Kulturkampf

"Between Berlin and Rome" from Kladderadatsch, 

16 May 1875. 

(Pope:) "The last move was certainly very unpleasant for me; but that doesn't yet mean the game is lost. I have one more very fine move up my sleeve!" 

(Bismarck:) "It will also be the last, and then you are mated in a few moves - at least for Germany." Note the caricaturist's error in orienting the chessboard by placing white squares on players' left.

"Hence if anyone, which God forbid, should dare willfully to deny or to call into doubt that which We have defined, let him know that he has fallen away completely from the divine and Catholic Faith."

Pope Pius XII,

Munificentissimus Deus

1950

Theotokos Panachranta. Mid-11th-century Kievan illumination from the Gertrude Psalter.

Koran, 9th c.; Manuscript of the Chapter Mary; Kufic script on gazelle skin; Mevlâna mausoleum; Konya, Turkey

"Strange as it may appear, that the doctrine which the church of Rome has promulgated, with so much pomp and ceremony, 'for the destruction of all heresies, and the confirmation of the faith of her adherents', should have its origin in the Mohametan Bible; yet the testimony of such authorities as Gibbon, and Sale, and Forster, and Gagnier, and Maracci, leave no doubt as to the marvellous fact."