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41 " on March 23, 543, the emperor declared “God’s Education” over. But this was the same wishful thinking that has traditionally accompanied any political statement about pandemic disease delivered with certain authority "
― Dan Jones , Powers and Thrones: A New History of the Middle Ages
42 " Principium fini solet impar sepe uidere ‘Often the end fails to equal the beginning "
― Dan Jones , The Templars: The Rise and Spectacular Fall of God's Holy Warriors
43 " The nobility of the kingdom grieved at being reduced to such ruin by the supine simplicity of one man, "
― Dan Jones , The Plantagenets: The Warrior Kings and Queens Who Made England
44 " These were not wars of religion—indeed, religion was often very plainly secondary to commercial and geopolitical considerations.19 But they were wars between religious men, and they had consequences that lasted for generations thereafter, so that they could still be seen to be playing out in Ibn al-Athir’s day. "
― Dan Jones , Crusaders: The Epic History of the Wars for the Holy Lands
45 " would simply not be possible in a volume light enough to read in bed. "
46 " Pope Urban stated that the departure date for his crusade should be August 15, 1096: the Feast of the Assumption, the holiest day of the summer. But five months before the official launch date, at Easter, Peter the Hermit’s motley band of followers—later called the People’s Crusade—was already on the move. "
47 " The collapsing together of wars fought for territory and wars that were waged on the basis of faith and dogma, with the goal of spiritual supremacy, was to play a key part in launching two hundred years and more of conflict that would come to be expressed primarily in terms of a battle for the one true faith. "
48 " There are,” he wrote, “three things of such a sort that they produce merciless destruction when they get the upper hand. One is a flood of water, another is a raging fire, and the third is the lesser people, the common multitude; for they will not be stopped, either by reason or discipline. "
49 " The rebels—men and women who eventually numbered in the tens of thousands—were nicknamed “les Jacques,” referring to the pseudonym “Jacques Bonhomme” (Jack Goodfellow), "
50 " That they themselves failed, and the fact that their uprising has latterly become a byword for heedless, bloodthirsty, rustic barbarity, does not mean that their grievances were unreasonable or impossible for us to understand today. "
51 " sodomite. "
52 " He was buried in Constantinople at the Hagia Sophia—the only person ever to be laid to rest there. The ancient doge had ensured that his and Venice’s name would be forever remembered in the history of crusading and of the affairs of the great Christian empire of the East. "
53 " the wise man will wage just wars . . . it is the injustice of the opposing side that lays on the wise man the necessity of waging just wars.”14 Elsewhere he suggested four clearly identifiable conditions under which a war could be considered just: It was fought for a good cause; its purpose was either to defend or regain property; it was approved by a legitimate authority; and the people doing the fighting were motivated by the right reasons. "
54 " Behind soaring defenses a constellation of beautiful churches held the greatest collection of Christian relics in the world—including a vial of the Holy Blood, chunks of the Holy Cross, the Crown of Thorns, body parts of all the apostles and seven saints’ heads, including two belonging to John the Baptist. "
55 " When the great conqueror Charlemagne was crowned Holy Roman Emperor by Pope Leo III on Christmas Day 800 CE, the pact between warrior kings and the Latin Church was cemented, and by the eleventh century Christianity—in the West at least—was a religion happy to embrace those who killed and maimed, so long as they did so with respect for the liturgies—and the property—of the Church. "
56 " The only sure reward for participants in the war to take revenge on Saladin would be redeemed in the afterlife, where it was assumed that God would look favorably on participants, granting them a smoother, swifter entry into paradise. "
57 " Principium fini solet impar sepe uidere. Often the end fails to equal the beginning. "
58 " The first targets and victims of the crusading vanguard were not the dread infidel at the gates of Constantinople, but communities of Jews living in cities of Western and central Europe, such as Cologne, Worms, Speyer and Mainz. "
59 " The men and women who took part in these penitential wars in the hope of spiritual salvation were known in Latin as crucesignati—those signed with the cross. "
60 " On December 29 four heavily armed men smashed through a side door to Canterbury Cathedral with an ax. The archbishop of Canterbury was waiting for them inside. They were angry. He was unarmed. They tried to arrest him. He resisted. They hacked the top of his head off and mashed his brains with their boots. "