Infidels_ A History of the Conflict Between Christendom and Islam - Andrew Wheatcroft [210]
30. Theodosius Grammatikos, in Spyridonos Lambros, “Le deuxième siège de Constantinople par les Arabes et Théodosius Grammatikos,” Historika Meletemata, Athens, 1884, pp. 129–32, cited in Ducellier, Chrétiens, p. 133.
31. See Brubaker, Vision, pp. 19–58.
32. Zernov, Eastern Christendom, p. 86.
33. See Rotter, Abendland und Sarazenen, pp. 68–9, and Tolan, Saracens, passim.
34. See History of Heraclius, cited in Ducellier, Chrétiens, p. 28. The best translation is The “Amenian History” Attributed to Sebeos, trans. Robert Thomson, 2 vols., Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000.
35. Revelation 4:7–8.
36. Ducellier, Chrétiens, p. 28.
37. Revelation 6:1–17.
38. In fact, Sebeos’s attitude, although hostile, shifted in register between a historical narrative and making an apocalyptic connection. Thus in chapter 30 of his History he begins by saying, “I shall discuss the [line of the] son of Abraham: not the one [born] of a free [woman], but the one born of a serving maid, about whom the quotation from Scripture was fully and truthfully fulfilled, ‘His hands will be at everyone, and everyone will have their hands at him’ [Genesis 16:12].”
39. Ibid., chapter 38.
40. See Michael McCormick, “Diplomacy and the Carolingian Encounter with Byzantium Down to the Accession of Charles the Bald,” in B. McGinn and W. Otten (eds.), Eriugena: East and West, Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1994. However, the outcome of these connections can be seen in the cluster of chronicles concerning the seventh century of Spain: the Chronicle of 754, the Continuatio Byzantia Arabica or Chronicle of 741, and a lost Historia Arabica. The historiographical connections between them and their relative importance is contested, but it is clear that Christians in Spain were fully aware of events in the eastern Mediterranean during the conquest after 634, and related these to the conquest of Spain. For a good discussion of these issues see Collins, Arab Conquest, pp. 52–65. Dubler, “Sobre la crónica,” is suggestive of a wider range of connections.
41. Alcuin, Opera, in J. P. Migne, Patrologiae series Latina, Paris: Migne, 1863, vol. 100, letter 164.
42. This becomes how Lacan in Ecrits described the manner in which concepts and ideas adhere. Jacques Derrida also noted the complexity of these attachments and the way in which the accretions (and their interpretation) grew over time: “The dissimulation of the woven texture [of a text] can in any case take centuries to undo its web: a web that envelops a web, undoing the web for centuries; reconstituting it too as an organism, indefinitely regenerating its own tissue behind the cutting trace, the decision of each reading”; Jacques Derrida, Dissemination, trans. Barbara Johnson, London: Athlone Press, 1981/1993, p. 63. See also Jacques Lacan, Ecrits, trans. Alan Sheridan, New York: Norton, 1977. I found Lacan extraordinarily difficult to understand, even in translation, although the original French edition (Editions du Seuil, 1966) was a useful point of cross-reference. However, some of the papers in Mark Bracher and Ellie Ragland-Sullivan (eds.), Lacan and the Subject of Language (London: Routledge, 1991), proved helpful.
43. On Saussure and Lacan, see Martin Francis Murray, “Saussure, Lacan and the Limits of Language,” University of Sussex Ph.D. dissertation, 1995. On Lacan’s approach, see Nancy and Lacoue-Lebarthe, The Title.
44. Cited in Bat Ye’or, Decline, p. 419, Blunt to Bulwer, July 14, 1860.
45. See Qustandi Shomali, “Church of the Nativity: History and Structure,” www.unesco.org/archi2000/pdf/shomali.pdf.
46. There is also a Muslim story of desecration, with the Crusaders stabling their horses in the Al-Aqsa mosque after the capture of Jerusalem in 1099. Are the two stories connected or reciprocal?
47. Mary Eliza Rogers, Domestic Life in Palestine (1862), London: Kegan Paul International, 1989, pp. 41–2.
48. Matthew 7:14. “Gate” and “door” are synonymous. See also Luke 13:23–4: