Note 678 — Chapter XV · THE MORAL LIFE OF EUROPE DURING THE AGE OF CHIVALRY

Lecky believes this to have been the main cause of the transformation in the Church. “The transition,” he says, “from the almost Quaker tenets of the primitive Church to the essentially military Christianity of the Crusades was due chiefly ... to the terror and the example of Mohammedanism” (History of European Morals, 3d ed., vol. ii, p. 252). But, as we have seen, the transition was already nearly complete before the rise of Islam.