Greek history topics: ancient, medieval and modern. Orthodox Christian. Hellenic Royalist. Metaxist. ♱⳩ 🇬🇷 🇨🇾 AΩ Πάλι με χρόνια με καιρούς, πάλι δικά
The Realm
Joined November 2024
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GreekRealm retweeted
Αμερικανοί συντηρητές αποκαλύπτουν τα βυζαντινά ψηφιδωτά της Αγίας Σοφίας τη δεκαετία του 1930, που οι Οθωμανοί είχαν καλύψει με σοβά.
Όλο τους το κατόρθωμα είναι πέντε αιώνες σοβάς..
GreekRealm retweeted
A Greek government report has documented 374 incidents affecting Christian religious sites across Greece in 2025, accounting for nearly 97% of all 386 incidents recorded at places of religious significance nationwide.
The overwhelming majority involved the Greek Orthodox Church, which recorded 362 incidents.
Another seven incidents affected Old Calendarist Orthodox Christians, four involved Jehovah's Witnesses, and one concerned the Anglican Church.
The documented offenses included burglaries, thefts, vandalism, sacrilege, grave desecration and other forms of profanation targeting Christian places of worship and religious property.
GreekRealm retweeted
In the last couple of days, Muslims:
1. Slaughtered 9 Christians in Jordan
2. Beheaded 40+ Christians in Nigeria
3. Massacred 60+ Christians in Ethiopia
4. Raped countless Christian girls in Europe
We cannot coexist with people whose religious scriptures call for our deaths.
GreekRealm retweeted
In the 1.300 years of Muslim-Arab slave trade, approximately a million Greek Christians were sold as slaves. Greek girls who were pretty were forced into prostitution after being enslaved to Turks who took all their earnings. Women captives were known to be subjected to sexual abuse.
After Chios Massacre (March 30, 1822) where the Muslim Turks slaughtered 42.000 Christian Greeks, 52.000 women and children were sold as slaves in the markets of Smyrna & Constantinople.
On September 1, 1821, Samothrace was devastated by the Ottomans through a general massacre, 10.000 men & boys were slaughtered while women & children were sold also in the markets of Constantinople & Smyrna. Only those who converted to Islam survived.
On July 14, 1821, 486 Greeks of Cyprus were publicly beheaded because they didn't convert to Islam.
On 13-22 September 1922, thousands of women (Greeks and Armenians) were mass raped and slaughtered in Smyrna from the Islamic horde, the Young Turks, who were motivated by racial and religious hatred. Only those who converted to Islam survived. They aimed the Christians of Anatolia and tried to erase our Greek footprint. They failed.
On 6-7 of September 1955, during the Constantinople pogroms, Muslim Turks committed rapes againt the Greek community of the City. Hundreds of women expelled and raped. Now there is a minotiry of less than 2.000 Greeks living in the city that their ancestors found, Constantinople.
In 1974, the Muslim Turks invaded the island of Cyprus and raped in the name of their god thousands of Greek women from 12 to 71 years old. Even the Church of Cyprus had consented through its tolerance to the amendment of the legislation in 1974, so that the abortions of that period became legal.
Women captives were known to be subjected to sexual abuse. Male Muslims were given the right to have sex with female captives (slaves), which was phrased: "those men who guard their genitals, except with their wives and those whom their right hands possess, for then there is no blame" (Quran 23:6), which granted men the right to have sex not only with their wives but also with female captive slaves.
Islam is an enemy for every woman.
Anyone who willingly supports the Islamic invasion against native Europeans is a traitor to his or her own kind and ancestors.
Picture: This is a Greek slave captured by the Muslim Turks during the Ottoman period. The sign writes: "ΡΟΔΟΝ ΕΤΩΝ ΙΗ ΠΩΛΕΙΤΑΙ ΜΝΑΣ Ω" which means: "Rose, eighteen years old for sale, for 800 mnas".
If you want to support me in the effort I’m making, please consider becoming a subscriber to my X account for only $2. I write about the ancient, medieval, and modern history of Greece and what Christians went through because of Islam. Always with primary sources and historical facts. Thanks for reading me and for all the support.
- Homer Pavlos
The Royal Hellenic Navy victories of 1912-1913 over the Ottoman Navy during the First Balkan War secured Greek dominion over the Aegean Sea, 114 years now and counting.
Admiral Pavlos Kountouriotis crippled the Ottoman Fleet in the naval battles of Elli and Lemnos, a year before WWI began.
GreekRealm retweeted
Here's my conversation with Anthony Kaldellis about the deep history of the Roman Empire in the west and the east (the Byzantine Empire). This was a truly fascinating conversation with a lot of wisdom for the modern world and for the future of human civilization. The Roman state lasted over 2,200 years. If we want to understand human nature, the modern world, and how humanity can flourish, it is valuable to study history, especially the history of why societies survive and why they collapse.
It's here on X in full and is up everywhere else (see comment).
Timestamps:
0:00 - Episode highlight
1:24 - Introduction
1:51 - The Roman Empire and the Byzantine Empire
5:49 - 2,200 Years of Roman History
26:12 - Power, violence, and civil war
47:27 - Edict of Caracalla
1:00:23 - Crisis of the Third Century
1:14:52 - Constantine and the new Roman Empire
1:26:53 - Christianity in the Roman Empire
1:52:21 - Fall of the Western Roman Empire
2:05:17 - Eunuchs, Taxes, and Power
2:30:24 - Emperor Justinian and wars of conquest
2:47:26 - The Arab conquests
3:07:01 - Why the Roman empire survived so long
3:33:08 - Lessons from history
Historic speech. WAKE UP Western Man
SECRETARY RUBIO: “Nationalism” became a dirty word. So we tore down our monuments, we condemned our own history, and in too many places we taught our children to be ashamed of the countries they would inherit. In the process we opened our borders, and outsourced our industry, and allowed our militaries to wither and to decay.
GreekRealm retweeted
SECRETARY RUBIO: “Nationalism” became a dirty word. So we tore down our monuments, we condemned our own history, and in too many places we taught our children to be ashamed of the countries they would inherit. In the process we opened our borders, and outsourced our industry, and allowed our militaries to wither and to decay.
How the medieval Greeks introduced the table fork to Catholic Europe
In AD 1004 a Greek Orthodox Roman Princess named Maria Argyropoulina held her grand wedding feast in Venice Italy after having married Giovanni Orseolo, the son of the Doge of Venice, in Constantinople.
During this wedding feast at the Doge's Palace, Maria astounded the local nobility by refusing to touch her food with her fingers. Instead, she cut her meat into small pieces, which she then daintily lifted to her mouth using a two-tined golden fork.
A high-ranking Catholic Church official, Cardinal Peter Damian, was present at this wedding banquet. When he saw her using the strange golden utensil to eat her food with he thought it to be ostentatious and was deeply offended that she was not eating with her hands (which, in turn, this Greek imperial surely found barbaric).
This event famously scandalized western Europe, where the Catholics—including the Venetians—primarily ate with their hands and thus viewed her eating with a fork as bizarre, and even unnatural. In contrast, forks had been a standard component of aristocratic dining etiquette and hygiene in Constantinople for centuries.
Catholic clergy viewed her use of a dining utensil, alongside her use of cosmetics and perfume, as an act of extreme vanity, pride, and royal decadence.
"God in his wisdom has provided man with natural forks; his fingers. Therefore it is an insult to Him to substitute them for metallic dishes when eating." —Cardinal Peter Damian
To the Greek Orthodox elites, the Catholic outrage over Maria’s dining habits was met not with defensive arguments about cutlery, but with quiet amusement, cultural superiority, and an escalation of theological polemics.
In Constantinople, forks had been a normal fixture of both Orthodox clergy and noble life since at least the 4th century. To the highly educated, thoroughly bathed, and refined Greco-Roman Byzantines, eating directly with greasy hands was considered uncivilized. They viewed the Italians and Germans as provincial boors.
Roman chroniclers of the era routinely documented Catholic visitors to Constantinople as aggressive, unwashed "barbarians" who lacked basic table manners. The Orthodox response was essentially to mock them for being so culturally backwards that they mistook basic hygiene for an affront to God.
When both Maria and her husband tragically died of the plague in Venice just a few years later in 1007, the Latin clergy publicly declared their deaths to be divine punishment from God for her sinful vanities. Because of this intense Catholic backlash, the widespread adoption of the fork was delayed in western Europe for centuries.
Thus the adoption of the Greek fork by the rest of Europe was a slow, grueling process that took nearly 800 years after Maria Argyropoulina's wedding. It transformed from a so-called "satanic weapon" into a symbol of high society, driven by a combination of Italian cuisine, wealthy royal brides, and a cultural shift toward hygiene.
The absolute turning point for the fork in Italy was the rise of pasta in the late medieval-era. By the 14th century, long strands of pasta like lasagna and vermicelli had become staples among wealthy Italian merchants. Twirling and lifting hot, slippery, noodles covered in sauce with bare hands was messy and impractical.
Thereafter, the fork traveled from Italy to the rest of Europe inside the dowries of wealthy, powerful Italian noblewomen who married foreign kings.
During the Renaissance, Western Europe underwent a massive cultural shift regarding cleanliness. Sharing communal plates, wiping greasy hands on clothing, and dipping bare fingers into shared bowls began to be viewed as unhygienic and vulgar. The fork was no longer an "insult to God's fingers," but a tool that separated the clean, refined elite from the unwashed masses.
The Industrial Revolution: for centuries, forks were handmade from silver or gold, keeping them exclusively in the hands of the wealthy. By the mid 19th century, mass-production techniques and the invention of low-carbon steel made forks cheap to manufacture. Within a few decades, every household in the Western World had a set.
The fork’s timeline of acceptance across the West:
• 14th Century - widely adopted in Italy
• 16th Century - adopted by the royal court in France
• 17th Century - adopted by the aristocracy in England
• 19th Century - standard across the Western world.
Without the rigorous, almost obsessive emphasis on hygiene, courtly etiquette, and high-culture cultivated by the Greek Orthodox elite in Constantinople, Western Europe likely would have continued eating with their hands.
When you pick up a fork today, you are participating in a 1,700 year-old Byzantine tradition.
Note: Ancient Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans all had large two-pronged forks, but they used them exclusively in the kitchen for carving and lifting heavy meats over fires. The Byzantines were the first civilization to shrink the fork down, make it out of precious metals, and decree that it belonged at the dining table as a personal eating utensil.
Meekness is not weakness
We commonly confuse meekness with spinelessness. But in the Gospel, this word referred to a trained war horse – enormous strength reined in.
The most peaceful person in all the Bible once raised two stone tablets above his head and smashed them against the ground with force. This was Moses, the very one of whom the Book of Numbers says directly: "the man was very meek, above all the men which were upon the face of the earth" (Num. 12:3). The meekest of men, yet capable, in righteous anger, of shattering the tablets inscribed by the finger of God, confronting Pharaoh, and keeping a rebellious people under control for forty years.
We look at all this, and it seems contradictory. In our language, the word “meek” has long been fused with the image of those whom people contemptuously call pushovers – someone who keeps quiet out of fear of the reaction. Yet here, the meaning is altogether different.
Strength taken under rein
In the Greek text of the New Testament, meekness is πραος (praos). In antiquity, this was not what they called a quiet person in the corner, but a broken-in horse: an animal in which all its wild power remained, but now it walks under saddle and obeys the slightest movement of the reins. The strength hasn't gone anywhere. It's simply been taken under rein.
"The meek person is one who has strength in abundance, but consciously restrains his hand from a crushing blow. The sword remains in its sheath. But it lies there by the will of its master, and the hand is capable of drawing it at any second."
Saint John Chrysostom said 1,640 years ago that meekness is a sign of great strength, and to be meek, one needs to have a noble, courageous and very lofty soul. Behind the quietness of the meek hides a restrained storm.
The meek does not remain silent from fear
Here we encounter a misconception that causes many people to stumble. The modern world despises meekness because it confuses it with the weakness of the downtrodden. We are told: if you don't strike back, you'll be crushed; if you remain silent, you're a coward.
But there is a vast gulf between a victim and a meek person. A victim remains silent out of helplessness: inside are fear and resentment driven underground, accumulating like water behind a poorly built dam until, sooner or later, it bursts forth—on their children, on some rude stranger in a queue, or on themselves. A meek person, by contrast, restrains his hand even though he has both the strength and the full right to strike. That is the very essence of this virtue.
John Chrysostom taught that a meek person is one who can endure insults directed at himself, yet defends those who are unjustly wronged and rises up forcefully against their oppressors. But the one who looks on indifferently at another's suffering is, in the saint's words, “careless, sluggish, and no better than a dead man”—and there is not a trace of meekness in that.
Do you see the difference? Meekness stands guard over one's own ego and restrains resentment when the offense is personal. Yet it rises to its full height when the weak are being struck. Moses bore personal insults without retaliation, even when they came from his own brother and sister. Yet when the sacred was desecrated, he unleashed his righteous fury.
Why evil gets stuck in a quiet person
Now for the main point: what actually happens when evil strikes a meek person?
Abba Dorotheus, in his discourse On Resentment, says that another person's wrongdoing is like a small live coal. As long as it remains a single ember, it is easy to extinguish: you endure the offense, and the ember goes out without leaving a trace. But the moment you begin to fan it ("Why did he say that to me?" "I'll give him a piece of my mind!"), you start feeding the ember with kindling, then firewood, and before long an entire blaze of anger is raging.
We tend to imagine that evil is conquered by mustering the forces of good and crushing the forces of evil. But in the spiritual life, that is not how victory is won. The devil is indifferent to the banner under which we hate. His only concern is that the chain never breaks, that every blow be answered with another blow, every injury with another injury, endlessly repeating itself.
"When we take revenge, we, without noticing it ourselves, hire ourselves as free carriers of another's malice."
But the meek breaks this chain. Evil enters him and finds nothing to push off from to fly further. St. John Climacus describes it this way: meekness is a rock rising above the sea of irritation, against which all incoming waves shatter, while the rock itself remains unmoved. Strike such a rock as much as you like – your hands will grow tired, but it will remain unharmed.
Guard dog or witness?
And here we come to a sensitive point. Today, in church circles, it has become fashionable to urge people to “grow fangs”: the times are hard, holy things are under threat, and one must learn to snap back. The logic is understandable, especially when there is slander all around and rudeness that invades every comment section under every news story. It feels as though we are being required to hate loudly and without pause: if you stay silent, you are a traitor.
And this compulsory anger burns a person to ashes. We notice it in ourselves too: by evening there is only rage left inside, and it becomes impossible to tell whether you are defending the faith or have simply grown used to snapping at everyone in sight.
"But Christ doesn't need guard dogs at the fence. He needs witnesses of truth. And a witness and a guard dog differ at least in that a dog bites, while a witness speaks the truth – and is often beaten for this truth."
We are not able to stop the madness around us: it is not for us to cancel out the world’s malice with a single gesture. But each person has their own threshold of endurance. And when evil crosses that threshold—through a rude message, an insult, or filth poured directly on you—we can ensure that it goes no further. That it dies here, within us, without receiving a single drop of retaliatory poison. It is important to know how to maintain a kind of quarantine in one’s soul against the virus of evil in the midst of a sweeping epidemic.
“Learn from Me, for I am meek and humble in heart” (Matthew 11:29), the Lord taught. This is almost the only time in all the Gospels when He directly calls us to learn a specific quality from Him – not miracles, not authority over the crowds, but meekness.
And perhaps the main question He asks us with these words is this: do we have the strength – precisely strength, not weakness – to restrain our hand when we are struck? Can we become that rock against which another’s wave of hatred shatters, or will we pick up the first ember from the ground and begin fanning it ourselves into a fire that we will no longer be able to extinguish?
—Mykyta Rakytnianskyi
The two lungs of Western Civilization: The Greek East & The Latin West
For centuries, biased historians (deeply influenced by Catholic and Protestant frameworks) actively sidelined the Eastern Roman Empire. They labeled it the "Empire of the Greeks" and "Byzantium" and dismissed it.
"The Holy Roman Empire was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire" —Voltaire
This was a deliberate political and theological project to legitimize the so-called Holy Roman Empire and defame the actual, unbroken Roman Empire based in Greece at Constantinople.
The Eastern Empire Was the Roman Empire
The idea that Rome "fell" in 476 AD is a uniquely Catholic narrative. The Roman Empire survived in south-eastern Europe at Constantinople for another thousand years after the collapse of the Western Empire.
If Western Civilization is defined by Roman law (like the Corpus Juris Civilis compiled by Emperor Justinian in 534 AD), Roman administration, and civic identity, then Constantinople was the torchbearer of the West while the western half of Europe was fragmented into Germanic 'barbarian' kingdoms.
The Preservation of the Greek Core
Western Civilization proudly claims Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle as its intellectual ancestors. Yet, the Latin West lost the ability to read Greek for centuries. It was the Greek East that preserved, copied, and studied these classical ancient texts.
When the Latin West finally experienced the Renaissance, it was directly triggered by Greek scholars fleeing the Fall of Constantinople in 1453 AD and bringing those foundational Western texts to Italy; including Roman jurisprudence (Latin law texts).
The Shared Abrahamic-Hellenistic Synthesis
Both the Greek East and Latin West operate on the exact same foundational synthesis: Athens, Jerusalem, and Rome. They both blended Greek philosophy, Jewish theology, and Roman political structure.
Viewing the Latin West and Greek East as two lungs of the same Western Civilization is a much more historically accurate framework.
"Come back when you have a metaphysical argument instead of these retarded appeals to civilization."
What do you think I have been doing?
Christian theology provided the unique metaphysical framework necessary for the birth of modern science by replacing a chaotic or cyclical worldview with a rational, orderly universe governed by a single Lawgiver.
The theological origins of modern science: because early European scientists believed the universe was crafted by an intelligent, orderly God, they expected to find mathematical laws and logical structures written into nature.
Before the widespread adoption of Christian metaphysics, many ancient cultures (including the Greeks, Romans, Babylonians, and Egyptians) viewed the cosmos through a different lens:
* Animism and Polytheism. Nature was alive with gods, spirits, and demons. A storm, drought, or eclipse wasn't seen as the result of a fixed natural law, but as the whim of a fickle deity. Because the gods were capricious, the universe was fundamentally unpredictable and semi-chaotic.
* The Greek Dilemma. While Greek philosophers like Aristotle pursued logic, they often viewed the universe as eternal, cyclical, or organic rather than designed. Furthermore, Greek gods were bound by fate or chaos, meaning the ultimate foundation of reality was not necessarily rational.
* The Cyclical Trap. Ancient cultures viewed time as a giant, repeating circle. If history and nature just repeat themselves endlessly, the incentive to study linear progress or discover permanent "new" laws is deeply diminished.
Order and Logic. Christianity introduced a specific set of theological assumptions about the nature of reality (metaphysics) that fundamentally changed how intellectuals viewed the physical world:
* The Rational Architect. Christianity inherited the Jewish concept of Creatio ex nihilo (creation out of nothing) by a single, supreme God. Crucially, this God was defined as perfectly rational, orderly, and unchanging (Logos).
* The Mathematical Blueprint. Because God is rational, His creation must be rational. The universe was viewed as a giant, intricate mechanism designed with "measure, number, and weight" (a popular biblical quote from the Book of Wisdom used by early scientists).
* Linear Time. Christianity introduced a strictly linear view of time - Creation > Fall > Redemption > Judgment. This gave history a direction and made the pursuit of progress and knowledge meaningful.
Early pioneers of the Scientific Revolution—such as Johannes Kepler, Isaac Newton, René Descartes, and Galileo Galilei—did not see their faith as a barrier to science. Instead, their faith was the motivation for their science. They believed that by using mathematics to decode the universe, they were literally "thinking God's thoughts after Him."
If the universe were semi-chaotic, as you believe, experimenting would be useless because the rules might change tomorrow. Because they believed a logical God kept the rules permanent, they could confidently use math to predict the movements of the planets and the behavior of gravity.
Approaching science with the assumption of a logical design allowed scientists to transition from simply describing nature to discovering universal, mathematical laws that predicted how the universe behaves. Because they expected to find order, they didn't dismiss anomalies as random accidents; instead, they searched for deeper, hidden rules to explain them.
This specific Christian mindset directly drove several of the most fundamental discoveries in human history:
* Before the Scientific Revolution, planetary movements were often viewed as having an intrinsic "will" or being driven by separate celestial physics. Believing that a single Creator designed a unified, harmonious system, Johannes Kepler spent years obsessively tracking data until he discovered his Three Laws of Planetary Motion. Because he assumed a perfect geometric design, he didn't give up when Mars' orbit deviated by a tiny fraction of a degree—leading him to discover that planets move in ellipses, not perfect circles.
* Sir Isaac Newton took Kepler's logical design a step further. He operated on the theological premise that the same God made both the heavens and the Earth. Therefore, the physics on Earth must match the physics in space. This assumption of absolute structural symmetry allowed him to discover the Law of Universal Gravitation, proving that the same unseen force pulling an apple to the ground also holds the moon in its orbit.
* The assumption of design shifted how scientists looked at anatomy. Instead of viewing the human body as a vessel for mystical humors, doctors began viewing it as a finely tuned machine with functional parts. This directly enabled William Harvey to discover the circulation of blood. He reasoned that the valves in veins had a logical, one-way purpose, leading him to realize the heart acts mechanically as a pump.
* René Descartes and later physicists used the concept of an unchanging God to argue that the total amount of "motion" or energy in the universe must remain constant. This logical necessity laid the conceptual groundwork for the conservation laws in physics (such as the conservation of momentum and energy), which dictate that nature never creates or destroys its foundational elements out of nowhere.
By assuming the universe was a "clockwork" mechanism built by a rational clockmaker, scientists gained the confidence to ask how it worked, confident that the answer wouldn't change arbitrarily tomorrow.
Saint Peter founded the Greek Church 1,983 years ago in the Greek city of Antioch (where they were first called 'Christians'). The Greek Orthodox Church is the only one that doesn't need or use a Bible translation.
The name 'Greek' in Greek Orthodox doesn't denote an ethnicity, unlike the Slavic Orthodox Churches (Russian Orthodox, etc,). Technically, all Orthodox Churches are Greek Orthodox (the "Greek East/Latin West" within Europe).
That being said, you have to follow your own heart. I don't try to convert anyone. But I will say that even a secular historian would tell you that the Greek Orthodox Church is the source.
I'm just an idiot who debates people online, I don't represent the Church in any way.
New testament books that take place in Greek Lands:
Acts
Galatians
Ephesians
Colossians
1 Thessalians
2 Thessalians
1 Timothy
2 Timothy
1 Peter
Revelation
Greek islands in the New Testament:
Chios
Cos
Crete
Cyprus
Lesvos
Patmos
Rhodes
Samos
Samothrace
Sicily (in Magna Graecia)
Greek cities mentioned in the New Testament:
Assos
Amphipolis
Apollonia
Athens
Attalia
Berea
Cenchreae
Colossae
Cnidus
Corinth
Derbe
Ephesus
Fair Haven
Hierapolis
Iconium
Laodicea
Lasea
Lystra
Miletus
Mitylene
Myra
Neapolis
Patara
Perga
Pergamum
Philadelphia
Philippi
Phoenix
Pisidian
Rhegium (in Southern Italy)
Salmone
Sardis
Smyrna
Syracuse (Sicily)
Tarsus
Thessalonica
Thyatira
Troas
Letters to Macedonia (Northern Greece):
• 1 Thessalonians (To the church in Thessalonica)
• 2 Thessalonians (To the church in Thessalonica)
• Philippians (To the church in Philippi)
Letters to Achaia (Southern Greece):
• 1 Corinthians (To the church in Corinth)
• 2 Corinthians (To the church in Corinth)
Letters to Greek Island Churches:
• Titus (Written to Titus while he was leading the church network on the island of Crete)
Letters to specific Greek Cities:
• Ephesians (To the church in Ephesus)
• Colossians (To the church in Colossae)
• Revelation (Contains seven distinct letters addressed to Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, and Laodicea).
Letters to Greek Provinces:
• Galatians (To a network of churches in the region of Galatia)
• 1 Peter (A circular letter to believers scattered across Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia)
Letters to Leaders Stationed in Greek Asia Minor:
• 1 Timothy (Written to Timothy while he was managing the church in Ephesus)
• 2 Timothy (The second letter to Timothy while he was still stationed in Ephesus)
GreekRealm retweeted
Saint Peter founded the Greek Church 1,983 years ago in the Greek city of Antioch (where they were first called 'Christians'). The Greek Orthodox Church is the only one that doesn't need or use a Bible translation.
The name 'Greek' in Greek Orthodox doesn't denote an ethnicity, unlike the Slavic Orthodox Churches (Russian Orthodox, etc,). Technically, all Orthodox Churches are Greek Orthodox (the "Greek East/Latin West" within Europe).
That being said, you have to follow your own heart. I don't try to convert anyone. But I will say that even a secular historian would tell you that the Greek Orthodox Church is the source.
I'm just an idiot who debates people online, I don't represent the Church in any way.
New testament books that take place in Greek Lands:
Acts
Galatians
Ephesians
Colossians
1 Thessalians
2 Thessalians
1 Timothy
2 Timothy
1 Peter
Revelation
Greek islands in the New Testament:
Chios
Cos
Crete
Cyprus
Lesvos
Patmos
Rhodes
Samos
Samothrace
Sicily (in Magna Graecia)
Greek cities mentioned in the New Testament:
Assos
Amphipolis
Apollonia
Athens
Attalia
Berea
Cenchreae
Colossae
Cnidus
Corinth
Derbe
Ephesus
Fair Haven
Hierapolis
Iconium
Laodicea
Lasea
Lystra
Miletus
Mitylene
Myra
Neapolis
Patara
Perga
Pergamum
Philadelphia
Philippi
Phoenix
Pisidian
Rhegium (in Southern Italy)
Salmone
Sardis
Smyrna
Syracuse (Sicily)
Tarsus
Thessalonica
Thyatira
Troas
Letters to Macedonia (Northern Greece):
• 1 Thessalonians (To the church in Thessalonica)
• 2 Thessalonians (To the church in Thessalonica)
• Philippians (To the church in Philippi)
Letters to Achaia (Southern Greece):
• 1 Corinthians (To the church in Corinth)
• 2 Corinthians (To the church in Corinth)
Letters to Greek Island Churches:
• Titus (Written to Titus while he was leading the church network on the island of Crete)
Letters to specific Greek Cities:
• Ephesians (To the church in Ephesus)
• Colossians (To the church in Colossae)
• Revelation (Contains seven distinct letters addressed to Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, and Laodicea).
Letters to Greek Provinces:
• Galatians (To a network of churches in the region of Galatia)
• 1 Peter (A circular letter to believers scattered across Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia)
Letters to Leaders Stationed in Greek Asia Minor:
• 1 Timothy (Written to Timothy while he was managing the church in Ephesus)
• 2 Timothy (The second letter to Timothy while he was still stationed in Ephesus)
"Dear non-Catholics. The Crusader aesthetic is inherently Catholic. Stop the larp. My culture is not your costume."
This comment was aimed at Protestants.
A Greek Orthodox response:
The so-called "Crusader aesthetic" was itself just a copy of the centuries-older Orthodox Roman knights of Constantinople ("Byzantium").
Long before western chivalry developed its romantic ideals, Byzantium was already glorifying with poetry the Akritai knights and their long struggle against Islam.
The concept of the "warrior-monk" or the knight-ascetic was already deeply embedded in Greek Byzantium centuries before Western Europe created the Knights Templar or the Hospitallers.
When the Crusader orders were formed in the 12th century as a radical new concept in the Catholic West—men who took monastic vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience but wielded swords—they were stepping directly into a template the Eastern Roman Empire had spent half a millennium perfecting.
Before the Crusades, Western European art rarely depicted holy figures or saints in armor. In contrast, the Greek East had an entire canon of Byzantine Military Saints—such as Saint George, Saint Demetrios, Saint Theodore Teron, and Saint Mercurios.
During the First Crusade (which happened due to the Roman Emperor asking the pope for aid), and after Crusaders arrived in places like Cappadocia or Constantinople, they saw these armored, haloed warriors painted across every Orthodox Church wall and instantly adopted this exact visual vocabulary for themselves.
Right around the time the First Crusade launched (1095 AD), the Byzantine Komnenian Dynasty had already shifted the imperial elite's identity around strict martial ideals. They fused the supreme political authority of the Roman state with the intense Greek Orthodox religious piety and military bravery of its knights.
The Crusaders didn't just stumble upon ancient history; they interacted with a living, contemporary medieval Roman court where the highest expression of nobility was a deeply religious, heavily armored aristocratic warrior.
By taking the ascetic mysticism of Eastern Christian monasticism and combining it with heavy armor, the Catholic Crusaders didn't innovate a new lifestyle—they exported a Greek Orthodox paradigm back to the Latin West.
Image: Byzantine Cataphract, 9th century AD, Eastern Roman Empire.
