A Review of Raymond Ibrahim’s The Two Swords of Christ
It was my very great pleasure to write a review of Raymon Ibrahim’s second book on the Crusades in what would become a trilogy for this journal, and I have been greatly looking forward to an opportunity to review his newest work, The Two Swords of Christ.
Mr. Ibrahim’s contribution to scholarship has been focused on the persecution of the Christian faith in the Muslim world. His particular interest in history made his mission clear. Tell the truth about the Crusades. As a descendant of Egyptian Coptic Christians, he still has a personal interest in the region and keeps an ever-vigilant eye on the Muslim world, sounding the alarm about ongoing persecution and atrocities which have gone on there since the rise of Muhammad.
The first book of the series, Sword and Scimitar, was focused primarily on the apocalyptic battles for the Middle East during the Crusader era. He is able to successfully communicate the importance of the era to modern audiences, and it is clear that had things gone differently on only a few days in history, the world may look very different. His follow-up book to that work, Defenders of the West, was primarily composed of mini-biographies of the most influential and important Crusaders from this era, with some significant overlap with Sword and Scimitar for obvious reasons. As biographies are stories of lives, this is an excellent work to begin with because biographies render more distant historical periods accessible to general readers. Both books are fascinating, albeit emotional, reads, and I highly recommend them even if the Crusades are outside your usual area of interest.
The Elephant in the Room
American Reformer is a journal focused on the restoration of American Protestant political and social thought. The subject of Ibrahim’s latest work is a time when Protestants would not have been welcome. The Christian religion of the day could best be described as Roman Catholic, although it has evolved in the intervening centuries. This work extends into the time of the Protestant Reformation; the military orders of monks he narrates did not have faith consistent with Protestant doctrine. Having said that, I believe that his book can still teach several lessons, and the specific heroes within the stories offer great examples for even Protestant Christians.
Protestants have never had official monastic orders, and so much of the lifestyle of the knights depicted in the book is suspect to our eyes. Nevertheless, extreme times require extreme measures.
The Two Swords of Christ
Ibrahim’s focus in this work is mostly about the Christian Crusader monastic orders known today mostly as “Templars” and “Hospitallers.” Both groups were founded in the aftermath of the First Crusade to protect and help Christian pilgrims who wished to go to Jerusalem and worship at the holy sites. Though given the name “Templars,” the true name of the order was the Poor Fellow Soldiers of Christ. Similarly, the knights known as “Hospitallers” were really named the Knights of the Hospital of St. John the Baptist. Much like Ibrahim’s rehabilitation of the Crusades in his previous work, he takes a sympathetic view of the two monastic orders he is investigating.
Most people who know the Templars at all assume the connection to the Freemasons, which is an 18th-century fabrication emerging from Germany. Other stories attribute bizarre occult or gnostic beliefs to the Templars, and their real activities and beliefs are mostly unknown. Cultural references to them do not feel any obligation to represent them with any honesty or even an attempt at objectivity. The Hospitallers, on the other hand, are mostly just forgotten today, even though, unlike the Templars, they still exist.
The Big Ideas
Ibrahim’s book does a good job of continually returning to a few consistent themes. Some of these themes carry over from his previous works. One theme, which is more subtly included, is that when Christianity is united, Islam cannot overcome its strength. In both Defenders and Two Swords, we see that Islam was mostly successful when Christianity was fractured and disunited. In the case of the military orders, intense focus on their specific mission kept them from sliding into secularism and decadence with the rest of Europe as the years passed and as the Crusades dragged on and the Holy Land was brought under total muslim occupation. Unfortunately, that same focus and stability eventually led to their loss of popular support among the increasingly secularized Europeans.
A more overt theme is the consistent victory over impossible odds experienced by the military orders in battle. Time and time again, the Templars and Hospitallers held against overwhelming force, successfully defeated much larger armies, and endured attacks and sieges long past when lesser warriors would have surrendered or died. A picture of this is repeatedly shown with the advanced age of the masters of each order. They tended to be elder brothers in the order and often were between the ages of 50 and 70 when appointed, with many still fighting, dying, and winning battles at that age.
As with the previous two books, Ibrahim is concerned with getting the Crusades right. Most of us were taught, if anything, that Crusaders were the bad guys and the muslims were just there minding their own business, or, best case, that the Crusades wore a religious facade to justify a standard political border dispute among imperialistic powers. Ibrahim disabuses his readers of that idea, explaining that the Crusades were a primarily defensive conflict to protect the Christian nations bordering Islamic lands from Islamic aggression and expansion and to avenge the grievous atrocities perpetrated against Christian pilgrims. By extension, the orders of the Hospital and the Temple were defensive orders that were organized to protect Christian pilgrims.
The Dual Origins
Ibrahim does a good job of explaining the historical context for the foundation of the orders, which were mostly unprecedented. The Poor Fellow Soldiers of Christ were founded to protect pilgrims in the wild wilderness between settlements after the Christians captured Jerusalem in the First Crusade. The kingdom was not able to secure the roads, and various banditti were loose in the region, unchallenged. At their founding, they only had nine knights and very few resources. They were gifted the temple (now the Dome of the Rock) as a headquarters, hence their popular appellation of “Templars.” With success came donations and church support, facilitating vast expansion over decades. The Knights of the Hospital of Saint John the Baptist have their origins in the creation of hospitals meant to serve Christian pilgrims with a place to stay in the Holy Land, food, and care for the sick. Eventually, they decided they needed guardians for the pilgrims and commissioned knights for that purpose. The Hospitallers never lost sight of their original purpose, always deferring to their “lords, the sick.”
An Emotional Roller Coaster
Much like Defenders and, to a lesser extent, Sword and Scimitar, Ibrahim records the events dispassionately, including the successes and failures of the Crusaders and the military orders. In many cases, this leads the reader from the heights of joy to the depths of despair in a few pages. Ibrahim’s style, which is not superfluous, nevertheless turns the book into a desperate race through the pages to find out who will ultimately win in the protracted conflicts he narrates. A student ot the Crusades will not enjoy the suspense as they are already aware of the aftermath, but those who are less knowledgeable about the Crusades will derive great excitement from the way he draws out the conflict in detail. It feels like each battle is anyone’s game until the end. Ibrahim is not shy about detailing the atrocities committed in the aftermath of muslim victories, which are legitimately hard to read, only softened by the gap of time since the events occurred. As a result, this book is not for young readers. Perhaps Mr. Ibrahim could be prevailed upon to create a children’s version so that the virtues of the Crusaders could be related to kids?
The book itself has a tragic tone as the Crusades were not generally successful, depending on how success is defined. As this book is focused on these two military orders, the fate of the orders is where the stories lead. I won’t spoil the end for those who are unfamiliar with the fate of the Templars and Hospitallers (the Order of Brothers of the German House of Saint Mary of Jerusalem, aka Teutonic Knights, make a few appearances in the book as well). Between their founding and the conclusion of the book, they have many ups and downs, and their ability to rebound with more than restored strength is a testament to the power of their clear vision and mission.
Lessons for Today
There are several lessons that can be learned from the military orders. Firstly, a clear statement and adherence to a simple mission can prevent drift. While the orders were not entirely immune to drift, they lasted centuries with the same mission and focus, drifting at a much slower pace than other institutions of the era. Institutions should name and adhere strictly to an easily understandable and reasonably limited mission.
Another lesson is the strict vetting of new members. This did not fully insulate the orders from dissidents or poor examples of their virtues. Ibrahim details a number of instances of brothers of the orders behaving duplicitously, being expelled from the order (and coming back later to cause problems), and even succumbing to cowardice in the face of the enemy. Nevertheless, given how many knights were a part of the orders throughout their existence and how often they were asked to face terrifying and miserable hardships, death in battle, and martyrdom, they had a remarkable track record of loyalty and honor from the brothers. There may be an additional lesson from this. Namely, that young men want to serve something larger than themselves. The orders, as a part of the Catholic church, already started with a clear tradition that dated back a long way, debates of Catholicity aside. Joining the order was hard, and only a few were able to do so. It cost them, as they had to forswear marriage and property to join, which had multi-generational implications in a society that thought deeply about that issue. Nevertheless, the orders at most times in history did not seem to struggle to locate a recruiting pool. When numbers were low, there was no evidence that they lowered the standards for joining the orders. As the right continues to grapple with the left over the future of young men in America, this could be a helpful clue to what inspires men to pick a side and strive for greatness.
Another lesson is the importance of coalition building. When Europe was united in its goals, the Crusaders were the strongest army on earth. In times when Europe was consumed with its own political and economic struggles, Islam was dominant. Surely the European nations had legitimate conflicts with each other. But, they could not or would not set aside those conflicts to deal with the greater and existential enemy of Islam. Ibrahim subtly implies that the preservation of Christendom through the 1500s was nothing short of miraculous and attributable largely to a handful of specific incidents that required miraculous intervention, incredible courage, and hard work. Islam feared a united Christendom. As a counterpoint, the violence with the Islamic powers didn’t end until diplomatic relations between Christendom and Islam were normalized. Often, the Templars and Hospitallers were obstacles to this process. An uncharitable view would be that those orders were hate-fueled or self-serving, believing that the end of war would be the diminishing of their orders’ prestige. A more charitable view of the situation is that the Templars and Hospitallers had a firmer understanding of muslim duplicity, and with their extensive experience, they understood that diplomacy with Islam was rarely in good faith. The Hospitallers, in particular, were the undying enemies of Islam and even fought with European Christians who had struck alliances with the Ottomans as recently as after the discovery of America by Columbus. The choices of the Hospitallers and the Templars leave us pondering if peace could have been established sooner, or if they were right all along, and if diplomacy should have been shunned until resolution could be achieved. I’ll let the reader form their own opinion.
Final Verdict
Ibrahim’s newest book is an excellent addition to the series that breaks new ground while still building on his previous works. I was asked recently by a friend if I thought that this or Defenders of the West was the better book. I had a hard time answering, and that in itself is high praise for The Two Swords of Christ. The strength of Two Swords is its emphasis on the life of an institution and what it takes to keep one on mission and effective for as long as possible. Since institutional health is such an important inflection point in our day, The Two Swords of Christ offers something unique that Defenders and Sword and Scimitar did not. Two Swords clocks in at a longer read than the previous works at 512 pages, but it does not feel tedious. Chapters are bite-sized and help the book’s pacing. Also, for those who enjoyed the aspect of Defenders that emphasized the personal holiness and devotion of its subjects, Two Swords does this also, but to a lesser extent, as less detail in general is given about the figures in the history. Some familiar names appear, and I would strongly recommend reading Defenders of the West first. If you have enjoyed the other books, this one is a no-brainer. If you are new to the series and have an interest in a true account of the Crusades, my suggested reading order is to read Defenders of the West first and then Two Swords and Sword and Scimitar after in whichever order you prefer. The bottom line is that the book is a great read, and you should definitely pick up a copy from Bombardier Books and support the work of Raymond Ibrahim. Spread the word about the truth of the Crusades and put a stop to the shame that the secular world tries to heap on Christendom about the supposed embarrassing conduct of the era. You owe it to yourself to get educated on the Crusades. Start with Ibrahim’s books.
