Chariots of Blood on the Way of St. James

Rennes-le-Château is a village in the foothills of the Pyrenees on the border of France and Spain. Through this village runs one of the most important pilgrimage routes of the Middle Ages – from the Languedoc to Santiago de Compostela, the city to which according to legend the relics of St. James of Zebedee floated at will from Palestine, after having been put in an empty boat. In this regard, Santiago de Compostela became a destination of Christian pilgrims when Palestine appeared to be out of reach because of the Moslem conquests and the reliquary of St. James in the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela became the most revered shrine in Western Europe after the relics of St. Peter in Rome. That explains why this road running from France through Rennes-le-Château to Santiago de Compostela was called the "Way of St. James.”

The British myth of Langedoc or the Impossible Lightness of being a Templar Knight

The limited size of this book does not allow any substantial commentaryon the Crusades except to mention some facts that influenced, in one way or another, the development of Western European Christian art. The cultural exchange between two Abrahamic religions – Islam and Christianity – happened in more or less peaceful conditions on the background of the Byzantine Empire, Spain and the Kingdom of Sicily, while the non-stop slaughter of the Crusades wasn’t very culturally beneficial. Nevertheless, the Crusades caused one really important development in the life of Western Europe, including its art – the emergence of military monastic orders, two of which rose to early prominence: the Order of the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem (Order of the Hospitallers), founded in 1113; and the Order of the Temple, founded in 1119. While the Order of Hospitallers initially was a medical order, later it began to guard pilgrims and give them refuge in so-called hospitals in the desert. Meanwhile, the Order of the Temple, from the very beginning, was created by Hugo Debyn as an order of military ascetics carrying Christianity at the tip of their swords, and that was essentially a new development in Civilization Christianity, turning its theology into a military science.