{"id":5772,"date":"2006-09-17T20:51:52","date_gmt":"2006-09-17T20:51:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/09\/manuel-iis-street-cred.html"},"modified":"2006-09-17T20:51:52","modified_gmt":"2006-09-17T20:51:52","slug":"manuel-iis-street-cred","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/09\/manuel-iis-street-cred.html","title":{"rendered":"Manuel II’s Street Cred"},"content":{"rendered":"

Peter Robinson provides background at the Corner:<\/a><\/p>\n

\n
\n

Manuel II Paleologus reigned as emperor of Byzantium from 1391, the year in which he is believed to have composed the text from which the Pope quoted last week, until his death in 1425. A brief overview of his experience of Islam:<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

1390:               Manuel is sent as a hostage to the court of Sultan Bayezid I. As his writings demonstrate, he reads widely in Muslim texts and engages in repeated debates with Muslim scholars. He is also forced to participate in an attack on his own people, the siege of Philadelphia, which eliminated the last Byzantine settlement in Anatolia.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

1394-1402:      The Ottomans besiege Constantinople. For some five years, Manuel directs the defense of the city in person. Then he entrusts Constantinople to his nephew and embarks on a tour of the West, seeking assistance.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

1422:                The Ottomans attack Manuel in Constantinople once again.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

By the time of his death in 1425, Manuel had spent virtually his entire adult life in the struggle against an armed and expansionist Islam\u2014and in 1453, just over a quarter of a century later, the Ottomans would finally conquer the empire he had defended.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The point? One may certainly argue that Islam had no monopoly on fourteenth and fifteenth century violence\u2014Manuel himself had to resist several attempts by members of his own family to deny him the throne. What one may not, argue, I think, is that Manuel lacked the authority or knowledge to speak about Islam. When he described efforts \u201cto spread by the sword the faith [the Prophet] preached,<\/em>\u201d he wasn’t mouthing some sort of ignorant medieval prejudice. He knew exactly what he was talking about.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Peter Robinson provides background at the Corner: Manuel II Paleologus reigned as emperor of Byzantium from 1391, the year in which he is believed to have composed the text from which the Pope quoted last week, until his death in 1425. A brief overview of his experience of Islam: 1390:               Manuel is…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5772","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nManuel II's Street Cred - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/09\/manuel-iis-street-cred.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Manuel II's Street Cred - 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5772","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5772"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5772\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5772"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5772"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5772"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}