Historical Characters, Including Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 40

[cahn]

I'm trying to use my other account at least occasionally so I posted about my Yuletide gifts there, including the salon-relevant 12k fic that features Fritz, Heinrich, Voltaire, Fredersdorf, Saint Germain, Caroline Daum (Fredersdorf's wife), and Groundhog Day tropes! (Don't need to know canon.)

Comments

Re: Byzantine tales, brought to you by virtue of me having finished the available podcast

[cahn]

Yeah, that's interesting about the names -- a very different pattern.

and also is a strange and unique mixture of historian style and performative feminity, i.e. every now and then Anna interrupts the narrative with an emotional lament to show she's not an unnatural unfeminine woman despite daring to write history, and then she switches back to continue with the story.

Heh, that sounds odd.

The synopsis of the Schism was kind of hair-raising with how it kept escalating! Although I must admit your increasing numbers of capital letters and exclamation points totally made me laugh.

Re: Byzantine tales, brought to you by virtue of me having finished the available podcast

[selenak]

They were meant ot make you laugh. :) I mean, as religious divisions go, the whole Catholic/Orthodox schism didn't cause the centuries of bloodbaths the Catholic/Protestant schism did. No one called to burn each other, either. The sacking of Constantinople in 1204 wasa the result of decades of build up of resentment and suspicions, plus plain old greed, but not of religious fervor - no Pope ever denied that the Greek Orthodox Church blievers were fellow Christians, let alone called for their destruction, and while the Patriarchs of Constantinople were all "no Pope tells US what to do!!!!" from that point onwards, the reverse was also true. Now, when Andronikos in order to become popular urged the mob to have a go at not just the Venetians but also the Pisans and the Genuese in their respective quarters in Constantinople, some Latin chroniclers say there even were even some orthodox priests pointing the way, while during the siege of Constantinople preceding the 1204 sacking the priests downright lied to the ordinary army about the Pope's statements. Only the officers were in the know, as they were the ones who had received Innocent III's letters to begin with in which he explicitly forbade Christian-on-Christian violence, since he weas already disconcerted that they were off route. This particular Crusade wasn't supposed to go to Jerusalem, they were supposed to conquer Alexandria as far as he was concerned, but for reasons that are a black comedy of their own the whole enterprise changed purposes pretty early on in terms of what the noble lords wanted. Anyway, my point is, you had the occasional Orthodox and Catholic priests agitating against each other, BUT it wasn't official policy, there was always mutual recognition of each other as true (if misguided) Christians from the religious authorities, and thus there were no religious wars, which makes a stark difference to the Catholic/Protestant situation. Or, for that matter, the Orthodox/Arians, or Orthodox/Monophysites situations.

Now, Theophanu married Otto II before the Schism, of course. But in the church in Cologne where Teophanu is buried, St Pantaleon, there are both Catholic and Greek Orthodox services, praying for understanding and unity among East and West:

http://www.sankt-pantaleon.de/freunde_in_der_anderen_welt/theophanu.html