The Real History of the Crusades

Christianity Today ^ | 5/6/2005 | Thomas F. Madden

[SeekAndFind]

With the possible exception of Umberto Eco, medieval scholars are not used to getting much media attention. We tend to be a quiet lot (except during the annual bacchanalia we call the International Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo, Michigan, of all places), poring over musty chronicles and writing dull yet meticulous studies that few will read. Imagine, then, my surprise when within days of the September 11 attacks, the Middle Ages suddenly became relevant.

As a Crusade historian, I found the tranquil solitude of the ivory tower shattered by journalists, editors, and talk-show hosts on tight deadlines eager to get the real scoop. What were the Crusades?, they asked. When were they? Just how insensitive was President George W. Bush for using the word crusade in his remarks? With a few of my callers I had the distinct impression that they already knew the answers to their questions, or at least thought they did. What they really wanted was an expert to say it all back to them. For example, I was frequently asked to comment on the fact that Islamic world has a just grievance against the West. Doesn't present violence, they persisted, have its roots in the Crusades' brutal, unprovoked attacks against a sophisticated and tolerant Muslim world? In other words, aren't the Crusades really to blame?

Osama bin Laden certainly thinks so. In his various video performances, he never fails to describe the American war against terrorism as a new Crusade against Islam. Ex-president Bill Clinton has also fingered the Crusades as the root cause of the present conflict. In a speech at Georgetown University, he recounted (and embellished) a massacre of Jews after the Crusader conquest of Jerusalem in 1099 and informed his audience that the episode was still bitterly remembered in the Middle East.

[SeekAndFind]

Here’s a helpful article describing the real history of the Crusades.

For those who feel that the article is too long, Here are some key facts:

* They were a defensive response to centuries of Muslim aggression.

* Attacking Jews was condemned by the Pope and never the purpose of a Crusade

* Crusaders for the most part were pious men who sacrificed a great deal to go on a crusade

* The real history of the crusades isn’t clean, and it’s a lot more complicated than the common misconception.

Historian Thomas Madden summarizes:

“So what is the truth about the Crusades? Scholars are still working some of that out. But much can already be said with certainty. For starters, the Crusades to the East were in every way defensive wars. They were a direct response to Muslim aggression—an attempt to turn back or defend against Muslim conquests of Christian lands.”

[SeekAndFind]

I also found Bruce Shelley's article on the Crusades an interesting examination of the motivations behind the Crusades: the Crusades were defensive to start, the papacy was aggressive militarily, and Europe was entering an era of self-conscious unity. Shelley examines the historical context, but also raises some questions worth asking in any era.

"The Crusades raise deep questions about the human heart. What is the nature of a "good" society? How do we restrain evil? Can "good" be defined by Christian doctrine? If so, how shall destructive ideas (called "heresy") be eliminated from society? Such questions are not buried in the twelfth century. Thoughtful Christians today, concerned about the moral decline in our own society, are asking essentially the same questions."

[warsaw44]

read

[MeganC]

Without the Crusades Europe would’ve been a Caliphate. Period.

[Perdogg]

I have a copy of Desmond Sewards “Monks of War”

[GOP Poet]

bookmark

[GraceG]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_Qpy0mXg8Y

Also covers what really helped contribute to the fall of the Roman Empire..

[Steve Van Doorn]

Islam's Sack of Rome of 846 AD was launched from Southern Italy and Sicily which was occupied by Islam until 1091 AD with help from the Vikings drove Islam out. The first crusade was launched on 1096 AD as a counter attack to help the Byzantine's fight Islam.

Three years after Italy removed the last Islamic base out of Sicily ending the +450 year Islamic reign the first crusade started. Similar with Spain in 1492 the year celebrated as the last year of the 781-year Islamic law in Spain.

[SES1066]

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
(Edgar A Poe - The Raven)

Instead of an obnoxious black bird, in this writer's case, it even more obnoxious and presumptive 'journalists' mining and minting guilt for daring to disrupt those halcyon days of Islamic Conquest and rule.

[Tennessee Nana]

The Crusaders ransacked and slaughtered non-Moslems all the way to Jerusalem and back..

especially the Jews and locals in Germany and other low country areas they passed through..

sometimes it was the strange new language, or a misunderstanding or just plain ruthlessness..

many “crusaders” never reached Jerusalem but decided they had already arrived when they got to an area somewhat different from their own...

and in Jerusalem anyone dressed starngly were identified as Sarasans and attacked accordingly...

and then there was that “Christ killers” thingy..

[Steve Van Doorn]

I subscribed to Real Crusades History on Youtube. This guy is fantastic here is an example:
Vlad the Impaler: Crusader Vampire?

[Sherman Logan]

OTOH, knights were a pretty brutal bunch. Their attacks on the locals in Hungary and elsewhere weren’t greatly different from how they behaved at home.

“Private war,” which consisted mostly of ravaging the neighbor’s lands, was endemic in the feudal areas. Ravaging, in this case, being a euphemism for destroying the enemy’s resources by raping and killing his serfs and burning his buildings and crops.

[Sherman Logan]

Islam's Sack of Rome of 846 AD was launched from Southern Italy and Sicily which was occupied by Islam until 1091 AD with help from the Vikings drove Islam out.

The Muslim Sack of Rome never actually got into the city. They raided outlying churches, mostly.

The guys who finally reconquered S. Italy and Sicily weren't Vikings. Their ancestors had been, but in the previous century or so they'd intermarried extensively with the pre-Viking inhabitants of Normandy and become the Normans, a peculiarly aggressive sub-species of French nobility.

[BwanaNdege]

My wife made extensive use of this book researching a paper for her Church History class last year. It is a really good read!

[RightGeek]

bump for later

[Berlin_Freeper]

Return to Mecca

[Steve Van Doorn]

said, "The Crusaders ransacked and slaughtered non-Moslems all *on* the way to Jerusalem and back.."

That did happen one time there is no record of Richard the lionheart giving those orders and the men were punished for their acts.

[the_Watchman]

The Muslims had attempted a conquest of Europe long before the launching of the Crusades. Charles Martel defeated them at Tours in 732 AD.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Tours

Tours is just barely in the northern half of France and just barely in the western half of France. So the Muslims had advanced well into the heart of Europe at the time.

[Alex Murphy]

The Fourth Crusade (1201-1204) ran aground when it was seduced into a web of Byzantine politics, which the Westerners never fully understood. They had made a detour to Constantinople to support an imperial claimant who promised great rewards and support for the Holy Land. Yet once he was on the throne of the Caesars, their benefactor found that he could not pay what he had promised. Thus betrayed by their Greek friends, in 1204 the Crusaders attacked, captured, and brutally sacked Constantinople, the greatest Christian city in the world. Pope Innocent III, who had previously excommunicated the entire Crusade, strongly denounced the Crusaders. But there was little else he could do. The tragic events of 1204 closed an iron door between Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox, a door that even today Pope John Paul II has been unable to reopen. It is a terrible irony that the Crusades, which were a direct result of the Catholic desire to rescue the Orthodox people, drove the two further—and perhaps irrevocably—apart.

Ping for later.