An Emperor and Church Father who ruled at the time of the begining of the Ottoman Empire and Turkish expansion. At the time of the historic Dracula and the Balkan wars against the Turks.
At a time when Europe once again would leave Byzantium to its fate under the Muslims because of Catholic sectarianism. Just as Catholic Europe had deserted it before during the Crusades, when it wasn't raping it on the way to Jerusalem.
Of course this is also a clever backhanded compliment a slap at the Omnipotence of the Orthodox Church as much as it's a slap at Islam.
This is very important the Pope was thus killing two birds with one stone in quoting Palaeologos. He condemns as outmoded the idea of the Orthodox Church being the New Rome. And he attacks Religion, read Islam, as political state military power, since the Vatican asa Spirtual City State perse has none. The Popes reading is that Islam remains too closely tied to State Power. Of course the role of the State in Catholic countries in the world can also be looked at, so people who live in glass houses....
Telling is the comment by Baum aboutManuels letters and writings....
Just as in the sixty-eight preserved letters between 1383 and 1417 few specific, day-to-day news items are to be found, so also in his theoretical writings the emperor distances himself from every-day reality.
Just as this current Pope has.Vatican experts say Pope 'unrepentant'
Dialog with one "Persian"/ of the emperor Manuel II Palaeologos /1391-1423/. The writing is valuable because of its original character. It should be considered as one of the few polemic writings in the Byzantine tradition based on private observation and direct contact with Muslims. The author also shows deep knowledge of the Byzantine tradition and the previous polemic writings against Islam. The book of M. Palaeologos is written in the end of the 14th century and is a kind of record of his conversation with a Muslim scholar /muderis = professor/ in Ankara, in whose house the emperor spent the winter of 1391. There are many reasons to include this source in our survey. First, as we already mentioned the story is based on a real dialogue between the author and a learned Muslim . Second, the writing is providing us with Islamic teachings, unknown till then in the Byzantine tradition. For example, the teaching about the mortality of the angels; the existence of logic among the animals; That Mohammed has a higher place in the Heaven hierarchy than the angels, etc. Third, the thoughts of Manuel II Palaeologos about the Byzantine political doctrine. He dropped behind the traditional Byzantine view that the only true religion - Christianity is spread through the world by the only legitimate empire - Byzantine and by the only legitimate emperor, the emperor of Constantinople - the New Rome. For him the state and military success are not a part and do not come to confirm the truth of particular religious system. In his writing we see a refusal of the doctrine about the messianic role of Byzantine in the world's history as a unifier of the Oicumene.