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What a$$hole came up with the SF motto?  "Kill them all and than let God sort them out"!
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Actually, it comes from a mediaeval anecdote a bit before there was an SF as we know it today. In 1209, during the Albigensian Crusade against the Cathar heresy in Southern France, the forces of Orthodox Catholicism laid siege to the city of Beziers which was defended by the Cathar heretics. The Catholic forces finally breached the walls of the city and - as they prepared to storm it - Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester and the commander of the crusaders, pointed out that not everybody in the city was a heretic. Because some of them were good Catholics, he asked the Papal Legate how they should treat the inhabitants when they captured the city.
A monk who was actually present at the siege recorded the answer of the Legate (Arnaud-Amaury, the Abbot of Citeaux) to the Crusaders as "Neca eos omnes. Deus suos agnoscet." (
Kill them all. God will know his own.)
The Crusaders followed his advice - surviving Cathars then became the original targets of the Inquisition.
In today's less flowery language, it's "Kill them all and let God sort them out."
Nothing like a mid-afternoon waltz down the murky old theological memory lane of zealots (from whatever belief) to place the world in perspective for us, is there.
Richard's $.02
