4 ms·
The Romans took it for a while Do you mean the conquest of the 4th crusade? Those people weren't romans, arguably nobody was by the 13th century - perhaps if a
by pvg 5y ago
The Romans took it for a while
Do you mean the conquest of the 4th crusade? Those people weren't romans, arguably nobody was by the 13th century - perhaps if anyone, the locals had a better claim to it than the conquerors.
- srcreigh 5y agoThere was a thing called the Holy Roman Empire. [0] An Orthodox seminary professor remarked that it was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire - so you may be onto something. Although I took a history of Christianity course in uni, it was taught by a RC priest, and there were no lessons about the crusades. You did get me curious though, maybe I'll get a book about that whole situation at the time. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Roman_Empire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Roman_Empire
- yesenadam 5y agofrom that page: > In a famous assessment of the name, the political philosopher Voltaire remarked sardonically: "This body which was called and which still calls itself the Holy Roman Empire was in no way holy, nor Roman, nor an empire."
- pvg 5y agoI wonder if the source of the confusion is this sort of terminology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin_Empire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin_Empire it sort of sounds like a synonym for Roman, it was one of the (curiously few!) conquests of Constantinople, etc. It just wasn't actually Roman anything.
- rsynnott 5y agoI’m bemused how you could possibly have a third-level course on the general history of Christianity that skipped the crusades.
- barry-cotter 5y agoThe Eastern Roman Empire fell in 1453 when the Seljuk Turks conquered Constantinople. The Ottoman Emperor's titles included Kaysar-i-Rum. I can't remember the dates but when the Greeks were conquering Crete their co-linguists described the conquerors as Hellenes while they were Romans. If you go by the criterion of (primary) self-identification there were Romans until the 1800s at least. By unbroken institutional continuity with the bureaucracy of Empire you can argue over whether it ended in 1453 or 1922.
- rsynnott 5y agoI mean, you could go further; there’s a not-totally-bonkers argument that the Catholic Church still provides continuity today.
- prox 5y ago1922? What institutions were that of the Empire?
- TomK32 5y ago1922 is the year Kaiser Karl I. of Austria-Hungary died.
- barry-cotter 5y agoThe Empire of Rum [Rome], with its Kaysar [Caesar], ended in that year. The Ottoman Empire was abolished then.
- pvg 5y agoSure, but if you take an even mildly expansive definition of 'Roman' then Romans just straight up built the Hagia Sophia and the crusaders of the 4th crusade are even less Roman so maybe we're mostly longwindedly agreeing?
- barry-cotter 5y agoDifference of emphasis. You seem to think the "Byzantines" were in some important sense not Roman, or that there's room for argument that they weren't. I disagree. They knew themselves as Romans for the excelent reason that they were citizens of the Empire.