EclecticLip

…until at least the weekend.  Workday priorities and such.

Meanwhile, the following phrase from Christopher Tyerman’s Fighting for Christendom: Holy War and the Crusades struck me as postworthy:

Ironically, for all its political success, the Albigensian Crusade failed to eradicate the Cathars, a task effected by the more pacific and reasoned methods [?!?!] of the Inquisition.  (p68, hardcover edition)

The more pacific and reasoned methods of the Inquisition?

The book’s part of a history kick I’m on right now, having recently finished Jenkins’ glorious The Lost History of Christianity, about which I’ll blog more later.  In one sentence: in its first millenium, Christianity soared to much greater heights in Asia than Europe.  As a movie reference, Asian Christianity was the Arnold Schwarzenegger to European Christianity’s Danny DeVito.

The Crusades played a role in the destruction of Asian Christianity — the violence of the era appears to have resulted in more polarized leaders emerging in the Muslim world, who did not tolerate followers of the sibling Abrahamic faith.  As saddening as this is, one can all-too-easily imagine how centuries of recurring invasion by European Christians could result in cultural suspicion of long-resident Asian Christian communities.