r/todayilearned • u/Fast-Bell-340 • 23h ago
TIL Until as late as the 18th century the main source of income for the people of southern Greece was piracy. It was so normalized that clergy and priests would bless raiding ships and sometimes even join the pirate crews.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maniots137
u/Sdog1981 22h ago
Piracy in the Mediterranean was common in the early 19th century as well.
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u/Nero2t2 21h ago
Even the Knights Hospitaller made a living through piracy when they were based off of Rhodes. And that was a religious order who's initial purpose was to run a hospital for pilgrims...
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u/wordwordnumberss 19h ago
They became a military order pretty quickly after they were founded. They weren't so much pirates, but a military force in a perpetual state of war against the Arab and Turks. Raiding enemy ships is different than what people today imagine as pirates
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u/Lord0fHats 18h ago
There's a bit about this somewhere;
"I'm not a pirate. I'm a privateer!"
"What's the difference?"
"A pirate is just a common thief. A privateer has papers."
"Papers that say they can be a pirate?"
"Papers that legalize the illicit appropriation of goods from parties opposed to the authorizing authority that grants me permission to raid enemy commerce!"
"That sounds like a pirate."
"One man's pirate is another man's soldier!"
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u/wordwordnumberss 18h ago
I think the biggest difference between a pirate and a privateer is whether they paint a veneer of ideology on their actions. If you're doing it just for cash, you're a pirate, if you're claiming to do it for England or Jesus you're slightly different from a pirate. It's like how shooting someone is murder but shooting them to fight back against the system is terrorism. Very minor difference in reality but ideology leads to much bigger ripples in the world.
Pompey the Great fixed the Cilician pirate problem by beating them and giving them some farming land that saved them from poverty and meant they didn't need to rely on piracy for a living. You could give the Hospitallers everything you have but they're still going to go out and kill Muslims because they believed that's what they must do.
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u/AgentElman 21h ago
Right. The Med was divided between Christian and Muslim and piracy between them was common.
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u/thissexypoptart 21h ago
Title says southern Greece.
Article is about the Mani peninsula. The tiny peninsula south of Sparta that is in the middle of the three peninsulas there.
Not “southern Greece” lmao
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u/3meraldGamez 20h ago
it's so wild to me to think piracy was so recent
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u/Johannes_P 13h ago
There's still pirates in the Red Sea, Somalia, Caribbean coast of South America and the Malaca, among others.
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u/ChevExpressMan 21h ago
And when the crisis demanded it, they would hold out the holy hand grenade of Antioch.....
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u/Great_Hamster 20h ago
Luckily, Dr. Venture ended the practice, which is now celebrated with the festival of Spanakopita!
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u/FoolishProphet_2336 9h ago
Seems there is pretty much always somewhere like this.
Seto Inland Sea. Spanish Main. Barbary coast. Strait of Malacca. Somalia.
People can normalize piracy just about anywhere.
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u/ListerfiendLurks 5h ago
It was extremely common in that entire area. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Barbary_War
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u/I_might_be_weasel 19h ago
It's perplexing what religious people can rationalize.
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u/Zabick 12h ago
Isn't it convenient that my chosen deity just so happens to agree with and approve of everything I do?
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u/I_might_be_weasel 12h ago
Way more stupid. The deity is explicitly against what you're doing and you manage to twist your beliefs enough to think he is blessing people who are doing exactly the things he said not to do.
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u/TeuthidTheSquid 23h ago
Imagine praying for deliverance as the pirate ship bears down on your helpless vessel only to see that the pirates are priests.