A Glorious Disaster
A.D. 1100 to 1300
The Crusades: blood, valor,
iniquity, reason, faith

Three qualities distinguish Volume 7 from the six that preceded it. First, it begins Part II of the series which will cover the second millennium of Christian history. This, of course, misstates the facts slightly: the second millennium actually began with the eleventh century and this volume begins with the twelfth. However, in broader sense, the eleventh century better belongs with those that came ahead of it when Christians were still emerging from a dark age in which their mere survival was the central concern. With the twelfth and the thirteenth we enter what are sometimes called "the High Middle Ages," when a startling new architecture enters Christian history, and the Christians try regaining the lands taken from them by Muslin armies four hundred years earlier.

Second, Volume 7 is the first produced by SEARCH, the Society to Explore And Record Christian History. The project began as a private sector endeavor. A limited partnership was formed in the Canadian   province of Alberta which raised considerable capital and struggled valiantly to turn the books out, eventually (it was hoped)   profitably. But it came up against a harsh reality. Due to cultural changes in the twentieth century, interest in history - all history - had dangerously waned. (An essay detailing exactly why this happened has been published by the editor of this series and can be purchased on this website. On the home page, click on "Order.") So the project failed financially after publishing the first six volumes. What was necessary, therefore, was a renaissance in general knowledge of the Christian story, the founding force behind our society. This would require more than just the books. It meant a whole movement. Thus SEARCH was chartered in Alberta and in Virginia to finish the books and with them to launch such a movement. This volume is its first achievement.

Finally in terms of visual impact Volume 7 is undoubtedly the strongest book in the series. That anyway is the opinion of one man who should know, namely Dean Pickup who has served as designer and art director of all seven. "True," says Mr. Pickup, "we have less commissioned artwork in this volume than in some of the others. But we also had far more previously published imagery to choose from, and therefore did not need to commission as much ourselves. Major events like the Crusades and fascinating individuals like Thomas Aquinas, Richard the Lionheart, St. Francis, Barbarossa and St. Louis have challenged the imagination of artists for centuries. All this was now available to us, and will continue to be for the remaining volumes."

"Yet," he confessed, "the Gothic cathedral pages in this volume were some of the most intimidating layouts I have ever encountered. It seemed impossible to show in print, the majestic grandeur of these buildings, which took hundreds of people hundreds of years to complete. We can only hope that on these pages we have conveyed at least one bare hint of their ineffable magnificence."

Foreword to 'A Glorious Disaster'

The striking aspect of this volume is its focus on violence and war. Three chapters center on the Crusades and a fourth on the Mongol invasions. The latter, in terms of violence and mindless destruction, were far worse than all the Crusades put together. Nevertheless, most of the wars in the volume were instigated by Christian leaders, fought as a Christian endeavors, and consequently dominate the Christian story in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.

In considering the Crusades, two indisputable facts should be noted. First, they were not an attack; they were a counter-attack. They are often presented as an unprovoked assault by avaricious Christians against the tranquil and irenic Muslim civilization in the Middle East. This is far from the truth. All the lands the Christians sought to conquer had had been seized from them by Muslim armies that burst out of Arabia in the seventh and eighth centuries, as detailed in Volume 5. The Muslims occupied Spain and in the following three centuries, they ruled southern France for a time, Sicily, Greece and southern Italy and three times attacked Rome. It seemed obvious to the Christians that unless this aggression was stopped at its source, sooner or later Europe too would become Muslim.

Second, the Crusades did not work. As both a military endeavor and a religious one, they failed miserably and left eastern Europe wide open to the next Muslim attack, which came over the following three centuries.   From this whole experience, the Christians could conclude that while they must resist Islamic aggression by force, they could not hope to overcome Islam itself in that way. If Christ is to conquer, it must be by love, not by violence.

Paradoxically, the same violent centuries also witnessed an astonishing outburst of   Christian creativity. Throughout western Europe there appeared cathedrals and churches whose soaring height and staggering beauty have awed humanity ever since. This phenomenon, Gothic architecture, we have is covered more in image than in words.

Meanwhile, a second conflict, which many would hold more pivotal to Christendom than the clash with Islam, raged in western Europe. It concerned the ultimate power to make the law. Should that power reside with what we would now call the secular authority, represented then by the emperor? Or should it reside with religious authority, represented in western Europe by the pope? Three chapters describe this ferocious dispute.

Is it relevant today? It most assuredly is. For the point at issue is the making of the law, and the problem, then and now, is that every law rests on or expresses some moral principle. So whose principles should the law embody? Behind all our "cultural" conflicts lies that essential question. Sooner or later it must be answered, and the answer will not be easily found.

Finally, one chapter centers on the remarkable Thomas Aquinas and his perceptive analysis of the relation between reason and faith. Here we see the first appearance of a generally neglected question. Why is it that the whole scientific revolution, which has transformed the world, arose exclusively in countries with Christian foundations? In the story of Thomas we get the beginning of the answer.

But this volume, like all its predecessors, is not a book about issues. It's about the people who made the issues and fought them. And in the Christian view, that is surely how it should be. Issues come and go. People live forever.