HISTORICAL INFORMATION

© 2002 by Orchid Land Publications

[20020529

     The late historian and scholar Steven Runciman wrote, "For eleven hundred years there had stood on the Bosphorous a city where the intellect was admired and the learning and letters of the classical past were studied and preserved. Without the help of Byzantine commentators and scribes there is little that we would know today about the literature of ancient Greece.  It was too, a city whose rulers down the centuries had inspired and encouraged a school of art unparalleled in human history, an art that arose from an ever varying blend of the cool cerebral Greek sense of the fitness of things and a deep religious sense that saw in works of art the incarnation of the Divine and the sanctification of matter. . . .  It was too, a great cosmopolitan city where along with merchandise, ideas were freely exchanged and whose citizens saw themselves not as a racial unit but as the heirs of Greece and Rome, hallowed by the Christian faith."

     "When we journeyed among the Bulgarian [Muslim]s. we beheld how they worship in their temple, called a Mosque while they stand ungirt.  . . .  Their religion is not good. Then we went among the German {Roman Catholic]s, and saw them performing many ceremonies in their temples; but we beheld no glory there.  Then we went to Greece, and the Greeks led us to the edifices where they worship their God, and we knew not whether we were in Heaven or on earth.  For on earth there is no such splendor or such beauty, and we are at a loss how to describe it. We know only that God dwells there among men, and their service is fairer than the ceremonies of other nations.  For we cannot forget that beauty." [Russsian envoys report to Prince Vladimir in Medieval Russia's epics, chronicles, and tales]

CLICK HERE for JIHAD and  CRUSADE