Christmas Conjuration

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The Christmas Conjuration is the name of an infamous massacre in New Constantinople which took place on Christmas Day 1590. In mid-1590, several hundred (believed to be between 200 and 300) Knootian Dutch Reformed refugees fleeing persecution in occupied parts of the United Provinces of Knootoss landed in New Constantinople seeking refuge. At the time the struggle between people who believed that the Pantocratorian Church should be in communion with the Patriarch of Constantinople and people who believed that the Church should remain instead in communion with the Pope made the city a hotspot of religious tensions.

The Emperor Constantine XV Angelus ruled New Constantinople at the time, and saw the Dutch Reformed as another potential source of religious tension in the city. He ordered that they convert to Catholicism in the Byzantine Greek rite still in use in Pantocratoria at the time by Christmas 1590. The Dutch Reformed refused, but sought permission to leave the city (their ships having already been confiscated by Emperor Constantine for his navy). Their request went unanswered until Christmas Day.

On Christmas Day the Emperor's soldiers gathered up the Dutch Reformed settlers, and executed them all. Most of the Dutch Reformed, including women and children were hung from the battlements of the Old Palace of the Despotic Court of New Constantinople. The gentlemen and officers in their number were beheaded. The ministers were hacked apart limb from limb. The bodies were burned in a mass grave over which the modern-day shanty town named Mortville now stands (the town takes its name from the morbid nature of its foundations).

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