Page 24 - AEI Insights 2020 - Vol. 6, Issue 1

AEI Insights, Vol 6, Issue 1, 2020

Europe came to be known as ‘Christendom’ because its identity was imagined or invented as
the Catholic in contradistinction to the Islamic Middle East and to the Eastern (authentic, true
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or Orthodox) Christianity.
The Christianity, of course, originated in the Middle East not in Europe. It was subsequently
universalised and, by spreading onto peripheral world, Europeanised by the Balkan-born
Roman Emperor – Constantin the Great (Edicto de Milan, 313 AD). He himself spent much of
his life on Bosporus and hence, was buried in Asia Minor. Surely, it was by the legal design of
this glorious Emperor (fully backed by the Empire’s political elite) that the city of Rome was
(re)turned into an administrative periphery, politico-ideological outcast and geostrategic
suburbia (by 324 AD). The official seat of Roman Empire including the Roman Senate – by
yet another historic edict of 330 AD – became Constantin-polis (Constantinople), and it
remained as such until a very end of the Empire, 11 centuries later.
Therefore, the post Roman/Byzantine inauguration of ‘Christendom’ as a pure western culture
necessitated sustained intellectual acrobatics – starching the truth away from an elementary
geography and historical evidence. Such an inversion by which an ideological and geopolitical
periphery presents itself as a centre required considerably emasculation – both, physical
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coercion and imposed narrative over the extensive space and time.
This a ’la card creation of Catholic Christendom or to say; Western Ummah, served two vital
objectives: domestic and external. Both helped solidification of the feudal socio-economic and
politico-military system and based on that of a precolonial European collective identity.
Domestically, it served for a coherent sense of selfhood – us vs. them paradigm: Unity,
oppression and obedience. Extra ecclesiam nulla salus – no salvation outside the church,
following the old Roman rational ‘no world beyond Limes line’, or the modern one: ‘no
prosperity outside the EU’. Externally, here was found the ‘moral’ narrative – a justifier for the
subsequent military voyages and other forms of organized plunders. Such an image build-up,
of course, was coupled with a coercive societal identity – the ‘Dark ages’ for at home, crusaders
for abroad.

This is how Europeans started to view the religious conflict as the identifying attribute of the
system’s formation, while elsewhere on the globe the interethnic and interreligious coexistence
was a traditional modus operandi within and among countries.

By the time of Renaissance, Catholic Europe came to realize that, in order to effectively project
itself – to physically and/or mentally colonise overseas territories – it needed either coercion
(rarefying and assimilation), labour-camp detention (slavery) or final solution (physical
extermination). These strategic dilemmas over the instruments to use, influenced and

4 Western animosities towards Russia that are constantly here (with some short-lived exceptions during the
Metternich post-Vienna congress period, Bismarck chancellorship and Yeltsin dizzy years) are escaping any
rational explanation. The only possible logics to find is if going back to the moment of split of the Christian
Church, mid XI century. That is the time when the Roman curia decided to compete with Constantinople by
organising the invading tribes in Europe for its ‘civilising’ mission (read: geostrategic ends), alongside the parallel
process that have started with the Russophones undertaking a similar mission in the norther and north eastern
portions of Eurasia. Two parallel ‘civilising’ missions, competing over concept and territories for centuries.
5 Transferring the official seat of the Roman Empire to Bosporus marked far more than just an event of the
peripheral maturity; periphery pressing onto the centre. It meant that – at the peak times of the Milan’s Edict of
Constantin the Great – the peripheral power successfully relocated itself closer to the centre; ideologically
(metaphysically, religiously) but also geopolitically (physically, geographically). Not to insert itself (like during
the subsequent Crusaders), but to transcend. That is a real meaning of the transfer of imperial capital from Rome
to Bosporus once for good. This will be the first and the last such a successful move from Europe, in human
history. With this adjustment – past its failed European experiment, Roman Empire returned to its origins; Balkans
and the Middle East, which extended the Empire’s life impressively – for over 1,000 years.

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