Crusaders Quotes

“This stark, binary approach—obedience or death—tended to work.”
― Dan Jones, Crusaders: The Epic History of the Wars for the Holy Lands

“Through a lapse in security, Innocent’s clothes and jewels had been stolen by graverobbers, and the mightiest prince of the Church lay in his coffin all-but naked and in the early stages of decomposition.30 The only consolation was that others were treated worse.”
― Dan Jones, Crusaders: The Epic History of the Wars for the Holy Lands

“Needless to say, Columbus’s journey in 1492 changed the world. His announcement of new territories full of things to trade or steal, and teeming with people to subjugate, convert or kill, helped to usher in a new phase of global history. After Columbus, the future for Europe lay to the west, not the east. And gradually, all the energy, excitement and terrible, merciless, zealotry that had inspired previous generations to make perilous journeys to the Holy Land flooded back, as Christian adventurers fell over themselves to strike out in the opposite direction. It had taken a long time, but at last the realms of Western Christendom had found their new Jerusalem. They swarmed across the sea there in their thousands, as though God himself had willed”
― Dan Jones, Crusaders: The Epic History of the Wars for the Holy Lands

“You have heard how we have conquered a vast empire and have purified the earth of the disorders that tainted it,” Hülagü wrote. “You cannot escape from the terror of our armies. Where can you flee? What road will you use to escape us? Our horses are swift, our arrows sharp, our swords like thunderbolts, our hearts as hard as the mountains, our soldiers as numerous as the sand. Fortresses will not detain us, nor armies stop us. Your prayers to God will not avail against us. We are not moved by tears nor touched by lamentations. Only those who beg our protection will be safe.”
― Dan Jones, Crusaders: The Epic History of the Wars for the Holy Lands

“Frederick was, in short, a shockingly liberal intellectual and a bluntly pragmatic ruler. Yet these instincts sprang not from ambivalence about faith, but rather from intelligence, necessity, the ability to compartmentalize and equivocate and—at root—Sicilianism.”
― Dan Jones, Crusaders: The Epic History of the Wars for the Holy Lands

“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.”
― Dan Jones, Crusaders: The Epic History of the Wars for the Holy Lands

“The slaughter of Jerusalem in the days following its fall to the crusaders on Friday, July 15, 1099, was one of the atrocities of its age, an extreme example of the rights of a victorious party to withhold mercy from the vanquished, and a biblical wasting in keeping with other Norman-inspired massacres like William the Conqueror’s “Harrying” of northern England in 1069 and 1070.”
― Dan Jones, Crusaders: The Epic History of the Wars for the Holy Lands

“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.”
― Dan Jones, Crusaders: The Epic History of the Wars for the Holy Lands

“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.”
― Dan Jones, Crusaders: The Epic History of the Wars for the Holy Lands

“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.”
― Dan Jones, Crusaders: The Epic History of the Wars for the Holy Lands

“Then, however, he launched into a rallying cry that would echo down the centuries, speaking of “an urgent task which belongs to both you and God.” He continued: You must hasten to carry aid to your brethren dwelling in the East, who need your help for which they have often entreated. For the Turks, a Persian people, have attacked them . . . and have advanced as far into Roman territory as that part of the Mediterranean which is called the Arm of St. George [i.e., Constantinople]. They have seized more and more lands of the Christians, have already defeated them in seven times as many battles, killed or captured many people, have destroyed churches, and have devastated the kingdom of God. Wherefore with earnest prayer . . . God exhorts you as heralds of Christ to repeatedly urge men of all ranks whatsoever, knights as well as footsoldiers, rich and poor, to hasten to exterminate this vile race from our lands and to aid the Christian inhabitants in time . . . For all those going thither there will be remission of sins if they come to the end of this fettered life while either marching by land or crossing by sea, or in fighting the pagans. This I grant to all who go, through the power vested in me by God.”
― Dan Jones, Crusaders: The Epic History of the Wars for the Holy Lands

“The two halves of the Church had been in formal schism since 1054, torn over fundamental theological arguments about the nature of the Holy Spirit, a vicious disagreement about whether leavened or unleavened bread was appropriate for the Eucharist and, especially, an inability to come to terms over the order of precedence of the pope in Rome and the patriarch of Constantinople.”
― Dan Jones, Crusaders: The Epic History of the Wars for the Holy Lands

“Here, then, was a model for Urban’s vision of the Church at large: centralized, expansionist, alive to the possibilities of popular devotion, particularly when they involved long-distance travel, integrated with the priorities and even the families of secular kings, and thoroughly approving of attacks on the forces of Islam in the Mediterranean theater.”
― Dan Jones, Crusaders: The Epic History of the Wars for the Holy Lands

“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

“Christendom, too, was beginning to quake.”
― Dan Jones, Crusaders: The Epic History of the Wars for the Holy Lands

“functional, fur-trimmed robes, rawhide skins and leather boots, was feared across Asia.”
― Dan Jones, Crusaders: The Epic History of the Wars for the Holy Lands

“By the time Genghis Khan died in 1227, the rumble of a Mongol army, its horsemen clad in long,”
― Dan Jones, Crusaders: The Epic History of the Wars for the Holy Lands

“Kill the valiant, the bold, the manly and the fine . . . and let the soldiers take for themselves as many of the common”
― Dan Jones, Crusaders: The Epic History of the Wars for the Holy Lands

“Damietta was one of Egypt’s three great cities, along with Alexandria, to the west, and Cairo,”
― Dan Jones, Crusaders: The Epic History of the Wars for the Holy Lands

“now, should they die on their journey, they would be going straight to hell.”
― Dan Jones, Crusaders: The Epic History of the Wars for the Holy Lands

“Every person who had joined the crusade had done so assuming they would be forgiven their sins;”
― Dan Jones, Crusaders: The Epic History of the Wars for the Holy Lands

“He was never coming home.”
― Dan Jones, Crusaders: The Epic History of the Wars for the Holy Lands

“Dandolo’s galley, decked out in vermilion cloth and silver, was the very last to leave.”
― Dan Jones, Crusaders: The Epic History of the Wars for the Holy Lands

“the chronicler Orderic Vitalis”
― Dan Jones, Crusaders: The Epic History of the Wars for the Holy Lands

“customarily forming the vanguard and rear guard in the field,”
― Dan Jones, Crusaders: The Epic History of the Wars for the Holy Lands

“Templar and Hospitaller knights and sergeants came to be regarded as the elite units in Frankish armies,”
― Dan Jones, Crusaders: The Epic History of the Wars for the Holy Lands

“From the 1130s the Templars’ mission was imitated by the Hospitallers, who added a military branch to their medical and palliative duties.”
― Dan Jones, Crusaders: The Epic History of the Wars for the Holy Lands

“Little by little, over the course of Baldwin’s reign, a genuine crusader kingdom would start to emerge.”
― Dan Jones, Crusaders: The Epic History of the Wars for the Holy Lands

“There, on December 25, he was crowned Baldwin I, king of Jerusalem.”
― Dan Jones, Crusaders: The Epic History of the Wars for the Holy Lands

“pitting churchmen and kings against one another,”
― Dan Jones, Crusaders: The Epic History of the Wars for the Holy Lands