Ближний Восток и его соседи

g 211 h The Stance of the Greek Orthodox Church Towards the Crusades... In order to reinforce her stance towards material war, the Roman Church used examples from the Old Testament such as the Crossing of the Red Sea (Exodus), the Maccabees, the extermination of the Amalekites and Decretum Gratiani . The Roman Church disregarded the famous quote by Origen Adamantius that “…the Christians read the wars of the Jews in the churches during mass” in the sense that the physical struggles are in the likeness of the spiritual struggles. Moreover, the famous terms miles Christi, militia Christi and bellum Domini lost their spiritual character and inspired the believers in the conduct of material war. 1 The Pope, being the supreme judge and guarantor of dogmatic matters (matters concerning the faith), gave the Crusades their intellectual and theoretical foundation. The Pope’s position in the Roman Church is quite different from that of the Pa- triarch in the Orthodox Church. The doctrine of infallibility is a prerogative of the Pope and any insult directed to the Pope, meant an insult to the entity of the Roman Church. A major case of the use of Canon Law o support the idea of the Papal su- premacy is the Canonical Collection under the name Deusdedit created under Pope Gregory VII. The purpose of that collection was to ensure the idea of the universal primacy of the Pope of Rome. It has to be noted that the term “infallibility” which is used in this text, was novel, but the spirit of this notion preexisted to its official proclamation as dogma by the first Vatican Council (in its text — “Pastor Aeternus”). 2 The social acceptance and support towards the Crusades had its founda- tion to the idea of the “liberation” of the “Holy Land”. This idea, however, is not identical in the Roman and Byzantine Churches. Western piousness dic- tated and established the practice of pilgrimage, that is a visit to the Christian Holy Land. Pilgrimage became the wishful thinking and dream of every pious and faithful believer. The supreme pilgrimage was the pilgrimage to the Holy Land. 3 In the Byzantine Church the concept of the “Holy Land” prevailed mostly after the 4 th century. This was a time where a lot of pagans started converting to Christianity. Up until that time, the concept of the Temple was mostly iden- 1 M. Villey. La Croisade. Essai sur la formation d’une théorie juridique. (L’Église et l’État au Moyen Age, 6). Paris: J. Vrin, 1942. P. 21–29. 2 S. Runciman. Δύση και Ανατολή σε Σχίσμα, tr.by Chr. Makropoulos. Athens: En PLo, 2008. P. 24–25; and also, Liber Canonum , I, 421 and 422 // Dictionnaire de théologie catholique. A. Vacant, E. Mangenot, E. Amann. Paris, 1924. Vol. 4, Pt. 1. Column 650. 3 N. Moschonas. Οι Σταυροφορίες, το Οραμα και η δράση // N. Moschonas (ed.). Η Τέταρτη Σταυροφορία και ο Ελληνικός Κόσμος. [ΕΙΕ/ΙΒΕ — Το Βυζάντιο Σήμερα, 5]. Athens: National Research Foundation, 2008. P. 64.