Muslim expansion ends
In the summer of 846, after forty years of conquering several cities in the Mediterranean, Islamic forces known as Saracens marched up to the walls of Rome. Seeing that no civil authority was able to organize the Italian defenses, Pope Leo IV took charge and halted the seemingly invincible Saracen army and navy at the battle of Ostia (depicted below). Twenty years later, Emperor Luis II tried to push the Muslims out of the peninsula, but their raids continued. The tragic century of invasion came to an end around 916 after Greek and German emperors jointed forces with the weakened Eastern Roman empire and the church to expel the Muslims completely. Christianity had a narrow escape. Had Rome fallen, the Saracens would have advanced upon Venice; and Venice taken, Constantinople would have been wedged in between two concentrations of Muslim power. On such chances of battle hung the theology of billions of people.
Source: Durant, Will. The Age of Faith: A History of Medieval Civilization, Christian, Islamic, and Judaic, From Constantine to Dante, A.D. 325-1300. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1950.
Public Domain
Back to archive
Full disclosure, I may occasionally borrow a sentence from Will Durant's Story of Civilization. I absolutely love that collection!