The Fool said: > And just how many unholy wars did the Popes reside over during the > dark ages Mr. Catholic?
Not an awful lot, I would've thought. It seems to me that the main inter-religious wars during the Dark Ages in Europe were between Merovingian France and the Muslim armies in Spain and between Byzantium and the Muslim armies in Asia Minor and the Middle East. In both cases, the Europeans were fighting to defend against territorial conquest by outside forces. Furthermore, the Byzantines' religious leader wasn't the Pope but the Patriarch of Constantinople. (There were, of course, various heresies in late Roman times, but if I recall correctly most of the unpleasantness was before the collapse of the West and the start of the Dark Ages.) If you're talking about the Crusades, those happened when the Dark Ages had given way to the Medieval period, which was a time of commercial and technological (and artistic and philosophical) innovation. Medieval Europe might look primitive and nasty from our viewpoint but it was making great strides forward until the setback of the Black Death. Rich GCU Not Remotely An Expert _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
