Scottish laird. KofC. Backwardist. Proud son of Chicago Polonia. Medieval historian. Author. Husband of one, dad to four. Humanities lover. Granddad of 3.
Around the time that Mohammad was born, South Arabia was under the rule of Ethiopia's Christian Aksumite Empire. The Ethiopian king ruled from Sanaa (Yemen) and conquered Yathrib—today's Medina in Saudi Arabia. Had the empire not collapsed, all of Arabia would've been Christian.
The Russian army has suffered 30000 casualties in each of the last three months. That’s more than a division per month, and more than an army altogether.
We lost two giants yesterday.
Gordon Wood's work on the American Founding and the early Republic stands second to none.
Robert Louis Wilken was another intellectual great--a brilliant historian of early Christianity and the patristic age.
Both are terrible losses.
Dear Harvard: It's not too late to right the wrong done to Carole Hooven. Please invite her to return to her teaching post at the University. Not only would it rectify an injustice, it would send a signal that Harvard honors academic freedom and intellectual integrity and no longer caves to mobs.
The Ottoman Turks persecuted both Jews in the Holy Land and the Christians in Mount Lebanon. Jews in the Ottoman Empire were dhimmis (second-class subjects of the empire), who were heavily taxed and systematically discriminated against.
As for Christians in Lebanon, Ottomans targeted them through a brutal campaign called kafno (famine). The Ottoman authorities, under Jamal Pasha and the Young Turk regime, imposed and enforced policies that killed around 200,000 to 300,000 Christians between 1915 and 1918. Nearly half of the population of Mount Lebanon died: https://t.co/zr8qHPDWxb
In so many cases, Turks leave Turkey or the Turkish-occupied northern Cyprus but the Turkish indoctrination does not leave them.
This has VERY much flown under the radar. While visiting the Almudena Cathedral today, Pope Leo refused to visit the Blessed Sacrament Chapel, which is covered in Rupnik mosaics. During his address, while discussing the miracle of Our Lady, he also quietly addressed the issues.