Sunday 6 September 2015

A World In Turmoil

In 1137:

there is both a Pope and an Anti-Pope in Rome (some Evangelicals think that the Pope is the Anti-Christ so what would they make of an Anti-Pope?);

Holy Roman Emperor Lothair's death will be followed by civil war;

Louis VII's reign will be disastrous;

the English conflict between Stephen and Matilda is becoming violent;

Alfonso VII of Castille, self-proclaimed Emperor of all Spaniards, is conquering the country;

Denmark is raided by pagans from across the Baltic;

the Eastern Roman Emperor, John II, campaigns to win Antioch from the Crusaders;

resurgent Muslims threaten the Frankish Kingdom of Jerusalem;

the Egyptian Caliphate is divided;

Arabia is split between petty realms;

Persia is having a dynastic war;

Muslims are conquering India but also pausing to fight in Afghanistan;

Tatars are conquering northern China while Sung rulers hold the south;

feuding Tairo and Minamoto tear up Japan;

in the Americas - here our viewpoint character's reflections are interrupted...

What a planet! but we can make the value judgment that it is better than a world without any intelligent life and this history will lead to something better, to us if not also to Danellians!

I might return to this post to make links to Wikipedia articles on "Tairo" etc but right now I want to proceed to something else.

4 comments:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

I wonder what the viewpoint character might have said about the Americas, that the Toltecs and Aztecs were fighting to determine who would end up as top dogs in what's now Mexico? That the Mayan city states were declining? That the Incas were beginning their rise to power?

I've read that one reason why the Catholic Church has been spared any REAL anti popes since Felix V renounced his claim to be pope in 1449 was because the kind of people who might have challenged a lawful pope preferred to leave the Church, not try to take it over.

Sean

Anonymous said...

I believe that that should be Taira, not Tairo. I took a course in Japanese history in college.

Best Regards,
Nicholas D. Rosen

Paul Shackley said...

Nicholas,
Thank you. It is "Taira" in Anderson's text, THE SHIELD OF TIME, p. 275.
Paul.

Jim Baerg said...

Sean:
"Preferred to leave the church"?
or just found that setting up their own church was more feasible than taking over the entire existing church, and preferred being a big frog in a small pond to being under a Pope they strongly disagreed with?
Becoming the leader of all Christianity might have been their preferred option, but splitting the church was what they now found possible to do.