Most beloved brethren: Urged by necessity, I, Urban, by the permission of God chief bishop and prelate over the whole world, have come into these parts as an ambassador with a divine admonition to you, the servants of God. I hoped to find you as faithful and as zealous in the service of God as I had supposed you to be. But if there is in you any deformity or crookedness contrary to God's law, with divine help I will do my best to remove it. For God has put you as stewards over his family to minister to it. Happy indeed will you be if he finds you faithful in your stewardship. You are called shepherds; see that you do not act as hirelings. But be true shepherds, with your crooks always in your hands. Do not go to sleep, but guard on all sides the flock committed to you. For if through your carelessness or negligence a wolf carries away one of your sheep, you will surely lose the reward laid up for you with God. And after you have been bitterly scourged with remorse for your faults-, you will be fiercely overwhelmed in hell, the abode of death. For according to the gospel you are the salt of the earth [Matt. 5:13]. But if you fall short in your duty, how, it may be asked, can it be salted? O how great the need of salting! It is indeed necessary for you to correct with the salt of wisdom this foolish people which is so devoted to the pleasures of this - world, lest the Lord, when He may wish to speak to them, find them putrefied by their sins unsalted and stinking. For if He, shall find worms, that is, sins, In them, because you have been negligent in your duty, He will command them as worthless to be thrown into the abyss of unclean things. And because you cannot restore to Him His great loss, He will surely condemn you and drive you from His loving presence. But the man who applies this salt should be prudent, provident, modest, learned, peaceable, watchful, pious, just, equitable, and pure. For how can the ignorant teach others? How can the licentious make others modest? And how can the impure make others pure? If anyone hates peace, how can he make others peaceable? Or if anyone has soiled his hands with baseness, how can he cleanse the impurities of another? We read also that if the blind lead the blind, both will fall into the ditch [Matt. 15:14]. But first correct yourselves, in order that, free from blame, you may be able to correct those who are subject to you. If you wish to be the friends of God, gladly do the things which you know will please Him. You must especially let all matters that pertain to the church be controlled by the law of the church.

The holy wars of Christianity and Islam, crusade and jihad respectively, represent a conflict of ideology between two Abrahamic faiths that would be reignited with the First Crusade in 1096. What makes them different is not the wars' necessity in their respective societies, but their origins. Jihad is explicitly referred to and justified in the Qur'an and crusading came into thought nearly a thousand years after the beginning of Christianity. Practice and execution also differentiate them. For a religious contrast, where Christians viewed Muslims as worshipping a false god through a false prophet, the Muslims were more concerned with the Christians' use of anthropomorphic imagery for veneration. Thus the difference in these two ideals can be seen: crusading ideology began to take shape in the late 11th century, and was driven by a politically minded, centralized papacy; jihad existed from the beginnings of Islam, and was driven by secular leaders using religious means to their political ends. The parallels of these respective holy wars as unifying forces in otherwise fragmented societies obscure the differences in origin and execution between them, and if not for this fragmentation and various other factors neither may have been employed at all.

38. The high-ranking priests participate in warfare and fight

and are killed or become the killers of men, the very ones that are

pupils of the nonviolent Christ and use the same hands to sanctify the secret body and blood.

60. Their [i.e. The Latins’] high-ranked priests approve of the slaughter of Christians and claim salvation for the ones doing that.

61. They glorify those among them, who are killed in battle, as saved and say that they enter heaven directly, even if they lost their lives fighting because of avarice or bloodlust or some other excess of evil.”

For the rules concerning priests are not the same among the Latins as they are with us; For we are given the command by the canonical laws and the teaching of the Gospel, “Touch not, taste not, handle not! For thou art consecrated”. Whereas the Latin barbarian will simultaneously handle divine things, and wear his shield on his left arm, and hold his spear in his right hand, and at one and the same time he communicates the body and blood of God, and looks murderously and becomes ‛a man of blood’, as it says in the psalm of David. For this barbarian race is no less devoted to sacred things than it is to war. And so this man of violence rather than priest wore his priestly garb at the same time that he handled the oar and had an eye equally to naval or land warfare, fighting simultaneously with the sea and with men...

[fols: 179b-180a]: Know for certain that this enemy's attack on your country, and their achieving what they have over some of you is a warning from God (who is praised) to those of you that remain, so that He may see if you will refrain from disobeying Him, so that He will help you against them and calm your fear, or persist and insist, so that He will give them victory over those of you that escaped. God (who is praised) afflicted you several times with various sorts of vengeful measures and you persist in disobeying Him, and He warned you time after time, and you rebel against the punishment falling upon you which corresponds to your deeds. They (the Franks) acted as they did because of (the Muslims') blame of God (who is praised) as a warning to others of them (the Muslims), and they (the Muslims) lied about the deeds of He who is praised, and He warns them (the Muslims) and only increases them (the Franks) in great tyranny. Now He warned you with a punishment the like of which He did not warn you with before, paying attention to you, albeit that your crimes are not like the crimes which preceded them. If only you would desist from sin, otherwise He will make you fall into the hands of your enemy as a matter of serious vengeance, destructive extermination and removal. God hasten your waking up from the sleep of neglect of the places of His punishment and place you among those who fear the speed of His power and the imminence of His punishments, acting according to what He ordered and prohibited in the rulings of His book, who limit (themselves) by rooting out (their bad qualities) and repenting to the point of knocking on His door. For He hears prayer and answers when He wishes.