They were men who believed simply, felt passionately, saw complex issues in black and white, were aggressive in word and deed and understood this world as but a shadow of a greater reality.

From Charlemagne by Derek Wilson

He pitched there a tent and was waiting in prayer the arrival of the  new converts when, behold! instead of friends, a band of enraged infidels appeared on the plains all in arms and, coming up, rushed into  his tent. The servants that were with the holy martyr were for defending his life by fighting; but he would not suffer it, declaring that the  day he had long waited for was come, which was to bring him to the  eternal joys of the Lord. He encouraged the rest to meet with cheer-fulness and constancy a death which was to them the gate of everlasting life.

That account of the death of Boniface, the “Apostle of Germany,” in  June 754 is important because it marks a turning point in world  history. It is also useful as a launchpad for this book because it  may help us to get into the right frame of mind to approach the life and  times of Charles the Great. Professor Barraclough succinctly observed,  “Without Boniface there could have been no Charles” and that is a truth  that we in the laid-back, agnostic, twenty-first-century West should not  lose sight of. If we find it difficult to understand the mentality of Islamic  suicide bombers and tend to be dismissive of all fundamentalisms, then our  imaginations need to be jolted so that we can place ourselves alongside the  warriors, scholars and missionaries who created and led the first Western  empire. They were men who believed simply, felt passionately, saw complex issues in black and white, were aggressive in word and deed and understood this world as but a shadow of a greater reality. And it was because  they were the men they were—heroes in every sense of the word—that  they turned the tide of events, took hold of a culture that seemed doomed   to extermination by superior forces and forged the civilization of which we  are the heirs.