Posted on 03/19/2006 6:44:46 PM PST by prairiebreeze
THE Vatican has begun moves to rehabilitate the Crusaders by sponsoring a conference at the weekend that portrays the Crusades as wars fought with the “noble aim” of regaining the Holy Land for Christianity.
The Crusades are seen by many Muslims as acts of violence that have underpinned Western aggression towards the Arab world ever since. Followers of Osama bin Laden claim to be taking part in a latter-day “jihad against the Jews and Crusaders”.
The late Pope John Paul II sought to achieve Muslim- Christian reconciliation by asking “pardon” for the Crusades during the 2000 Millennium celebrations. But John Paul’s apologies for the past “errors of the Church” — including the Inquisition and anti-Semitism — irritated some Vatican conservatives. According to Vatican insiders, the dissenters included Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI.
Pope Benedict reached out to Muslims and Jews after his election and called for dialogue. However, the Pope, who is due to visit Turkey in November, has in the past suggested that Turkey’s Muslim culture is at variance with Europe’s Christian roots.
At the conference, held at the Regina Apostolorum Pontifical University, Roberto De Mattei, an Italian historian, recalled that the Crusades were “a response to the Muslim invasion of Christian lands and the Muslim devastation of the Holy Places”.
“The debate has been reopened,” La Stampa said. Professor De Mattei noted that the desecration of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem by Muslim forces in 1009 had helped to provoke the First Crusade at the end of the 11th century, called by Pope Urban II.
He said that the Crusaders were “martyrs” who had “sacrificed their lives for the faith”. He was backed by Jonathan Riley-Smith, Dixie Professor of Ecclesiastical History at Cambridge University, who said that those who sought forgiveness for the Crusades “do not know their history”. Professor Riley-Smith has attacked Sir Ridley Scott’s recent film Kingdom of Heaven, starring Orlando Bloom, as “utter nonsense”.
Professor Riley-Smith said that the script, like much writing on the Crusades, was “historically inaccurate. It depicts the Muslims as civilised and the Crusaders as barbarians. It has nothing to do with reality.” It fuels Islamic fundamentalism by propagating “Osama bin Laden’s version of history”.
He said that the Crusaders were sometimes undisciplined and capable of acts of great cruelty. But the same was true of Muslims and of troops in “all ideological wars”. Some of the Crusaders’ worst excesses were against Orthodox Christians or heretics — as in the sack of Constantinople in 1204.
The American writer Robert Spencer, author of A Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam, told the conference that the mistaken view had taken hold in the West as well as the Arab world that the Crusades were “an unprovoked attack by Europe on the Islamic world”. In reality, however, Christians had been persecuted after the Muslim conquest of Jerusalem.
CONFLICT OVER THE HOLY LAND
Historians count eight Crusades, although dates are disputed: 1095-1101, called by Pope Urban II; 1145-47, led by Louis VII; 1188-92, led by Richard I; 1204, which included the sack of Constantinople; 1217, which included the conquest of Damietta; 1228-29 led by Frederick II; 1249-52, led by King Louis IX of France; and 1270, also under Louis IX
Until the early 11th century, Christians, Jews and Muslims coexisted under Muslim rule in the Holy Land. After growing friction, the first Crusade was sparked by ambushes of Christian pilgrims going to Jerusalem. The Byzantine Emperor Alexius appealed to Pope Urban II, who in 1095 called on Christendom to take up arms to free the Holy Land from the “Muslim infidel”
ping
The Jewish community is owed a deep and heartfelt apology for the behavior of some of the Crusaders, but that is a whole different story.
-ccm
Agree 100%. So I wonder when there will be burning of Italian flags in muslim countries?
And we all know how Muslims cannot stand acts of violence.
It looks like the Catholic church is going after the Muslims. Someone has to.
Interesting read. Thanks for the ping.
I knew there was a good reason I liked this guy. (Papa Razzi)
Good. PJPII meant well, but I think he was mistaken in this policy. Pope Benedict was said from the start to be more of a realist on some of these silly ecumenical issues and especially on Islam.
And, by the way, the Inquisition is not as bad as it is often painted, either. In the period when tens of thousands of witches were being burned in northern Europe, the Italian Inquisition basically said that these women were not witches, just crazy. Even the Spanish Inquisition, which was pretty much under the control of the Holy Roman Emperor and/or the King of Spain, was not as bad as it's usually painted. Or, at least, no worse than the justice you got in most of the rest of Europe at that time. Anyone who has visited the dungeons of some the the European castles and chateaux will recognize that they were not pleasant places.
A Google search will turn up some of the latest historical work on the Inquisition. John Tedeschi's work is especially worth looking at.
Hopeless to compare barbarities. . .but we do know the Christians moved foward. . .let us say. . .to a more enlightened world view; whereas the core of Islam. . .and it's adherents. . .have not.
It would be odd and counterproductive if the Catholic Church chose to refight the merits of the crusades. It simply does not translate well into the modern age, and it's irrelevant.
The Christians moved along with time, the Muslims never did.
It's about freaking time the Church declare the Crusades to have been the defensive counterattacks against rampaging Islam that they were.
Who cares what the muzzies think? Deus Vult!
Why is it that journalists and historians conveniently forget the 400 years prior to the crusades? The muslims controlled the mediteranean sea and raided the coast of southern europe for centuries. Just where did that dark pigment find itself into the Spanish and Italian gene pool? By inter-racial dating. I don't think so. Serious scholars have found a strong economic and strategic military motive for these invasions which aimed at reclaiming European control over mediteranean shipping lanes.
Not sure the intent is to "refight the merits".
I'd be satisfied to just have the record set straight.
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