“You have heard what we cannot recount without deep sorrow how, with great hurt and dire sufferings our Christian brothers, members in Christ, are scourged, oppressed and injured in … the … cities of the East. Your own blood brothers, your companions, your associates … are either subjected in their inherited homes to other masters, or are driven from them ….

“Christian blood, redeemed by the blood of Christ, has been shed, and Christian flesh, akin to the flesh of Christ, has been subjected to unspeakable degradation and servitude.

“Everywhere in those cities there is sorrow, everywhere misery, everywhere groaning (I say it with a sigh). The churches in which divine mysteries were celebrated in olden times are now, to our sorrow, used as stables for the animals of these people!”

These could be the words of a modern pope, patriarch or bishop lamenting the persecution of Christians in northern Iraq and Syria, the region now under the control of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (isis). Instead, they are 1,000 years old. They come not from Pope Francis, but instead Pope Urban ii, as recorded by Balderic Archbishop of Dol, as the pope called Europe to arms, launching the Crusades and driving 100,000 Christians to descend on the Middle East, eager to spill Muslim blood.

It is no exaggeration then, to call the violence unleashed in the region “medieval.” All Christians had to leave Mosul, convert to Islam or pay an unspecified fee by noon this past Saturday (July 19) according to an ultimatum issued by isis. Before 2003, 60,000 Christians lived in Mosul in communities that had existed for over 1,500 years. At the start of last month, that number was 35,000. Following isis’s deadline, it is believed to be almost zero.

Paying a fee to stay doesn’t look like a real option. Some of isis’s warnings didn’t even mention it. Also, the fee always seems to be more than anyone can pay. To give one example, when one Christian father could not pay the amount isis demanded, the Islamists raped his wife and daughter in front of him. He committed suicide shortly after.

For Mosul’s Christians, staying means torture and/or death. Leaving means being robbed of everything they’re carrying and having what they leave behind seized by the Islamists.

Two weeks ago, isis destroyed a monument revered as the tomb of the Prophet Jonah. Mosul’s churches have been seized and some vandalized. Islamists destroyed the Syriac-Catholic bishopric in Mosul, destroying its library and manuscripts, according to Syriac-Catholic Patriarch Ignace Joseph iii Younan.

In the past few days isis evicted the Syriac-Catholic monks from the fourth century monastery of Saint Behnam, one of Iraq’s most prominent Christian centers, allowing them to take only their clothes.

“How in the 21st century could people be forced from their houses just because they are Christian, or Shiite or Sunni or Yazidi?” Chaldean Catholic Patriarch Louis Raphael Sako asked.

“This has never happened in Christian or Islamic history. Even Genghis Khan or Hulagu didn’t do this,” he added.

Both the Syriac and Chaldean Catholic Church are in full communion with the Roman Catholic Church.

“I want to express my closeness and my constant prayer to these families and these people,” Pope Francis said on Sunday, ahead of a moment of silent prayer in St. Peter’s Square in Rome. “Dear brothers and sisters who are so persecuted, I know how much you suffer. I know that you are stripped of everything. I am with you in the faith of the One who has conquered evil!”

“The God of peace will awaken in all the authentic desire for dialogue and reconciliation,” he continued, referring to all the crises in the Middle East and Ukraine going on right now. “Violence will not win over violence. Violence is won over by peace!”

These may not be the fighting words of Urban ii, but isis’s whole ideology revolves around provoking a conflict with Europe and Rome. That ideology will linger even if isis does not.

Radical Islam will continue to push at Europe and Catholicism. It is already repeating the provocations that triggered the Crusades.

Watch for these provocations to continue. Europe will respond eventually. To learn how we know this, read “The Crusades Are Critical History.”