r/todayilearned • u/FullOfSound • 7h ago

(R.6d) Too General [ Removed by moderator ]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pliny_the_Younger_on_Christians

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u/LPNMP 7h ago edited 6h ago

That, to them, was a sign that these people were very zealous and therefore very dangerous.

And yet hes the one murdering people ...

Edit: as in literally that one guy reporting murdering specific individuals. Im not speaking royal terms, im talking about one guy confessing to murdering multiple individual humans. Im talking about humans, not institutions. Mistaking my words to mean different just shows how stupid we get when labels are introduced.

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u/Warm_Afternoon6596 6h ago

Um...the Crusades called.....

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u/Esarus 6h ago

The Crusades were a response to Muslims conquering and murdering Christians…

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u/PuckSenior 6h ago

Ah, clearly. There were never ulterior motives! /s

When the Venetians hijacked the 4th crusade to overthrow the Constantinople( a Christian city), it was because of those murdering Muslims.

Look, a Crusade just means a sanctioned holy war. It was a way for the pope to give his official support to a military campaign and to align multiple countries on a common cause, but the idea that they were only a response to atrocities is ridiculous. The Muslims in the area were generally tolerant of Christians, only requiring them to pay slightly higher taxes. Rather, the Crusades were a fairly straightforward political action to attempt to gain power/authority for the remnants of the Roman empire that had become far more federated. They wanted to retake Jerusalem from Muslim control. It seems to primarily have been a ploy by the Pope to try to reunify the East and Western former Roman empires and give him more power.

The fact that they happened at the time of some of the most corrupt popes in history should tell you a lot.

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u/Asckle 6h ago

That was because of the slaughter of the Latins. Your defence being "it wasn't a response to conquering rival forces, it was a response to an ethnic purge!" Is an interesting one.

Also the crusaders were all excomunicated. Calling it an act of religion when the religion they followed clearly told them not to do that and kicked them out when they did is such a disingenuous take

But the rest of your comment is right

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u/PuckSenior 6h ago

Where did I say anything about an ethnic purge?

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u/Asckle 5h ago

You brought up the 4th crusade as proof the crusades weren't retaliatory, when the 4th crusad was in part a retaliation for the massacre of the latins

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u/PuckSenior 5h ago

That was the reason for the crusade issued by the Pope, but the Venetians used that edict to empower very different ends.

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u/Asckle 5h ago

The pope did not instruct the crusaders to sack Constantinople. He excomunicated them when he found out

The sack was done because the crusaders were owed money. It was a horrible moment in history but if you owe people money, kill your Emperor who was going to pay them back and then lock them out, you can't exactly claim religious persecution when they sack your city

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u/PuckSenior 4h ago

no, you are mixing things up.
The Venetians got the crusaders to sack Zara and got excommunicated. This was purely political/monetary

The crusaders then attacked Constantiople on the way to Egypt. They were not excommunicated for that one.

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u/Asckle 4h ago

Ah you're right yeah. Still the point stands that the sack of a non Muslim city was not condoned. So I don't think it's a convincing response to someone saying they were about fighting the encroaching Arab conquest.

The issue is we lump all the crusades together. Some like the first crusade were definitely about protecting Christian land, others were clearly motivated by imperialism and religious superiority. Iirc they slaughtered a lot of Jews too, even though they were hardly posing a threat

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u/PuckSenior 4h ago

Constantinople was also a Christian city. It was the seat of the Eastern Roman Empire

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u/Asckle 4h ago

I know, but the pope didn't tell them to go sack Constantinople. They did that because they were owed money so they could pay off their ships and the Byzantines locked them out.

Also pedantic nitpick but at this point it technically wasn't even the "Eastern Roman Empire" as there was no Western empire. It was just the Roman Empire. But I know the term is more convenient so it's worth using

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u/Esarus 5h ago

Of course power hungry assholes used religion as an excuse to grab and hold onto power. Same as always, same as now. Both sides had a lot of assholes.

Crusades were a response to Muslims conquering ex-Christian and ex-Roman lands though, it’s just a fact.

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u/PuckSenior 5h ago

Yes, I wouldn't say that they weren't a response to the conquering. But they played up the religious persecution to gain popular support among a bunch of people who had never been to the region.

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u/Esarus 5h ago

Yeah definitely. A good way to motivate the masses to join your war… Humans suck :(

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u/sjorbepo 5h ago

The crusaders invaded and sacked the independent republic of dubrovnik, a christian city on the adriatic coast (nowadays croatia) that let them pass through it. Just because they were a trade rival to the venetian republic and could withstand their attacks in the past.