ORTHODOX OR CATHOLIC?!

ORTHODOX OR CATHOLIC ?!

Albanian historiography is stuck in the times of Enver Hoxha.

    Enver Hoxha for reasons that can be neither positive nor negative imposed a development of Albanian Historiography completely detached from religion, but he practically continued in the path of King Zog, the formulation of Pashko Vasa, The religion of the Albanians is Albanism.

    Due to historical events never clearly explained by Albanian historiography, we have reached a sorry state where Albanians officially learn a version of Albanian history that is fundamentally different from what is taught in academies outside Albanian territories.

    The main example is the Albanian Flag of the Two-Headed Eagle. The whole world academy teaches it as the Orthodox Roman Flag (later on this, as this definition is incorrect as well). The Albanian academy has not come up with a final position on the meaning of the flag. There is a reason for this concealment, it was right as during that time something like that was required. But now in the age of the internet, the continued coverup of the truth causes confusion, especially with documentaries and strange articles in the Albanian-speaking media that churches in Albanian-speaking lands allegedly used to be Catholic in the 6th century.

    First of all, when historians in the West use the words Catholic, Orthodox, Greek, Latin, these are codes that historians use to single out different periods or groups of the past for analytical effect. None of these terms are used in their literal sense. For example: The term "Greek Fathers", now widely used for church fathers who formulated Christian theology during the Roman Empire, made theology in the dialect of the ancient Greek language called Koine Hellenic spoken by merchants and sailors during that time, it performed the function of English now in modern times. The Gospels were also written in that language, in the language of the merchants. Apostle Paul preached in the Koine Hellenic dialect of sea traders. As I read somewhere, something similar has now happened to the language of Aircraft Pilots, plain English with simple words agreed upon as the international aviation language aiming to simplify communication in order to avoid deadly accidents.

So the term "Greek" in theology, has nothing to do with what is now called the Greek nation, when discussed by historians. Even if we take as an example St. Gregory Nazianzen, who was practically Greek from birth, if he was called Greek, he would be very offended and would answer that he was a Christian, not a Greek. The meaning of the word Greek had to do with the pagan Greek philosophy that was at war with the Christian theology of that time.

    Now, was Skanderbeg Catholic or Orthodox? Answer, Skanderbeg was a Roman Christian, whereas Catholic and Orthodox IDENTITY, did NOT exist in the 15th century. In his own seal Skanderbeg declared that he was a Roman (Romaios in Koine Hellenic), which at the time meant Christian. The seal is found in a museum in Denmark and displayed online.

    The term Catholic comes from the ancient Greek word Katholikos, which means No Blemish, Complete, No Distortion. In Latin the word Universalis began to be used for some time, but the word Universalis means rotation around a center, practically the word Circle, which is philosophically catastrophic because it leaves out of analysis the space outside the circle. So Latin-speaking Christian theologians were forced to reuse the word in Koine Hellenic, Katholikos, which is still used to this day.

    And the word Orthodox, comes again from Koine Hellenic, which means the True Doctrine, Orthodoxos.

    All Christian denominations around the world assert to be Catholic and Orthodox, meaning that they all have a no-blemish faith which possesses true doctrine. So as you can see, a monastery built in the 6th century by the Romans can be neither Catholic nor Orthodox as an identity, and is both Catholic and Orthodox as a theology.

    As for the use of the word Catholic and Orthodox as IDENTITY, this came as a need during the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire.

    What is today called Catholic or Orthodox as a code among historians (however understood as Identity from a political point of view) were merely Liturgical Rituals of the Ecclesiastical Prayers of the various Christian areas that were created by the Roman Emperors of Constantinople for management purposes. Each See followed whatever liturgical rituals based on local prayers they used, there was no standardization. Rome was different, and Constantinople New Rome was different.

    In the 6th century, the Albanian-born Roman Emperor Justinian (who also built St. Sophia in New Rome Constantinople), created the Pentarchy, dividing the Empire into 5 Sees, Rome, New Rome Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem. At that time the Prefecture of Illyria was inside the See of Rome. In the 8th century, in 740, because of the war against icons known as Iconoclasm, Emperor Leo Isaurian, out of rage that the Pope of Rome did not support him in the fight against the icons, removed southern Italy and Illyria from the management of the Roman See, and handed over the management to the New Rome Constantinople, having replaced the Patriarch of New Rome Constantinople with another who obeyed him in the war against the icons.

    From 740 onwards, the all Albanian-speaking areas came under the control of the Liturgical Rituals according to Constantinopolitan customs. Again, the concept of Catholicism and Orthodoxy as separate identities did not exist at that time.

    In 1054 Rome and New Rome Constantinople severed relations for political reasons embellished on the surface with theological reasons. The severance of relations was not reflected on the ground, Christianity continued to be united, but Rome was now no longer part of the Roman Empire centered in New Rome Constantinople, but in the possession of the Germanic Kings. Now Rome, influenced by the German Kings, began to penetrate into the liturgical territory of Constantinople. The climax occurred in 1204 when the Crusaders destroyed Constantinople after the Emperor they helped seize power lied to them and did not pay the promised amount of money, for them to continue the campaign for the recapture of Jerusalem by the Muslims.

    However, even after the withdrawal of the Crusaders from Constantinople New Rome almost 80 years later, Christianity continued to be united, although the Patriarch in Constantinople and the Pope in Rome continued their direct conflict between them over control of liturgical territories.

    This situation continued even with the conquest of Constantinople by the Ottomans (not the Turks, the concept of the Turkish Nation was invented by Ataturk in 1923), Christianity continued to be united again until the end of the 17th century. During this period, Constantinople New Rome and Rome made an attempt to reconcile with the councils of Ferrara and Florence that began in 1431 and ended in 1449 with the consent of the Pope and Patriarch under the Roman Emperor Palaeologus XI of New Rome Constantinople. During this period Skanderbeg re-takes Kruja from the Ottomans (not the Turks), and begins the war in cooperation with the Christians in Western Europe. Again, the entire Albanian-speaking area, including the territory now called Kosovo, (renamed Kosovo by the Bulgarian Empire during the 9th century), had been under the control of the liturgical rituals of Constantinople for 7 centuries, now called Orthodox. During this period the Slavic tribes that had conquered Roman territories were split, with some adopting liturgical ritual control of Rome now called the Croats, and some others adopting the liturgical ritual control of Constantinople now called the Serbs. The Bulgarians had accepted the Constantinople ritual since they established their Empire in the 9th to 10th centuries. Again, let us repeat again, the concept of Catholic and Orthodox identity did NOT EXIST yet. Skanderbeg was merely a Christian Roman religiously, not Catholic or Orthodox. But Skanderbeg himself married in the Ardenica Monastery which was under the liturgical ritual control of Constantinople, now called Orthodox.

    In 1683 the Ottomans lose the battle of Vienna to the Christian alliance led by Polish King Jan Sobieski. The Pope of Rome began to think of crusades against the Ottomans, which made the sultans very afraid. Until that time, Christianity was again united, monks continued to travel to and take communion in churches with rituals controlled by the Pope of Rome and in churches with rituals controlled by the Patriarch of Constantinople. The fear of the Crusades made the sultans forbid the  cooperation between the churches of Rome and Constantinople, so the end of the 17th century marks the true practical division of Rome and Constantinople.

    During this period the Ottomans had divided the population of the empire into 5 religious groups they called the Millets: Romans (Rum in Ottoman), Muslims, Jews, and 2 Armenian religious groups. The Population census was done only counting the religious identity of the Millet System, the Ottomans had no interest in linguistic identities. At that time all Christians were counted as Romans, regardless of whether they spoke Albanian, Greek, Serbian, Arabic, Bulgarian, Ottoman, or the Phoenician language (now known as Lebanese). During this time, with the help of Venetian merchants, Genoese, and French Kings, etc., the Pope of Rome managed to penetrate somewhat into the territories under the control of the Patriarch of Constantinople, and change the rituals from Constantinopolitan to Roman, which is seen today for example. in what are now called Catholic areas in Albanian territories and some islands that are now part of Greece. Penetration was very low.

    In 1839, under the influence of France and under the control of France, the Sultan gave permission for the creation of the Catholic Millet that mainly affected the areas north of Rumelia - the Land of the Romans (which was renamed the Balkans in the beginning of the 20th century from western Europians) as well as the Maronites in the territory of the former Phoenicians now called Lebanon (Lebanese still speak a language version of the famous Phoenicians who invented the alphabet used today worldwide including Albanians).

    The year 1839 marks the beginning of the concept of Catholic and Orthodox Identity, no longer as theological concepts, but as Identity concepts, forced by the process of dissolution of the Ottoman Empire. In 1870, the Vatican Council officially established the Catholic name as the identity of the churches controlled by Rome. A few years earlier, the German King Otto of Greece had created the Church of Greece, but the term orthodox was not used at all as an identity. Even the church of Russia or Serbia (created in 1920) do not officially incorporate the term Orthodox in their official names. The term Orthodox began to be used openly from the beginning of the 20th century as a reaction to the Vatican Council I. Thus the church of Albania was formed by officially incorporating the term Orthodox into its identity, the Autocephalous Orthodox Church of Albania.

    From this time on, world historiography began to use the terms Catholic or Orthodox when referring to historical analysis for study purposes, but in politics these terms took on a completely different meaning that led to the Balkan wars.

    Highly indicative of the 700-year-old power of the Constantinople Ritual, Skanderbeg's descendants in Italy fought and resisted hard for almost 400 years not to change the Constantinopolitan Rite until the Pope of Rome finally accepted it. To this day the Arbëresh of Italy strongly preserve the Constantinopolitan Ritual of the Liturgy, 1300 years since the 8th century when the Prefecture of Illyria passed under the management of Constantinople to New Rome.

    Application of modern terms to the historical past, in the field of historiography is called Anachronism. Anachronism has now begun to be fought in Western historiography since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, and such nonsense as 15th-century Greek or Serbian identity as Orthodox or Catholic is now ridiculed in symposiums on Byzantine historiography.

    Albanian historiography is the most backward in this regard, it is stuck in a deep historiographical ignorance, Albanians still do not know the meaning of the Albanian flag, let alone knowing the true history.

    In another post I will explain why the Albanian Renaissance adopted the Christian Roman Flag we use today.

Ektrit Manushi

EktritReport.com

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