Women and the Crusades

Crusade has always been associated with men. However, throughout history women have played a very big role in crusades. During unsettling times in several countries, women played an equal role at par in crusading for the cause. During the initial years of the crusades, women set off on a journey along with men to Jerusalem to ask forgiveness for their sins and also in efforts to free it from Muslim control. In 1096, when the crusaders lost to the Muslims, the Pope declared that no woman, children and old people were allowed to be a part of the crusades. Despite the ban, many women accompanied their husbands on the crusade. The most famous woman crusader was Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine.
When the crusaders went on a cause, they left their women and children behind. The women would wait for as long as ten years for their spouses, fathers and brothers to return. Some men never returned and the women ended up waiting without knowing what happened to these men. It could be a son, a father or a husband.
In the first crusade, more than 500 thousand men were lost. The second crusade had several men with arms. These included nobles and common men and women were left to look after the wealth and administration back home. The women faced raid on properties and were often found defending their homes. They went through emotional and physical abuse. Several women refused to give up their homes as they preferred to be killed in their own homes than be taken as slaves or killed somewhere else. Such heroic encounters gave women more confidence to fight.
Women governed the country and the household on the name of their husband and raised children. Even the royal regencies did it when the king was away on the crusade. The queen and mother of Louis VIII of France, Blanche of Castile, became a regent when the king was away on a crusade. While leaving, Louis told his mother that he was leaving his three wards and the country of France in her care. Blanche suppressed rebellions and also increased the power of French dynasty. She formed several alliances and also took over Midi into France. As a result of her governance, France expanded and is pretty much same even today in terms of boundaries.
Anna Comnena, the daughter of the emperor of Byzantine, wrote about the arrival of the crusaders, who first came to Jerusalem in the year 1099. She documented how these so-called liberators ended up raiding and looting the people and the land.

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The Crusades: First, Second and Third Crusades

The First Crusade was provoked by the preaching of Crusade against the Muslims by Urban II, at a synod at Clermont in November 1095. There had earlier been an appeal to the West for aid against the Muslims by Alexus Emperor of Constantinople, whose Eastern Roman empire the Muslims were threatening. Urban's appeal widened the scope of the affair into the pious goal of rescuing the holy places in Palestine from Muslim domination.
The Western armies had earlier fought the Muslims("Moors") in Spain and Sicily, in the effort to expel them from the territories they held in Western Europe. In the East,the Muslims had for many years been persecuting pilgrims and threatening the Eastern half of the Roman Empire.
The First Crusade was essentially a popular movement estimated to have involved a mass movement of close to a million people in eastern migration(close in scope to the barbarian migrations which led to the fall of the Roman Empire). The largely French crowd that heard the preaching of Urban II responded enthusiastically. Subsequent preaching for a Crusade by Peter the Hermit and Walter the Penniless snowballed enthusiasm into a growing crowd of illiterate peasants marching through Germany, Hungary and the Balkans in 1096, much to the alarm of the Emperor of Constantinople who had not foreseen that the Western response to his appeal would be a popular unorganized mass movement of zealous but misguided peasants!
The crowd was hurriedly allowed to cross the straits into Asia Minor where it was massacred by the Turks with the remnant taken as prisoners or sold into slavery. A second wave of Crusaders led by nobles from France, Belgium and Norman Italy consisting of properly organized professional troops landed in Constantinople in the Spring of 1097. Nicaea was taken after a siege and Antioch by the spring of 1098. Jerusalem was captured in the spring of 1099. After the success of the Crusaders the feudal lords at the head of the Crusading armies settled down to carving out fiefdoms for themselves in captured areas. Many of the European styled castles in the Near East date from the time of the First Crusade. The province of Jerusalem became the fiefdom of Godfrey of Bouillon("Kingdom of Jerusalem"). The Order of the Knights Templar and Hospitallers was formed to provide protection for Christian pilgrims and fight against the Muslims.
The Second Crusade arose from the need to deal with the threat to Jerusalem from the northwestern flank of the Kingdom after the fall of the Kingdom of Edessa to the Muslims. Bernard of Clairvaux (a famous mystic) by his preachings and exhortations roused the King of France and the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire to action. The Second Crusade, however, was a failure for Jerusalem was recaptured by the Muslims under Saladin in 1187.
The Third Crusade(1189-92) is known as the King's Crusade and came under the leadership of Phillip Augustus of France, Richard of England and Emperor Frederick ("Barbarossa"). The Third Crusade met with early crisis when "Barbarossa" was accidentally drowned on the way to Palestine; and Phillip Augustus had a disagreement with Richard and returned home. Richard had to proceed with the Crusade alone. He was,however, unable to dislodge the Muslims from Jerusalem but he scored the partial success of an agreement with Saladin which granted Christian pilgrims access to Jerusalem.
The Fourth Crusade was at the instance of Innocent III and other French priests. It was, therefore, essentially a French crusade under papal direction. Boats were needed by the Crusaders for transportation and the Doge of Venice offered to supply them at a price. The Crusaders, however,could not afford the sum and in payment they agreed to help the Venetians recapture Zara, a town that had once been under Venetian control. After the recapture of Zara, the crusaders made a sudden change in objective. Rather than sail to Alexandria in Egypt, they sailed to Constantinople and laid siege on the city. Constantinople, capital of the Eastern Roman Empire was captured in 1204. Although Innocent had not been involved in the decision to divert the Crusade to Constantinople, he gladly accepted the results for at last, the Greek Church in the Eastern Empire came under Papal authority, bringing the power of the Pope to a new zenith in Europe. Besides, the strategic military significance of the new possession was obvious. Constantinople could serve as convenient base for a Fifth Crusade against the Muslims.
Innocent III also sponsored a Crusade under the leadership of Simon de Montfort against the Albigensis (Cathari)of Southern France in 1208, and a savage war which virtually exterminated the "heretical" sect was fought. The Fifth and Sixth Crusades were only partially successful. Frederick leader of the Sixth Crusade successfully negotiated an agreement with the Muslims allowing the Christians control over Jerusalem, Bethlehem and Nazareth.But subsequent Crusades failed to keep Jerusalem under Christian control and Jerusalem fell under the control of the Saracens who succeeded the Seljuk Turks to power in Palestine.
A sad event occurred in 1212; the Children's Crusade. Two boys, barely in their teens, Stephen and Nicholas led an "Army" of "pious" children across southern Europe to Italy in a bid to sail to the Holy Land but were captured and sold by unscrupulous merchants into slavery. The Children had believed that their innocence would guarantee their success where their "sinful" parents had failed.
The Crusades ended in 1291 with the fall of Acre to the Muslims.

The writer JohnThomas Didymus is the author of "Confessions of God: The Gospel According to St. JohnThomas Didymus"( [http://www.resurrectionconspiracy.com/] ). If you have found this article interesting please read the related article ALIEN SPACE INVADERS AND THE CHRISTIAN BELIEF IN THE SECOND COMING OF JESUS on his blog: http://johnthomasdidymus.blogspot.com/2010/10/alien-space-invaders-and-christian.html.

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Saint Rita of Cascia and the Stigmata

We could spend a whole library of books sharing the miracles and examples of our Lord's love and care in St. Rita's life, but since her life is only a part of this book on heroic women our Lord has called us to share with you, we would like to recall one of the most outstanding gifts. He gave Rita a miracle.
Saint Rita of Cascia receives the Stigmata
During Lent of the year 1443, in Cascia, St. James of Marches, a great preacher of his day, gave a very personal, passionate sermon on our Lord to the Nuns.
Rita was so taken by the sermon that she returned to the Monastery and began to pray, with all her heart and soul, before a fresco of Jesus crucified. As she humbly asked for a part of His suffering on the Cross, admitting that she was unworthy to share His full Passion on Calvary, a thorn fell from the Beloved Head of our Savior and pierced the forehead of St. Rita.
She immediately began to bleed profusely, and the wound that kept bleeding has been accepted by all as the gift of the Stigmata of our Lord.
In the case of most holy people who have been graced with the Stigmata, like St. Francis of Assisi, and the saintly Padre Pio, the fragrance exuded from the holy wounds smells like a beautiful perfume from Heaven, more pleasing even than that of flowers. With the wound of St. Rita, came humiliation, estrangement and isolation.
The wound had such a pungent, putrid odor emanating from it that she had to suffer the ostracism and rejection of her fellow Nuns who, at best, feared it might be infectious and, at worst, could not bear the smell.
She spent the next fifteen years alone, suffering more and more excruciating physical pain. But although she was isolated from her Community in a small cell far away from any of the consoling companionship of other Nuns, she had the Consoler! Instead of looking toward herself and her pain, she focused on Jesus and His Crucified Head of thorns and all the thorns in her life were turned into roses of love by her Lord as she offered them to Him Here we have a perfect case of Redemptive Suffering. Stated simply, redemptive suffering goes like this. You have suffering which will not go away. For some reason, the Lord allows you to have it. You can't pray it away; you can't wish it away. You can become angry, and turn away from God, or you can offer it up to God for the souls in Purgatory, the conversion of sinners, or to relieve the suffering of someone here on earth.
We believe that Redemptive Suffering is a powerful offering to Our Lord. It's a way of taking a terrible negative, the pain inflicted on us by the suffering, and turning it into a great positive, by offering it to Our Lord Jesus.
We believe that Saint Rita of Cascia used this unusual twist of not receiving the fragrance of Heaven that accompanies the Stigmata, to glorify Our Lord Jesus.
She offered up to him the isolation caused by the putrid odor of her wound

Bob and Penny Lord are renowned Catholic authors and television hosts on EWTN, Global Catholic television. They are prolific writers about the Catholic faith, especially the Saints for which they have been dubbed "experts on the Saints." For more about stigmata and stigmatist go to: http://www.discover-catholic-miracles.com/stigmatists.html

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The Evangelical Religion

Beginning in Great Britain in the 1700's, Evangelicalism, which is a Protestant Christian movement, followers have the belief that they must be "born again". It's about personal conversion and focuses on the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Being "born again" means rebirth. It is a spiritual birth by accepting Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. When we are first born, which everyone experiences, that is the birth of the flesh. To be spiritually reborn, one would accept Christ and therefore be able to go to heaven once life on this earth is complete.
The term "evangelical" is used by a number of different break offs mostly stemming from the Roman Catholic Church. The word itself comes from the Greek word for "Gospel" or "good news". People who follow and evangelical faith have life principles founded on the New Testament and therefore are Christian.
Often times the Evangelical religion is classified as the middle ground religion between theological liberalism and Fundamentalist Christianity. This classification comes from the view that liberal parties seem to concede to the values of the world yet their fellow Fundamentalists have lost the Christ-like heart.
For those evangelicals in North America, their social views tend to be very conservative. We can see this especially in the aspects of marriage being defined between one man and one woman and also their views against abortion. Evangelicals oppose same sex marriage and tend to oppose laws that would permit abortion.
The influences from evangelicals during election times are great. There is always a large appeal of the Christian right in red states and there seems to be huge success when it comes to appealing to certain social agendas. It is believed that Christianity should have a place among public life since the Untied States was founded on principles surrounding religious freedom. This however doesn't mean that all evangelicals lean towards the more conservative side when it comes to politics. There are members on both sides.

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Ramayana - Victory of Virtue Over Vice

The Ramayana is an ancient Sanskrit epic attributed to the poet Valmiki and an important part of the Hindu canon. The Ramayana consists of 24,000 verses in seven cantos and tells the story of Rama, whose wife Sita is abducted by the demon king of Lanka, Ravan.
Like its epic cousin Mahabharata, the Ramayana is not just an ordinary story. It contains the teachings of the very ancient Hindu sages and presents them through allegory in narrative and the interspersion of the philosophical and the devotional. The characters of Rama, Sita, Lakshmana, Bharat, Hanuman and Ravana (the villain of the piece) are all fundamental to the cultural consciousness of the world.
Morals in Ramayana
The brief narration of the entire Ramayana story by the sage Narada to Valmiki, forms the first sarga of Valmiki Ramayana. Narada lists the sixteen qualities of the ideal man and says that Rama was the complete man possessing all sixteen of these qualities. Although Rama himself declares "he is but a man", and never once claims to be divine, Rama is regarded by Hindus as one of the most important avatars of God Vishnu and an ideal man.
The story of Rama is divided into four parts:
1. Early life of Rama
2. Rama's exile
3. Abduction of Sita (Rama's wife) and
4. Slaying of Ravana, the abductor of Sita, and Rama's coronation.
Main Characters
1. Rama is the hero of this epic tale. He is portrayed as an incarnation of the god Vishnu. He is the eldest and the favorite son of the King of Ayodhya, Dasharatha. He is a popular prince loved by one and all. He is the epitome of virtue. Dasaratha, forced by one of his wives Kaikeyi commands Rama to relinquish his right to the throne for fourteen years and go into exile by his father. While in exile, Rama kills the demon king Ravana.
2. Sita is the wife of Rama and the daughter of king Janaka. She is the incarnation of Goddess Laxmi (Lord Vishnu's wife). Sita is the epitome of womanly purity and virtue. She follows her husband into exile and there gets abducted by Ravana. She is imprisoned in the island of Lanka by Ravana. Rama rescues her by defeating the demon king Ravana.
3. Hanuman is a vanara belonging to the kingdom of Kishkinda. He worships Rama and helps find Sita by going to the kingdom of Lanka crossing the great ocean.
4. Lakshmana, the younger brother of Rama, chose to go into exile with him. He spends his time protecting Sita and Rama. Ravana and Maricha deceive him into believing that Rama was in trouble while Sita gets abducted.
5. Ravana, a rakshasa, is the king of Lanka. He received a boon from Brahma that he will not be killed by either gods, demons or by spirits, after performing a severe penance for ten thousand years. He was also the most intelligent and erudite living being of his time. He has ten heads and twenty arms. After getting his reward from Brahma, Ravana begins to lay waste the earth and disturbs the deeds of good Brahmins. Rama is born a human to defeat him, thus overcoming the boon given by Brahma.
6. Dasharatha is the king of Ayodhya and the father of Rama. He has three queens, Kousalya, Sumitra and Kaikeyi, and three other sons, Bharata, Lakshmana and Shatrughna. Kaikeyi, Dasharatha's favourite queen forces him to make his son Bharata heir apparent and send Rama into exile. Dashatara dies heartbroken after Rama goes into exile.
7. Bharata is the second son of Dasharata. When he learns that his mother Kaikeyi had forced Rama into exile and caused Dasharata to die broken hearted, he storms out of the palace and goes in search of Rama. When Rama refuses to break his exile to return to the capital to assume the throne, he requests and gets Rama's sandals and places them on the throne. Bharata then rules Ayodhya as a representative of Rama.
8. Vishvamitra is the sage who takes Rama into the forest at the behest of defeating the demons destroying his Vedic sacrifices. On the way back he takes Rama into Mithila where Rama sees and falls in love with Sita.

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Did Alien Astronauts Really Come Down to Earth in Ancient Times?

Many sci-fi lovers like to believe that alien astronauts visited earth in ancient times. While it is a very attractive idea, there really is no way to know what did or didn't happen in in prehistoric times. There are no written records, no surviving words-of-mouth passed down through the generations, and certainly no ruins of technologically advanced cities. As far as history tells us, there is no evidence that humans have ever come into contact with alien life forms on earth. But we know that even in the day before recorded history, some people were not as backward as we might think they were. And they were doing some really strange things that are hard to explain today.
Transport yourself back to the Salisbury Plain of present-day southwest England some three thousand five hundred years ago. Some strange things were going on there. People were dragging huge stones of up to 50 tons from as far as 250 kilometers away to build a circle of upright stones. That place is called Stonehenge these days and only 17 of those awesome rocks stand today. What is more amazing is that some rocks lie horizontally over other standing rocks, like beams across the ceiling of a modern building. Now think of this. Only about three to four hundred years ago, people did not have the technology to lift such huge weights, let alone transport them over such a distance. How did the people who built the Stonehenge do that? Did they have the kind of advanced technology that we have today? There is no evidence to suggest that. Or did they get a little help from alien beings who came with their high-tech equipment, did the job and flew away? Don't be so quick to pooh-pooh the idea because, as stated above, there really is no way to know what did or didn't happen in prehistoric times. The second question is what did they build the rock formation for? If humans didn't have a very good reason to build it, then someone probably did.
Now transport yourself back a little back to the future to the Nazca Desert in southern Peru. The ancestors of today's Nazca Indians who lived there were drawing enormous lines across the desert, some as long as 65 kilometers. The drawings are so vast that the pictures they make can only be seen properly from the air. Two questions immediately spring up in mind. How and why? There is no written record to suggest any answer to these questions. Did they build it just for fun? Not very likely. Did they build it as part of ancient ritual? Probablen! Or were they landing areas for alien spacecraft as suggested by some? But if they were, then there must surely have been Nazca folklores about strange craft and strange beings from the stars. The absence of any such folklore leaves a blank. In fact, until they were discovered from the air by a pilot of an airplane flying over the area in the early 20th century, the native Indians of the area weren't even aware of the lines, which means neither they nor their ancestors had any use for the strange lines. But if humans had no use for the lines, then someone probably did; otherwise they wouldn't be there. Was it ancient astronauts from outer space?
Now let's go to another time in ancient Gaul, which is roughly an area covered by today's France. Between 5,000 and 7,000 years ago, some prehistoric inhabitants of that place were erecting huge, roughly-rectangular shaped rocks in several parallel lines that stretched up to 6 kilometers. The number of the stones is itself staggering: more than 3000 in all. And the stones are not your regular pick-and-carry sized rocks; they are huge rocks that are as high as 4 meters. That was pretty tough work considering the primitive technology available to them. But somehow they did it. Why? One theory is that these were erected to serve as ancient seismographs. Really? Is France so earthquake-prone? Or was it at that time? Not very likely. However, it is obvious that they were made for a purpose, but nobody knows what. Did some intelligent visitors from outer space erect them as markers?
The Hindu epic Ramayana mentions a flying machine called the 'Pushpak Viman' which belonged to the ten-headed arch-villain Ravana. Although there is no description of what it looked like or how it flew, or even who made it, it was certainly a flying machine and he used it to fly all the way from his capital city to the forest where the hero Rama was living and abduct the latter's beautiful and faithful wife. There are also countless stories of gods, demons and powerful sages using devastating projectiles like the 'agnyatra' (fire missile) and 'bayuastra' (wind missile) to wipe out their enemies and several villages at a time. There is even mention of a poison gas that was capable of wiping out life from the entire world. How did these ancient people know of such things with their primitive technology? They certainly didn't develop the technology as there are no relics of technologically advanced ancient cities in India. There can be only one answer: they probably saw it. The saw strange flying machines in the sky and probably witnessed them either engaging in aerial battles or using their technology for other more productive purposes.
Until a few decades ago, it was easy to dismiss the idea of alien life in the universe. Not so anymore. With the discovery of more and more exo-planets, it is now known that almost every star has a planetary system. Considering that there are over a 100 billion stars in our galaxy (The Milky Way) alone, there could be at least a hundred billion planets out there. If only a tiny fraction of these exo-planets support life, the number of planets with life would still be staggering. And here we are only talking about the Milky Way galaxy. There are over a 100 billion galaxies each with over a 100 billion stars. Now do the math yourself. Therefore, the idea that earth may have been visited by alien astronauts in ancient times is not so farfetched. If you think about it, our own descendents may be traversing the universe in huge spaceships as alien explorers in search of energy, treasures and new worlds to conquer within the next five centuries.
The End

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What Is the Silver Cord? The Inside Scoop on Weird Out of Body Phenomena That MAY Be Real

What is the silver cord in out of body and astral projection literature supposed to mean? Does it symbolize something in our collective unconscious, or is it a real thing that connects our physical body to our spiritual self?
The funny thing is, even if you are hard core, true blue believer in psychic and paranormal experiences, the silver cord is a pretty controversial topic.
I've seen arguments break out amongst people who experiment with, and regularly have out of body experiences, or astral travel adventures, with some believing they are real, and others believing they are simply a construction of the imagination. (and NOT emblematic of an authentic spiritual experience)
Some common thoughts?
Some believe that the silver cord connects the ethereal body with the physical. (and separation can lead to physical death)
Others believe that the silver cord is only a metaphor, or a psychic "archetype" that is passed on from generation to generation, and somehow gets embedded in the awareness of the astral traveler... hence, they believe it's real, and there.
Others like myself, simply aren't sure! Why? Because I've had plenty of OBE's, and have never seen a silver cord of any kind, YET... at the very same time, it strikes me as odd that so many unrelated people see the same sort of visual imagery in the out of body experience, and have it NOT be something that is there for some.
As a matter of fact, there is some reference to a silver cord going back hundreds of years, and across many different cultures, continents and centuries of time, making it very unlikely to me that's it a complete fabrication.
Also, many people believe that the soul, or spiritual self leaves the body every night during sleep... and the "subtle" body, flies freely without any cord or connection with your physical body, and only returns when you awake and regain ordinary awareness. (or at least what we consider to be ordinary awareness, the OBE state might be the REAL world and THIS one... only a illusion:-)
Did you know, for example, that in Hindu and some Buddhist literature, the subtle body or etheric energy of every person enters what are called the "Bardo" realms that the soul occupies between consciousness and sleep? This is the same place that many OBE'rs visit during the astral travel or out of body experience, and is also very similar to the "heaven" that many people who come close to death, but are revived... report as well.
What do you think about the silver cord? Have you seen one? Have you had an OBE experience? Many people who experiment with binaural beats claim to see a silver cord as well, which in my mind, might be a connection. (no pun intended..;-)

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