Last Emperor, The - DivX Version (Normal Quality), DVD (Good Quality), PDA Version, HD Ready:720p (Super Quality)
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IMDB rating: 7.80 Plot: A dramatic history of Pu Yi, the last of the Emperors of China, from his lofty birth and brief reign in the Forbidden City, the object of worship by half a billion people; through his abdication, his decline and dissolute lifestyle; his exploitation by the invading Japanese, and finally to his obscure existence as just another peasant worker in the People’s Republic. |
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DivX Version (Normal Quality), DVD (Good Quality), PDA Version, HD Ready:720p (Super Quality)
Actors: Lone John,O’Toole Peter,Ying Ruocheng,,Dun Dennis,Sakamoto Ryuichi,Young Ric,Tagawa Cary-Hiroyuki,Ikeda Fumihiko,Vuu Richard,Tijger Tsou,Biography,Drama,History,
How did the consequences of Pope Urban and Innocent III (1st and 4th crusades) go far beyond their intentions?
The Crusades intentions were to redirect excessive violence and an active military culture toward sacred ends. In March 1095 at the Council of Piacenza, ambassadors sent by Byzantine Emperor Alexius I called for help with defending his empire against the Seljuk Turks. Later that year, at the Council of Clermont, Pope Urban II called upon all Christians to join a war against the Turks, promising those who died in the endeavor would receive immediate remission of their sins.[17]The first crusade unleashed a wave of impassioned, personally felt pious Christian fury that was expressed in the massacres of Jews that accompanied the movement of the Crusader mobs through Europe, as well as the violent treatment of "schismatic" Orthodox Christians of the east. During many of the attacks on Jews, local Bishops and Christians made attempts to protect Jews from the mobs that were passing through. Jews were often offered sanctuary in churches and other Christian buildings. In the 13th century, Crusades never expressed such a popular fever, and after Acre fell for the last time in 1291 and the Occitan Cathars were exterminated during the Albigensian Crusade, the crusading ideal became devalued by Papal justifications of political and territorial aggressions within Catholic Europe. The last crusading order of knights to hold territory was the Knights Hospitaller. After the final fall of Acre, they took control of the island of Rhodes, and in the sixteenth century, were driven to Malta, before being finally unseated by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1798. The Fourth Crusade was initiated in 1202 by Pope Innocent III, with the intention of invading the Holy Land through Egypt. Constantinople, after the Fourth Crusade, declined in strength and could no longer cope with the barbarians menacing it. Two centuries later the city fell an easy victim to the Turks. The responsibility for the disaster which gave the Turks a foothold in Europe rests on the heads of the Venetians and the French nobles. Their greed and lust for power turned the Fourth Crusade into a political adventure.
A society plagued by violence was one catalyst resulting in Urban II’s initial call for a crusade (aside from the political cause cited above). Bored and power-wielding nobility were consumed by the new appropriation of violence as a means of exerting local power, which resulted in the Peace of God and Truce of God movements, that attempted to regulate this rampant violence by limiting violence only to certain days and against certain peoples.
Urban II also attempted to channel this aggression by creating a common enemy that Christians could rally against. He had to redirect the violence toward an "other," which would result not only in the crusades in the Holy Land and violence against Muslims, but also against Jews (who were seen as enemies of christ) and heretics. This was one consequence of Urban II’s initial call for a crusading movement, as it resulted in the persecution of not only "enemies of christ" abroad, but also within Christian Europe.
As for Innocent III, the obvious unintended consequence of his call for crusade, which culminated in the disastrous Fourth Crusade, was, because of a serious lack in planning and resources, the crusaders sacking a Christian city, Constantinople. This was a politically and economically motivated crusade, the direction of which was usurped by the nobility running it, not the papacy, which resulted in the sacking of a Christian city. It never even reached the Levant.
| Nov 05, 2009
Muslim armies had conquered much of northern Africa, Egypt, Palestine, Syria, and Spain, which had been some of the most heavily Christian areas in the world.
Thousands, and possibly millions, of Christians died during this drive to eventually bring the entire world under Islam.
The First Crusade was launched in 1095 by Pope Urban II to check the advance of the Muslims and regain control of the city of Jerusalem and the Holy Land.
If this defensive war was not fought then we would probably all be Muslim today.
I am sure that some atrocities were committed by individuals of both sides during this war but by most people’s judgment this was a just war.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Crusa de
With love in Christ.
imacatholic2 | Nov 05, 2009
Bill Pace