![]() ![]() The novel is racially charged, accusing the German monk-knights of exploitation, greed, and oversized ambitions to dominate the recently joined nations of Poland-Lithuania. ![]() The Knights were crusading monks, who, after being expelled from the Holy Land, shifted their sites to Eastern Europe, seeking to force the conversion of the Baltic peoples. I recently read Henryk Sienkiewicz’s novel Krzyżacy (1900), translated as The Knights of the Cross, the tale of a young knight, Zbyszko of Bogdaniec, who enters into a bitter feud with the Teutonic Knights. ![]() It was an incredible time to be in Eastern Europe, shortly after the fall of the Soviet Union, although, more than recent history, I soaked in the great legacy of Christendom that still pervades their culture. Something was pointing me to Poland and, amazingly enough, I was actually sent there the next year as a Rotary Club exchange student. I went on to read John Paul II’s Crossing the Threshold of Hope and his biography (in the pre- Witness to Hope days), and the letters of St. Faustina’s Diary was actually the first Catholic book I ever read, back in 1995. My last post focused on the background of the Divine Mercy devotion and St. ![]()
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