In this “rare book that combines searing passion . . . with a subject that has affected all of our lives" (Chicago Tribune), the novelist and cultural critic James Carroll maps the two-thousand-year course of the Church"s battle against Judaism and faces the crisis of faith it has sparked in his own life as a Catholic. “Fascinating, brave and sometimes infuriating" (Time), this dark history is more than a chronicle of religion. It is the central tragedy of Western civilization, its fault lines reaching deep into our culture.
Drawing on his well-known talents as a storyteller and memoirist, Carroll has created “a deeply felt work, a book that measures the ‘sweep of history" against [his] experience as a man of the church" (San Francisco Chronicle). A courageous and affecting reckoning with difficult truths that will touch every reader, “CONSTANTINE'S SWORD is a history written to change the way people live" (Talk).