6 Crusades and Inquisition

Ami Fagin

Beyond Genocide

The official policy of the Roman Church’s empire during the era of the Crusades and Inquisition sanctioned waves of killing and persecution which was initiated during the First Crusade in 1096 and spread across Europe and the Middle East. The mentality of intolerance which the Church institutionalized endured into the 18th century. Muslim, Jewish, Cathar and other independence groups were victimized by successive waves of military and popular annihilations. Religious “purity” was used by Church officials to gain political control over insubordinate or “heretical” populations. The verse and images portrayed in this illumination focus on central teachings of Christian, Muslim and Jewish faiths as well as imagery from historic episodes of mass atrocity which define this era of European history. The image of the Cross and central panel of the Pieta evoke the pathos of the tortured and dead adult Christ weighing heavy in his mother’s lap. Illustrations of mass atrocity perpetrated during this era, combine with the telling of the murder of Abel by his brother Cain, written in the Koran and Genesis.