Before he was charged with killing 49 people at two mosques, Brenton Harrison Tarrant covered his arsenal with symbols and names that medieval historians recognized immediately.
Symbols and writing cover a bulletproof vest and protective gear in a photo posted on Twitter on Tuesday by the accused gunman who attacked two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand. By Gillian Brockell Gillian Brockell Staff writer for Retropolis Email Bio Follow March 16 at 1:38 PM The arsenal and clothing of the man accused of killing 50 people in attacks on two New Zealand mosques was covered in symbols and writing.
Sturtevant counted 18 references to the Middle Ages in the markings and writing on the arsenal that belonged to Brenton Harrison Tarrant, the 28-year-old Australian charged in Friday’s New Zealand rampage. The graffiti-covered guns in the video live-streamed by the admitted New Zealand shooter. One name in particular stood out to Sturtevant: Charles Martel. Martel was a real person in history, credited with defeating the last organized army headed by a Muslim ruler to attempt to invade what is now France at the Battle of Tours in 732. But legends about Martel, among contemporary hate groups and medieval people, reach mythic proportions.
In medieval Sicily, Christians, Muslims and Jews were “living and working together side by side,” Sturtevant said. In 7th-century England, the well-respected archbishop of Canterbury was from Turkey, and his favorite abbot was from North Africa. There were Ethiopian embassies across southern Europe, including Rome. Pilgrimage books listed travelers as hailing from “India” — though this was probably just a fill-in for anywhere in the Middle East.
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