The Catholic Book Club discussion

3. Why has the author chosen these ten battles as the ten battles every Catholic should know about?

Apparently the author has chosen to focus on the Ottoman Empire and its attempt to conquest all of Europe from the east. Of course, Islam is mucho more than the Ottoman Empire, although for some time this Empire dominated many of the Islamic countries nearest to Europe.

There were also other Islamic Empires and countries in the world, such as what today is Indonesia, the Mogul Empire in India, or the Shiite Iranian Empire, but their influence on European history was almost nil.

There was also the Golden Horde, the Mongol Khanate in Russia. The Mongol invasion of eastern Europe was as dangerous as the Turkish, as they also laid siege to Vienna, but at that time the Mongols hadn't yet adopted Islam as their official religion. Anyway, there were important battles at that time, in Poland, Lithuania, Hungary and Bulgaria, that probably Catholics would do well to know about.

I do not know if Michael D. Greaney wrote about Nicopolis and Varna. There is another battle called Kosovo. The battle quoted by the Professor was Lignica when the mongolians attacked Europe the battle of Lignica where they defeated to the Duke Henry Pius and big Master of the Teutonic Knights and they invaded Hungary in the age of Bela IV. Frederick II Hohestaufen (the enemy of the popes)did not anything to defend the Empire.

I chose these battles because I had already published half of them in a different form in the old "Catholic Men's Quarterly". When the late John Moorehouse suggested turning the articles into a book, I realized we had a theme going, of relatively obscure battles (at least to western Europeans), and it seemed better to have something to tie them together instead of just a random collection. We were planning on a follow=up, but never got to it before John died. I was also working on a five-volume work explaining how Rome came to be the logical place to HQ the Church, but I was only able to get up to Magnesia in 190 BC before I got diverted by other projects.

Interesting project to the Rome and the race for becoming the head of the Church. I must admit that i am a big fan of Mr. D. Greaney and i read his articles in Catholic World Report.

Sad to say, CWP suspended the series I was doing for them without telling me why. I had a dozen completed, of which they published four and scheduled a fifth, but then kept rescheduling, and finally stopped responding to my monthly queries after telling me for six months "within the next two weeks." My personal feeling is that it was aliens from the planet Koozbane who forced them to stop, since the readers' comments seemed to be positive.

Michael wrote: "Sad to say, CWP suspended the series I was doing for them without telling me why. I had a dozen completed, of which they published four and scheduled a fifth, but then kept rescheduling, and finall..."

Well, it's a shame, because they were very good, and I like them. In fact, it's getting harder and harder for me to read Catholic World Report. It's getting further and further away from what I like the most. But his list of the best books I read this year is a must-have classic. Now I read a lot of Religion in Freedom in which my friend Pablo J. Gines works https://www.religionenlibertad.com/?g.... I also read Imaginative Conservative https://theimaginativeconservative.org/. By the way, I received a lot of criticism for defending the Crusaders, and criticizing Dan Jones' book Crusaders: The Epic History of the Wars for the Holy Lands https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... I was criticized by Wokes, Muslims, and Byzantine Philes, and I am also a lover of the Byzantine Empire, and I consider, that as long as the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem existed Byzantium was guaranteed survival. They don't seem to talk about that, and they didn't refute Islam's attacks on pre-Crusader Christian kingdoms. I certainly do not like the excessive ideologization of my fellow historians. It is curious how the Crusades began to be criticized, perhaps this began with Walter Scott, but the last decades have been insane. In Spain the Professor (Manuel Alfonseca) can assure us we have the idea of the three cultures of a tolerant Islam, with a flourishing economy in which Jews, Muslims, and Christians coexisted peacefully sweetened. Behind this myth were Blas Infante, and Américo Castro.

It is very interesting what the Professor has pointed out referring to the Mongols, and to the battle of Lignica of the thirteenth century in which Poles, Germans, and Hungarians fought against the Mongols, and only the death of the great Kahn prevented the destruction of Europe. I believe, that Belloc already raised decisive battles of Christians against pagans, and heretics in both "The Great Heresies" and "Europe, and Faith. Against the Persians, in fact without the wars between Persians and Byzantines, Islam could never have expanded. We also have battles against the Vikings in France, Spain, England, and Ireland the latter shaking off the yoke of the Vikings with Brian Bru. The case of Otto I warring against the Magyars in Lechfeld. They are cases that could be interesting, and worthy of study. As for Central Europe I am a great lover of that region, and I have bet on those writers Zofia Kossak Szucka, Laszlo Passuth, Jaroslav Durych, Hanna Malewska, and the Romanian writers Vintila Horia author of the "Knight of Resignation" https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1... , and Constantin Virgil Gheorghiu I believe that Central Europe is decisive in our history, and should be given greater importance than it has, so I believe that Michael D. Greaney's book is worthy of praise, and praise.