The Holy Grail is a sacred object figuring in literature and certain Christian traditions, most often identified with the dish, plate, or cup used by Jesus at the Last Supper and said to possess miraculous powers.
The subjects we’ll be looking at for the next few days will pertain to the below article, but will be short. Tomorrow we’ll look at…
Luke 5
The Call of the First Disciples
There’s no solid evidence proving the pictures below are the true McCoy.
1 And it came to pass, that, as the people pressed upon him to hear the word of God, he stood by the lake of Gennesaret,
2 And saw two ships standing by the lake: but the fishermen were gone out of them, and were washing their nets.
3 And he entered into one of the ships, which was Simon’s, and prayed him that he would thrust out a little from the land. And he sat down, and taught the people out of the ship.
4 Now when he had left speaking, he said unto Simon, Launch out into the deep, and let down your nets for a draught.
5 And Simon answering said unto him, Master, we have toiled all the night, and have taken nothing: nevertheless at thy word I will let down the net.
6 And when they had this done, they enclosed a great multitude of fishes: and their net brake.
7 And they beckoned unto their partners, which were in the other ship, that they should come and help them. And they came, and filled both the ships, so that they began to sink.
8 When Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying, Depart from me; for I am a sinful man, O Lord.
“Depart from me” – the nearest one comes to God, the more he feels his own sinfulness and unworthiness, and that’s a good thing.
9 For he was astonished, and all that were with him, at the draught of the fishes which they had taken:
10 And so was also James, and John, the sons of Zebedee, which were partners with Simon. And Jesus said unto Simon, Fear not; from henceforth thou shalt catch men.
11 And when they had brought their ships to land, they forsook all, and followed him.
12 And it came to pass, when he was in a certain city, behold a man full of leprosy: who seeing Jesus fell on his face, and besought him, saying, Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean.
13 And he put forth his hand, and touched him, saying, I will: be thou clean. And immediately the leprosy departed from him.
14 And he charged him to tell no man: but go, and shew thyself to the priest, and offer for thy cleansing, according as Moses commanded, for a testimony unto them.
15 But so much the more went there a fame abroad of him: and great multitudes came together to hear, and to be healed by him of their infirmities.
16 And he withdrew himself into the wilderness, and prayed.
17 And it came to pass on a certain day, as he was teaching, that there were Pharisees and doctors of the law sitting by, which were come out of every town of Galilee, and Judaea, and Jerusalem: and the power of the Lord was present to heal them.
18 And, behold, men brought in a bed a man which was taken with a palsy: and they sought means to bring him in, and to lay him before him.
19 And when they could not find by what way they might bring him in because of the multitude, they went upon the housetop, and let him down through the tiling with his couch into the midst before Jesus.
20 And when he saw their faith, he said unto him, Man, thy sins are forgiven thee.
21 And the scribes and the Pharisees began to reason, saying, Who is this which speaketh blasphemies? Who can forgive sins, but God alone?
22 But when Jesus perceived their thoughts, he answering said unto them, What reason ye in your hearts?
23 Whether is easier, to say, Thy sins be forgiven thee; or to say, Rise up and walk?
24 But that ye may know that the Son of man hath power upon earth to forgive sins, (he said unto the sick of the palsy,) I say unto thee, Arise, and take up thy couch, and go into thine house.
25 And immediately he rose up before them, and took up that whereon he lay, and departed to his own house, glorifying God.
26 And they were all amazed, and they glorified God, and were filled with fear, saying, We have seen strange things to day.
27 And after these things he went forth, and saw a publican, named Levi, sitting at the receipt of custom: and he said unto him, Follow me.
28 And he left all, rose up, and followed him.
29 And Levi made him a great feast in his own house: and there was a great company of publicans and of others that sat down with them.
30 But their scribes and Pharisees murmured against his disciples, saying, Why do ye eat and drink with publicans and sinners?
31 And Jesus answering said unto them, They that are whole need not a physician; but they that are sick.
Believers contend that the shroud is the cloth placed on the body of Jesus Christ at the time of his burial, and that the face image is the Holy Face of Jesus.
32 I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.
33 And they said unto him, Why do the disciples of John fast often, and make prayers, and likewise the disciples of the Pharisees; but thine eat and drink?
34 And he said unto them, Can ye make the children of the bride chamber fast, while the bridegroom is with them?
35 But the days will come, when the bridegroom shall be taken away from them, and then shall they fast in those days.
36 And he spake also a parable unto them; No man putteth a piece of a new garment upon an old; if otherwise, then both the new maketh a rent, and the piece that was taken out of the new agreeth not with the old.
37 And no man putteth new wine into old bottles; else the new wine will burst the bottles, and be spilled, and the bottles shall perish.
38 But new wine must be put into new bottles; and both are preserved.
39 No man also having drunk old wine straightway desireth new: for he saith, The old is better.
“The old is better” – Jesus was indicating the reluctance of some people to change from their traditional religious ways and try the gospel.
The Byzantine Empire:
Creating the New Rome
During the Age of Faith that dawned when Byzantine emperors in Constantinople embraced Christianity and Islam arose in Arabia, Christians and Muslims had at least one thing in common: They all credited their victories to heaven.
The crown housed in the Paris cathedral is a circle of canes bundled together and held by gold threads.
“Praise be to God…Praise to God…Praise be to him who has caused our enemies to perish and brought to us our inheritance from Muhammad our Prophet,” said the brother of Abu al-Abbas, founder of the Abbasid Dynasty, who in 750 overthrew the caliph who ruled the Muslim world.
As descendants of Muhammad’s uncle, Abu al-Abbas and his heirs claimed the right to rule a vast Islamic empire in the name of Allah and his Prophet. But they were not the only ones who thought God was on their side.
That belief was shared by opposing Muslims who denied their legitimacy as well as by Christians of various persuasion, including Orthodox soldiers of the Byzantine Empire who clashed with Muslim armies and Catholic crusaders from western Europe who set out to secure the Holy Land for their faith and ended up sacking Constantinople.
Underlying the religious conflicts between Muslims, Orthodox Christians, and Roman Catholics were cultural differences rooted in past imperial rivalries. Muslim rulers were heirs to the proud imperial legacy of Persia and followed Persian precedents by advancing west and challenging Europeans for control of the Mediterranean world.
Byzantine emperors drew inspiration from the accomplishments of their classical Greek predecessors and Alexander the Great, who infused the Near East with Greek culture.
Crusaders from Western Europe fought to restore the glory of Rome – once the hub of an empire far surpassing that of Alexander or his Persian rivals – and bring Jerusalem and other sites sacred to Christians, Muslims, and Jews under Roman Catholic authority.
When the Roman emperor Constantine founded the great city of Bospours Strait that would bear his name, he did not think of it as Greek or Byzantine. He called it a New Rome, for it was modeled after the empire’s capital on the Tiber River.
This new capital, which was dedicated in 330 A.D. at a site called Byzandtium and became known as Constantinople, was more defensible than Rome and closer to wealthy eastern provinces such as Egypt, the source of much of the grain that fed Rome and later Constantinople.
Furthermore, Rome remained a largely pagan city, containing not only Christian churches but also shrines devoted to various gods and goddesses. After converting to Christianity, Constantine angered Romans who held other beliefs by refusing to participate in a pagan procession.
He then left Rome for good to build an imperial city that would glorify both his power and his faith.
Constantine had succeeded in reuniting the Roman Empire by armed fore, but it soon divided again into eastern and western halves. Constantinople endured as capital of the eastern half, known as the Byzantine Empire, while Roma and its western empire fell to Germanic invaders in the 5th century.
Rulers in Constantinople avoided a similar fear by buying off the Goths and members of other Germanic tribes, granting them land, and even enlisting them as troops to repulse other invaders.
Byzantine emperors also relied heavily on soldiers from former Roman provinces in the Balkans such as Macedonia and Illyria, extending form what is now Albania to Croatia. Those Romanized recruits were favored over Germans in Constantinople, and some rose to positions of trust.
After the death of Emperor Anastasius in 518, an Illyrian of humble origins called Justin, who served as commander of the Palace guard, took power in Constantinople. Elderly and childless, he adopted as heir his energetic nephew, Peter Sabbatius, who assumed he name Justianian.
Fluent in Latin, Justinian spoke Greek haltingly, but that was no great handicap in a city whose leading figures still considered themselves Romans.
The civic center of Constantinople was adorned with classical monuments like the Roman Forum and a coliseum called the Hippodrome, where charioteers belonging to two teams, the Blues and the Greens, competed to the roars of their fans.
Justinian was well versed in Roman law and Christian theology. But he also enjoyed popular pastimes such as plays and chariot races and fell in love with an actress named Theodora, who like other members of her profession had an unsavory reputation.
According to the Byzantine historian Procopius, “no role was too scandalous for her to accept without a blush.” Nonetheless, the two wedded after Justinian prevailed upon his uncle to amend a law forbidding men of high rank from marrying actresses.
In 527, he succeeded the deceased Justin as emperor and Theodora became empress.
Unlike the old Roman Empire, where rulers’ wives played no official role, the Byzantine Empire that Justinian solidified and expanded was more like ancient Egypt, where queens were honored and sometimes exercised power.
Justinian would be remembered for codifying Roman law and publishing an authoritative digest of statutes that provided a legal framework for many later European societies.
But Theodora also furthered the cause of justice by pressing for laws protecting girls from enslavement and abolishing the death penalty for women convicted of adultery.
Without her, Justinian might have been driven from the throne in 532 when Constantinople rose up against him.
Among the grievances of the populace were food shortages that distressed the poor and the elimination of tax exemptions for the wealthy. The revolt began in the Hippodrome while Justinian was present.
Fans of both teams, the Blues and the Greens, who normally shouted “Nika!—Victory!” only to cheer on their side, raised that cry together in defiance of the emperor, who fled to the palace while they took to the streets.
Justinian was about to abandon the city to the mob when Theodora urged him to stay and fight. “Every man who is born into the light of day must sooner or later die,” she declared, by Procopius’s account, “and how can an Emperor ever allow himself to become a fugitive?”
Heeding her, Justinian held his ground and called on a trusted general, Belisarius, to crush the revolt. Troops herded rioters back into the Hippodrome and slaughtered some 30,000 people there.
Finding much of the city reduced to rubble, Justinian proceeded to reconstruct Constantinople.
His greatest monument was the Hagia Sophia (“holy wisdom”), a domed structure of breath-taking height that became the glory of Byzantine Christianity – known as the Orthodox Church after it broke with Roman Catholicism in the 11th century.
Long before that, however, Byzantine Christians evolved their own rites and recognized their emperor and the patriarch of Constantinople as their spiritual leaders, rather than the bishop of Rome, honored by Roman Catholics as pope.
Even as he rebuilt the capital, Justinian set out to reclaim large parts of the old Roman Empire lost to Germanic tribes.
Soon after Belisarius crushed the Nika Revolt, Justinian sent him challenge the Vandals, who had descended into Spain and Italy before coming to Africa, where they occupied the coast of present-day Tunisia and Algeria.
Like other new states formed by Germanic invaders, the Vandal kingdom was politically unstable.
Exploiting the rift between a ruler who had just seized power and the king he ousted, Belisarius defeated the Vandals within months and went on to attack the Ostrogoths in Italy, who were at odds following the death of their dynamic leader, King Theodoric the Great.
In 540, they yielded to Belisarius and invited him to become their monarch, an offer he declined in deference to Justinian. By the time Justinian died in 565, the Byzantine Empire nearly encircled the Mediterranean.
But this was a classic case of imperial overexpansion. The tax burden Justinian placed on his subjects to finance military campaigns was too great, and his successors lacked the funds and forces to defend distant provinces.
Lombards of Germanic origin crossed the Alps in 568 and occupied much of northern and central Italy except for a corridor extending from Rome to Ravenna, a port on the Adriatic Sea that remained a Byzantine stronghold until the eighth century.
Similar advances were made by Bulgars and other invaders who swept down from the vicinity of the Danube River and seized large parts of the Balkans.
But the greatest threat came from the Near East, where Sasanid Persians intent on matching the feats of Cyrus the Great and other Persian conquerors of old wrested Syria, Palestine, and Egypt from Byzantine forces in the early 7th century.
They threatened to overrun Asia Minor, known to Greeks as Anatolia or “the land to the east.” If Anatolia fell, Constantinople itself would be in peril.
Rising to that challenge came the Byzantine emperor Heraclius, who took power in 610 and divided his homeland of Anatolia into military districts, each one commanded by a general who recruited troops and rewarded them with land.
This system was later extended to other parts of the Byzantine Empire and bolstered its defenses without increasing the tax burden. Heraclius advanced against the Persians and won victories in Mesopotamia that toppled the Persian king in 628.
The prolonged struggle between Byzantines and Persians left both sides weaker, however, and vulnerable to Muslim forces advancing from Arabia.
Egypt, Palestine, and other former Byzantine provinces along the eastern Mediterranean coast fell readily to the Muslims, who showed greater tolerance toward Jews and members of nonconformist Christian sects than Byzantine rulers had.
In 651, Muslims conquered Persia and added that prize to an Islamic empire that now embraced the entire Near East with the exception of Anatolia.
Stunned by their losses to Muslims, Byzantine rulers wondered if God was punishing them for their sins – in particular, for their devotion to icons, sacred images, which iconoclasts (opponents of icons) thought was excessive and violated the biblical commandment against worshiping images.
Iconoclasts noted that Islam prohibited such images and feared that God would continue to grant Muslims victories until Christians, too, ceased worshipping icons.
Iconoclasm was embraced by Emperor Leo III, who repulsed Muslims besieging Constantinople in 718. He owed that victory in part to the use of Greek fire, a compound that, when set aflame, terrorized opposing forces on land or water.
But Leo attributed his military success to God and felt he now had a sacred duty to strip churches and monasteries of paintings and sculptures representing Christ, the Virgin Mary, and other revered figures.
Byzantine soldiers favored that prohibition, hoping that God would reward them with more victories. But many other Christians were appalled, including women who took to the streets of Constantinople to protest the removal of their beloved icons.
This bitter religious controversy divided the empire, with some rulers favoring iconoclasm and others opposing it.
Finally, in 843, Empress Theodora reversed the policy of her late husband, Emperor Theophilus, and restored icons permanently to Byzantine shrines.
By rejecting iconoclasm, Byzantines affirmed their devotion to artistry, a vital element of Greek culture since ancient times.
In addition to crafting icons, Byzantine artisans manufactured fine jewelry and glassware and shimmering silk fabrics, which had earlier been produced only in China.
By one account, silkworms were introduced to the Byzantine Empire in the 6th century by itinerant Christian monks who smuggled their eggs out of China.
Byzantines also honored Greek scholarly traditions by studying and copying the works of ancient Greek philosophers, scientists, playwrights, and poets, literature that might otherwise have been lost to posterity.
Politically, the Byzantine Empire made up for the loss of remote territories around the Mediterranean by becoming a more cohesive and well-organized state. Its imperial bureaucracy was so elaborate and complex that the word byzantine came to mean “intricate.”
Its armies regained strength and seized territory in and around Syria and Muslim forces in the 10th century. But the main objective of rulers in Constantinople was to reclaim the northern Balkans from Bulgars and other invaders.
Basil II, who became emperor in 976, earned the title “Bulgar Slayer” for punishing campaigns that imposed Byzantine authority and beliefs on what is now Bulgaria and reestablished the Danube River as the empire’s northern frontier.
He reportedly ordered Bulgar troops he defeated to be blinded, leaving only a few soldiers with a single eye to lead the rest back to their horrified ruler, Samuel, who died in disgrace.
For all his brutality, Basil was also a shrewd diplomat who extended Byzantine influence to Russia by coming to terms with Grand Prince Vladmir of Kiev.
Vladmir married Basil’s sister and converted form paganism to Christianity, which took an Orthodox form in Russia as it did in Greece.
The Byzantine Empire declined following the death of Basil II in 1025, in large part because its internal resources proved insufficient to meet external threats.
The reorganization of Anatolia and other areas into military districts, governed by generals, resulted in a social system resembling the feudalism of western Europe, where barons acquired fiefdoms in exchange for their military services to dukes or kings and peasants became their vassals.
Byzantine nobles amassed large estates, commanded their own troops, and sometimes rebelled against Constantinople.
Emperors found it increasingly difficult to collect revenue and raise armed forces as more and more land and laborers became the property of those nobles to do with as they wished.
During the 11th century, new threats to the Byzantine emerged on several Fronts. To the west, Normans of Viking ancestry entered the Mediterranean in longships and occupied Sicily and southern Italy.
The Byzantines were left without a foothold in Italy, for Rome and Ravenna had become papal states – bastions of the Roman Catholic Church, which broke with the Orthodox Church when leaders of the two denominations excommunicated each other in 1054.
Nonetheless, they soon found a common enemy in the Seljuk Turks: Muslims who seized control of Baghdad from caliphs of the Abbasid Dynasty and advanced into Anatolia, where they routed Byzantine forces in 1071 and occupied that country, known today as Turkey.
In 1095, the Byzantine emperor Alexius I appealed to Rome for aid, hoping that Catholics would help defend Constantinople against the Turks. Instead, Pope Urban II launched a broader campaign, aimed at ousting Muslims from the Holy Land and seizing Jerusalem.
The Abbasid dynasty descended from the Prophet’s youngest uncle, Abbas ibn Abd al-Muttalib (566–653 CE). They ruled as caliphs from their capital in Baghdad, in modern Iraq, after taking over authority of the Muslim empire from the Umayyads in 750 C.
The ensuing Crusades disrupted and weakened the Byzantine Empire, which suffered the ultimate indignity when the wealthy Italian city-state of Venice, a commercial rival, funded the Fourth Crusade and induced Catholic soldiers to sack Constantinople in 1204.
As the Orthodox bishop of Ephesus related, “Even the Great Church of God [Hagia Sophia] and the imperial palace, and were filled with men of the enemy, all of them maddened by war and murderous in spirit.”
Having lost their grip on the Holy Land and undermined Byzantine authority, Crusaders cleared the way for Turks of the emerging Ottoman Empire.
During the 14th century, Ottoman forces crossed the Bosporus and occupied much of the Balkans before besieging and capturing Constantinople in 1453.
Among the victims of the siege was Emperor Constantine XI, the last ruler to bear the name of the city’s founder before this Greek capital of Roman origins fell to the Turks and became Istanbul.
…St. Catherin’s Monastery.