Welcome to the Eric Metaxus show.

If the plural of octopus is Octopi and the plural of hippopotamus is hippopotamai, what's the plural of metaxus?

Metaxi? Metaxe. Or maybe metaxis is,

whoops, I sprung a leak. Anyway, I'm just glad there's only one of them. And here he is.

Eric Mataxe. Mataxis. Metaxis. It's not so tough, Todd. We've been friends for 30 years for crying out loud.

Hey, folks, Thanksgiving is coming up.

In fact, it's always coming up.

It comes around every year.

I can hardly think of a year where it didn't come up eventually.

And so I thought, wouldn't it be good to talk a little bit about, you know, what happened before Thanksgiving?

It just so happens, by the way, that someone who's been on this program before, William Federer has written a book called The Tretcherous World of the 16th Century and how the Pilgrims escaped it, which is effectively the prequel to America's

freedom. William Federer, welcome to the program. Eric, great to be with you. Hey, I mean,

the treacherous world of the 16th century and how the pilgrims escaped it, most of us knows so little

about the 16th century. We don't think of it as

treacherous or non-treaturous. So what are we talking about here? What is that, what is it that got you to write this book? You've written so many books on history. It's a joy to talk to you on any historical subject. But I love it when you come out with a book like this because you really have done your homework and we get to benefit.

So what is it

that, why do you call it the prequel to America's freedom? What did they leave? Well, Europe was

ruled by kings and it was being invaded by the Sultan of Turkey, the Ottoman Sultan, the

magnificent. He was surrounding Vienna. So backdrop, the Muslims conquered all of North Africa, which used to be Christian. There were 250 Catholic diocese along North Africa. Muslims invaded Spain and held it for 700 years, and they were just driven out in 1492, so just a couple years earlier.

The Muslims had controlled Egypt for 600 years.

It had been founded by the Christian faith, Mark, that wrote the gospel, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

And then Syria was completely Christian for six centuries, evangelized by the Apostle Paul until Khalid Umar conquers it.

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