"Latins"

[spiridon]

I see now,some where it is written in the bible either from st paul or other, and as i remember in my own words it says somthing like
" we have traded citizenship form old Jerusalem(on earth) to new jerusalem(Heavenly) as we become Christian...I was told a long time ago that it represents how when we fully know and accept the true church (ORTHODOX) we have traded citizenship and no longer a humanly Race or ethnicity, we are now Christian...does this make sense ? please correct me if Im wrong,......

[Kollyvas]

St. Paul maintains that we are neither Greek, Jew nor Scythian in Christ Jesus, but one Body. But he didnt renounce his Roman citizenship either...
R

[drewmeister2]

The point here is that the "Latins" that ended up being called "Latins" were not "Roman" at all, but Franko-germanic invaders. It is interesting to note that the first truly heretic pope was a Frank, and not a Greek.

So why aren't Latins called Franks? Could it be because if Latins were called Franks, then people may think it only meant French Westerners, and not the whole Western church as a whole?

[ioannis]

I guess you could explain why they are not called Franks (although many times thaey are indeed called Franks) in a number of ways. Roman Latins only spoke Latin for official business such as the senate (even then sometimes Greek, the first recorded senate hearing in 350BC was in Greek) - the common language used in Rome and throughout the Roman Empire was Greek (this by the way is one reason Mel Gibson's movie was flawed, portraying the use of Latin as a common language; most people could not speak Latin). Therefore, it seems better to call these people in Rome simply Romans b/c they really were not "Latins". "Latins" seems appropriate for the Franks because when they invaded and began filling the places of power and the population, they took Latin and indeed made it a common language (A poor example might be how Hebrew was a dead language altogether but when the state of Israel was formed the language was revived).

There are a few short books/articles written about this: how when the Franks conquered the city of Rome they turned it into something that it never was, and created a distortion of history that prevails to this day. Example: They conquered Rome and claimed the Roman Empire was dead, portraying the "Greeks" and some side-show "schismatics". This paved the way for the "Holy Roman Empire", which was not Holy and quite Germanic. Meanwhile, the real Roman Empire was still quite powerful in the East, Africa, the Middle East and most of Southern Italy for many centuries, and even saw periods of growth. The term "Byzantine Empire" was never know to them, they called themselves Romans.

Fr. John Romanides has an article on the internet you can find called "Charlemagne's Lie of 872" (I forget the exact date).

There is also a good article called "The Roman West, the Byzantine East". I can email this to you if you cannot find it. Very good long article that will have you never trusting peoples version of history and events again!