The two hundred years which cover, roughly speaking, the actual period of the Holy War, are crammed with an interest that never grows dim. Gallant figures, noble knights, generous foes, valiant women, eager children, follow one another through these centuries, and form a pageant the colour and romance of which can never fade, for the circumstances were in themselves unique. The two great religious forces of the world—Christianity and Islam, the Cross and the Crescent—were at grips with one another, and for the first time the stately East, with its suggestion of mystery, was face to face with the brilliant West, wherein the civilisation and organisation of Rome were at last prevailing over the chaos of the Dark Ages...

I say the Catholic "conscience" of history--I say "conscience"--that is, an intimate knowledge through identity: the intuition of a thing which is one with the knower--I do not say "The Catholic Aspect of History." This talk of "aspects" is modern and therefore part of a decline: it is false, and therefore ephemeral: I will not stoop to it.

It was in the month of July, 1842, that I was released, by order of Pope Gregory, from my first imprisonment in the dungeons of the Inquisition. On this occasion, one of the Dominican monks who serve the office of Inquisitor, inquired of me, with a malicious look, whether I, also, intended, one day, to write an account of the Inquisition, as a well-known author had done before me, with respect to Spielberg, in his celebrated work, "Le mie prigioni." Perceiving at once the object of this deceitful interrogation, which was only to afford a pretext for renewing my incarceration, at the very moment when liberty was before me, I smiled at my interlocutor...

A New York Times Notable Book, winner of the Jerwood Award from the Royal Society of Literature, a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice, and named a Book of the Year by the Telegraph, Spectator, Observer, and BBC History Magazine, this bold new history of the rise of Christianity shows how its radical followers helped to annihilate Greek and Roman civilizations. The Darkening Age is the largely unknown story of how a militant religion deliberately attacked and suppressed the teachings of the Classical world, ushering in centuries of unquestioning adherence to "one true faith." Despite the long-held notion that the early Christians were meek and mild, going to their martyrs' deaths singing hymns of love and praise, the truth, as Catherine Nixey reveals, is very different. Far from being meek and mild, they were violent, ruthless, and fundamentally intolerant. Unlike the polytheistic world, in which the addition of one new religion made no fundamental difference to the old ones, this new ideology stated not only that it was the way, the truth, and the light but that, by extension, every single other way was wrong and had to be destroyed. From the first century to the sixth, those who didn't fall into step with its beliefs were pursued in every possible way: social, legal, financial, and physical. Their altars were upturned and their temples demolished, their statues hacked to pieces, and their priests killed. It was an annihilation. Authoritative, vividly written, and utterly compelling, this is a remarkable debut from a brilliant young historian.

Reproduction of the original.

In this final work of his American trilogy, Nicholas Hagger focuses on the unified World State it is America's secret destiny to create, and on the world's divided culture that impedes its creation. Throughout world culture there are conflicting and entrenched metaphysical and secular approaches that permeate all its main disciplines, including history, philosophy and science, literature and comparative religion. In each discipline there is a tussle between the traditional religious view, which is supported by the 4.6 billion of the world's 7.3 billion population that follow a religion, and the secular and social approach associated with humanism and the scientific reductionism of Hawking and Dawkins, which sees the universe as a random accident. Hagger argues that it is America's secret destiny to bring in a democratic, UN-based, partly federal World State that can unify humankind. The conflict between metaphysical and secular approaches can be healed within a new reconciling philosophy that unites both outlooks, Universalism, which is already making an impact in the US. The key to this reconciliation is focusing on the scientific view of the order in the universe, and on the experience of the common essence which resides in all religions (the belief in the ordering Light), and on the traditional view of order in the seven disciplines of world culture. This reconciliation can reunify each discipline and therefore world culture, and create world unity. Restoring the metaphysical vision of order in world culture can strengthen Americ's harmonizing of humankind within a World State based on political Universalism.