Roman Catholic. Such denial of the right to celebrate the men and women who have done remarkable work in the service of the Lord and of the Church is one of those regrettable shortcomings of the modern Western Church. William Tynedale, pursued all across Europe until he was betrayed by a friend, was strangled, then burned at the state in Belgium on October 6th, 1536 A.D. for producing his New Testament in the English language, a violation of edicts of the Bishop of Rome. The identity of his persecutors and executioners is long gone from human memory, but the work of the Blessed William Tynedale lives on in the King James Version and New King James Versions of the Bible, which are largely based upon his pioneering translations of both the Old and New Testaments. Rather than post the gruesome depiction of his death, which is in the video, I post here Page One from Chapter 1 of his Gospel of St. John from either the 1525 or 1526 A;D. edition of his New Testament. Many people, myself included, believe he deserves the credit that William Shakespeare generally receives for the creation of the English language. His pioneering translation was adapted by his associate Miles Coverdale for the Great Bible of 1539 A.D. the first complete Bible in the English language (with credit also due to Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, who purchased copies for placement in all the churches of the Church of England, a goal ever achieved in his lifetime) and, a half-century later, without a word of recognition, provides the vast majority of the wording in the King James Version and its successor, the New King James Version. For more on which words and phrases were unique to the Blessed William Tynedale watch the video or listen to the Podcast. You’ll probably be surprised to learn how much of the Bible you know is the result of the Blessed William Tynedale’s creation of English prose phrasing.
Episode Twenty-two, also published today, celebrates the life and contributions of one of the greatest of the 16th-17th Anglican divines, the Blessed Lancelot Andrewes, whose Feast Day is September 25th. Andrewes is one of my personal favorites. I suspect that he was one of those rumored to have desired placing the Church of England under the jurisdiction of the Patriarch/Archbishop of Constantinople. The illustration is a memorial window in the Cloister at Chester Cathedral, Chester, England. The picture is public domain through Wikipedia Commons. I applied perspective correction using Photoshop to the original file.
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