american-holocaust

SEX, RACE AND HOLY WAR 179saders' wrath were forced to drag the decomposing bodies of their countrymenbeyond the gates of the city and to stack them into enormous funeralpyres to inhibit the spread of disease. But not before the bodies were mutilated:"a whole cargo of noses and thumbs sliced from the Saracens"was shipped home, writes religious historian Roland Bainton. 96 Once again,Her Holy Mother the Church was triumphant, as she would be, repeatedly,for many great and grisly years to come.But not always. Sometimes there were defeats. Never, however, weredefeats unexplainable: those crusaders who were beaten had failed becausethey had sinned-and the sins they had committed invariably were sins ofpride and especially sins of carnality. God was on the Christians' side unlessthey succumbed to temptation. Example after example, the medievalchronicles claimed, showed this-to be so. From the Hungarian defeat ofPeter the Hermit's disciple Gottschalk to the failures of the Christians atAntioch, "the lesson was plain," observes one historian: "the crusaderswere assured of victory in this life and salvation in the next, but only solong as they avoided carnal sins." 97Because of this, women-including wives-