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Synopsis:

Christianity's Criminal History, Volume 7
13th and 14th Centuries

"The Middle Ages," noted Nietzsche, "is the era of the greatest passions." How these passions expressed themselves in the 13th and 14th Centuries is related by Karlheinz Deschner in the newest volume of his Christianity's Criminal History.

At the beginning of this epoch stood Emperor Henry VI, who claimed for himself dominium mundi, world rule -- with or without the blessing of the Pope. At the end stood Emperor Charles IV, who ruled the Holy Roman Empire until 1378. The most powerful ecclesiastical opponent of this imperium was Pope Gregory IX (1227 to 1241), who demanded from the emperor his right to crusades and who managed internal security by means of the Inquisition.

Events of this period: the decisive power struggle between emperor and papacy, the fall of the Hohenstauffen and the end of papal universal domination, the papal bull "Unam Sanctam," the Mongol Invasion, the Sicilian Vesper, the "Babylonian Captivity" of the popes in exile in Avignon, increasingly devastating anti-Jewish pogroms, crusades in every direction, among them that of Frederick II, the Crusades of Louis I the Holy to Egypt and Tunis, the Crusades of Christians against Christians, against the Albigensians, the Stedinger, the grotesque Children's Crusade, the destruction of the Templars, the destruction of the Pastorells, the notorious terrorist regime of the German Order, the extermination of the "heathen" in the Northeast of Europe, the suppression of the Balts, the Prussians -- and not least the totalitarian Inquisition meant to suppress every stirring of intellectual freedom.

Deschner's meticulous, irrefutable presentation of evidence from eye witnesses who were previously silenced or distorted reveals the very Christian Middle Ages as the high water mark of ruthless power politics involving both secular thrones and the Holy See.

 

Christianity's Criminal History

Volume 7
Synopsis

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