What if Nikephorus II Phocas successes in establishing basically an Orthodox variant of Jihad?

[PecuTheGreat]

From Wikipedia, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikephoros_II_Phokas

Nikephoros also disagreed with the church on theological grounds. He wished the church to elevate those soldiers who died in battle against the Saracens to the positions of martyrs in the church – similar to the status of "Shahid" which the Emperor's Muslim foes bestowed on their own fallen soldiers. In the Christian context, this was a highly controversial and unpopular demand

I first came across this in the history of Byzantium podcast.

This isn't exactly Jihad levels yet but with warring against Muslims to conquer or reconquer lands on an ecclesiastical basis already developing in the West, a Nikephorus successful in making fallen soldiers against the Muslims martyrs then adopting crusader ideas developing in the east like absolution of sins and a duty to conquer lands from Muslims will get us about there.

I guess the main side effect of this would be a possible development of an Orthodox equivalent to the "Ghazis", foreign Christian soldiers coming to serve under Rome for the religious duty and religious benefits of fighting the Muslims.

Now, given that of course there'll also be secular advantages in Roman pay, we could get something like the Varangian guard develop except instead of as Imperial bodyguards, they'll be more like shock troops. In how they originate at least and it could be a way of the Orthodox converting peoples without even being aware of it.

Like, some Kievian Varangians or Polovtsy go on an Orthodox Jihad, comes back with alot of money his cousins in the Scandenavia or Kazakhstan hear of it and arrive in Constantinople and are required to do some Christian stuff to join and are told they're rich and winning due to this religion.

 

[Halagaz]

This is a pretty interesting idea! But note that Nikephoros' proposal was to grant martyr status to all Byzantine soldiers who died in any battle for the preservation or expansion restoration of the Empire - not just to those who died fighting against Muslim armies.

So IDK how that would work with foreign soldiers...they could easily find that the "orthodox jihad" they are participating in doesn't necessarily have anything to do with fighting for Jerusalem or whatever - but could be something as simple as garrison duty in a Byzantine defensive war thousands of miles away. Or they could even be unpleasantly surprised to learn that you can also get martyrdom through participating in a Byzantine war against their own nations...

It's also interesting to speculate whether this would (subtly) effect the general morale of Byzantine armies in future wars. And whether it would make the Byzantine church and officials more friendly and less haughty in their dealings with western Crusaders.

 

[PecuTheGreat]

This is a pretty interesting idea! But note that Nikephoros' proposal was to grant martyr status to all Byzantine soldiers who died in any battle for the preservation or expansion restoration of the Empire - not just to those who died fighting against Muslim armies.

So IDK how that would work with foreign soldiers...they could easily find that the "orthodox jihad" they are participating in doesn't necessarily have anything to do with fighting for Jerusalem or whatever - but could be something as simple as garrison duty in a Byzantine defensive war thousands of miles away. Or they could even be unpleasantly surprised to learn that you can also get martyrdom through participating in a Byzantine war against their own nations...

It's also interesting to speculate whether this would (subtly) effect the general morale of Byzantine armies in future wars. And whether it would make the Byzantine church and officials more friendly and less haughty in their dealings with western Crusaders.

Okay, I could easily see a Just war requirement and civil war exception to that as it makes sense.

Expansion and war against Christian states would be harder as Rome is the 1 Christian Empire in their eyes. I could see a general aversion to sainting people killing Christians develop into something more official overtime or be the compromise that Nikephorus II has to make to get the Patriarch to sign up on that.

Although I am positing service from peoples from Pagan states, those largely don't share a border with Rome so shouldn't be an issue.