The Crusades: Myth and Reality
You would have seen your knights prostrate heneath the horses'
hoov es, your hous es stor med by pillage rs and rans acke d by
looters, your wealth weighed by the quintal, your women sold
fourat atime and bought for a dinar of your own money! You
woul d have seen the cros ses in your chur ches smas hed, the
pages of the false Testaments scattered, thePatriarchs" tombs
over turn ed. You would have seen your Musli m enemy tram-
pling on the place where you celebrate the Mass, cutting the
throats of monks, priests and deacons upon the altars, bringing
sudden death to the Patriarchs and slavery to the royal princes.
You would have seen fire running through your palaces, your
dead burned in this world hefore going down to the fires of the
next,vour palace lying unrecogni zable, the Church of St. Paul
an d th at of th e Ca th ed ra l of St. Pe te r pu ll ed do wn an d
destroyed; then you would have said, "Would that I were dust,
and that no letter had ever brought me such tidings!'Most notori ous of all may be the jihad ists' entry into Const antino ple
onMay29, 1453,when they—like the Crusaders in Jerusalem in 1999
finally broke through a prolonged resistance to their siege. Here the rivers
of blood ran again, as historian Steven Runciman notes. The Muslim sol-
diers "slew everyone that they met in the streets, men, women, and
chi ldr en wit hou t dis cri min ati on, The blo od ran in riv ers dow n the
ste ep streets from the heig hts of Petr a towar d the Gold en Horn. But
soon the lustfor slaughter was assuaged. The soldiers realized that captives
and precious objects would bring them greater profit.'
Like Crus ader s, who vio lat ed the san ctu ary of bot h syna gogu e and
mosq ue, Musli ms raid ed mona steri es and conve nts, empt ying them of
their inha bita nts, and plu nder ed priv ate hous es. They ente red the
Hagi a Sophia, which for nearl y a thousa nd years had been the grandest
churchn Christendom. The faithfulhad gathered within its hallowed walls
to