Gilbert Keith Chesterton

“ Prominently, and probably in a row, would sit the Christian theologians, eager with the eagerness of all men who live much with their own sex in schools and clubs and universities, for an unending war of words. Like all men who have a complete theory of things, they would be fretting and on fire with the chance of expounding it, many of them stirring and stamping. For men who have much to say are more nervous than men who have nothing to say. ”

“ In the exact words of Joinville's Chronicle, `There was a great disputation between clergy and Jews at the Monastery of Cluny.' That single sentence knocks flat for ever the whole picture and conception of the medieval Jew which we all have from Scott's romances or from general report. Ignorant fools who insult a strange sect merely because it is strange, do not arrange public debates to give it a chance of explaining itself. People bent on rooting out a tribe ruthlessly like rats or weeds do not invite the heads of the tribe to make speeches about themselves on a platform. ”

“ And at the moment, before any of the philosophers could move, the old man of the crutch stood up and asked to speak.
Joinville in his Chronicle gently says that this was received `with doubt'. Human life is so startlingly the same in all ages that one can see the scene as clearly as if it were a modern meeting when some peppery and impractical Colonel insists on addressing the meeting. One can imagine the whispers between the Abbot and his chief supporters. `If he speaks there will be a row,' and the unanswerable answer, `If we stop him there will be a worse row'. ”