Saracen

My gums have turned black.

The Saracens laugh in my face.

Where, oh, where is King Frederick? My blade is beginning to rust.

He dines with the Pope.

We do have a good one we'll read from in a second.

But here's what he's going to say.

For at that time there was relentless war between the Christians and the Saracens, and the camps of both armies were pitched each over against the other in the plain, so that none might pass from one unto the other without peril of death." Moreover, a cruel edict had gone forth from the sultan that any who should bring the head of a Christian should receive a great deal of gold as reward.

Nevertheless, the undaunted soldier of Christ, Francis, hoping that he was shortly about to gain his end, determined to continue on his way, not dismayed by fear of death, but urged on by his yearning therefore.

Nicholas is delighted by the fact that some of the new peoples have already received baptism.

He reminds the Portuguese King Alfonso how he had already given him free and ample faculty to invade, search out, capture, vanquish and subdue all Saracens and pagans whatsoever.

Capturing and subduing, by the way, did not just mean seizing land and selling property.

Faithfully, it included enslaving and selling people.

This would put them in around circa 800 CE, but we don't get any writings about this romantic vision until the 12th century.

They represent chivalry and a noble fight against the Saracens, probably inspired by the Umayyad invasions of Gaul, and get their best coverage in the Chanson de Roland, the Song of Roland.

They pop up in 12th, 13th century French medieval literature, 15th century Italian literature, and Baroque operas of the 16th and 17th centuries.

And then we get more.

This would put them in around circa 800 CE, but we don't get any writings about this romantic vision until the 12th century.

They represent chivalry and a noble fight against the Saracens, probably inspired by the Umayyad invasions of Gaul, and get their best coverage in the Chanson de Roland, the Song of Roland.

They pop up in 12th, 13th century French medieval literature, 15th century Italian literature, and Baroque operas of the 16th and 17th centuries.

And then we get more.

Turk becomes the kind of general term for Muslim in Europe.

There are all these other terms that early modern Europeans used to understand Islam too.

Moors, Saracens, Mohammedans, there are all kinds.

And these terms are slippery.

They don't exactly have very fixed technical meanings, but can be used interchangeably.

It was a time when Europe experienced a profound economic, intellectual, and cultural decline after the grandeur and technological heyday of the Roman Empire.

The unity that the Roman Dominion had created quickly vanished, and despite large swathes of Western Europe including Rome being united under Emperor Charlemagne, this eventually unraveled and the Holy City was sacked by the Saracens in 846 AD.

and so began the most chaotic and corrupt period of the papacy remembered as seculum obscurum dark century but also by the more vividly descriptive papal pornography if there are any doubts over the meaning of that it was a suggestion that the vatican was run by little more than corruptive morality the man who would take center stage during one of the strangest events in vatican history despite being more rotten flesh than living breathing defendants at the time was pope formosus we believe he was born in rome around 816 a.d and that developed for his early life until he was appointed bishop of porto by pope nicholas i in 864 a.d two years later he was given the task of aiding the conversion of bulgaria as the papal legates the personal representative of the pope pope nicholas i was replaced by pope adrian ii who in turn was succeeded by pope john viii the new pope was faced with a catalogue of issues ranging from the growing strength of the saracens to the south brewing trouble with the franks and the byzantines and the complex political quagmire that had become the papal state It's here that things get a little murky, and you'll have to forgive the slight gaps.

We're talking about a period over a thousand years ago which has long been remembered in a rather damning light and suppressed whenever possible.

The murder of Pope John VIII may have sent shocks throughout the Catholic world, but for one man in particular, it made life significantly easier.

When Marinus I became the new Pope in 882 AD, all of Formosus' pastilles, whether true or not we'll never know, forgotten, and he was once again elected as Bishop of Porto.

Pope Marius I lasted just short of a year and a half before dying of natural causes, and he was replaced by Adrian III, who reigned for little more than a year and died while on a trip to Germany to discuss the rising threat of the Saracens with the Emperor Charles the Fat of the Carolingian Empire, whose nickname apparently appeared long after his death and there are no indications that He was a little too portly.

The new Pope was Stephen V, who managed to reign for a lengthy six years and had to contend with a financially lean church, as well as famine, drought, locusts, and massive political and social instability.