From the preface to The Third Crusade

In the year of the Incarnate Word of our Lord 1187, when Pope Urban III held the government of the Apostolic See and Frederick I was emperor of Germany; when Isaac II was reigning at Constantinople, Philip II in France, Henry II in England and William II in Sicily, the Lord's hand fell heavily on His people, if indeed it is right to call those "His people" whom uncleanness of life and habits, and the foulness of their vices, had alienated from his favor.  Their licentiousness had indeed become so flagrant that they all of them (casting aside the veil of shame) rushed headlong in the face of day into sin.

It would be a long task, and incompatible with our present purpose, to disclose the scenes of blood, robbery and adultery which disgraced them (for this work of mine is a history of deeds and not a moral treatise); but when the Ancient Enemy had diffused, far and near, the spirit of corruption, he more especially took possession of the lands of Syria and Palestine, so that other nations now drew an example of uncleanness from the same source which formerly had supplied them with the  elements of religion.  For this cause, therefore, the Lord, seeing that the land of His birth and place of His Passion had sunk into an abyss of turpitude, treated with neglect His inheritance and suffered Saladin, the rod of His wrath, to put forth his fury to the destruction of that stiff-necked people; for He would rather that the Holy Land should for a short time be subject to the profane rites of the heathen than that it should any longer be possessed by men whom no regard for what is right could deter from things unlawful.