The Great Betrayal: The Great Siege of Constantinople

 

The Great Betrayal: The Great Siege of Constantinople by Ernle Bradford

It happens. Not often, but it happens.  I’ll buy a book based on its cover and title, without knowing anything about the historical event, and I’ll end up feeling much more learned, enriched, and educated. I come away with a sense of victory that I ‘accidentally’ discovered a great book.  This book was a highly interesting and informative read; so much so that I’m tempted to scoop up other works by the author.  That’s not to say that the subject matter within these pages is pleasant.  No, far from it.  But history is history and, if anything, you would hope that people would learn from past mistakes.

The topic of this book is the Fourth Crusade that took place in the very early years of the thirteenth century.  Actually, a more appropriate description would be the diversion of the Fourth Crusade.  The crusaders and their escorts never arrived at their intended destination.  We read, though, that this was planned all along by the insiders.   The crusade was initiated by Pope Innocent III.  The intention was to “convert the heathen” in neighboring Egypt and Syria.  I’m assuming the reader of this review knows a bit about the crusades, so I’ll just mention that they were an embarrassing part of Christian history. We now know better, but we weren’t always as smart.

The pope enlists the Doge of Venice, Enrico Dandolo and his legion of Venetians to lead the crusade and the actual crusaders.  The issue is, unbeknownst to the pope, Dandolo has already made an agreement with the Moslems in Egypt not to invade, and he’s not about to go back on his word.  Instead, he conjures up a far more lucrative scheme.  He instead sets his sights on the Byzantium Empire, specifically the city of Constantinople.  Constantinople, though, is also Christian.  So why attack neighboring Christians?  Well, it seems that there’s an exiled “pretender” to the Byzantium throne known as Alexius.  Alexius makes a deal with Dandalo – restore him to the throne, and he’ll ensure Dandalo will reap a sea of riches.  Well, who can refuse an offer like that?  Especially since the 80-year old blind Dandolo cares much more about money than a crusade.  So the journey begins.

I won’t go into any more plot details, but the story itself is quite enthralling.  In fact, I’m surprised that Netflix or any other movie or television producer hasn’t snatched up this story (to my knowledge).   It would be quite a ratings grabber if done right.  The length of this book seemed just about right – only 200 pages or so.  That may seem a bit small, but that was really all that was needed.

What makes this tale much more tragic is that the author really hits home with his readers the beauty and majesty of the Byzantine empire before it was sacked.  He goes into quite a bit of detail with the descriptions of the many aspects of the culture, and this clearly came across as the place to be if one were alive at the time.  It’s sad when one reflects that, due to this event, a multitude of writings and works of art were destroyed and therefore lost to history.  Again, you wouldn’t think Christians would go to war with other Christians, but one only has to view the modern day barking among the divisions, no matter how minor they may be, and it sadly doesn’t come across as that surprising upon reflection.  It should point out that the Byzantine Empire was considered “Eastern” and the Roman Empire was known as “Western”, and there were some apparent divisions of the two factions.  Still, though, the idea of “conquering” the East by the West was not what Pope Innocent III had in mind at all.

What’s even sadder, is the ravaged Constantinople is never really able to lick its wounds, and is therefore vulnerable to the Turkish invasion that would take place two and a half centuries later. This essentially sealed its historic fate for good.  (What was once known as Constantinople is now Istanbul, Turkey.)

So, no, not a happy tale, but one well told.  I never felt overwhelmed by too many names, or swamped under with too much meticulous detail.  The author did a great job with pacing the narrative.  In addition to telling the linear story, he sets up the main players well by giving us plenty of background and history before the actual event commenced.  If you’re like me, not only will you enjoy this book, but you’ll learn a whole lot of history as well.

Christianity and the Religions: From Confrontation to Dialogue

 

Christianity and the Religions: From Confrontation to Dialogue by Jacques Dupuis

I came across this one quite by accident.  There’s a priest whose blog I follow who mentioned some favorable things about this author.  I took a chance and bought one of the author’s books on Amazon.  This one, it seems, was his last before he passed away in the early 2000s. Needless to say, I didn’t really find the book a very enrichening experience.  This book was quite a scholarly piece of work and it was mostly over my head.  This book reminded me of one of those volumes that I had to buy back in my college days for a particular course.  Although the students were supposed to read a book such as this in our college class, most of us never did.  The reason?  Well, it was just too hard to understand or really pique much interest.

Having said all that, I think it’s unfair to state that this was a “bad” book.  Just because it was over my head, doesn’t mean that it warrants such criticism.  This book seems to be written by the learned for the learned.  Since I’m not in that category, who am I to judge?  Maybe if you have an advance degree in theology you would get more out of this book than I did.  The book is only about 225 pages.  But they’re dense pages. They’re detailed pages.  I forced myself to read a minimum of ten pages per day, and even that was a chore. Had I not set such a goal, I doubt I would have ever finished. It took some serious effort.

Now, the ironic thing is that the thesis that the author is trying to prove is not at all difficult to comprehend. It just seems that he goes on and on and devotes an incredible amount of pages to his topic, and I couldn’t help wonder if it was really necessary.  The author is essentially making a comparison between Christianity and the other major religions.  He has a Catholic background, and for centuries there has been a mantra stated by the church: “No Salvation Outside the Church”.  Well, what this author (and most other Catholics) have had to explain over and over again, is that this sentiment doesn’t mean that one has to be Catholic in order to be saved, nor even a Christian.  Instead, it essentially means that the “Church” is essentially the home of Jesus Christ, and Jesus dying and being resurrected is the only path to salvation.

But how does this work if you’re a Moslem?  Or a Buddhist? Or Athiest?  Well, essentially the author argues that it essentially doesn’t matter.  As long as one is serving what they “think” is God, then they’re basically o.k.  Again, from my knowledge, this is essentially the teaching of the church.  So, yes, Jesus Christ is the Son of God, but, no, one doesn’t have to be explicitly a Christian to partake in the rewards.  Jesus, the author argues, is much too big to put into any small religious box.

So the problem with this book for me is the author seems to state this fact over and over again.  He manages to uncover all sorts of analogies, comparisons, research notes, religious writings, religious opinions, etc. to prove his point.  It was just too much – even if only slightly longer than a couple hundred pages.

So as an analogy: let’s say an author was to state something like “The boy went to the store to buy an apple”. Well, imagine if the author feels compelled to spend 50 pages talking about the origins and different variations of the word “boy”, another 50 pages telling you about all of the origins and uses of the word “store”, and then goes into 50 more pages of detail talking about all of the different kind of apples there are and why they’re all essentially the same.  I mean, yes, it’s impressive that all of this detail goes into the work, but for my less-educated brain, it just seemed repetitive, unnecessary, and tedious.

Well, I guess it’s safe to say that I don’t think this book was ever a hot seller. And as mentioned earlier, it wasn’t really written with the layman in mind anyway.  The chances are pretty slim that you might even come across such a work.  Unless you’re a scholar in the subject matter, I would advise you to pass.  It was just too much detail that really didn’t seem warranted.