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=> Real Reasons For Lower Number of Christians in MidEast

Real Reasons For Lower Number of Christians in MidEast
Posted by pancho (Guest) - Wednesday, December 5 2007, 21:47:45 (CET)
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a.Ch 3, p. 53

With an eloquence that would have enlisted Cassanova, Jerome (first ‘great father’ of the church) calls upon men to give up all and follow Christ , asks the Christian matrons to dedicate their first-born to the Lord as offerings due under the Law , and advises his lady friends, if they cannot enter a convent, at least to live as virgins in their homes. He comes close to rating marriage as a sin. “I praise marriage but as it produces me virgins”; he proposes to “cut down by the ax of virginity the wood of marriage”, and exalts John the celibate apostle over Peter, who had a wife. He is not against marriage, but those who avoid it escape from Sodom, and painful pregnancies and bawling infants and household cares, and the tortures of jealousy.

b.Ch 3, p. 55

Barbarians came down to the Near East and overran Syria and Palestine (395); “how many monasteries they captured, how many rivers were reddened with blood!”

c.Ch 3, p 58

Monasticism was for many souls a refuge from the chaos and war of the barbarian invasions; there were no taxes in the monastery or the desert cell, no military service, no marital strife, no weary toil; ordination to the priesthood was not required of a monk; and after a few years of peace would come eternal bliss.

d.Ch 3, p.76

Perhaps to counterbalance a sexual instinct that had run wild, the new morality exaggerated chastity into an obsession, and subordinated marriage and parentage to a lifelong virginity or celibacy as an ideal; it took the Fathers of the Church some time to realize that no society could survive on such sterile principles.

Too many Christians of these early centuries thought that they could serve god best, or rather most easily escape hell, by abandoning their parents, mates or children, and fleeing from the responsibilities of life in the frightened pursuit of a selfishly individual salvation. In paganism the family had been the social and religious unit; it was a loss that in medieval Christianity this unit became the individual.

e.Ch 13 pp. 300-301

A pretty girl of Cordova, known to us only as Flora, was the child of a mixed marriage. When her Mohammedan father died she resolved to become a Christian. She fled from her brother´s guardianship to a Christian home, was caught and beaten by him, persisted in apostasy, and was turned over to a Moslem court. The qadi, who might have condemned her to death, ordered her flogged. She escaped again to a Christian home, and there met a young priest, Eulogius, who conceived for her a passionate spiritual attachment. While she hid in a convent another priest, Perfectus, achieved martyrdom by telling some Moslems what he thought of Muhammed; they promised not to betray him, but the vigor of his exposition so shocked them that they denounced him to the authorities.. Perfectus might have saved himself by a retraction; instead he repeated to the judge his conviction that Muhammed was “the servant of Satan”. The judge remanded him to jail for some months, hoping for a change of mood; none came and Perfectus was condemned to death. He marched to the scaffold cursing the Prophet as “an impostor, an adulterer, a child of hell.” The Moslems gloated over his decapitation, the Christians of Cordova buried him with pomp as a saint (850).

His death inflamed the theological hatred of both sides. A group of Christian “Zealots” formed, led by Eulogius; they were determined to denounce Muhammed publicly, and accept martyrdom joyfully as a promise of paradise. Issac, a Cordovan monk, went to the qadi and professed a desire for conversion; but when the judge, well pleased, began to expound Mohammedanism, the monk interrupted him: Your Prophet”, he said, “has lied and deceived you. May he be accursed, who has dragged so many wretches with him down to hell!” The qadi reproved him, and asked if he had been drinking; the monk replied: I am in my right mind. Condemn me to death.” The qadi had him imprisoned, but asked permission of Abd-er-Rahman II to dismiss him as insane; the Caliph, incensed by the splendor of Perfectus´funeral, ordered the monk to be executed. Two days later Sancho, a Frank soldier of the palace guard, publicly denounced Mohammed; he was beheaded. On the following Sunday six monks appeared before the qadi, cursed Mohammed and asked for not death only, but “your sharpest tortures”; they were beheaded. A priest, a deacon and a monk followed their example. The Zealots rejoiced, but many Christians, priests as well as laymen, condemned this lust for martyrdom. “The Sultan”, they said to the Zealots, “allows us to exercise our religion, and does not oppress us; why, then, this fanatical zeal?” A council of Christian bishops, summoned by Abd-er-Rahman, reproved the Zealots, and threatened action against them if they continued the agitation. Eulogious denounced the council as cowards.

Meanwhile Flora, her ardor raised by the Zealot movement, left her convent, and with another girl, Mary, went before the qadi; they both assured him that Mohammed was “an adulterer, an impostor, and a villain,” and that Mohammedanism was “an invention of the Devil.” The qadi committed them to jail. The entreaties of their friends had inclined them to retract when Eulogius prevailed upon them to accept martyrdom. They were beheaded (851), and Eulogius, much encouraged, called for new martyrs. Priests, monks and women marched to the court and denounced Mohammed, and obtained decapitation (852). Eulogius himself earned martyrdom seven years later. After his death the movement subsided. We hear of two cases of martyrdom between 859 and 983, and none thereafter under Moslem rule in Spain.



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