Battle of Arachova
The Battle of Arachova was fought between an Ottoman Empire force under the command of Mustafa Bey and Greek irregulars under Georgios Karaiskakis. On 18 November, Mustafa Bey's 2,000 Ottoman Turkish troops were blockaded in the village of Arachova. An 800-man Turkish force that attempted to relieve the defenders three days failed. On 22 November Mustafa Bey was mortally wounded and tensions rose between the new commander Kehagias and his Albanian officers as morale plunged. At midday on 24 November the Ottomans made a disastrous attempt at breaking out. Most were perished from hypothermia. Following the conclusion of the Third Siege of Missolonghi on 10 April 1826, fighting was restricted to the Siege of the Acropolis and skirmishes around Palamidi; the Ottomans seemed to have gained the upper hand in Central Greece, with many Greek rebels accepting Kioutahi Pasha's amnesty in order to take a break from the hardships of the Greek War of Independence. Georgios Karaiskakis took a number of fighters from Missolonghi.
On 27 October he arrived at Domvrena, besieging the 300-man Ottoman garrison who had taken refuge in tower houses. On 14 November, Karaiskakis broke off the siege after receiving news that Mustafa Bey's 3,000 man army had begun its descent towards Amfissa, putting the Greek forces in the area in grave danger. On the early morning of 16 November, Karaiskakis reached the Hosios Loukas monastery, spending the rest of the day there. Shortly before the dawn of 17 November, Greek troops set camp at Distomo. On the same day Mustafa Bey dispersed Greek pickets at Atalanti camping at the Agia Ierousalim monastery outside Davleia. There he questioned the local igumen about Karaiskakis' whereabouts and whether he knew of his intention to relieve Amfissa; the igumen lied, claiming that Karaiskakis had yet to leave Domvrena and that he was oblivious of the Ottoman maneuvers. Mustafa Bey believed him ordering his soldiers to keep an eye on the monks and promising to execute them should one of them try to betray his presence at the monastery.
While Mustafa Bey and his aide Kehagias discussed their future plans while dining, a monk, fluent in Turkish overheard their conversation. The monks convened in secret, deciding to dispatch one of them to Distomo and inform Karaiskakis of the route the Turks were to take. A young monk named Panfoutios Charitos managed to bypass the Turkish sentries twice, speaking with Karaiskakis and returning to his bed before the Turks recounted the number of the monks present. Karaiskakis ordered his officers Georgios Hajipetros, Alexios Grivas and Georgios Vagias to occupy the church of Agios Georgios in Arachova and the surrounding houses, they were to strike the Turks with a force of 500 men once their enemies emerged from Mount Parnassus. Small bands were stationed between Arachova and Distomo in order to signal the outbreak of hostilities, at which point the main force would come to their aid. Christodoulos Hajipetros and his unit of 400 men covered a passage south of Arachova. Karaiskakis' secretary sent messages to all known guerrilla bands in the surrounding areas, informing them of the impending battle.
At 10 a.m. on 18 November, Greek lookouts signaled that the Turks were approaching Arachova from the north–east. An advanced column of Turks arrived at the village and was waiting for the rest of the army when Albanian soldiers noticed that several houses had freshly carved loopholes. Taking cover behind huge rocks standing inside the village they initiated a firefight with the Greeks; this came as a surprise to the majority of the villagers who had remained oblivious of the situation until the last minute. Turks continued to funnel fresh troops into the village approaching the Greek positions which were the source of continuous volleys of shots. In the meantime Christodoulos Hajipetros' troops redeployed to the Kumula hill overlooking the village from the south. Karaiskakis' troops appeared on the outskirts of Arachova around midday, rebels from the surrounding areas gathered west of the village thus encircling the Turks. Mustafa Bey reacted by sending a detachment of 500 infantrymen to hold Karaiskakis' advance.
The rest of the Turkish army occupied a hill overlooking the village. Upon descending the Maura Litharia hillock the Greeks were engaged by the Turkish detachment that had barricaded themselves inside houses. A quarter of an hour the Turks had repelled an attack, moreover the Greek right flank broke ranks and fled; the situation was reversed when a unit of Souliotes under Georgios Tzavelas mounted a second offensive, killing a Turkish officer and rallying deserters to return to the battlefield. Morale in the Turkish right flank plunged, those who managed to escape were intercepted west of the village and annihilated, yet the Ottoman center and left flank held fast and Karaiskakis sought other ways to break the stalemate. 300 Greeks under Giotis Danglis passed west of the Zervospilies hill, taking a hill, higher than that the main Turkish force had occupied. This came as a complete surprise to Mustafa Bey, who led sword in hand. Being favored by the terrain, the Greeks crushed three waves of attackers within half an hour.
In the meantime Karaiskakis overcame the resistance that faced him, reaching the Agios Georgios church. The Turkish camp was surrounded and besieged just as night fell and hostilities were suspended. On 19 November, the two sides exchanged fire; the rest of the day was uneventful. In the early hours of 20 November, the Greeks received 450 men in reinforcements, most of them were sent on guard duty to the roads leading
Morea expedition
The Morea expedition is the name given in France to the land intervention of the French Army in the Peloponnese between 1828 and 1833, at the time of the Greek War of Independence. After the fall of Messolonghi, Western Europe decided to intervene in favour of revolutionary Greece, their attitude toward the Ottoman Empire's Egyptian ally, Ibrahim Pasha, was critical. The intervention began when a Franco-Russo-British fleet was sent to the region, winning the Battle of Navarino in October 1827. In August 1828, a French expeditionary corps disembarked at Koroni in the southern Peloponnese; the soldiers were stationed on the peninsula until the evacuation of Egyptian troops in October taking control of the principal strongholds still held by Turkish troops. Although the bulk of the troops returned to France from the end of 1828, there was a French presence in the area until 1833; as during Napoleon's Egyptian Campaign, when a Commission des Sciences et des Arts had accompanied the military campaign, a Morea scientific expedition accompanied the troops.
Seventeen learned. Their work was of major importance in increasing knowledge about the country; as an example, the topographic maps they produced were excellent. More the measurements, profiles and proposals for the theoretical restoration of Peloponnesian monuments, of Attica and of the Cyclades were, following James Stuart and Nicholas Revett's Antiquities of Athens, a new attempt to systematically and exhaustively catalogue ancient Greek ruins; the Morea expedition and its publications offered a near-complete description of the regions visited. They formed a scientific and human inventory that remained one of the best means, short of visiting them in person, to get to know the regions. In 1821, the Greeks revolted against centuries-long Ottoman rule, they declared independence. However, the declaration contradicted the principles of the Congress of Vienna and of the Holy Alliance, which imposed a European equilibrium of the status quo, outlawing any change. In contrast to what happened elsewhere in Europe, the Holy Alliance did not intervene to stop the liberal Greek insurgents.
The liberal and national uprising displeased the Austria of Metternich, the principal political architect of the Holy Alliance. However, another reactionary gendarme of Europe, looked favorably on the insurrection due to its Orthodox religious solidarity and its geostrategic interest. France, another active member of the Holy Alliance, had just intervened in Spain against liberals at Trocadero but held an ambiguous position: Paris saw the liberal Greeks first and foremost as Christians, their uprising against the Muslim Ottomans had undertones of a new crusade. Great Britain, a liberal country, was interested in the regional situation because it lay on the route to India and London wished to exercise a form of control there. For all of Europe, Greece represented the cradle of art since antiquity; the Greek victories had been short-lived. The Sultan had called to his aid his Egyptian vassal Muhammad Ali, who had dispatched his son Ibrahim Pasha to Greece with a fleet and 8,000 men adding a further 25,000 troops.
Ibrahim's intervention proved decisive: much of the Peloponnese had been reconquered in 1825. All that Greek nationalists still held was Nafplion, Hydra and Aegina. A strong current of philhellenism developed in Western Europe, thus it was decided to intervene in favour of Greece, the cradle of civilisation and a Christian vanguard in the Orient whose strategic location was clear. By the Treaty of London of July 1827, France and the United Kingdom recognised the autonomy of Greece, which remained a vassal state of the Ottoman Empire; the three powers agreed to a limited intervention in order to convince the Porte to accept the terms of the convention. A plan to send a naval expedition as a show of force was adopted. A joint Russian and British fleet was sent to exercise diplomatic pressure against Constantinople; the Battle of Navarino, fought after a chance encounter, resulted in the destruction of the Turkish-Egyptian fleet. In 1828, Ibrahim Pasha thus found himself in a difficult situation: he had just suffered a defeat at Navarino.
On August 6, 1828, a convention had been signed at Alexandria between the viceroy of Egypt, Muhammad Ali, the British admiral Edward Codrington. Ibrahim Pasha had to evacuate his Egyptian troops and leave the Peloponnese to the few Turkish troops remaining there. However, Ibrahim Pasha refused to honor the agreement, reached, continuing to control various Greek regions: Messenia, Navarino and several other strongholds, he had ordered the systematic destruction of Tripoli. In addition, the French government of Charles X was beginning to have doubts about its Greek policy. Ibrahim Pasha himself noted this ambiguity when he met General Maison in September: “Why was France, after enslaving men in Spain in 1823, now coming to Greece to make men fre
Liberation of Kalamata
The Liberation of Kalamata took place on 23 March 1821 when Greek irregular revolutionary forces took control of the city after the surrender of the Ottoman garrison, without fighting. It was one of the first events of the Greek War of Independence. Kalamata became. Soon, one of the first tactical regiments was created in the city under the command of the Corsican philhellene Joseph Balestra
The Massacre at Chios
The Massacre at Chios is the second major oil painting by the French artist Eugène Delacroix. The work is more than four meters tall, shows some of the horror of the wartime destruction visited on the Island of Chios in the Chios massacre. A frieze-like display of suffering characters, military might and colourful costumes, terror and death is shown in front of a scene of widespread desolation. Unusually for a painting of civil ruin during this period, The Massacre at Chios has no heroic figure to counterbalance the crushed victims, there is little to suggest hope among the ruin and despair; the vigour with which the aggressor is painted, contrasted with the dismal rendition of the victims has drawn comment since the work was first hung, some critics have charged that Delacroix might have tried to show some sympathy with the brutal occupiers. The painting was completed and displayed at the Salon of 1824 and presently hangs at the Musée du Louvre in Paris. A military attack on the inhabitants of Chios by Ottoman forces commenced on 11 April 1822 and was prosecuted for several months into the summer of the same year.
The campaign resulted in the deaths of twenty thousand citizens, the forced deportation into slavery of all the surviving seventy thousand inhabitants. Delacroix had been impressed by his fellow Parisien Théodore Géricault's The Raft of the Medusa, a painting for which he himself modeled as the young man at the front with the outstretched arm; the pyramidal arrangement that governs Géricault's painting is seen with the figures in the foreground of The Massacre at Chios. On this unlikely layout of characters, Delacroix commented, "One must fill up. Would that everything should hold together!" The dense assembly of characters at the front is in marked contrast to the open and dispersed spaces behind them. Land and sea and shade run appear as bands of drifting colours listlessly running into each other, Delacroix appears to abandon the laws of perspective altogether with his rendering of clouds; the complete effect of this background is to suggest a constant opening out and centrelessness. Aesthetician Heinrich Wölfflin identified this technique, classified it a tectonic form.
The thirteen civilians—men and children–have been rounded up for slaughter or enslavement. They are harshly presented to the viewer in an flat plane, their arrangement principally comprises two human pyramids–one pyramid to the left of the canvas culminating in the man with the red fez, the other to the right culminating in the mounted soldier. The area between the two pyramids contains two soldiers in shadow, two more Greek victims–a young man embraced by a young woman; the two men in the pyramid to the left are injured. The man at the front is on or near to the point of death, the man poised at the top of the group appears unable to prepare a defence for himself, his gaze is in the direction of the suffering children in front of him, but it does not fall on them. This seeming detachment, coupled with the vacant stare of the dying man lend to this group an air of despondent resignation. In contrast, the human pyramid to the right has a vigorous vertical thrust; the writhing of the woman tied to the horse, the upward reaching stretch of the figure to her left, the shocking mane of the horse, the twisting and commanding figure of the soldier upon it, all give dynamism to the grouping as it rises.
But at the foot of the pyramid, an old woman raises her head to gaze into the sky, to her right a baby seeks maternal comfort from a clenched-fisted corpse. Body parts including a hand and forearm, an indistinct, congealed bloody mass hover grimly above the infant. Of the rear, Elisabeth A. Fraser notes that "he background cuts through the centre of the composition and drops inexplicably out and back from the cluster of figures." This dramatic arrangement breaks the picture apart into fragments, with clumps of tangled bodies, scattered glances and other details competing for the viewers attention. In the middle distance, another mêlée of humanitarian disaster unfolds, the background is an uneven display of sacked, burning settlements and scorched earth. Most of the Mediterranean horizon is painted with bleak earth colours, it is punctuated only by smoke, the mane of the rearing horse and the head of the soldier. Delacroix reveals over a number of weeks’ entries in his Journal a desire to try to get away from the academically sound and muscular figures of his previous work Dante and Virgil in Hell.
Two studies Delacroix worked on at this time, Head of a Woman and Girl Seated in a Cemetery, show the combination of unexaggerated modelling and accented contour he was striving to incorporate into his larger work. The final treatment of figures in the Massacre is however less consistent than these two studies; the flesh of the dead man at the front is for instance colouristically rendered, contrasting with the more tonal modelling of the nude to the right, the Veronese-like schematic modelling of the baby. On 15 September 1821, Delacroix wrote to his friend Raymond Soulier that he wanted to make a reputation for himself by painting a scene from the war between the Ottomans and the Greeks, have this painting displayed at the Salon. At this time Delacroix was not famous, had yet to paint a canvas, to be hung for public display. In the event, he decided to paint his Dante and Virgil in Hell, but as this painting was revealed to the public in April 1822, the atrocities at Chios were being meted out in full force.
In May 1823, Delacroix committed to paint a picture about the massacre. When the
Wallachian uprising of 1821
The uprising of 1821 was a social and political rebellion in Wallachia, at the time a tributary state of the Ottoman Empire. It originated as a movement against the Phanariote administration, with backing from the more conservative boyars, but mutated into an attempted removal of the boyar class. Though not directed against Ottoman rule, the revolt espoused an early version of Romanian nationalism, is described by historians as the first major event of a national awakening; the revolutionary force was centered on a group of Pandur irregulars, whose leader was Tudor Vladimirescu. Its nucleus was the Wallachian subregion of Oltenia, where Vladimirescu established his "Assembly of the People" in February. From the beginning, Pandurs were joined by groups of Arnauts and by veterans of the Serbian Revolution. Although infused with anti-Hellenism, they collaborated with, were infiltrated by, agents of the Filiki Eteria. Vladimirescu cooperated with the Sacred Band of Alexander Ypsilantis, thereby contributing to the larger war of Greek independence.
In conjunction with Ypsilantis' troops coming in from Moldavia, Vladimirescu managed to occupy Bucharest in March. Vladimirescu agreed to split the country with Ypsilantis, preserving control over Oltenia and the southern half of Muntenia; the Pandurs' relationship with the Sacred Band degenerated upon revelations that the Russian Empire had not validated Ypsilantis' expedition, over Vladimirescu's attempts to quell Eterist violence. Many of the Arnauts or covertly supported Ypsilantis, while others endorsed an independent warlord, Sava Fochianos. Vladimirescu secretly negotiated an entente with the Ottomans, who invaded Wallachia in late April; the Pandurs withdrew toward Oltenia. Vladimirescu's brutality alienated his own troops; the Oltenians scattered, though some Pandurs formed pockets of resistance, led by captains such as Dimitrie Macedonski and Ioan Solomon. They suffered clear defeat in their confrontation with the Ottoman Army. In June, Ypsilantis' force and its remaining Pandur allies were routed at Drăgășani.
The uprising sparked a cycle of repressive terror, with a final episode in August, when Fochianos and his Arnauts were massacred in Bucharest. The uprising of 1821 is seen as a failed or incomplete social revolution, with more far-reaching political and cultural implications; the Ottoman government registered its anti-Phanariote message, appointing an assimilated boyar, Grigore IV Ghica, as Prince of Wallachia. The ascent of nationalist boyars was enhanced during the Russian occupation of 1828, cemented by a new constitutional arrangement, Regulamentul Organic. During this interval, survivors of the uprising split between those who supported this conservative establishment and those who favored liberal causes; the latter helped preserve a heroic image of Vladimirescu, also borrowed by agrarianists and left-wing activists. From the beginning of the 18th-century and Moldavia had been placed by the Sublime Porte under a regime of indirect rule through Phanariotes; this cluster of Greek and Hellenized families, the associated Greek diaspora, were conspicuously present at all levels of government.
At a more generalized level, the Phanariote era emphasized tensions between the boyars, Phanariote or not, the peasant class. Though released from serfdom, Wallachian peasants were still required to provide for the boyars in corvées and tithes. Over the early 19th century, the rural economy was paralyzed by peasant strikes, tax resistance, sabotage, or litigation. Additional pressures were created by Ottoman demands for the haraç and other fiscal duties, which the Phanariotes fulfilled through tax farming. "Excessive fiscal policies, dictated by both the Ottoman demands and the short span of reigns" meant that Phanariotes treated the principalities as "an actual tenancy." The national budget for 1819 was 5.9 million thaler, of which at least 2 million were taken by the Sublime Porte, 1.3 million went to the ruling family, 2.4 supplied the bureaucracy. Although not at their highest historical level, Ottoman pressures had been increasing since ca. 1800. Tax payers were additionally constrained by those boyars who obtained tax privileges or exemptions for themselves and their families.
In 1819, from 194,000 families subject to taxation, 76,000 had been wholly or exempted. Tax farmers, in particular the Ispravnici, acted in an predatory manner, and, in various cases, tortured peasants into paying more than their share. In the 1800s, a reformist Prince Constantine Ypsilantis sided with the peasants, cracking down on abuse and threatening capital punishment. Under constant fiscal pressure, many villagers resorted to selling their labor to boyars or to peasant entrepreneurs. According to a report by the Ispravnic of Gorj County, in 1819 migrant farmhands could cover their tax debt; the Phanariotes' hold on the country was nonetheless put into question by various episodes of the previous half-century, by local troubles coinciding with the Napoleonic era. In 1802, the threat of an invasion by Ottoman secessionist Osman Pazvantoğlu pushed Bucharest into a panic. At its height, the mercenary Sava Fochianos and his Arnauts denounced their contract and left the city defenseless; this embarrassment prompted Ypsilantis to form a small national contingent, comprising armed burghers and Pandurs who were trained by Western standards.
Vi
Constantinople
Constantinople was the capital city of the Roman Empire, of the Byzantine Empire, of the brief Crusader state known as the Latin Empire, until falling to the Ottoman Empire. It was reinaugurated in 324 from ancient Byzantium as the new capital of the Roman Empire by Emperor Constantine the Great, after whom it was named, dedicated on 11 May 330; the city was located in what is now the core of modern Istanbul. From the mid-5th century to the early 13th century, Constantinople was the largest and wealthiest city in Europe; the city was famed for its architectural masterpieces, such as the Greek Orthodox cathedral of Hagia Sophia, which served as the seat of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, the sacred Imperial Palace where the Emperors lived, the Galata Tower, the Hippodrome, the Golden Gate of the Land Walls, the opulent aristocratic palaces lining the arcaded avenues and squares. The University of Constantinople was founded in the fifth century and contained numerous artistic and literary treasures before it was sacked in 1204 and 1453, including its vast Imperial Library which contained the remnants of the Library of Alexandria and had over 100,000 volumes of ancient texts.
It was instrumental in the advancement of Christianity during Roman and Byzantine times as the home of the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople and as the guardian of Christendom's holiest relics such as the Crown of Thorns and the True Cross. Constantinople was famed for its complex defences; the first wall of the city was erected by Constantine I, surrounded the city on both land and sea fronts. In the 5th century, the Praetorian Prefect Anthemius under the child emperor Theodosius II undertook the construction of the Theodosian Walls, which consisted of a double wall lying about 2 kilometres to the west of the first wall and a moat with palisades in front; this formidable complex of defences was one of the most sophisticated of Antiquity. The city was built intentionally to rival Rome, it was claimed that several elevations within its walls matched the'seven hills' of Rome; because it was located between the Golden Horn and the Sea of Marmara the land area that needed defensive walls was reduced, this helped it to present an impregnable fortress enclosing magnificent palaces and towers, the result of the prosperity it achieved from being the gateway between two continents and two seas.
Although besieged on numerous occasions by various armies, the defences of Constantinople proved impregnable for nearly nine hundred years. In 1204, the armies of the Fourth Crusade took and devastated the city, its inhabitants lived several decades under Latin misrule. In 1261 the Byzantine Emperor Michael VIII Palaiologos liberated the city, after the restoration under the Palaiologos dynasty, enjoyed a partial recovery. With the advent of the Ottoman Empire in 1299, the Byzantine Empire began to lose territories and the city began to lose population. By the early 15th century, the Byzantine Empire was reduced to just Constantinople and its environs, along with Morea in Greece, making it an enclave inside the Ottoman Empire. According to Pliny the Elder in his Natural History, the first known name of a settlement on the site of Constantinople was Lygos, a settlement of Thracian origin founded between the 13th and 11th centuries BC; the site, according to the founding myth of the city, was abandoned by the time Greek settlers from the city-state of Megara founded Byzantium in around 657 BC, across from the town of Chalcedon on the Asiatic side of the Bosphorus.
The origins of the name of Byzantion, more known by the Latin Byzantium, are not clear, though some suggest it is of Thraco-Illyrian origin. The founding myth of the city has it told that the settlement was named after the leader of the Megarian colonists, Byzas; the Byzantines of Constantinople themselves would maintain that the city was named in honour of two men and Antes, though this was more just a play on the word Byzantion. The city was renamed Augusta Antonina in the early 3rd century AD by the Emperor Septimius Severus, who razed the city to the ground in 196 for supporting a rival contender in the civil war and had it rebuilt in honour of his son Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, popularly known as Caracalla; the name appears to have been forgotten and abandoned, the city reverted to Byzantium/Byzantion after either the assassination of Caracalla in 217 or, at the latest, the fall of the Severan dynasty in 235. Byzantium took on the name of Kōnstantinoupolis after its refoundation under Roman emperor Constantine I, who transferred the capital of the Roman Empire to Byzantium in 330 and designated his new capital as Nova Roma'New Rome'.
During this time, the city was called'Second Rome','Eastern Rome', Roma Constantinopolitana. As the city became the sole remaining capital of the Roman Empire after the fall of the West, its wealth and influence grew, the city came to have a multitude of nicknames; as the largest and wealthiest city in Europe during the 4th–13th centuries and a centre of culture and education of the Mediterranean basin, Constantinople came to be known by prestigious titles such as Basileuousa and Megalopol
Christians
Christians are people who follow or adhere to Christianity, a monotheistic Abrahamic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. The words Christ and Christian derive from the Koine Greek title Christós, a translation of the Biblical Hebrew term mashiach. While there are diverse interpretations of Christianity which sometimes conflict, they are united in believing that Jesus has a unique significance; the term "Christian" is used as an adjective to describe anything associated with Christianity, or in a proverbial sense "all, noble, good, Christ-like."According to a 2011 Pew Research Center survey, there were 2.2 billion Christians around the world in 2010, up from about 600 million in 1910. By 2050, the Christian population is expected to exceed 3 billion. According to a 2012 Pew Research Center survey Christianity will remain the world's largest religion in 2050, if current trends continue. Today, about 37% of all Christians live in the Americas, about 26% live in Europe, 24% live in sub-Saharan Africa, about 13% live in Asia and the Pacific, 1% live in the Middle East and North Africa.
About half of all Christians worldwide are Catholic. Orthodox communions comprise 12% of the world's Christians. Other Christian groups make up the remainder. Christians make up the majority of the population in territories. 280 million Christians live as a minority. Christians have made noted contributions to a range of fields, including the sciences, politics and business. According to 100 Years of Nobel Prizes, a review of Nobel prizes awarded between 1901 and 2000 reveals that of Nobel Prizes laureates identified Christianity in its various forms as their religious preference; the Greek word Χριστιανός, meaning "follower of Christ", comes from Χριστός, meaning "anointed one", with an adjectival ending borrowed from Latin to denote adhering to, or belonging to, as in slave ownership. In the Greek Septuagint, christos was used to translate the Hebrew מָשִׁיחַ, meaning " anointed." In other European languages, equivalent words to Christian are derived from the Greek, such as Chrétien in French and Cristiano in Spanish.
The abbreviations Xian and Xtian have been used since at least the 17th century: Oxford English Dictionary shows a 1634 use of Xtianity and Xian is seen in a 1634-38 diary. The word Xmas uses a similar contraction; the first recorded use of the term is in the New Testament, in Acts 11:26, after Barnabas brought Saul to Antioch where they taught the disciples for about a year, the text says: " the disciples were called Christians first in Antioch." The second mention of the term follows in Acts 26:28, where Herod Agrippa II replied to Paul the Apostle, "Then Agrippa said unto Paul, Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian." The third and final New Testament reference to the term is in 1 Peter 4:16, which exhorts believers: "Yet if as a Christian, let him not be ashamed. The city of Antioch, where someone gave them the name Christians, had a reputation for coming up with such nicknames; however Peter's apparent endorsement of the term led to its being preferred over "Nazarenes" and the term Christianoi from 1 Peter becomes the standard term in the Early Church Fathers from Ignatius and Polycarp onwards.
The earliest occurrences of the term in non-Christian literature include Josephus, referring to "the tribe of Christians, so named from him. In the Annals he relates that "by vulgar appellation called Christians" and identifies Christians as Nero's scapegoats for the Great Fire of Rome. Another term for Christians which appears in the New Testament is "Nazarenes". Jesus is named as a Nazarene in Math 2:23, while Saul-Paul is said to be Nazarene in Acts 24:5; the latter verse makes it clear that Nazarene referred to the name of a sect or heresy, as well as the town called Nazareth. The term Nazarene was used by the Jewish lawyer Tertullus which records that "the Jews call us Nazarenes." While around 331 AD Eusebius records that Christ was called a Nazoraean from the name Nazareth, that in earlier centuries "Christians" were once called "Nazarenes". The Hebrew equivalent of "Nazarenes", occurs in the Babylonian Talmud, is still the modern Israeli Hebrew term for Christian. A wide range of beliefs and practices are found across the world among those who call themselves Christian.
Denominations and sects disagree on a common definition of "Christianity". For example, Timothy Beal notes the disparity of beliefs among those who identify as Christians in the United States as follows: Although all of them have their historical roots in Christian theology and tradition, although most would identify themselves as Christian, many would not identify others within the larger category as Christian. Most Baptists and fundamentalists, for example, would not acknowledge Mormonism or Christian Science as Christian. In fact, the nearly 77 percent of Americans who self-identify as Christian are a diverse pluribus of Christianities that are far from any collective unity. Linda Woodhead attempts to provide a common belief thread for Christians by noting that "Whatever else they might disagree about, Christians are at least united
