James Barrows, a Fish Bar patron who enjoyed chain-smoking over a beer on Monday night, said he had voted for Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg but now felt betrayed by him for launching the crusade toward a smokeless New York.
Thus was launched the crusading movement, whose high tide lasted for two centuries.
But the pope did exactly the same thing when he launched the Crusades.
When Christendom launched the Crusades, the holy wars that shaped Europe, in the eleventh century, Jews were the paradigmatic enemy inside (the infidel near at hand), and Muslims became the defining enemy outside (the infidel far away).
Some made stabs in the dark, with one blogger suggesting that Griffin had either decided to re-launch the Crusades.
In launching the crusades as Christian holy war in 1095, Pope Urban II proclaimed, "God wills it!" He promised all who died that their sins would be totally forgiven and they would go straight to paradise, effectively making killing penance, while most Christians of the time regarded killing as a mortal sin requiring penance.
During the truce he persuaded Pope Innocent III to launch the Fifth Crusade in support of his daughter's kingdom.
A pope 1,000 years ago exhorted Christians to launch the First Crusade against Muslims, explained Syeed, of the Islamic Society of North America.
Historians have argued that the desire to impose Roman church authority in the east may have been one of the goals of the crusade, although Urban II, who launched the First Crusade, never refers to such a goal in his letters on crusading.
In 1209, the Pope launched the Albigensian Crusade against the heretics of southern France.
