How we cite our quotes: Chapter, Paragraph
Quote #1
But then the startling music of splintering oak flung me out of bed. I offered a silent prayer to Saint Mark, the patron saint of those who would be brave. (1.4)
The saints that Edmund prays to act like role models. Each time he prays to them, he's invoking a different virtue—strength, wisdom, and so on. It's always easier to find inspiration when you're trying to uphold something good. Even if he doesn't actually know a lot of people he could use as role models, he is familiar with his saints.
Quote #2
One of the Exchequer's men held the white thing flat against the base of the anvil while a companion drove a spike through it, like a hand of Our Lord on the Tree. (1.23)
Edmund makes it obvious that he's grown up in a culture that's very influenced by his religion. When Otto's hand is cut off, Edmund compares it to Jesus's death on the cross. All of that imagery is very much present in his mind and imagination.
Quote #3
The Holy Father in Rome had decreed that all who fought to take Jerusalem from the heathen would obtain indulgences—forgiveness of sins. The foulest criminal could absolve himself of wrongdoing before Heaven by joining the army of God. I envied those war pilgrims. I knew that my master was a good man, but a criminal, and that the law would consider me guilty too. And so would Heaven. (2.18)
Here's an example of how the church and state were linked back then. The Pope orders a war—and gets people to join by saying their sins will be forgiven if they do. Good leverage, right? But there's more implied in this passage. Edmund admits without question that he's being judged in Heaven because of Otto's sin.
Quote #4
To have no regard for one's soul was like caring nothing for one's mother—it was impossible to imagine a man so callous or wicked. (7.14)
Edmund explains that he can't imagine someone not caring for his soul because it's such an important part of a person that to do so would be like not caring for the woman who gave you life.
Quote #5
I could not believe what I was hearing when he spoke, softly, in an even voice, his words clear despite the scar along his lips.
He said, "God give you strength."
God's strength. It was a phrase Father Joseph used, encouraging my father as he faced death. Perhaps, I thought, Rannulf is not such a prayerless man after all. (8.42-44)
Edmund assumes that because Rannulf is a "pagan" (which is also an assumption that everyone makes), he's a stranger to God. So when Rannulf invokes God's strength for Edmund to get some work done, Edmund's mind is blown—dude uses the same phrase that priests use. This is when Edmund starts thinking there's more to people than meets the eye.
Quote #6
I prayed in my weakness, not unlike the offering of a dying man to Heaven. I begged the aid of Our Lord Jesu, from whom proceeds all understanding and goodness. I wished for a rosary, with its gaudy beads, but instead closed my eyes and opened my heart to Heaven. (12.18)
Edmund prays to Heaven to cure his seasickness—he's been puking his brains out for days and he's asking God to just give him a break. He wishes that he had a rosary to pray with, but he does his best with his words and thoughts.
Quote #7
Men do not forget so soon. Father Urbino spoke the noble Latin, praying to God for the rest of the souls of our brothers Miles de Neville and Matteo Mattei, the big sailor from Genoa. It was not a formal requiem, simply a brief address to Heaven. (19.10)
Father Urbino is sent on board to take care of spiritual needs—like a religious doctor. When the sailors die in the storm, he offers up a brief funeral for them. Even though they don't have a church and all of the other religious equipment, it's important that they still join together in prayer.
Quote #8
"Men misjudge me," he said peacefully. "Inside, I sing songs like the ones Miles used to love, and I offer Heaven my own sort of prayers. Nigel is the one who craves." (25.16)
There's this reputation that men like Rannulf pillage, steal, and worse, but as Rannulf explains, people are wrong about him. He may not fit within the box of what they think a religious man should look like, but that doesn't mean he isn't religious in a different way.
Quote #9
All eyes were on one individual, a broad-shouldered, yellow-haired man, with a thick, muscular neck, and a face set in pious thanksgiving, or weariness, or some inner brooding. He prayed a long while, as an army of men watched, firelight flickering. (26.46)
Richard the Lionheart was a famously religious man. When he lands on the shore of the Holy Land, the first thing he does is drop to his knees to pray. By kneeling down, he's showing that there's a king up above whom he obeys, even if he is the King of England. Prayer first, pomp and circumstance second.
Quote #10
The creature twitched, stinging upward, stabbing the air. Scorpions and spiders, vipers and centipedes were created when God cast Adam and Eve from the Garden. The sun multiplied such beasts from rot, decaying wood, and flesh. In God's innocent, unfallen Creation, no such creatures existed. (28.17)
In medieval times, the Bible wasn't just useful for law—it was also useful for explaining pretty much everything and anything. Like, say, where bugs come from.