Gomelsky

Introduced band music creation into the west.

Chariots of Blood on the Way of St. James

Rennes-le-Château is a village in the foothills of the Pyrenees on the border of France and Spain. Through this village runs one of the most important pilgrimage routes of the Middle Ages – from the Languedoc to Santiago de Compostela, the city to which according to legend the relics of St. James of Zebedee floated at will from Palestine, after having been put in an empty boat. In this regard, Santiago de Compostela became a destination of Christian pilgrims when Palestine appeared to be out of reach because of the Moslem conquests and the reliquary of St. James in the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela became the most revered shrine in Western Europe after the relics of St. Peter in Rome. That explains why this road running from France through Rennes-le-Château to Santiago de Compostela was called the "Way of St. James.”

The British myth of Langedoc or the Impossible Lightness of being a Templar Knight

The limited size of this book does not allow any substantial commentaryon the Crusades except to mention some facts that influenced, in one way or another, the development of Western European Christian art. The cultural exchange between two Abrahamic religions – Islam and Christianity – happened in more or less peaceful conditions on the background of the Byzantine Empire, Spain and the Kingdom of Sicily, while the non-stop slaughter of the Crusades wasn’t very culturally beneficial. Nevertheless, the Crusades caused one really important development in the life of Western Europe, including its art – the emergence of military monastic orders, two of which rose to early prominence: the Order of the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem (Order of the Hospitallers), founded in 1113; and the Order of the Temple, founded in 1119. While the Order of Hospitallers initially was a medical order, later it began to guard pilgrims and give them refuge in so-called hospitals in the desert. Meanwhile, the Order of the Temple, from the very beginning, was created by Hugo Debyn as an order of military ascetics carrying Christianity at the tip of their swords, and that was essentially a new development in Civilization Christianity, turning its theology into a military science.

Lie: Rite against Light.

Roger II’s artistic program was undoubtedly the swan song of Byzantine art in Western Europe. It was followed by Gothic art, which was the first specifically Western European art. Unfortunately, due to the overwhelming influence of the anti-Gothic propaganda during the Renaissance, the philosophy of Gothic art remains unknown. Only recently, due to the work of the outstanding American art historian Irvin Panofsky, has the smog of wrong interpretation begun to disappear and the understanding of the true symbolism and logic of Gothic art become clearer. Meanwhile, the dominance of Gothic art appears to be a key element in understanding Western European mentality, and thus it is possible that the art of this period influenced Western Europe more than that of the Renaissance. It is enough to say that the so-called international Gothic style created a unified cultural space of Western Europe and was responsible for the formation of Civilization Christianity as a worldview.

Great schism: Yehoshua Ha-Notzri against Jesus Christ.

It is absolutely impossible to consider from a canonical point of view such an anti canonical event as the Great Schism, but when in 1054 the legate of Pope Cardinal Humbert entered Hagia Sophia during the celebration of the liturgy and placed on the altar the Bull of excommunication from the Roman Church to all Orthodox Christians who denied the supremacy of the Pope, he made the dichotomy between two substantially different subjects of history – the Orthodox Christian East and the Roman Catholic West obvious. This event signaled the beginning of the drifting away of Western European art from Orthodox Christian art, which simultaneously became the time of the West’s greatest artistic achievements, but also the one shouldn't forget that the top of the mountain is the place from which one can only go down.

Western Christianity: culture against civilization.

Establishing a consolidated position of the Church on the question of “what is an icon - a work of art or just an object of worship?” - is all the more urgent because this issue has geopolitical implications and is closely intertwined with the attitude of Eastern Christians to Western European Christianity. Indeed, it was the heresy of iconoclasm that provoked the "Great Schism" and the emergence of Roman Catholicism, thus giving birth to the West as a catholic civilization.

The Holy Lie - Icons against Christianity.

Participants in the TV talk-show “Judge for Yourselves,” hosted by anchorman Maxim Shevchenko, during a discussion on the controversy caused by the expedited passage by the Russian Parliament of a new law transferring to the Church property that in the Russian Empire was associated with the Orthodox Christian Church, unexpectedly hit a raw nerve when they touched on the subject of the situation in which the Church and the Russian Federation have found themselves following seventy years of living under atheistic rule. It is very important for the Russian Federation to establish its connection not only with the USSR, declared by President Reagan to be an Еvil Empire, but with the Russian Empire as well. Indeed if it is a neoplasm having no connection with historical Russia, it cannot establish internationally recognized borders and it is denied the right to defend its national interests, even in its own territory. The legislation, which would transfer such a vast collection without the funds necessary to preserve it, could have the twin impacts of bankrupting the Church while exposing these national treasures to the ravages of time. A holdover from Soviet times, a certain lassitude of thinking bars the State from funding the preservation of art objects owned by the Church, in spite of the fact that such funding would be in the national interest. Additionally, this action would certainly be the best and the most diplomatic way to underscore the determination of the Russian government to restore its historical continuity with the Soviet Union as well as with the Russian Empire.