1,000th Anniversary of the Adherents of the Religion of Peace’s destruction of Jerusalem’s Church of the Holy Sepulchre

This year is the 1,000th anniversary of the destruction of The Church of the Holy Sepulchre by Caliph al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah, the Islamic Fatimid ruler based in Egypt. Though not the immediate cause of Western (Christian) military reaction, it is interesting to note that this provocation by Muslims against Christians occurs 86 years before the first papal call for a Crusade in 1095.

Constructed in A.D. 326 on the orders of Roman Emperor Constantine the Great, the church is where the New Testament says that Jesus was crucified and is said to also contain the place where Jesus was buried (the sepulchre). It passed from the control of the Christian Eastern Romans (or Byzantines) to the Muslin Arabs in A.D. 638. On October 18, 1009, Caliph Al-Hakim’s orders for the complete destruction of the church were carried out. It is believed that Al-Hakim was aggrieved by the scale of the annual Easter pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Though not the immediate casus belli for the Crusades, the Muslim destruction of the Church in 1009 serves as a clear refutation of the claim that the later Crusades were an unprovoked and imperialistic adventure perpetrated by the bad Europeans against innocent and peaceable Muslims.

September 11th, 2,000 years ago: "Quintilie Vare, legiones redde!"

Two-thousand-nine is the 2,000th anniversary of one of the most important battles in European history. September 11, A.D. 9 saw the conclusion the three-day Battle of the Teutoburg Forest between the Roman legions of Augustus Caesar under the command of Publius Quinctilius Varus and the Germanic tribes under the leadership of the Roman-trained Arminius or Hermann the German. Caught over extended and, more importantly, over confident, Varus was ambushed in a heavily wooded area and cut down along with three legions and auxiliary troops, about 20,000 troops in all.

According to the Roman historian Suetonius in his Lives of the Twelve Caesars, Augustus was so traumatized by the defeat that until his death in A.D. 14 at the age of 77, he would often cry out Quintili Vare, legiones redde! ('Quintilius Varus, give me back my legions!'). Moreover, to place an unmistakable exclamation point on the taboo associated with the shameful defeat, the three legionary numbers (XVII, XVIII and XIX) were never used again by the Romans for any of their armies, unlike other legions that were restructured — a case unique in Roman history.

The great loss caused Augustus to abandon his goal of establishing the Elbe River as the empire’s permanent frontier and withdrew to the Rhine River to mark the boundary between the Latin and German speaking worlds. Ever since, the French and Germans have been disputing Augustus’ settlement to the detriment of Europeans and the whole world for almost two millennia.

For the Romans, the Rhine border was defensible and held for 400 years until New Year’s Eve A.D. 406. On that momentous night, the Rhine froze over solid allowing a motley group of Vandals, Alans and Suebians to simply walk across at Mainz, initiation the beginning of the end for the Roman Empire in the West. Within three years, the Visigoths sack Rome itself accelerating a decline that ends in A.D. 476 with the cessation of the use of the title “Emperor of the Romans” in the West until the Frank Charlemagne revives the office in the year 800.

CRITIQUE & REVIEW: William Rosen’s “Justinian's Flea: The First Great Plague and the End of the Roman Empire” valuable to understanding our history

William Rosen’s “Justinian's Flea: The First Great Plague and the End of the Roman Empire” is a very interesting and ambitious effort to explain how the outbreak of plague in the 6th Century was the historical pivot which turned the story of the West toward the creation of the Europe we recognize today. A sprawling narrative detailing such diverse topics as politics, military conquest, biology, architecture, religion, trade, demography, evolution and genetics, Rosen does a fair job of weaving all of these developments into a compelling story of what happened and why it might have happened to create our world.

In a nutshell, Rosen's thesis is the AD 542 outbreak of plague in the Roman Empire of Justinian (reign 527-565) and the wider world of Late Antiquity so weakened the West/Rome that it allowed for the destruction of the ancient empire of Persia and pruning of the Roman Empire by the Arabs a century later. The depopulation of Justinian's Mediterranean empire and the Sassanid Persians left them open to conquest by the Arabs who dodged the plague. Justinian's dream of a re-established Roman Empire centered on the Mediterranean Sea failed after wave after wave of plague every 15 years wiped out about half of the empire's population over the 6th Century. The corresponding weakening of military and economic strength of Rome freed the fledgling barbarian kingdoms in western Europe to establish their staying power free of Roman authority and orientation. Europe's axis of power and culture moved north to the Frankish empire that found its fruition in the reign of Charlemange and his establishment of the Holy Roman Empire.

The Roman Empire bore the brunt of Arab attacks losing its rich North African, Egyptian and Syrian provinces to the new faith of Islam. Though continuing to call themselves "Roman", the Constantinople regime became more and more Greek and within two generations of Justinian's reign, they were fighting for their very existence. The world empire of Rome had become a regional power later called the Byzantine Empire by historians. The Frank, Goth and Saxon barbarian tribes solidified into the European nation-states we see today.

The plague's depopulation also set off an agricultural revolution in Europe that set the stage for the population explosion of the High Middle Ages.

Rosen's book is a easy read though the author sometimes assumes his readers might know more than the do about all of the different subjects he discusses. For instance, the geometry of the architectural sections on the Hagia Sophia lost me. But I'm not a math guy.

Overall, this book will give the reader a good bridge in the story of the West from the Classical Age to the Middle Ages. The so-called "Dark Ages" were not so dark and deserve more study and understanding. Justinian's Flea is a good place to start for the average reader of history.

CRITIQUE & REVIEW: “Constantine the Great: The Man and his Times” by Michael Grant

“Constantine the Great: The Man and his Times” by Michael Grant is another entry in my “Year of Rome” theme. I have not been able to find a good biography of Constantine so this one had to do.

The author is truly a subject expert but not a very elegant writer. His work suffers in comparison to Anthony Everitt's who wrote two prior “Year of Rome” books I recently read, one on Cicero and the other on Augustus.

Grant does his best to breakdown the various biased accounts of Constantine’s life and times to portray the truth as he discerns it. He succeeds in only the barest sense. I finished the book without really knowing Constantine’s motivations. Where the coherent narrative of a flesh and blood person? Grant is so focused on revealing an unbiased account of the facts culled from Christian hagiography and pagan polemics, we lose the man.

A great case can be made that Constantine the Great was one of the ten most influential humans ever to walk the planet. Grant’s work is valuable but I still await a deeper study of the man.

CRITIQUE & REVIEW: “Augustus: The Life of Rome's First Emperor” by Anthony Everitt

Book Finished and Review Coming Soon.