User talk:Ichthyovenator/Archive 2

Archive 1

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Archive 5

Thank you for your contributions to Jaekelopterus

I like reading articles that catch my interest on the main page, and I was really impressed with this one! I definitely learned something, even if I don't have enough background knowledge to get the most out of it. I found the history of research section to be interesting; history and science are two of my favourite subjects in school, so it's really cool to read about the history of scientific research and discoveries. Clovermoss (talk) 03:31, 26 October 2019 (UTC)

It's my pleasure! Glad you could learn something from it! History and science are my personal favourites as well, I rarely edit anything which doesn't fit into one of the two. Ichthyovenator (talk) 14:01, 26 October 2019 (UTC)

Thank you for the article about the "greatest of the ancient sea scorpions, and among the most famous, Jaekelopterus was an active apex predator that measured a massive 2.6 meters in length"! --Gerda Arendt (talk) 21:23, 26 October 2019 (UTC)

Your GA nomination of Andreas Palaiologos

Hi there, I'm pleased to inform you that I've begun reviewing the article Andreas Palaiologos you nominated for GA-status according to the criteria. This process may take up to 7 days. Feel free to contact me with any questions or comments you might have during this period. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Iazyges -- Iazyges (talk) 14:20, 30 October 2019 (UTC)

List of kings of Iran/Persia

Interesting ;) [1] If you need help with anything, feel free to ask, since there is indeed a lot of confusing stuff - I'm still trying to understand and fix the chronology of the Parthian/Arsacid rulers as we speak [2]. --HistoryofIran (talk) 03:28, 15 November 2019 (UTC)

HistoryofIran Heh thanks! I'll definitely be in touch if I run into any problems (you're also more than welcome to make any edits if you notice any errors as I go along). I think the current list on Wikipedia suffers a bit from an inconsistent format.

One problem I'm facing is what to do with the dynasties between the Sassanids and the Safavids. It feels a bit odd to list the Caliphs as monarchs of Iran for instance (even though they technically were) and the small native dynasties all overlap chronologically. I'm thinking some of the smaller ones might be best suited for the Islamic dynasties of Iran instead of the big list but I'm not sure if there is an "overall" chronology of "main" dynasties for the period. Ichthyovenator (talk) 16:14, 15 November 2019 (UTC)

I see. A simple approach would be to just add the "official" kings of Persia/Iran, i.e Achaemenids -> Sasanians -> Parthians/Arsacids -> (maybe Buyids?) -> Safavids -> Afsharids -> Zands -> Qajars -> Pahlavis. Either that or you could add all the major dynasties (Seljuqs, Ilkhanate, Caliphs etc) of the country. Imho the smaller dynasties are irrelevant in this case. --HistoryofIran (talk) 16:31, 15 November 2019 (UTC)

HistoryofIran Yeah, would be nice to have as little gaps as possible (so that readers don't ponder why there is such a massive gap between the 7th and 16th centuries), I'll see what I come up with (and of course other editors will be able to change the list around if they disagree with what I include/omit). Ichthyovenator (talk) 19:12, 15 November 2019 (UTC)

Thanks

		The Barnstar of WikiProject Greece
		We don't have a "Byzantine" barnstar, so this will have to serve as a small token of heartfelt appreciation and encouragement for your excellent and interesting wok on the last members of the Palaiologos dynasty. Thank you, and keep it up. Constantine ✍ 13:10, 16 November 2019 (UTC)

Many thanks! Ichthyovenator (talk) 15:29, 16 November 2019 (UTC)

Your GA nomination of Andreas Palaiologos

The article Andreas Palaiologos you nominated as a good article has passed ; see Talk:Andreas Palaiologos for comments about the article. Well done! If the article has not already been on the main page as an "In the news" or "Did you know" item, you can nominate it to appear in Did you know. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Iazyges -- Iazyges (talk) 18:41, 17 November 2019 (UTC)

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New eurypterid paper

Hi, I just saw this new paper that also deals with Jaekelopterus which has free images: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-53590-8 Super Dromaeosaurus might also be interested. FunkMonk (talk) 20:55, 30 November 2019 (UTC)

FunkMonk Very interesting! Thanks for notifying me! I'll have a look through it in the coming days and add relevant info (and images) to the Jaekelopterus article. Cool to have an in-depth study on its eyes since that's already a pretty big portion of the article's "palaeoecology" section. Ichthyovenator (talk) 12:44, 1 December 2019 (UTC)

Your GA nomination of Akkadian royal titulary

The article Akkadian royal titulary you nominated as a good article has been placed on hold . The article is close to meeting the good article criteria, but there are some minor changes or clarifications needing to be addressed. If these are fixed within 7 days, the article will pass; otherwise it may fail. See Talk:Akkadian royal titulary for issues which need to be addressed. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Llywrch -- Llywrch (talk) 05:22, 10 September 2019 (UTC)

Hi, just a note to let you know that I haven't forgotten about this nomination. I've just been distracted by off-wiki stuff like work, some medical problems (I'm feeling better now), & a child who seems intent on getting herself expelled from kindergarten. I'm still working on the review & will have an update soon. -- llywrch (talk) 22:58, 20 October 2019 (UTC)

No worries! Ichthyovenator (talk) 09:38, 21 October 2019 (UTC)

Hi again. I finally was able to write up some new comments about this article. You ignore most of what I wrote before (although I still would prefer that in the tables listing the various titles, you link to the articles from the English words, not the Akkadian ones), & respond to my new ones. (And much of what I wrote about the meaning of the title šar kiššatim should be applied to King of the Universe.) Hope this helps. -- llywrch (talk) 22:38, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

Llywrch Great! I'll have a thorough look at your new comments in the coming days. I too think that linking from the English words would probably be better, I'll get to that as well. Ichthyovenator (talk) 23:16, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

Hi, I wrote my responses. I believe there is really only one last open issue, & then I should be able to pass this article. -- llywrch (talk) 20:37, 2 December 2019 (UTC)

Your GA nomination of Akkadian royal titulary

The article Akkadian royal titulary you nominated as a good article has passed ; see Talk:Akkadian royal titulary for comments about the article. Well done! If the article has not already been on the main page as an "In the news" or "Did you know" item, you can nominate it to appear in Did you know. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Llywrch -- Llywrch (talk) 23:01, 11 December 2019 (UTC)

Your GA nomination of Problem of two emperors

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Your GA nomination of Problem of two emperors

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Your GA nomination of Esarhaddon

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Your GA nomination of Esarhaddon

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Your GA nomination of Ashurbanipal

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Your GA nomination of Ashurbanipal

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Your GA nomination of Esarhaddon

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Your GA nomination of Ashurbanipal

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Megarachne

This is to let you know that the above article has been scheduled as today's featured article for March 25, 2020. Please check the article needs no amendments. If you're interested in editing the main page text, you're welcome to do so at Wikipedia:Today's featured article/March 25, 2020.—Wehwalt (talk) 23:52, 18 February 2020 (UTC)

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Some baklava for you!

Thanks for your great new article at Pretenders to the Byzantine throne! buidhe 18:50, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

• I've gone ahead and nominated you for autopatrol, if you don't mind. Thanks for all your hard work on the encyclopedia! buidhe 18:58, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

@Buidhe: Thank you! And thank you for the autopatrol nomination (of course I don't mind :D)! Ichthyovenator (talk) 20:55, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

Autopatrolled granted

Hi Ichthyovenator, I just wanted to let you know that I have added the "autopatrolled" permission to your account, as you have created numerous, valid articles. This feature will have no effect on your editing, and is simply intended to reduce the workload on new page patrollers. For more information on the autopatrolled right, see Wikipedia:Autopatrolled. However, you should consider adding relevant wikiproject talk-page templates, stub-tags and categories to new articles that you create if you aren't already in the habit of doing so, since your articles will no longer be systematically checked by other editors (User:Evad37/rater and User:SD0001/StubSorter.js are useful scripts which can help). Feel free to leave me a message if you have any questions. Happy editing! œ^™ 06:34, 6 March 2020 (UTC)

Precious

After Man

Thank you for quality articles about groups of extinct aquatic creatures, such as Jaekelopterus, Megarachne and Pterygotidae, for history such as Ashurbanipal, and future such as After Man, with a focus on articles alone, for precision and no clutter, - you are an awesome Wikipedian!

You are recipient no. 2369 of Precious, a prize of QAI. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 06:28, 25 March 2020 (UTC)

Thank you! Ichthyovenator (talk) 08:58, 25 March 2020 (UTC)

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2Kaiserproblem

Hi, I disagree that polarity is irrelevant. The HRE and the Byzantine Empire were always the two definite superpowers of Europe at the time and both backed their ideological position with rival and mutually exclusive ideologies, just like earlier and subsequent bipolar relationships, Antipopes and the Investiture Controversy are issues, just like the 2Kaiserproblem, involving the Catholic Church which claims to be Orthodox and the universal Church (it's in the name ...), while Caesaropapism relates more to issues involving the Orthodox Church, which also claims to be Catholic and the universal Church. The Schism is only the most famous and longest lasting of a whole series of schisms which are undeniably closely linked with the separation of the One Empire into two empires. If "Third Rome" can be in the "see also" section, why not include articles detailing the much longer dispute over the heritage of the imperial office? The East-West schism is as old as the 3rd Canon of the 1st Council of Constantinople and grinds on to this day, against which background the whole span of the historical 2kaiserproblem rose and fell. It seems most illogical to not mention the "2kirchenproblem" that was the mirror image of the article's subject. The Treaty of Toredesillas perhaps is a little distant, since of the two empires involved only one actually claimed to be the heir of the Roman Empire; perhaps the point really is the Papacy's role as quasi-emperor and universal ruler derived from the Donation of Constantine. Perhaps that should be added instead, perhaps too the article on Oecumene. GPinkerton (talk) 12:19, 20 March 2020 (UTC)

@GPinkerton: Okay. First of all I'll address why the articles currently in the "See also" section are there. Greek East and Latin West is obvious; one of the major arguments the HRE used was that its emperors and the Pope could speak Latin while the Byzantines spoke Greek, it is intrinsically related. Third Rome is in there because it is also directly talked about in the article (the Ottomans, Serbians, Bulgarians and Russians can also be considered "third Romes"). I shouldn't even have to explain why Legacy of the Roman Empire is there.

So for the ones you wanted to add: East–West Schism is probably the closest related one but it's a religious dispute while the emperor dispute is above all else a political one (yes it is linked to different religious world-views but it isn't closely related to the schism). The schism had nothing to do with the two-emperors problem as it happened 200 years after the emperor dispute began and was rarely a factor in it. Sometimes the dispute was between two Catholic emperors (e.g. the dispute between the HRE and the Latin Empire) or one Christian emperor and one Muslim emperor (e.g. the dispute between the HRE and the Ottomans).

I have no idea why you want to add Antipope and Investiture Controversy. As I said before, while religion was used as a justification at points, the 2 Emperors Problem was a political dispute while these are religious disputes within the Catholic Church, completely unrelated to the issue of why there are two emperors when there should be just one. Same goes for Caesaropapism.

Neither of the two empires involved in the Treaty of Tordesillas claimed to be the heir of the Roman Empire and it is completely unrelated to the dispute.

I'm as big a fan of the Byzantines as anyone else but if you want to say that "the HRE and the Byzantine Empire were always the two definite superpowers of Europe at the time" you're gonna need to back that up with some sources. The HRE was often strong, yes, but it was always crippled by internal political or religious conflict. The Byzantines were not always a superpower and often experienced long periods of decline. They certainly did not represent a superpower under the Angelos, Laskaris or Palaiologos dynasties. Ichthyovenator (talk) 12:56, 20 March 2020 (UTC)

@Ichthyovenator: It's undeniable (then and now) that the two empires were the ideological superpowers in mediaeval Christendom/wider Europe. No other states or monarchs (outside the middle east) claimed to have the power to make/unmake kings or to use or bestow titles like caesar or appoint and depose popes and patriarchs. In Roman east and west the was a recognized step up between the ranks of mere kings and kings of kings - the emperors, who alone got from heaven what kings got from emperors. Whether or not the claims of universal jurisdiction added up to the swords and horses equivalent of a blue water navy and air superiority at this or that period is irrelevant; throughout the 2kaiser struggle there was a bipolarity between the Byzantine commonwealth (I know, ...) and the Papo-Carolingian restitutio. A parallel bipolarity existed in both empires; the Church and State controversy manifested in the Investiture Controversy, the Donatio and the Gelasian doctrine while the corresponding Caesaropapist "am I not an emperor and priest?" brouhaha. We don't say decline any more, we say "transformation" ... The East west Schism dates from the Accacian schism and the two halves of the Catholic Church were never gain in full accord and their jurisdictions were determined by the bounds of the respective emperors' and popes' authority. Sicily moved from Latin West to Byzantine Empire and its church and liturgical language went with it, then moved to Islam and Arabic, then back again to Latin Church and then the western empire itself. That's not the church being unrelated to the 2emperor problem; that the Church being a part of it.

If you can understand why the differing use of Greek and Latin can have a bearing on the issue, surely you can understand the obviously much greater influence that the two mutually-excommunicating religions (with, yes, their respective liturgical languages) had on the entire nature of the relationship between Byzantium and mediaeval Rome. The 2Kaiserproblem is clearly much more than a "political dispute", and as you have admitted religion was a justification and there no reason to exclude the vast array of accompanying doctrinal dispute within which the 2Kaiserproblem arose from the see also bit. The idea that the religious dimension happened in a vacuum and is "completely unrelated to the dispute" is flatly farcical; it inheres everywhere. Charlemagne was made emperor by the pope, emperors in east and west derived their authority from the Church and claimed sole control over it, the mediaeval western emperors were mere German kings until they went to Rome for their imperial coronations, Byzantines scoffed at the illegitimate barbarian format of papal imperial ceremonies, the pope denied the legitimacy of the ideas attached to "becuase Constantinople is the New Rome", &c., &c.! The alphabet in which such attitudes were expressed is of minor import in comparison.

It is entirely untrue that the empires involved in the Treaty of Tordesillas and its long legacy were not claimants of the Roman Empire. One party to it were "Catholic Kings". The Spanish Hapsburgs deriving their claim to the New World from the provisons of the Treaty, and their imperial title as Roman emperor from, well, the Roman empire. In any case, the original Treaty clearly operated within an ideology in which there were two competing global empires (universal, that is, besides the provisions of the Donatio enjoyed by the papacy).

I cannot understand why you imagine that the contents of the see also section need to relate solely to "political" disputes that are exactly contemporaneous with the existence of the Byzantine Empire and its competitors. Why? The 2Kaiserproblem did not happen in vacuum on some distant planet, it has a legacy, a background, and antecedants.

The idea that religious disputes were not political and were "completely unrelated to the dispute" is, again, very silly. Ecclesiastical politics is still politics, disputes over the nature of the emperors' religious authority and legitimacy went hand in had with disputes over the nature of the emperors' geo-political power (i.e. its universality (or "catholicism") and its self-proclaimed orthodoxy). At root, the 2Kaiserproblem is a mediaeval-and-subsequent discourse over the nature of the imperial office. So is Caesaropapism and the Investiture Controversy. I can't fathom why that's not obvious or why they should not be included as related articles. GPinkerton (talk) 15:16, 20 March 2020 (UTC)

@Ichthyovenator: P.S. you may also be interested in a suggestion I have made at Talk:List of Roman emperors. GPinkerton (talk) 15:46, 20 March 2020 (UTC)

@GPinkerton: I'll deal with all the suggested additions to the "see also" section individually here, to make discussion easier you can reply to them individually as well then (if you disagree with what I'm saying) so that it gets less cluttered:

East–West Schism: yes, religion has a part to play in the two-emperors problem but it doesn't have a lot to do with it. Only the HRE's argument to being the "true" Roman Empire was based on religion (coronation by the Pope, a woman can't be emperor), the Byzantine Empire's argument was political and historical (Constantinople is the capital of the Roman Empire, therefore he/she who rules there is the Roman emperor). That there was an ongoing religious East-West dispute at the same time as there was an emperor dispute does not mean that the two were as related as you say. That being said, it is an interesting parallel and I think you could add this to the "see also" section. I just think that it isn't as connected as it might appear to be. There is also the issue (which I brought up but you did not respond to) that the two-emperor problem was not solely a Catholic-Orthodox issue. During the time of the Latin Empire the Latin emperors and Holy Roman emperors bickered over who was the true Roman emperor (despite both being Catholics) and after 1453 the Ottomans and Holy Roman emperors refused to recognize each other as emperors (a dispute between Christians and Muslims).

@Ichthyovenator: But it's only your opinion that "religion has a part to play in the two-emperors problem but it doesn't have a lot to do with it" or "it isn't as connected as it might appear to be". It had masses to do with it. The churches more or less existed to support the ideological claims of their respective emperors. Just because not every aspect of the ecclesiastical struggle matches every aspect of the imperial strife doesn't mean it should be barred from the section. It was the same pole with east and west at either end. The issue of the Ottomans being Muslim is hardly the point; the Ottomans were awarded their imperial title by the Ecumenical Patriarch in Constantinople, not from pretended descent from the Romans per se. GPinkerton (talk) 21:05, 20 March 2020 (UTC)

@GPinkerton: I don't have the time to reply to everything right now (I will soon) but I just wanted to point out that the Patriarch bestowing the imperial title on the Ottomans is quite the claim. I've seen it repeated often but never adequately sourced. Crucially, Mehmed II assumed the title Kayser-i Rum in 1453 whilst a new Patriarch wasn't appointed until 1454. The Ottomans derived their claim to be heirs of Rome from possessing Constantinople, not from being endorsed by the Patriarch of a religion they didn't follow. Ichthyovenator (talk) 01:30, 21 March 2020 (UTC)

@Ichthyovenator: I can't say I have a source (yet; I have certainly read somewhere in print that the title was awarded by a Christian non-Turk) but I would dispute that the title does what you claim anyway. The point of it is that they were appointed Caesars "of the Romans" [read: of Greek Orthodox people]. This is not a claim to a universal empire or a heritage of the Roman empire. It's assumption of a native title awarded to the ruler of the caliphate's subject people, the Rumi. The sultans were, long before 1453 and quite independently of any antiquarian concerns, already the rulers of the country of Rum (as were sultanates centuries earlier) and lords of many "Rumi" people. As with the Bulgarian czars, the title is incidentally the junior one, and the Turkish rendering bears no resemblance to titles or addresses of the Byzantine basileus, a fact that could not have escaped Mehmet. Indeed, there were late Byzantine caesares that were not even emperors at all, but high sinecures awarded to the imperial family or similar. GPinkerton (talk) 01:51, 21 March 2020 (UTC)

@GPinkerton: So I'm just going to make it clear again that out of all your suggestions, I think the schism makes the most sense to add. That being said, yes the literal translation of Kayser-i Rum would be "Caesar of Rome" or "Caesar of the Romans" but I'd like to see a source on that this means that Mehmed only used it to claim that he ruled the Roman people? Certainly previous Islamic rulers who took control of Roman lands didn't claim the title Kayser/Caesar. I doubt Mehmed the Conqueror intended his new title to evoke it being inferior to the title of emperor (yes he would probably be aware of the difference between a basileus/augustus/imperator and a caesar but still). The HRE emperors were frequently called Kaiser, it's not so different. By 1453 the title of caesar wasn't as widespread as it had been under say, the Tetrarchy. The main point is that Mehmed was making a power move and it is pretty clear what he meant the title to convey. Even if he would only have gotten the title through help from the Patriarch (which I very much doubt), that doesn't explain how the Ottomans were still refusing to recognize the HRE emperors a hundred years later, if each Ottoman sultan was recognized and crowned as Roman emperor by the Patriarchs there would be sources on that.

As a further point, the Bulgarian title being czar came after they began to claim it; Simeon I proclaimed himself "basileus of the Bulgarians and of the Romans". Simeon (and some of his successors) explicitly wished to transfer the "universal empire" from Constantinople to Bulgaria. Ichthyovenator (talk) 18:22, 21 March 2020 (UTC)

@Ichthyovenator: I was not aware of Simeon as basileus; I was thinking of Tervel, appointed caeasar by Justinian II. I do not know how this was expressed in old Slavonic, but I assume it was cognate with czar. I have no doubt, though, that the Bulgarian claim to a universal empire would have much to do with its having an autocephalous patriarchate with ambition. This certainly does not prove that the Schism does not deserve to be in the See Also.

I do not know how exactly the patriarchs recognized each sultan's status as caesar - Sultans did not have coronations - but doing so would undoubtedly have been among the duties of the patriarchs as head of the Romans' milet. The lack of mutual recognition of sovereignty by the HRE and the Sultans clearly has as much or more to do with the fact these empires were in direct and open competition for territory in war and also because any recognition of any Muslim ruler would have been prejudicial to 1.) the war itself and the accompanying diplomatic tussle, 2.) the Crusading ideology inherent in Europe and the HRE since the Middle Ages and the long-held aim of the recovery of Jerusalem, a city whose guardianship was explicitly part of the Ottoman (by then-)Caliphate, and 3.) the Hapsburgs' own claim to the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem through their Spanish titles (and the example of Frederick II, the only HRE to rule the Holy Land). As far as chronology goes, Mehemet freed the monk Gennadius from captivity in Adrianople in September 1453 and made him deacon, priest, and then Bishop of Constantinople. Now, I don't know precisely how much time is need to perform those three quite involved ceremonies according to canons, but it appears it must all have happened in 1453 because his official instalation as OEcumenical Patriarch was on the 6th January 1454, which I can only presume was the earliest available day for such a ceremony, with the Advent fast and the Christmas season likely preventing it occurring any earlier. So, I'd now like to see the source that says Mehmet was acclaimed Caesar precisely in the months May-December 1453! Much of the general literature says the title was applied "after 1453" in vague, post-Conquest way, but not by whom or exactly when. One general source, Byfield's A Century of Giants, 1500-1600, pp. 61ff., actually says the Patriarchate was restored (process beginning September and settled before Christmas 1453, as above) with the express purpose of granting Mehmet the title. As for pre-1453 Turkish rulers of the Rum, I referred to the Sultanate of Rum and the idea that Rum doesn't not merely mean Roman Empire or Rome, but also the Melkites and Greek Orthdox, and the area of Anatolia, or of Asia Minor, or Europe, or the Balkans. The unsent letter of Pius II to Mehmet offered the sultan the East Roman throne if only he would be baptized; the Pope had not recognized either the investiture (by the sultan) of the Patriarch or the title of Caesar assumed by the sultan because it was not in the (excommunicated) eastern patriarch's gift to appoint emperors, but the papacy's alone. The instalation of the Patriarch Gennadius by Mehmet himself shows Mehmet's own position of the Investiture issue; the emperor chooses the patriach, and the choosing proves the imperium's legitimacy. Your point about Mehmet making a power move is exactly right, and clearly, and by itself shows that Caesaropapism and the Investiture Controversy are both relevant here; Mehmet and the Ottomans took a position on these debates. Interestingly, while certain pro-Mehmet pieces by Byzantine writers call the sultan, rather than caesar, basileus, (and even make the ancestors of Osman related to Achaemenis and the lineage of the Perisan basileus) Gennadius himself never does. GPinkerton (talk) 16:09, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

@GPinkerton: I swear I read somewhere that the Patriarch at no point "gave" the imperial title to the Ottomans (which is why I've been so apprehensive about this), but I can't find the source for that right now. If Gennadius did grant Mehmed the title, then certainly yes, the dispute between Mehmed the Conqueror and the HRE is an extension of the Christian dispute. If Gennedius didn't grant Mehmed the title, the dispute is not a Christian one and the schism no longer matters as much to the Ottoman part of the dispute. My point on the later Ottoman sultans being confirmed as emperors by the Patriarchs was just asking since the imperial title was explicitly not inherited in the Byzantine Empire and had to be bestowed upon each new emperor, someone like Suleiman the Magnificent would need to have it bestowed upon him by the Patriarch if the 2-emperor problem remained a Christian issue and he refused to recognize the rulers of the HRE as emperors. Suleiman did refuse to recognize the HRE emperors as emperors (referring to them as kings) but there is no record of him, or any other sultan (maybe with the exception of Mehmed?) being bestowed with the title.

A further point, which was raised at the List of Roman emperors talk page as well, is that Caesar in the late Byzantine world no longer meant junior emperor, but was a senior court title bestowed upon prominent allies and courtiers, ranking below "Despot" and "Sebastokrator". I doubt Mehmed intended to evoke this court title with his new title, he is clearly expressing his rule over the Roman Empire. Yes, the term Rum had been used by Turkish rulers before, but Kayser and its implications is new. Ichthyovenator (talk) 16:49, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

@Ichthyovenator: It was I that raised the issue that caesar was not he senior title in the 15th c., just above on this page. Again, mere doubt is not enough to exclude the entire issue as entirely unrelated. The suggestion is that the form Ceasar was a deliberate archaism probably inspired by Mehmet's erudite Byzantine advisors, some of whom appear to have seen the Ottomans as a divine punishment or prelude to the end-times and the rule of the Last Emperor, a return to the pre-Constantinian universal church under a pagan, but nonetheless divinely-sanctioned, universal empire. Mehmet (or his panygyricists in Persian and Greek) had pretensions as an Alexander and as a King of Kings of Achaemenid or Sasanian type, as well as being the (not-universally recognized anti-)Caliph, a position outranking kings of whatever kind and certainly invalidating any (polytheist) Hapsburg claim to universal sovereignty. I don't know that any sultan used or expressed interest in the title after Mehmet, which shows also why the Patriachate's angle on the 2Kaiserproblem is so significant. I do know that it was Mehmet, and not the Constantinopolitan Synod, the formally appointed a new bishop of Ochrid in 1467. GPinkerton (talk) 18:53, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

@GPinkerton: I meant that it wasn't a ruler title at all by the 15th century, not that it was a junior imperial title. The title of Caesar in the Tetrarchy (a junior emperor/designated successor) had almost nothing to do with the title of Caesar in the late Byzantine period as what it meant had changed a lot over the course of the centuries. The point is that Kayser-i Rum is effectively a claim to be the Roman emperor, not to be a junior ruler within the Roman framework. I haven't found anything on any sultan using the title after Mehmed either, but my point was that they refused to recognize the rulers of the HRE as emperors. I maintain that the source of the Ottoman claim to be heirs of Rome was holding Constantinople, not being sanctioned by the Patriarchs. Ichthyovenator (talk) 19:43, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

See above for my explanation of why this point is very thin and there are many another reason for this, not least open warfare between the two powers, and why it certainly doesn't mean the East West Schism had nothing to do with the two-emperor problem which I think is what you're trying to prove. Your position appears to be that the Ottomans did not use imperial titles when addressing the Hapsburgs, and this makes them relevant to the 2Kaiserproblem, and also that the Abbasids did not use imperial titles when addressing the Carolingians, so this makes them not relevant to the 2Kaiserproblem. GPinkerton (talk) 07:33, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

@GPinkerton: With the non-hostile resolution to our discussion on the best format to use in a list of Roman emperors, I think we can continue with the discussion over here. I think we're just going to have to drop the Schism discussion, I'm just not going to agree that the East-West schism had as much to do with the two-emperor problem as you say. That being said, I agree that it was a contemporary issue for most of it and directly involved the two primary parties involved in the dispute (and obviously didn't exactly improve relations between them), so, I'm not going to dispute the addition of a link to East–West Schism. Ichthyovenator (talk) 20:14, 25 March 2020 (UTC)

@Ichthyovenator: Very wise, thanks! The background of the schism is certainly more prominent a factor than any linguistic divisions, though these have their ecclesiological bearings too. It is, additionally, discussed in the historical work that introduced the idea of the 2Kaiserproblem. GPinkerton (talk) 00:48, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

Antipope: Alongside East–West Schism this is probably the one most closely related of your suggestions, seeing as one can see parallels between Pope/Antipope and Byzantine Emperor/Holy Roman Emperor but this is (as I will argue on the next one) a solely Western European issue confined to Catholicism. There were no Anti-patriarchs in Byzantium, the Ottoman Empire or Russia and as I've said before, the two-emperor problem was more than a issue within Christianity.

No anti-patriarchs!? You've obviously never heard of the Old Believers! What of the anti-patriarchs numerous throughout Byzantium's history? Forgotten them? What about all those Christological controversies and their mutual excommunications? What of the on-going struggle between the Jacobite and Melkite Syrian Orthdox factions, active from the 6th century or earlier? Again, just because a small aspect of the 2Kaiserproblem involves a Muslim ruler (with a Christian title, given him by a Christian Church), it hardly means that all issues of Rome-Constantinople are somehow separate from the 2Kaiserproblem.

Okay, I did forget about the issues in the Byzantine church (yeah that's a bit embarrassing) and had no knowledge of the Old Believers. I still don't think the practice of appointing Antipopes has anything to do with the 2-emperor problem. Yes, it's something which threatens the integrity of the "universal church" like the 2-emperor problem threatens the integrity of the "universal empire", but I still stick to my point of the 2-emperor problem not solely being a Christian issue and still not being resolved when numerous of the claimants were under the same religious head. I retain that Antipopes have little to do with the problem and that it would be more confusing for readers if it were in the "see also" section than if it isn't. Ichthyovenator (talk) 18:22, 21 March 2020 (UTC)

I submit that readers should be allowed to make their own judgements on just how and whether these clearly comparable and certainly contemporaneous issues are related. GPinkerton (talk) 16:09, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

I submit that Antipopes are not related to the 2-kaiserproblem and that a religious issue within Catholicism from the 11th century (there were earlier Antipopes but it really took of at that time) to the 15th century will be a confusing addition to the "See also" section of a political dispute which ranged from the 9th century to the 18th century (counting Russia) and had wide implications for things such as the Crusades and modern historiography (without the HRE the term "Byzantine Empire" would probably not exist and it would remain recognized as the Roman Empire). Ichthyovenator (talk) 16:49, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

I maintain that Antipopes are a significant part of Byzantine and HRE history, with each empire at various times having supported opposing claimants whose purpose was to support their empire's claim in the 2Kaiser struggle. As we know, the disputed papacies also were integral to the Crusades and the ideas of crusading, empire, and imperial authority throughout the period. There is nothing confusing about it, as simply following the link will furnish explanation of why the relationship is pointed out. GPinkerton (talk) 18:52, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

Antipopes are a significant part of HRE history, yes, but of Byzantine history? Not a single of the Byzantine-empire supported Papal candidates during the time of imperial rule in Italy are considered Antipopes today? "with each empire at various times having supported opposing claimants whose purpose was to support their empire's claim in the 2Kaiser struggle" what? The only thing that even remotely resembles what you're describing is the attempted election of Antipope John XVI, supported by Byzantine Emperor Basil II, but at no point did that have anything to do with supporting the Byzantine Empire over the HRE in the dispute? Again, I feel like Antipopes are too tangentially related to the emperor dispute. Ichthyovenator (talk) 19:43, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

I think the most obvious example is Antipope Boniface VII, whose career fits the paradigm I described exactly. You said already that antipope is "probably the one most closely related of your suggestions, seeing as one can see parallels between Pope/Antipope and Byzantine Emperor/Holy Roman Emperor" and since you now must recognize that it was most definitely not a "solely Western European issue confined to Catholicism" as before you'd claimed, or that "there were no Anti-patriarchs in Byzantium, the Ottoman Empire or Russia" is simply badly wrong. There is of course the wider Byzantine Papacy, the role of the emperors in which the later western emperors sought to emulate, as I'm sure you do know. Please don't allow ignorance and POV to get in the way of others' contributions! GPinkerton (talk) 07:21, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

I can concede that I was wrong on several accounts but I don't think its fair to insinuate that I'm ignorant or that my POV is getting in the way. I am aware that the new line of emperors in the west tried to emulate the role the Byzantine emperors held in church business and I suppose the issue is not 100 % confined to Western Europe or Catholicism but I still think it is too tangential to the emperor dispute. Antipope Boniface VII is interesting (and might suggest that Papal support - really the only thing legitimizing the HRE - might not have been a certainty) but his article here on Wikipedia isn't exactly the most expansive and though it briefly mentions Byzantine support, it says nothing of any intention to support the Byzantine Empire as the one true Roman Empire in the HRE's stead (so if there was such an intention, which would be very interesting, that is going to need proof). In either case, Antipopes John XVI and Boniface VII are still just blips in the Papacy's long history and I don't see Antipopes being used or supported on a regular basis by the Byzantines following the coronation of Charlemagne. Ichthyovenator (talk) 20:14, 25 March 2020 (UTC)

@Ichthyovenator: Don't take it pejoratively; I mean simply that your POV that antipopes are not relevant to the subject is mot significant when we consider the issue is discussed by Ohensorge and it was he that defined the term. I don't know why you hold this POV, but it conflicts with the published literature. Ohensorge refers to the Antipope John XVI particularly, but in his discussion of the 2Kaiserproblem he also alludes to Clement and Victor IV. I remind you that quite apart from the sources, "one can see parallels between Pope/Antipope and Byzantine Emperor/Holy Roman Emperor". All individuals with human lifespans are "just blips in the Papacy's long history"; what has that to do with it? GPinkerton (talk) 00:48, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

@GPinkerton: how exactly does Ohnesorge (whose work I haven't read, as I presume it is in German) discuss the issue of Antipopes? With the blip-comment I simply meant that Byzantine-supported Papal candidates post-800 with the intention of recognizing the Byzantines as the one true empire are extremely rare (if they existed at all) compared to Popes and Antipopes who supported the HRE. Ichthyovenator (talk) 11:12, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

@Ichthyovenator: The fact that the HRE employed antipopes especially to support their imperial title is proof enough they ought to be linked here. The lack of Byzantine success in doing so to the same extent is not enough to dismiss their relevance to the 2Kaiserproblem. GPinkerton (talk) 18:41, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

@GPinkerton: I'd argue that the Byzantines did not care enough about the Papacy to employ Antipopes, though you've mentioned several Antipopes I haven't seen any evidence that they were pro-Byzantine in their imperial worldview yet. In general (and this is in the article and cited), the Byzantines cared very little about who ruled in the west (I suspect this extended to the Papacy) as they firmly believed that they would one day reconquer the Western Roman Empire, good old Emperor Nikephoros II Phokas (the famous "White Death of the Saracens") famously proclaimed that he intended to invade and destroy the Papal States and re-establish the Exarchate of Ravenna before invading and destroying the HRE.

I'd argue that the Antipopes employed by the HRE have more to do with Caesaropapism and the Investiture Controversy than it does the problem of two emperors (I know you're arguing that these are all related concepts) the Popes may have been opposed to the Holy Roman Emperors quite often but they at no point (to my knowledge) disputed that the HRE was the legitimate Roman Empire - doing so would have been detrimental to themselves as well. Ichthyovenator (talk) 22:23, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

@Ichthyovenator: You seem to be arguing two separate things: first the Byzantines cared very little about who ruled in the west but then they also "intended to invade and destroy the Papal States". And why? Becuase the Papal States were an illegitimate Frankish creation by the Donation of Pepin, a thing, like the Donation of Constantine, never recognized by the East. Because in former times the Exarch of Ravenna had been known to depose disobedient pontiffs at the (eastern) emperor's command. Because Nicephorus sought to replace the heretical HRE occupant of Peter's chair with his own tame antipope! Numerous antipopes were either supported from or sought support from Constantinople, they simply mostly did so before the emergence of the HRE, after which the HRE were responsible for the creation of most of them, as is obvious from the proximity of the western emperors to Rome compared with the eastern after the Exarchate was reduced to just the Capitanata and Basilicata. Still, papal policy of union or otherwise with the East, as well as the position of investiture of prelates and emperors, was a most significant element in the relations Byz.-HRE and was the cause of many disputed papacies and antipapacies. There were numerous popes who, in opposition to the HRE, advanced the political advantage of the HRE's enemies, not least the support given to the Normans by Nicholas II (an early example of the insular doctrine referred to elsewhere was Nicholas's granting of Sicily (Aghlabid Muslim and in the ecclesiastical territory of Constantinople since the seventh century) to Robert Guiscard) and Gregory VII. These were not antipopes per se, but then bona fide popes do not have the same polarizing effect as does a claim of sede vacante, very similar to the polarizing imperialsede vacante rights claimed in the appointment of Charlemagne - the west considered Irene an anti-emperor and the Roman throne empty. (Gennadius II, for what it's worth, seemed to believe Mehmet might have been the cosmic anti-emperor of Revelation and he was just doing his bit to hasten the end of the world before retiring to a monastery.) GPinkerton (talk) 03:31, 27 March 2020 (UTC)

Investiture Controversy and Caesaropapism: The Investiture Controversy was a power struggle between the Pope and the Holy Roman Emperor over who had the right to appoint church officials. I can see how one might be tempted to draw parallels from this to the struggle between Pope and Byzantine Emperor which eventually led to the proclamation of the HRE but I don't think this should be here. The Investiture Controversy is a solely Catholic issue (while the two-emperor problem extended to Orthodox Christianity and Islam as well), and it is solely Western European. One might argue that this is a political dispute as well (it is obviously a competition over who should have the most influence, religion being the excuse) but it really only tangentially relates to the issue of why there is more than one emperor. This goes for Ceasaropapism as well, which is similar but confied to Byzantium and I'd argue is even less related.

Caesaropapism and the Investiture Controversy are eastern and western halves of the same phenomenon debating the same question: what is the relationship of the the Universal Church with the Universal Empire. The page we are dealing with asks the question: what is the relationship between the Universal Empire and the other Universal Empire. Caesaropapism is far from confined to Byzantium; Byzantine emperors controlled the papacy for a long time - at least one pope was deposed by imperial edict from Constaninople. Indeed the Gelasian doctrine and the Donatio are both intimately connected with Constantinople's empire. GPinkerton (talk) 21:05, 20 March 2020 (UTC)

Yes, that's why I grouped them together as one point of discussion. The page we are dealing with does not ask the question what is the relationship between the Universal Empire and the other Universal Empire?, it asks the question who is the ruler of the Universal Empire and why?. For the most part, the parties in the dispute accepted the notion that there was only one Universal Empire. I maintain that both issues only tangentially (if at all) relates to the issue of why there is more than one emperor. Ichthyovenator (talk) 18:22, 21 March 2020 (UTC)

This is exactly my point. "The page we are dealing with does not ask the question what is the relationship between the Universal Empire and the other Universal Empire?, it asks the question who is the ruler of the Universal Empire and why?" is a false distinction. The page deals with the universally acknowledged de jure universal empire and universally contested claims of the two primary de facto "universal" empires. As I keep saying, you can't have universal empire without a universal church and you can't have a 2Kaiserproblem without the two main churches involved in the dispute over the universally acknowledged de jure universal (Catholic, Orthodox, and OEcumenical) church and universally contested claims of the two primary de facto "universal" ("Catholic, Orthodox, and OEcumenical") churches, east and west. They go together like a horse and carriage. GPinkerton (talk) 16:09, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

Without actual world domination there is no such thing as a de facto universal empire, these are all theoretical concepts. Without a single recognized empire, the universal empire is kaput (this is of course the central issue of the 2-emperor problem and the one that emperors unsuccessfully tried to resolve throughout the entire dispute). As I've demonstrated several times, you can have a dispute over who holds the universal empire without a similar dispute over who presides over the universal church. The prominent examples of that would be the 2-emperor problem as manifested in the disputes between the Holy Roman Empire and the Latin Empire (both Catholic), the Byzantine Empire and Bulgaria/Serbia (all three Orthodox) and the Holy Roman Empire and the Ottomans (one Christian, the other Muslim - though it remains to be seen if this is really a Catholic/Orthodox dispute after all). Ichthyovenator (talk) 16:49, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

these are all theoretical concepts exactly, which makes them all the more relevant since they rely on on another ideologically. you can have a dispute over who holds the universal empire without a similar dispute over who presides over the universal church You really can't though. The entire problem harks back to the competing claims of supremacy and apostolic succession between the sees of Rome and New Rome. It's not so much a Catholic-Orthodox issue (for long periods the eastern belligerent was a heretical, Iconoclastic, emperor, or else a follower of some other official heresy) it's a Rome(/west)-Constantinople(/east) issue. Emperors and pretend emperors like the Bulgarian and other European monarchs came and went but the ideological contest between Old and New Rome's empires carried on regardless. This is another argument for linking the Donation of Constantine, the papacy's own attempt to get in on the translatio imperii. As is surely clear, the Schism(s) and the theological/ecclesiastical dimension of the 2Kaiserproblem is vastly more significant and fundamental than the dilettante interest of Mehmet II in his defeated Byzantines' forms and customs. GPinkerton (talk) 18:52, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

The Donation of Constantine definitely shouldn't be linked; it's a forgery and wasn't directly invoked by a Pope until the 1000s. You really can't though - of course you can (and I showed that you can). The church happens to be related to the Roman Empire; it is not an integral part of it. The Roman Empire was thought of as universal already in Pagan times (when there definitely wasn't a universal church) - usurpers and civil wars during Rome's earlier centuries have more to do with the 2-emperor problem than Caesaropapism or the Investiture Controversy has. Ichthyovenator (talk) 19:43, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

@Ichthyovenator: Your point here is redundant. The 2Kaiserproblem is specifically about the relationship between the two imperial seats and their pentarchic sees. It has nothing whatever to do with pagan Rome. The Christian imperial ideology required that empire have the same marks as the Four Marks of the Church: one, holy, catholic and apostolic. Disputes over the translatio imperii and the apostolic succession are spiritual and temporal sides of the same coin. As I have said, translatio imperii, the Investiture Controversy, and Caesaropapism are all aspects of the mediaeval politico-religious discourse of empire, and the Donation of Constantine is part of the papacy's response to the 2Kaiserproblem. Indeed, its existence is first reputed in papal communications to firstly a western emperor (Charlemagne) and secondly an eastern patriarch (Michael). I don't know how the relevance of all these to one another can be missed, honestly. GPinkerton (talk) 00:48, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

@GPinkerton: "nothing whatever to do with pagan Rome" !! The Roman Empire was seen as universal already when it was ruled by Pagan emperors. The idea of a universal monarchy is an old idea, ancient kings such as Sennacherib and Alexander the Great viewed themselves as universal monarchs long before the Roman Empire was a thing. The 2-emperor problem concerns the universality of the Roman Empire - who is the one true universal ruler? The empire's perceived universality was established before it became Christian.

I'm not saying all of your suggestions are completely unrelated to the 2-emperor problem. I think they are too tangentially related to make sense to someone unfamiliar with these concepts - when I first saw your additions to the See Also section I was very confused, for instance (and I wrote the article!). I'll go back on what I said earlier, I think the Donation of Constantine (as the main justification the Popes could claim for their practice of crowning emperors) could be linked in the See Also section, even though it was not part of your original suggestions. That being said, Caesaropapism and the Investiture Controversy are related to the power of the Church vs the power of the emperor, not the power of one emperor vs another emperor. Though these are contemporary issues, all within (mostly) Christianity they're just not the same. You might not have the 2-emperor problem without the issue of Caesaropapism, and there wouldn't be an Investiture Controversy without a new Roman Empire in the west. I don't think the Investiture Controversy should be in at all, but maybe Caesaropapism should in some capacity, it might be better to explain it in the text instead of linking it in the "See Also" section, though. Ichthyovenator (talk) 11:12, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

@Ichthyovenator: I don't understand why you're willing to admit the Donatio as relevant on the grounds of the "claim for their practice of crowning emperors", but not Cesaropapism and the Investiture Controversy! Ohnsorge discusses the Investiture Controvery in 2Kaiserproblem. There are relevant on the grounds of the "claim for their practice of crowning bishops and patriarchs", an essential part of Roman and post-Roman imperial ideology. All three are closely linked and all are aspects of mediaeval imperial discourse on the nature of imperium. More broadly, the ideas of cosmocrators and kings of kings, emperors of the four colours, divine viceregency, and so on, are all linked in terms of being ideologies of universal "empire", but are neither as intrinsically connected in time or space, nor as historiographically or academically to the mediaeval Rome-Constantinople axis. I don't why insisting it must "make sense to someone unfamiliar with these concepts" forms part of your argument; hyperlinks' suitability is not determined by notional Wikipedia users' imagined familiarity with any subject. The literature makes mention of the Investiture Controversy (and numerous antipopes); that should be enough. GPinkerton (talk) 18:41, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

@GPinkerton: I just admitted that I now think that Caesaropapism is relevant - but that it might be better to add it in the text and explain it in more detail than just leaving a link to it under "see also". Eitherway, I'm going to say that I'm tentatively willing to accept the addition of all three concepts (Antipope, Caesaropapism and Investiture Controversy) to the See Also section on the condition that they have some form of accompanying explanation as to either what the concepts/controversies are or how they relate to the 2-emperor dispute (as I did for everything in the See also section of my draft for the emperor list and just did on the items currently in the see also-section of the 2-emperor problem article). Ichthyovenator (talk) 22:23, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

@Ichthyovenator: Suits me. It was because discussion of these concepts was wanting in the article that I added them to the See Also in the first place. GPinkerton (talk) 03:31, 27 March 2020 (UTC)

Treaty of Tordesillas: The two parties involved in the Treaty of Tordesillas were Portugal and Spain. Portugal did not claim to be the heir of the Roman Empire and neither did Spain; the Habsburgs did not yet rule Spain (even if they did they would not have been able to claim to be the heirs of Rome through their possession of Spain, the HRE and Spain were two separate states/institutions). Yes, the treaty "made" Portugal and Spain into two competing near-global empires but that's not what the two-emperor problem is about. Physical, geographical "universality" is not the same thing as the spiritual and religious universality claimed by the position of Roman emperor - both are a form of world domination but they are not the same thing. I don't think this treaty should be added to the "see also" section.

I disagree that "physical, geographical "universality" is not the same thing as the spiritual and religious universality claimed by the position of Roman emperor". The Treaty works on the ideological basis that 1.) the Church decides what land is whose, 2.) the Church's power extends everywhere, 3.) the power of the empire invested with authority by the pope extends everywhere as a consequence, 4.) the physical and geographical reality is irrelevant and authority rests solely in Church-approved monarchs' hands irrespective of the territorial extent of their imperium. Just like Diocletian and Theodosius, the Treaty divided the oecumene into two halves. Just like those emperors and the subsequent Byzantine and Carolingian ones, the Reyes Catholicos assumed their authority (or the Church's) extended all over the habitable world, irrespective of the realpolitik. This is, however, the only tenuous suggestion. GPinkerton (talk) 21:05, 20 March 2020 (UTC)

Of course actual territorial control is not the same as the religious universality claimed by being Roman emperor. The Byzantine Emperore were (in part) the recognized de jure leaders of the Christian world until 800, their suzerainty recognized by western Christian kingdoms such as the Franks. A spiritual universal rule is not the same as a factual territorial universal rule (then there would be no Frankish kingdom). Regardless of the basis of the treaty, it has little (and indeed I would argue, nothing) to do with the 2-emperor problem. Ichthyovenator (talk) 18:22, 21 March 2020 (UTC)

It has to do with the division of the world into two empires on the grounds that Papacy exercises Universal Sovereignty and the heritage of the Roman Empire. That should be enough. There never was such a thing as factual territorial universal rule, though it was more or less assumed to have been exercised by Alexander (as according to the Romance and Julian's de Caesaribus) and Augustus (as according to the Bible). GPinkerton (talk) 16:09, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

Does the treaty ever mention the Roman Empire? Furthermore, the division of the world (worth specifying that it is the non-European world) into two sovereign colonial empires is similar to what the 2-emperor problem finds problematic - there can be only one true universal ruler. I still submit that this treaty is completely unrelated to the 2-emperor problem and should be kept away from the "see also" section. Ichthyovenator (talk) 16:49, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

It's not only the non-European world. It's the whole world not included in the Donatio, whose territories the pope had already theoretically parcelled up in prior centuries by recognizing anointed (Catholic) kings. (see Investiture Controversy) The Treaty's text could not foresee that it would be used later to assert all manner of Hapsburg (HRE) and post-Hapsburg claims to sovereignty, to the present day. The See Also is not for purely contemporary subjects alone. GPinkerton (talk) 18:52, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

The whole world not included in the Donatio? You're going to need some sources if you're explicitly linking the Treaty of Tordesillas with the Donation of Constantine. Also on the same note, "the whole world not included in the Donatio" would include lands such as Germany, Scandinavia and Russia, which surely were not on the table of being given to Spain and Portugal. The Treaty of Tordesillas is not connected to the 2-emperor problem. Ichthyovenator (talk) 19:43, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

You would do well to consult even the most general reference works, which all make the obvious and glaring connection to the Donatio. For instance, the entry under "Alexandrine Bulls" https://www.encyclopedia.com/, where appear these words: "The remote antecedent of the bulls is found in the Donation of Constantine, a famous eighth century forgery, in which that Roman emperor is said to have given the popes, among other privileges, dominion over "the various islands." On this basis, the papal chancery elaborated what is now called by medievalists an "omni-insular doctrine," applied for the first time in 1091 when Urban II gave the Archipelago of Lipari to a local abbot and the island of Corsica to the bishop of Pisa. Afterward, Adrian IV and other popes granted dominion over various islands in European seas to several princes, demanding in exchange the payment of feudal tribute. In some of the final stages of its evolution during the Middle Ages, the collection of Peter's pence was linked to papal sovereignty over islands. Among the areas feudatory to the Holy See were England, Sicily, Sardinia, Cyprus, Castelrosso, the archipelagos of the Tyrrhenian and North African seas, Scandinavia (considered an island by the imperfect geography of the time), and finally, in the fourteenth century, the Canary Islands. The "omni-insular doctrine" was still a part of the public law of Europe when America was discovered. You can see that the [Catholic] European monarchies are already papal fiefdoms under the Donatio, which was not accepted as forgery until the eighteenth century, and therefore do not form part of the papal grant. The position of Russia is ambiguous but since the original Treaty assumed it was dividing up Asia and the Ptolemaic universe rather than new continents, and the task deputed to Columbus had been the conversion of the emperor of China in a Christian alliance against the Turk for the recovery of Jerusalem, under Spanish sovereignty, I assume this unexcerciseable privilege of Asian dominion would have fallen to the Portuguese instead. It is also notable that the Treaty's inherent flaw resulted in the inevitable renegotiation of the line of demarcation a few decades later on the other side of the world, resulting in a treaty to which a Roman emperor was signatory. Next, see: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=B38I-7oVLvwC&pg=PA167. Or: Curta, F.; Donation of Constantine in Holt, A. (ed.), (2016) Great Events in Religion: An Encyclopedia of Pivotal Events in Religious History where the wording is "Despite the arguments advanced by Nicholas of Cusa and Lorenzo Valla, Renaissance popes continued to use the Donation of Constantine to advance their claims. Perhaps one of the most famous, later uses of the Donation is the Treaty of Tordesillas (1494) which divided the newly discovered lands outside Europe between Portugal and Spain. In that treaty, based on a papal bull issued one year earlier, Pope Alexander VI appears as lord of the Western Hemisphere, who could then donate to his allies in Portugal and Spain the lands that Constantine had donated to Pope Sylvester. Another curious fact is that in the See also section of that very entry appears both: the Investiture Controversy and the acclamation of Otto I, and the conversion of Constantine. Tell me again how these things are all somehow unconnected! GPinkerton (talk) 07:12, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

Okay! I concede that the Treaty of Tordesillas obviously is connected to Constantine's supposed donation then. Maybe Donation of Constantine should have Treaty of Tordesillas linked in its "see also" section then, and vice versa. I also agree that the Donation of Constantine is connected to the Papacy's perceived right to designate a Roman emperor, which in turn of course is connected to the 2-emperor problem but I still feel like that is too tangential for it to be included prominently in the see also-section. I don't see "Investiture Controversy" or the other articles you mentioned linked in the see also-sections of any of the articles Donation of Constantine, Treaty of Tordesillas or Treaty of Zaragoza. One nitpick; Charles V was Holy Roman Emperor, yes, and he did sign the Treaty of Zaragoza but surely he signed it because he was the King of Spain (and in the role of sovereign of Spain) - it might look and sound like the same thing but in a world where the distinction between king and emperor is a very big distinction it makes a lot of difference. Ichthyovenator (talk) 20:14, 25 March 2020 (UTC)

@Ichthyovenator: Again, it appears that all that's keeping my proposal out is the way you feel - as I said though, the Donation of Constantine plays a central role in the relationship between papacy and empire and empire and other "empires" and it itself had significant consequences like the Treaty of Tordesillas and its accompanying bullae. I was not speaking of the See Also sections in Wikipedia, but in the encyclopaedia I cited above. If the Wikipedia sections are missing these things that is no argument for not improving this page; I will look into expanding them. I am not qualified to say what hat Charles V was wearing when he signed but it hardly matters whether he was wearing his Roman titles or his dozens of others, since we continue to refer to his as the Hapsburg empire regardless, and while the text of the Treaty begins: Don Charles, by the grace of God king of the Romans and emperor ever august ... we can be certain he did not do so a "King of Spain" since no such title existed at that time. Now, it is true that since Columbus all the possessions of the New World were specifically Castile's - Aragonese ships were barred from sailing there; indeed all traffic was required to depart from Cadiz, but that hardly matters; all Charles' minor, effectively courtesy titles are listed in the Treaty (of Zaragoza): king of Aragon, king of Jerusalem, duke of Athens, archduke of Austria, king of "the Indies", and so on. At the time, it was rumoured a new Hapsburg Emperor of America might be proclaimed. (One might say Tordesillas marks the point at which one ceases to need a Roman imperial title; a Roman pontifical title worked just as well - but was no longer recognized by Protestant nations, just as it was not recognized by Muslim ones. We call the Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, and American colonial empires by that name irrespective of the nature of the monarchy or otherwise, but this is not the point.) GPinkerton (talk) 00:48, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

Quick note on Charles V; yes there was no such thing as a King of Spain at the time but I think you know what I meant. What I meant was that the Treaty of Zaragoza is a treaty between Portugal and Castile, not Portugal and the Holy Roman Empire. One might say that this matters very little since Castile and the HRE had the same monarch at the time (yes, of course Charles would use all his titles when signing a document) but what I'm saying is that Charles V signed the treaty in his capacity as the ruler of Castile, not in his capacity as the Roman emperor.

You're wanting to add in the Treaty of Tordesillas based on the way you feel about it, though. You feel that it is highly connected to the 2-emperor problem and I feel that it isn't. As you say (which I didn't know originally), the Treaty derives from the Donation of Constantine, which in on itself serves as the basis of the Pope's right to proclaim emperors and distribute territories but it is not directly related to the 2-emperor problem itself. Ichthyovenator (talk) 11:12, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

@Ichthyovenator: I think we can leave the Treaty for now, since it does lie outside the time period, though not the ideological framework, but the Donatio fits well with the subject, time, and region. Charles signed as semper augustus, but the territory was awarded to the Kingdom of Castile. GPinkerton (talk) 18:41, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

@GPinkerton: Alright! That's discussion done on two of the points. I can support adding the Donation of Constantine to the article, either through adding a mention of it in the text somewhere or in the See Also section. Ichthyovenator (talk) 22:23, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

Bipolarity (international relations): sure, the HRE and the Byzantine Empire were the "ideological superpowers" of their day but polarity is distribution of actual power, not ideological power, no? There were times when other states rivalled (and surpassed) either the HRE or the Byzantine Empire in power, not to mention the times when other states declared their rulers to be emperors as well. In 915 there were three emperors (Berengar of the HRE, Simeon I of Bulgaria and Constantine VII of Byzantium), in 1224 there were five (Theodore Komnenos Doukas of Thessalonica, John III Doukas Vatatzes of Nicaea, Andronikos I Megas Komnenos of Trebizond, Frederick II of the HRE and Robert I of the Latin Empire) and in 1550 there were again three (Ivan the Terrible of Russia, Suleiman the Magnificent of the Ottomans and Charles V of the HRE). The dispute wasn't always between the HRE and the Byzantine Empire and at least one of the two was most of the time not a superpower (take the HRE in the early 900s, confined to northern Italy, or Byzantium in the 1400s, confined to Constantinople and some other territories). Ichthyovenator (talk) 17:53, 20 March 2020 (UTC)

Basically no. Soft power is as important as hard, more so even, in the aera of illiteracy, fluctuating borders, and short lifetimes. Far more people saw coins and went to church than ever saw an emperors's face and armies. No-one then ever saw an accurate map. Again, just because not every aspect of modern international relations theory applies to precisely the period under consideration, the wider fact remains that there was a bi-polar international division between East and West Christendom, even if there were at times rivalries with other powers on other poles. There are plenty of years with multiple competing emperors, I can't see what this has to do with the basic issue that everyone shared the view that there was only one real [senior-]emperor but disagreed on who that real emperor was. (I would argue the Bulgarian czars were not a problem, pretending only to the junior title, awarded them by a bona fide Heraclian emperor and with their Patriarch always (until the 1800s and again now) subordinate to the OEcumenical bishop of Constantinople.) Even in the 1400s, an eastern emperor were powerful enough to make a tour through Europe and interacting as a superior with kings as if it were 1,000 years earlier. Christmas 620 years ago would not have been the same if Henry Bolingbroke had known his imperial guest ruled little more than a walled town and some islands (and the vast array of Orthodox hearts and imaginations beyond the borders). GPinkerton (talk) 21:05, 20 March 2020 (UTC)

As I mentioned previously, the Bulgarians did not pretend to the junior title. Yes, the Byzantines were ideologically superior due to their position as Roman emperors but what I meant was that just because the Byzantines told everyone this, it wasn't necessarily respected (which brings me to the issue of soft/hard power). The Bulgarians and Serbians, both Eastern Orthodox Christians, invaded the Byzantines (several times) and at points claimed the position of emperor. I feel like the 890s to early 900s Italian Holy Roman Emperors (Guy, Lambert, Louis III and Berengar) are an even better example. They were papally proclaimed emperors, sure, but their control and influence was incredibly limited and not really respected beyond their immediate area of influence in northern Italy. Ichthyovenator (talk) 18:22, 21 March 2020 (UTC)

Again, just because some rulers didn't measure up to their or others' claims, it doesn't follow that the the centuries-long contest between two imperial powers for Europe-wide spheres of influence itself isn't an obvious instance of bipolarity in historical geopolitcs. A few thousand Afghan rebels defeated the Soviet Union; it hardly means the USSR was never a superpower and the Cold War was not an instance of bipolarity. GPinkerton (talk) 16:09, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

The Cold War was an instance of bipolarity but I retain that the 2-emperor problem wasn't, partly because there were often more than 2 (surely Simeon's Bulgarian empire is powerful enough for the situation of his time to be counted as some sort of tripolarity according to your view?). Furthermore, that would ignore other major ideological and territorial powers of their day which were unconcerned with who the true emperor was. The Abbasid Caliphate in 800 was for instance at least on the level of Charlemagne's empire and the Byzantine Empire, both in hard (territorial extent and size and strength of armies) and soft power (influence etc.). Ichthyovenator (talk) 16:49, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

Fine. We should link Polarity (international relations) then, though within Christendom there was an obvious and centuries-long bipolarity. The Abbasid Empire of Charlemagne's day is a very bad example of one unconcerned with who the true emperor was, since we know that the Abbasid Caliph very much did recognize Charlemagne as a monarch ranking above a simple king and sent a famous and generous embassy to say so; I don't know just how Hurun ar-Rashid treated the Byzantine claimant. I'm sure no-where outside Simeon's domains was his claim taken seriously, least of all in the Roman or Byzantine spheres, the two empires referred to in the 2Kaiserproblem. GPinkerton (talk) 18:52, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

No we shouldn't, for the many reasons I've stated. I can agree that there is an ideological bipolarity within Christianity from 800 to 1453, but that is ignoring rival claimants (e.g. Bulgaria, Serbia) and ignoring actual hard power relations. With "unconcerned with who the true emperor was" I mean that the Abbasids didn't care much of the dispute, their empire was as powerful (if not more so) than the other two. Of course the Abbasids recognized Charlemagne as something more than a king; he was a ridiculously powerful ruler, that's not evidence that they recognized him as emperor or cared about that issue in the slightest. The point with the Abbasids was that the Abbasid Caliphate represented another great empire of the day but one completely unrelated to the emperor dispute.

It doesn't matter if Simeon's claim to be the Roman emperor was taken seriously outside his own domain, his domain was larger than that of the contemporary HRE candidate and similar in size to the domain of the Byzantine emperor - he would have exerted as much ideological influence as either of the other two claimants. Clearly, the Byzantines took him seriously as a threat. Ichthyovenator (talk) 19:43, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

Bulgarians are not mentioned in Ohensorge's treatment of the subject and discussion of the 2Kaiserproblem does not appear in the one source that discusses Bulgaria in the references. What justification is there for including discussion of it in the page whose subject is the dispute between eastern and western empires in the middle ages, still less excluding whole swathes of ideas on the basis they don't apply to tangential issues like imitatio among the Bulgarians and Turks? The Wikipedia article may treat of a "Bulgarian-Byzantine" dispute as though it were an equal part of the phenomenon but the 2Kaiserproblem in historiography is specifically about Rome and Constantinople - is this original research? I note citations are ... thin. GPinkerton (talk) 00:48, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

The Wikipedia article does not treat the Bulgarian-Byzantine dispute as if it were an equal part of the problem - you'll notice that it is the shortest of all the sections (and that the Holy Roman-Byzantine dispute is the longest). I'll admit that I haven't actually read Ohnesorge's original treatment (and besides, it is written in German, right?), but the article defines the 2-emperor problem as "the historiographical term for the historical contradiction between the idea of the universal empire, that there was only ever one true emperor at any one given time, and the truth that there were often two (or sometimes more) individuals who claimed the position simultaneously", which I think is a fair assessment of what the issue is - Simeon's attempt at transferring the universal empire from Constantinople to himself fits into that and though the 2-emperor problem might not be mentioned by name in the source used in the Bulgarian section, the dispute between Simeon and Constantinople is compared to the Holy Roman-Byzantine dispute in so far that it was a more pressing issue that had to be dealt with quickly since the Bulgarians and Byzantines were in such close geographical proximity. The section is in the article for completeness sake, with the exception of the Byzantines, Germans, Russians and Ottomans, the Bulgarians and Serbs are the only rulers who explicitly took (or claimed connection to) the title of "Roman emperor" (in defiance of other recognized emperors at that).

Regardless of whether Simeon (and a handful of other non-Byzantine Balkan rulers) counts as part of the problem (I think they obviously do), I still don't fully accept the notion that relations between the HRE and the Byzantine Empire were an example of Biopolarity. I agree that yes, for long periods of time the HRE and the Byzantine Empire represented the sole ideological superpowers within Christianity but I don't think the situation can completely likened with something like the Cold War (notice that the Cold War article itself doesn't even link to polarity !!). Does Ohnesorge discuss polarity in his original treatment on the emperor dispute? My main argument against this is that there were other contemporary states with at least as much ideological influence within and outside their own borders, the most notable example of which would be the Caliphates. Ichthyovenator (talk) 11:12, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

@Ichthyovenator: It's the phrase "the historiographical term for the historical contradiction between the idea of the universal empire, that there was only ever one true emperor at any one given time, and the truth that there were often two (or sometimes more) individuals who claimed the position simultaneously" that I'm taking issue with. It makes it appear as though this were a suitable translation of the concept of 2Kaiserproblem, but it doesn't. Ohnsorge's term he applied specifically to the mediaeval east-west phenomenon. Russia, Turkey, and the rest are not included or so much as mentioned in his text. Now, Wilson does use "two emperor problem" in dealing with later periods, but this is not the phrase's proper meaning as Ohnsorge coined it. I would argue that without serious qualification, the post 1453 stuff, even the post 1204 period, belongs to some other article, like Third Rome, or grouped together in a section at the foot. Or linked in the See Also. It's also quite bold to claim that the Abbasids had "at least as much ideological influence within". They had no sway in Europe. Their influence in Europe was indirect at best and not at all comparable to the East-West imperio-religious polarity, which touched everyone every day. (They physically recited the -oque at almost every church service for instance ...) GPinkerton (talk) 18:41, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

@GPinkerton: The exact meaning of what the 2Kaiserproblem is and isn't is not exclusively for Ohnsorge to decide (even if he created the term)! It's just a phrase to describe a medieval and early modern phenomenon and Wikipedia does need to take into account how the term is used by other authors (Ohnsorge's work is from 1947 after all, Wilson's is more recent for instance), I see no reason why Wilson's use of the term would not be taken into account? He is a respected historian whose done a lot of work on Germany and the HRE. What parts of "the historiographical term for the historical contradiction between the idea of the universal empire, that there was only ever one true emperor at any one given time, and the truth that there were often two (or sometimes more) individuals who claimed the position simultaneously" do you take issue with? "2Kaiserproblem" is a historiographical term (invented in 1947), and does refer to the contradiction between the idea of the universal empire and the real situation of there actually being multiple emperors. On a side note, the medieval east-west emperor problem is the same problem later manifested with the Russians and the Ottomans (both, legitimately or not, claiming the legacy of Byzantium). The only part of the article which doesn't fit in with the east-west dynamic is the Bulgarian claim, which represents a different and very interesting 2-emperor problem, but still relating to the same core idea (who is the rightful Roman emperor? who governs the universal empire?).

On the Abbasids: Europe is not the world! The Abbasid Caliphs were temporal and religious rulers of a vast empire (covering many once Roman lands, one could add), together with the Carolingian and Byzantine (and briefly, Bulgarian) empires they were one of the powerhouses of their day in the Mediterranean. The Caliph would have been as influential, if not more so, within Islam as a Roman emperor would be within Christianity, wouldn't you say? I find the notion that the Abbasids would have zero influence outside their own borders is ridiculous to me and though they did not govern anything in Europe per se, they were obviously a major player and I suspect that the rising or waning power of the Caliphate would be a very important issue on the mind of at least the Byzantine emperor (and probably the rest of Christian Europe). Ichthyovenator (talk) 22:23, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

@Ichthyovenator: I'm not being precise enough; Ohnsorge's monograph is about the Byzantines and Germans only. I have no objection to including the other instances of multiple emperorage, but the lead needs to state explicitly that the 2Kaiserproblem refers expressly sensu stricto to this axis and the mediaeval Rome-Constantinople-"German" relationship, but that the concept has since been broadened out in space and time. The claiming of the legacy of Byzantium lies well outside the original concept. This is why I have been saying concepts relating specifically to the Byz.-HRE dispute should be linked and their non-pertinence to Russia, Turkey, Serbia, &c. is neither here nor there. It is these later claims that lie at a tangent; the relationships of church/state-Rome/Byzantium are at the core.

On the Abbasids, I had hoped initially to include a link to Fitna, but it seemed there wasn't single article dealing with the subject as a whole so I didn't try. In some ways, this dispute is the parallel in Islam. Now the Abbasids were not powerhouses in the Mediterranean in anyone's day. The Abbasid revolution caused the effective loss of almost all the old One Caliphate's Mediterranean provinces and the the Islamic Mediterranean was thereafter dominated by the rump Ummayyad caliphate and newer dynasties like the Idrisids, Aghlabids, and the later Zirids and Tulunids, only some of whom paid (nominal) allegiance to Baghdad or Samarra. Unless you're speaking about Syria, Egypt (early on), Mesopotamia, and parts of Anatolia and the Causcasus, it's not really true to say the Abbasids "covered many once Roman lands". And while amalgamating the role of both emperor and patriarch within Islam the caliph exceeded the imperial authority in theory, the fact that this authority had no chance of being recognized in Rome or Constantinople or even by his own Christian subjects (even in the way minor way some non-Chalcedonians under the Sasanians had sometimes expressed support for the Shah) means that their ideological influence was, as I say, very limited and indirect. Doubtless the Arabs and Byzantines are another polarity, lasting many centuries, but there was never the feeling that each sought to restore the Roman empire. The Muslims had no need of such a concept. (This is also why the caesar title worn by Mehmet II - a self-professed Successor and Commander of the Faithful - was a subsidiary title of relatively minor importance whose significance apparently registered mainly with Greeks and Europeans.)It should also be noted that there were many self-identifying "Roman" Christians in the Abbasids' territory, both inside and beyond the former bounds of the Empire, and the religious and political goings-on in Rome and Constantinople (and ecclesiastical developments in Alexandria and Antioch, not to mention Jerusalem) were followed closely by these people in a way that was not mirrored in any significant sense in the Byzantines' realm or the HRE. This is why the polarity in Christendom (and Europe within it) is so much more significant. The pope, by contrast, often could intervene in geopolitics the Byzantine sphere et vice versa. GPinkerton (talk) 03:31, 27 March 2020 (UTC)

@GPinkerton: Oh alright! I suppose you don't think the current iteration, with "The term is mostly used in regards to medieval Europe, in particular, the long-lasting dispute between the Byzantine emperors in Constantinople and the Holy Roman emperors ..." stresses it well enough then? I'm welcome to suggestions for rewriting this particular part but I'm not sure the history of the concept itself within historiography is as relevant as how the 2-emperor problem is actually used today, but as I said, open for suggestions here.

Fitna does look like quite a parallel concept but as you say, yes there isn't a good overview article of the subject (the Fitna (word) article is a bit too general to link I think). I disagree about the Abbasids not being a Mediterranean powerhouse but as with the other subjects I can support linking Polarity if it has an accompanying note - something which notes that it is an ideological polarity within Christianity and not necessarily always a polarity involving actual hard power. Ichthyovenator (talk) 21:56, 28 March 2020 (UTC)