“Cordoba Christians love to read Arab poems and fairytales. They study Arab theologians and philosophers not to refute their ideas, but to have a more accurate and elegant Arabic. Where are the people now who read the Latin interpretation of the Bible or study the life and teachings of Jesus, the prophets or the apostles? Alas! All talented young Christians read and study Arabic books with great enthusiasm, collect huge libraries at great expense, despise Christian literature as unworthy of attention. They forget their language. For every person who writes a letter to his friend in Latin, there are a thousand who can express themselves gracefully in Arabic and write better poems in that language than the Arabs.”
Christian scholar Paul Albar (800-861), who lived in Cordoba during the reign of the Umayyad Emirate of Andalusia, expressed the growing admiration for Arabic among Christian youth with these lamentable sentences (Cited by Richard W. Southern, Islamic Conception in Medieval Europe, p. 29).
For Christians, the Muslim presence in Andalusia seemed to never end. As if it wasn't enough that they were thrown into deep conflicts among themselves, Islamic culture also influenced generations of Christians. Whichever way you look at it, for a devout Christian, the situation was not "hopeful" at all.
Nearly 250 years had passed, when the Crusaders gathered from all over Europe, trampled upon the Islamic countries, attacked Palestine and captured Jerusalem in 1099. This time it was the Muslims' turn to grieve. The crimes committed by the Crusaders in Anatolia, Syria and Palestine, provoked by the Papacy itself, were so horrifying that it was almost the "end of times" for Muslims. The Crusades were the second mass contact of Christians with Muslims after Andalusia. This time, however, the “victory tone” was mixed in the reviews and comments. Contrary to the interpretations and approaches in Andalusia, generalization-filled rote styles stood out in the writings on Islam and Muslims.
The flow of history did not stop again. In 1187, Salahaddin liberated Jerusalem from the Crusaders. In the next process, the Crusaders were pushed back step by step. Although the destruction caused by the Mongols in the Islamic region in the meantime gave hope to the Christians again, first the Mamluk and then the Ottoman eras took place. Until the Ottoman Empire collapsed, it was the main element in the image of the "other" constructed by the Church and the Christian clergy in the West. At the same time, Orientalism, which grew and flourished with all its branches, was transformed into a material warehouse that the Church benefited from.
Over the past century, modern political and cultural currents that have emerged one after another have led to the weakening of the Roman-based Catholic Church. The Islamic world was already fragmented through colonial states, occupations, and internal conflicts. Thus, the Church, which lost its "other" in front of it, became unable to say anything to its base and members. Churches were without communion and priests were left speechless. Although some "fanatic" voices were raised from time to time, the Church was now a long way from its former power, when it shaped the course of the world and led campaigns against Muslims.
The “retired” Pope Benedict XVI, who died at the age of 95 on the last day of 2022, was one of the most concrete examples of the transformation process I mentioned above. Benedict 16th, who started his papacy at the age of 78 in 2005 and ended with his resignation in 2013, had to face many crises during his time running the Catholic Christian world from the Vatican. From accusations of abuse and child abuse by hundreds of church members to economic corruption in the Vatican, files with heavy content piled up one after the other. The Pope, who made a habit of apologizing for every issue where his person and the office he represented were targeted, further weakened his person and the authority of the office he represented with these steps. Finally, he resigned on February 11, 2013, saying, "I am a sick and old man, lacking the energy to manage such a large structure." It would later be written that the reports and claims of abuse scandals in the Church were part of a blackmail scenario for Benedict to step down.
Pope Benedict XVI was seen as one of the last representatives of the "conservative" wing of the Catholic Church. A retired conservative trying to protect what's left of the Church in a world where homosexuality, atheism, hedonism, and all other -isms are eating away at societies.
