Word: christiane
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...demand to expel the Moslems from the Holy Land throbbed in the conscience of Christian Europe through the 12th century, and for many years thereafter. Few places in the West escaped the eloquence of the Crusader preachers. Writes Historian Runciman, describing a sermon of Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, the most famous of them: "Very soon his audience was under his spell. Men began to cry for Crosses-'Crosses, give us Crosses!' It was not long before all the [cloth] that had been prepared to sew into Crosses was exhausted; and Saint Bernard flung off his own outer garments...
Tangled Convictions. The wars they fought were not a simple struggle of Christian v. Moslem. Disunity prevailed in both camps. A campaign was as often as not a Donnybrook of tangled arms and convictions, with Christians and Moslems on one side fighting Christians and Moslems on the other...
Moslem disunity saved the Crusading states from destruction for the greater part of a century. But disunity among the Christians in the end proved more serious. The Christian conquerors from the West found large colonies of co-religionists in the Holy Land, of the Orthodox, Syrian and Armenian rites. Each variety of Christian regarded the others as heretical and untrustworthy, and acted accordingly. These theological differences, multiplied by the Crusaders' greed and frequent acts of cruelty, cost them the active sympathy of many native Christians. The great failure of the Crusades, however, was the lack of unity between...
...turn of the century, Paul Claudel and André Gide were beginning literary careers, Claudel as poet-playwright, Gide as novelist. In temperament and opinion, they were opposites: Claudel a zealous Roman Catholic, Gide a tormented doubter who could neither accept nor dismiss the Christian faith. The two men became cautious friends, and in 1899 began a correspondence which sputtered and stormed until 1926. Their letters, now published in English for the first time, give a fascinating picture of two first-rate minds locked in a long quarrel about ultimate realities...
...philosophy and literature." Not without arrogance, he added: "We others, we Catholics, are built to walk dry-shod through the Red Sea." Today, at 84, Claudel has never changed his mind on that. Gide remained uncommitted until his death, declaring himself "neither Protestant nor Catholic but quite simply a Christian...