The Pope S Last Crusade

Drawing on untapped resources, exclusive interviews, and new archival research, The Pope’s Last Crusade by Peter Eisner is a thrilling narrative that sheds new light on Pope Pius XI’s valiant effort to condemn Nazism and the policies of the Third Reich—a crusade that might have changed the course of World War II. A shocking tale of intrigue and suspense, illustrated with sixteen pages of archival photos, The Pope’s Last Crusade: How an American Jesuit Helped Pope Pius XI's Campaign to Stop Hitler illuminates this religious leader’s daring yet little-known campaign, a spiritual and political battle that would be derailed by Pius’s XIs death just a few months later. Peter Eisner reveals how Pius XI intended to unequivocally reject Nazism in one of the most unprecedented and progressive pronouncements ever issued by the Vatican, and how a group of conservative churchmen plotted to prevent it. For years, only parts of this story have been known. Eisner offers a new interpretation of this historic event and the powerful figures at its center in an essential work that provides thoughtful insight and raises controversial questions impacting our own time.

By the middle of the fourteenth century, Christian control of the Iberian Peninsula extended to the borders of the emirate of Granada, whose Muslim rulers acknowledged Castilian suzerainty. No longer threatened by Moroccan incursions, the kings of Castile were diverted from completing the Reconquest by civil war and conflicts with neighboring Christian kings. Mindful, however, of their traditional goal of recovering lands formerly ruled by the Visigoths, whose heirs they claimed to be, the Castilian monarchs continued intermittently to assault Granada until the late fifteenth century. Matters changed thereafter, when Fernando and Isabel launched a decade-long effort to subjugate Granada. Utilizing artillery and expending vast sums of money, they methodically conquered each Naṣrid stronghold until the capitulation of the city of Granada itself in 1492. Effective military and naval organization and access to a diversity of financial resources, joined with papal crusading benefits, facilitated the final conquest. Throughout, the Naṣrids had emphasized the urgency of a jihād waged against the Christian infidels, while the Castilians affirmed that the expulsion of the "enemies of our Catholic faith" was a necessary, just, and holy cause. The fundamentally religious character of this last stage of conflict cannot be doubted, Joseph F. O'Callaghan argues.

Called by her people Isabella la Catolica, she was by any standard one of the greatest women of all history. A saint in her own right, she married Ferdinand of Aragon, and they forged modern Spain, cast out the Moslems, discovered the New World by backing Columbus, and established a powerful central government in Spain. This story is so thrilling it reads like a novel. Makes history really come alive. Highly readable and truly great in every respect!

The United States, argues Michael A. Palmer, is engaged in a political crusade to modernize the Islamic world. Americanism is in the vanguard of modernity's relentless advance, promoting capitalist markets and democratic institutions. To compete, Islamic societies must adopt a more secular and material approach, as have the West and South and East Asia. But these principles conflict with Islamic fundamentals. Once a vibrant force, much of the Muslim world spent four centuries as prisoner of an Ottoman Empire that embraced feudalism while the West jettisoned it. In the absence of a renaissance or enlightenment, modernization in the Islamic world has been painful and unsuccessful. While many in the West long for an "Islamic reformation," Palmer argues that Islamists such as Osama bin Laden are the face of that reformation. Just as Protestant reformers sought a return to the purity of early Christianity, jihadists desire a return to the halcyon days of conquest and expansion, when the Caliphate controlled a united and powerful Muslim community. American actions have not provoked this conflict, nor can American withdrawal end it, Palmer contends. For example, China, also a once-powerful civilization subjected to Western imperialism, has not produced homicide bombers. Instead, the Chinese are busy modernizing. Islam's failure to modernize is the root cause of the current situation. Bin Laden and other jihadists understand, correctly, that if Islam is to avoid the materialism and secularism that come with modernity, they must Islamize the West by force.

Criticism of the way in which Europeans have treated the inhabitants of the non-European world in the course of European expansion has a long history, Three centuries before Christopher Columbus encountered the American Indians, European intellectuals and clergymen had criticized the treatment of the peoples whom the crusaders and other Europeans met as they moved outward from the heartland of European civilization. The connection between the sixteenth-century Spanish writers who criticized the Spanish conquest of the Americas and medieval writers who criticized the behavior of Europeans toward the non-Europeans they encountered on their borders, is more familiar. Yet, their criticism referred back to medieval legal traditions and arguments about the rights of infidels in the face of European expansion. However, it is the increased recognition of the importance of this connection that has inspired much new research in the field of medieval canon law. The most important theorist of what we now call "race relations", in the Middle Ages, was Sinibaldo Fieschi, a distinguished canon-lawyer, who became Pope Innocent IV (1243-54), whose pontificate is the starting point of this study. As a working canon-lawyer and pope, Innocent's work provides an unusual insight into the whole development of Christian-infidel relations, for his work covers those who lived within Christian Europe, those who were recent converts to Christianity, and those who lived beyond the bounds of Christendom. As pope he initiated the Mongol mission, the first attempt to deal with the Mongol threat to Eastern Europe on a diplomatic level, and to convert the Mongols to Christianity. As a lawyer he was also the author of a commentary on the nature of a just war that became the basis for all future discussion of the rights of infidels who lived in the path of European expansion. A wide knowledge of both legal theory and papal practice blended in a single career and it was this union of these two traditions that formed the intellectual background of Vitoria and Las Casas, and the eminent critics who followed them. This is the first complete study of this subject, based upon a careful analysis of papal and legal sources. Papal sources included letters found in papal registers, including the unpublished Vatican Register 62 which contains only letters dealing with the problems raised by infidel societies. The legal sources include commentaries on the basic texts of canon law that bear on the status of infidels, as well as legal opinions written to deal with specific problems involving Christian-infidel relations. Although directed to specialists and students of this period, this work, original in concept and exceptionally well-written, is sure to find a far wider audience. The whole subject is important, and topical too, in view of the current interest in racism and race relations, itself the subject of the author's Appendix.

As ISIS tore through the regions of Syria and Iraq, they brought with them a caustic and terrible ideology, one obsessed with appropriating history to their own benefit. The Crusades, a nearly two-hundred-year period encompassing one of the most romanticized epochs in history, stands out in ISIS philosophy as a subject of bitter contention and inspiration. Throughout their propaganda, ISIS employs their Crusader mythos, a self-contained worldview based on their belief that the Crusades never actually ended and, indeed, that ISIS is today waging a war of survival and ultimate victory against the final crusade. This idea of a continuous Crusade of East versus West represents for ISIS a war that spans most of history, nearly a thousand years of true Muslim civilization fighting against all others. To this effect, ISIS labels its Western opponents modern-day Crusaders and its nearer Middle Eastern enemies Crusader lackeys, including even Al-Qaeda. Present in all forms of ISIS media, from digitally crafted, gruesome execution videos to prohibitions of Apple products, this belief of waging unending war against the Crusaders and their followers frames ISISs entire existence as they march, retreat, and fight against what they believe is the war of the end times. Throughout this book, the academic concepts of propaganda will be discussed, the most poignant stories of the Crusades told, and the long and bloody evolution and utilization of the Crusades in modern propaganda will be analyzed and brought to light.