On that they were in fierce agreement—as worlds, as orders, as professions; and a child of peace found it worth his while to listen to Naphta talk about the martial monks of the Middle Ages, who, although ascetics to the point of exhaustion, were likewise filled with a spiritual lust for power and did not refrain from bloodshed in order to bring about the City of God and its transcendent world dominion; or about belligerent Knights Templar, who considered death in battle against unbelievers more meritorious than death in one’s bed and for whom slaying and being slain for the sake of Christ was no crime, but the highest glory.