Word: bohemond
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Miracle of Faith. Great lords like Godfrey of Bouillon mortgaged their estates to raise armies and took up the Cross to serve God's cause with their swords. Bohemond of Taranto, the impoverished son of the Norman conqueror of Sicily, sought to carve a kingdom of his own in the East. And they were joined by religious fanatics, adventurers and brigands who sought only pillage, murder and rape. In the Crusades, idealism and gangsterism were in harness...
...conviction that an old, rusty piece of iron unearthed beneath an Antioch church was the lance with which the Roman soldier had pierced the side of the crucified Christ, the Crusaders, half-starved and crazed with religious fanaticism, swept out of the city and routed the Turks. Afterward, Bohemond of Taranto ordered the severed heads of captured Turks roasted on spits, "encouraging the rumor that the Prankish barons fed on human flesh," and so spread terror among the demoralized infidels. Within a year, the Crusaders had carved out for themselves feudal principalities in Syria and Palestine...
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