Through Force or Faith? — Page 178
?— A Reply to Pope Benedict XVI 178 The city was filled with corpses and blood. (August C. Krey, The First Crusade: The Accounts of Eyewitnesses and Participants, Princeton: 1921, p. 261) Another eyewitness writes: In this temple almost ten thousand were killed. Indeed, if you had been there you would have seen our feet coloured to our ankles with the blood of the slain. But what more shall I relate? None of them were left alive; neither women nor children were spared. (Frederick Duncan and August C. Krey, Eds. , Parallel Source Problems in Medieval History, New York: Harper & Brothers, 1912, p. 114) This is not about a secular war or a war that was fought without the direct order and full support of the vicegerent of Jesus. Indeed this war was initiated by the vicegerent of Jesus himself and his representatives and great religious figures played pivotal roles in this war. The same Christian conduct we find in Andalusia where the Muslims were not only slaughtered or exiled, the Holy Spanish Inquisition was initiated at the behest of the Pope; with the history and accomplishment of which the Pope must be well aware because he is the past chairman of the supreme sacred con- gregation of the Roman and Universal Inquisition. If God is not pleased with bloodshed, and certainly God is not pleased with it, what does the Pope think of this part of the Christian History? In contrast, when the Muslims conquered Jerusalem during the reign of the second Righteous Caliph of the Holy Prophet s as in A. D. 637, they did not commit any massacre or plunder in honour