New Byzantium: Meaning and Authentic History

NEW BYZANTIUM

Meaning and Authentic History

[Black Forest, Germany]

 

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Our Readers are requested first to enter and review the following in Google:

(NOTE: Be wary of self-acclaimed "experts" bent on imposing their own thinking.)

 

Irvine professor vs. New Byzantium

[copy and paste on browser}

 

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OUR RESPONSE to the above:

 

Once read, it is evident that the article’s thrust centers against the reality of the survival and continuity of Western Civilization; which was effectuated by Byzantium
in its eleven-and-one-half centuries old presence and influence in the world’s historical arena.

Notice the scholastic paucity of the said article, whereby it asserts that Byzantium did not preserve and continue Western Thought and Civilization.
Yet, it fails to indicate what it is that Byzantium did offer in its millennial existence. Absurd, of course, and impossible for an empire not to have exerted
influence after an eleven-hundred-year powerful, colorful, rich, and varied history.

The myopic view of the article is premised on referenced critical comments of that period that Byzantium had no identity due to the diversity of cultures and peoples
dwelling in Constantinople. Such thinking contradicts reason, if it is considered that multiplicity was indeed the strength of the Empire. To deny this fact
is to deny the crowning success, for example, of New York City or even of the United States of America proper. Cultural diversity in actual terms is one of the major
causes that renders: NEW BYZANTIUM IS THE AMERICAS.

Further on the serious lack of scholastic vigor, is that no chronological investigation of NEW BYZANTIUM appears to have been conducted in preparation for the article.
It is unknown whether this was incompetence or a deliberate negligence in reporting the facts. It is with typical and dutiful servility that the article regurgitates historical
pablum served over the years. It becomes clear that the above cited article begs for a foundation in reason, while it also conceals the underlying motive to disparage
the continuity and relentless presence and influence of Byzantium and Western Civilization. Conclusion. The said article is an unbecoming academic breach designed
to serve an agenda of discord and ignorance. In short, it reveals itself as a propaganda ploy under the guise of scholarship—a black eye for Academia in California.
¡Que lástima!

 

Following below is the true record of the origin of NEW BYZANTIUM:

 

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NEW BYZAMTIUM IS THE AMERICAS

 

NEW BYZANTIUM was inspired by Dr. Karras [Mark Athanasios C.] who  articulated and presented it to members of the Order of
Saint Constantine the Great and of Saint Helen on June 11, 1990 at a breakfast meeting in  the Black Forest region of Germany.

The event took place the day after a sailing cruise on Lake Konstanz (Bodensee) by members of the Order.
The Professor, H.I. and R.H. Prince Theodore IX,  Grand Master of the Order and Hegemon of the House of Lascaris Comnenus of Constantinople,
listened to the presentation with a great deal of enthusiasm and adopted it at once.

He has continued since then to embrace and support the principle
with much interest, enhancing it with his valuable writings and contributions to academia as seen b
elow:

 

The Author:
Dr. Teodoro Lascaris-Comneno

QUINTO CENTENARIO
Encuentros y Desencuentros al Medio
Milenio de Hallazgo del Nuevo Mundo

FIFTH CENTENARY
Encounters and Divergencies on the Half
Millennium of Discovery of the New World

Front cover of the book, 'Quinto Centenario' by Dr. Theodore IX Lascaris Comnenus.

 

Reference: Lascaris-Comneno, Teodoro. (1993). Quinto Centenario: Encuentros y Desencuentros al Medio Milenio de Hallazgo del Nuevo Mundo  [Fifth centenary: Encounters and
divergencies on the half millennium of discovery of the New World].
(Pp.136-139). Consejo Nacional de la Cultura (CONAC). Caracas, Venezuela: Colper, Editores. (Original in Spanish).

(Closing Chapter - translation)
ERA  OF  NEW  BYZANTIUM

The [said] New Era is rendered by the internal process that is produced in each individual and globally in the whole community.  It is an ample and tolerant form of thinking, whereby
man is neither come to suffer nor to pay for a bad deed, but to live in harmony in the midst of all and by way of our means.  When harmony is broken, emotional and physical
disturbances arise that range from sadness to grave illnesses.

            Within the New Era, eastern philosophical views and high level psychic manifestations will have preeminence, with absolute respect toward all religious beliefs: all this, in connection
with the development of modern electronic equipment and computation and technical resources.

            The center of the New Era is in America, in the New Byzantium, in California near San Francisco where the East met with the West: the Russian Orthodox monks with the
Castilian Catholic friars.

            The words Byzantium and Byzantine were used pejoratively, and in particular by the Franks who in the IV Crusade sacked Constantinople.  However, in the past century the
investigations in scientific and historical fashion by Germans, English, French, and Russians have fully reappraised Byzantium for its art, literature, customs, and above all for its
ecumenical syncretism.  From Byzantium derives the Renaissance and from it the Modern Age.  Its fall in 1453 originated the discovery of the New World.

            Byzantium united the Greek culture, the Latin institutional system of Rome, and monastic Hellenic philosophical Christianity.  This system lasted for eleven centuries (from 330 to 1453),
more than any other Republic, Crown, or Empire.

            As Jaspers[*] affirms in his Origin and Goal of History, there have only been three great civilizations: that of India, of China, and of the West, comprised of and integrating high cultures. 
The one of the West was born in Asia Minor in the Greek City of Miletus of Ionia with the thinkers and philosophers Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes, followed by the
pre-Socratic(s), today much revitalized in the new thinking relative to contemporary Philosophy.

            The Greek and Hellenistic cultures form the basis of the culture of Rome, succeeded by II Rome or Byzantium that in turn was attempted to be continued by the two III Romes,
the Germanic Roman Empire and that of the Czars of all Russias.  Byzantium in the New Era is foretold in the American continent as New Byzantium, not only in California
but including the city of Valencia, Venezuela, in view of the secret and magical name of Byzantium or Constantinople, which was: VALENTIA.

            An imaginary line drawn from Constantinople traversing the North Pole to Kodiak, Alaska, where the Russian monks founded their first mission on American soil, arriving
by their expansion to the fortieth parallel, goes directly from Byzantium to the vicinity of San Francisco, California.

            And, precisely, the Labarum of Constantine glows in our time in both distinguished cities in the North and the South of the Continent.

            The highest mission of New Byzantium is that all the Americas: English, Portuguese, Frankish, and especially Spanish need to cooperate with full mutual deference and respect,
consistent with the spirit of the New Era, comprehension, understanding, and fraternal communication, according to the prophetic divine inspiration of the Supreme prelate of
the Order of Constantine the Great, Dr. Mark Athanasios C. Karras.  Thus, the Americas of the New World, following the guiding example of Byzantium, the mythical and exemplary
city of Greece and Rome, of the Latin and Greek languages, in the ensuing XXI Century, will come to know each other and above all MEET IN DUE FORM.

            This is so, because from the point of view of civilization, their provenance is Western and that was GRECO-LATIN.

            Spain is the daughter of Greece and Rome, and Spanish America is heir and legatee to a millennial philosophical and scientific civilization in which the Hispanic Latin American
modality is a guide to excelling creativity in all aspects, especially racial and social, in the search of human communities more ample and tolerant in each instance . . . .
 

By: Teodoro Lascaris Comneno (1993)   [Head of the House of Lascaris Comnenus of Constantinople (d. Sep. 20, 2006)]

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[*Jaspers, Karl. The Origin and Goal of History. Michael Bullock (Trans.). New Haven: Yale University Press, and London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1953. Greenwood
Publishing Group, 1976.]

 

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ADDENDUM

For the educational edification absent in the cited article

 

 

Partial List of contricbtions to Humanity and to the Western World by BYZANTIUM:

   

1.     1.    Ratified, empowered, and expanded CHRISTIANITY in the World (Constantine the Great).

2.     2.    Established Religious Tolerance (Edict of Milan February 313 AD).

3.     3.    Instituted coordination of the Clergy and of Christian Dogma (Council of Nicaea 325 AD).

4.     4.    Founded and and developed Monastic life and discipline (St. Anthony the Great, St. Basil the Great).

5.     5.    Ushered in Slavic Christian Orthodoxy.

6.     6.    Introduced Slavic Writing (Glagolitic alphabet - Cyril and Methodius, ca. 860 AD).

1.     7.    Instituted Civil Jurisprudence, current in Europe and Latin America today (Emperor Justinian, 529-534 AD).

2.     8.    The crucial Byzantine women’s role in preservation of the family unit as well in personal assertion and achievement.

3.     9.    Produced Architectural Art, present in Europe and in America today (Capitol buildings, etc.).

4.     10.  Created Iconographic Art in world-wide prevalence to date.

5.     11.  Launched the University concept of organized Academia (Emperors Theodosius II and Costantine IX).

6.     12.  Diseminated Culture and Education in Europe by erudite Byzantine emigrants after the Fall of 1453.

1.     13.  Established hierachical Civil and Voluntary Military organization (Emperor Constantine).

2.     14.  Prompted emulation of Byzantine royal demenaor  by later European regal Houses.   

3.     15.  The material enrichment affecting Europe to date (wealth of the Vatican, etc.).

4.     16.  The long-lasting endured guardianship of Europe against the Asian onslaught.

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