supporttheunderdog wrote:GreekIslandGirl wrote:supporttheunderdog wrote:I am not entirely sure why the city formerly known as Byzantium should be the spiritual centre of any faith group: I am aware of some suggestions St Andrew may have preached in the Area, but that does not make it mre or less holy: If anywhere if one subscribes to any form of Christianity the spritual home should be in what is known as the Holy Land.
Personally I have reservations about the whole concept of Apolistic succession, whether Petrine or Andreine, indeed the whole concept of a church hierarchy is probably about power and thought control.
My own suspicion is that the preeminance of Constantinople as the center of Eastern Orthodoxy is more likely to be linked with the politics of the age, when Byzantium was the capital of the Eastern Empire: likewise Rome probably only became pre-eminant because in the early days of the Christian Church it was a major center of political power.
You sound impoverished of psyche. No noumenon. Greek Orthodoxy is more than the sum of parts. There are many holy sites for most Christians, Muslims, Hindus etc. But Constantinople/Byzantion represents more for us than our Christian heritage alone. It is the center which culminated in the continuation of the Greek Hellenistic lifeblood. Which is why the Ottomans invested so much in its capture (Crusaders before them). And why, spiritless colonialists, like yourself, strive to dissolve it of its importance to our identity.
I think you will find the renaissance had been under way in before the fall of Constantinople in 1453 - One historian dates the start of the renaissance as early as 1070 - one had the Scholastic movement and the Universities - in the 13th century Thomas Aquinas had been studying Platonic and Aristotalian philosphy -indeed through out the high middle ages through contacts with Byzantium and the Arabs Ancient Greek Scientific texts were being studied - throughout the late 14th century there was massive studying of ancient latin texts and eg Roman law in Italy and by 1401 the Italians were beging to look at other Greek texts, all opf whic predates the fall of Constantinople by many years.
So yes we have taken a lot from ideas the Greece developed but the idea that the renaissance was triggered by the fall of Constaninople is now superceded.
Magnanimous of you to even
mention the Greeks had anything whatsoever to do with the Renaissance. However, your grasp of historical events remains weak. Not wise to pick one 'historian' who supposedly, out on a limb, can pinpoint down to such accuracy (1070, you say) an event, or
series of events, which most claim spanned a few centuries. My claim was one of
manifestation of the Rennaisance by the increased flow of Greek scholars, after the fall of Constantinople, who spread the teaching of the Greek language more widely, so that Classical works could be read in the original Greek, rather than merely from translations.
place.
