By historian William Thomas Walsh

“Of the external foes of the Church, Mohammedanism was one of the most dangerous and long enduring. Ideologically it was not external, but one of the great heresies, containing as it did many Christian elements, mingled with some borrowed from Judaism, and much gross and carnal materialism foreign to both; Mohammed taught, for example, the Virgin birth and Resurrection of Christ, yet denied His divinity; treated Him as a great prophet, yet demanded the conversion of His followers by the sword.

But the organization of Islam was outside the Christian fold, and its pressure was from without. In its very first century of existence, this sect conquered not only large tracts of Asia, but all northern Africa as far as the Atlantic, engulfed Spain, and invaded France, leaving there, as on the crest of a highest wave, marks of its own culture which persisted even to modern times.

Nor did the danger of a Mohammedan conquest of all Europe end with the battle of Tours in 732. The peril endured for nearly a thousand years, now menacing France, now Italy, now striking through the Balkans, now through northeastern Europe: now on land, now on sea.

In the tenth century the Moslems held Sicily, whence they raided the mainland of Italy, laid waste the country about Rome, profaned the apostolic tombs, and collected tribute from the Popes.

They had been a threat to the peace and independence of European Christians for nearly four centuries when Pope Urban II preached the First Crusade against them in 1096.” —- Characters of the Inquisition,

William Thomas Walsh was a historian, educator and author. His educational background included a B.A. from Yale University (1913), he received an honorary Litt.D. from Fordham University. Walsh’s works were distinguished by their well-researched, documented, and faithful account of history.

Heralded for his uncompromising devotion to truth and accuracy, Walsh’s frank retelling of many sensitive but nevertheless historical events elicited both acclaim as well as personal attacks. His book Characters of the Inquisition was first published in 1940. He passed away in 1949.

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— See also The Real Crusades channel at YouTube

Gifts Unexpected by Stephen Hand

Stephen Hand’s novella, Gifts Unexpected, is a story about a broken young girl and the hermit-priest who saved her and others; it is a story which shows how even suffering and tragedy birth hope and redemption in those open to the gift of Being.

Gifts Unexpected is often a ragged chronicling of contemporary realities which threaten to extinguish our hope. With the same palette of honesty, however, Stephen Hand restores an arid landscape to a promise of health. By undertaking the decencies that others have laid down, Father Joseph acts as a human ark to keep others afloat until they can sight safer harbors. — C.O’Reilly

Gifts Unexpected by Stephen Hand on Kindle

— Leo XIII on the “Sect of Darkness”