Frankopan offers a view from the East

It is often said that you cannot understand the politics, acrimony, and wars of Asia Minor and the Middle East without understanding the place of the Crusades in the region's history.  In a marvelous pairing with that thought, Peter Frankopan has written a book that suggests that you cannot understand why the First Crusade occurred without an understanding of what was happening in the Byzantine Empire, and especially the region extending east from Constantinople.I met Peter after he gave a marvelous talk at the recent Jaipur Literature Festival.  Now I've finished the book and am pleased to highly recommend it.It is hard to imagine how a reconciliation between the two major factions of the Catholic Church could occur after this event:On 16 July 1054, the papal legate, Cardinal Humbert of Silva Candida, along with other envoys from Rome, strode into the great church of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople as the Eucharist was being celebrated. In a moment of high drama, they walked directly up to the front of the chuch, not pausing to pray. Before the clergy and the congregation, they produced a document and brazenly placed it on the high altar.  The patriarch of Constantinople, it read, had abused his office and was guilty of many errors in his beliefs and teaching.  He was forthwith excommunicated, to suffer with all the worst heretics in hell, who were listed carefully.And yet, within 40 years, Pope Urban II joined forces with the eastern church and, in a nota...
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