The Real History of the Crusades (2002)

crisismagazine ^ | 2002 | By Thomas F. Madden

[GeronL]

The Christian "Crusades" were a defensive war against the Islam Jihad.

Of course they are stronger nowadays

[Treader]

What a lovely tale to tell, und tell, und tell again...

[Mount Athos]

The paragraph on the 4th crusade is full of absolutely vicious lies.

The Crusades of the 13th century were larger, better funded, and better organized..

So organized and well funded that Forth crusade began by going straight for looting the largest religious center of Christianity in the world at the time.

The Fourth Crusade (1201-1204) ran aground when it was seduced into a web of Byzantine politics, which the Westerners never fully understood.

The westerners of the Fourth Crusade undertood perfectly well that they were desecrating, looting, and butchering the inhabitants of the largest Christian city of the day. The web of political manipulation brought by the 4th crusade was spun by the Roman Catholic crusaders, not the Byzantine Greeks. How could it be otherwise when the Roman Catholic armies imposed puppet rulers loyal to the pope for generations with this atrocity?

They had made a detour to Constantinople to support an imperial claimant who promised great rewards and support for the Holy Land.

The Roman Catholic 4th Crusade consisted of atrocities committed upon Christians in Constantinople, with the goal of overthrowing the 1000 year old Orthodox Christian religious order of the city, imposing a line of puppet leaders, looting its riches, desecrating the churches, and butchering the populace.



Thus betrayed by their Greek friends, in 1204 the Crusaders attacked, captured, and brutally sacked Constantinople, the greatest Christian city in the world..

Blaming the victim like this is really sick. The above is written in the form of a monstrously evil lie, which turns truth upon its head. This is the equivalent of saying Muslims terrorists did 9/11 because Americans betrayed them. It is the Roman Catholics who savagely betrayed the Greek Orthodox christians in the 4th crusade, by looting the city, desecrating the churches, and butchering the populace. The populace was greatly confused to see knights with crosses on their chests butchering fellow Christians who had peaceably been let into the city..

Pope Innocent III, who had previously excommunicated the entire Crusade, strongly denounced the Crusaders. But there was little else he could do..

Little else he could do? The pope confirmed and let stand the puppet rulers newly imposed upon the city, loyal to him. So very sincerely sorry about invading, hope you love the new leaders I've imposed, they are staying forever!

The pope's conscience didn't bother him enough to actually return the stolen riches back to the Christian city his soldiers had plundered and butchered. Many of the most prized Christian relics stolen from Constantinople, remain at the Vatican museum on display to this day (a few have recently been returned). Look for the date of aquisition, 1204. Popes also knew that key artworks stolen from the Hagia Sofia in Constantinople were integrated into the Cathedral of Notre Dame, but this was not ordered stopped, none have been returned to this day. So very sorry our Roman Catholic armies have invaded, thanks for all of your most prized religious relics and riches, we are keeping them all!.

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..

Irony? The very first act of the 4th crusade was going straight for butchering and looting the Orthodox equivalent of Rome, a city much greater than Rome at the time. How is it ironic that this 4th crusade sabotaged relations? That's like saying it is ironic that 9/11 sabotaged relations between muslims and Americans. The goal of this crusade was the total destruction of the Orthodox Christian faith and subjugation of the Orthodox city and people unto them, period. We know this because the Popes of the time confirmed this atrocity with generations of imposed puppet leaders loyal to them, and were not bothered to return stolen religious relics and riches.

The sickest part of this writing is blaming the Orthodox christian victims of Constantinople for the atrocity they endured. For what, pride? A good case can be made that much of the crusades were a defensive war, but a very clear exception should be made for the atrocity upon Christian Constantinople committed by the Roman Catholic armies of the 4th crusade.

[TheWormster]

I'm puzzled. How was a war to take Jerusalem a defence of Christian lands? I thought that Israel was always the land of the Jews?

[kindred]

[The goal of this crusade was the total destruction of the Orthodox Christian faith and subjugation of the Orthodox city and people unto them, period. We know this because the Popes of the time confirmed this atrocity with generations of imposed puppet leaders loyal to them, and were not bothered to return stolen religious relics and riches.]


This makes the picture clearer yet, the reform movement under Christian men like Martin Luther,and so many others who were murdered by the Catholic religion, is because they left the scriptures and substituted the Pope instead of Christ Jesus as the one intercessor between God and man and have added so many false doctines to their unscriptural religion.
History is a picture of the truth and must be returned to before the next generation is destroyed by the lies and half truths they have been deceived with.
The Muslims are doing what they have always done and are moving against both Jews and Christians again.

[mikeus_maximus]

the Crusaders introduced Western aggression to the peaceful Middle East and then deformed the enlightened Muslim culture, leaving it in ruins.

Sounds like a plan...

[freedumb2003]

Thanks for a great post.

B&B

[Ben Ficklin]

"How was a war to take Jerusalem a defense of Chritian lands? I thought Israel was always the land of the Jews?"

Alternative history sources maintain that though the crusaders were Christian, many(if not all) were of the royal Jewish bloodline and entitled to rule these lands.

[SuziQ]

I'm reading a book by Hillaire Belloc about the Crusades. It is so refreshing to get the REAL story on it rather than the modern media's or a revisionist historian's.

[SuziQ]

Check it out.

[SuziQ]

How was a war to take Jerusalem a defence of Christian lands? I thought that Israel was always the land of the Jews?

Obviously, it was the land where Jesus lived and died. At the time of the Crusades, there were many Christians living there alongside the Jews, but ALL were under the rule of the Muslims.

[kalee]

ping

[DariusBane]

Ping for later

[The_Reader_David]

The author also ignores the behavior of the First Crusade, which beseiged Constantinople on Holy Thursday of 1097. Anna Comnena, daughter of the Emperor at the time, writes of the Crusaders that they travelled in the guise of pilgrims to Jersualem, but had the intent of seizing the Imperial Throne.

[The_Reader_David]

Actually, Palestine (by your leave, that was the name of the Roman province) was largely depopulated of Jews following the Roman seige and destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D.

After the seige, Jerusalem was such a minor city, that despite its first bishop, St. James, having presided at the Apostolic Council recorded in Acts, for centuries the see was suffregan to the Bishop of Caesarea. (Precedence of episcopal sees within the Empire was based on the importance of the city.) It was the Christian East Romans who rebuilt the city, gracing it with churches commemorating the sites of events in Our Lord's Passion--eventually granting its bishop the dignity of patriarch, despite having only a tiny flock compared to the other four patriarchates. And it, and all surrounding provinces were Christian lands by the time of the rise of Islam and the Crusades by virtue of having majority Christian populations and being part of the largest Christian nation--the Roman Empire (the Western scholarly renaming as 'Byzantine Empire' has no basis in fact, and is a matter of prejudice by those who either want to claim the mantle of Rome for the Papacy (or the Frankish Empire) or detach what they regard as the glories of pagan Rome from its long Christian history (as Gibbon who bizarrely named the retirment of the last Western Augustus to a villa near Naples in 476, 'the Fall of Rome' for polemical reasons).)

[Alter Kaker]

Alternative history sources maintain that though the crusaders were Christian, many(if not all) were of the royal Jewish bloodline and entitled to rule these lands.

Alternative history sources are flat-out wrong. They were from the same Frankish stock as everyone else. BTW, look at the treatment of the Jews by the crusaders -- they treated Jews worse than Muslims.

[bert]

.....For variations on this theme, one need not look far. See, for example, Steven Runciman’s famous three-volume epic, History of the Crusades, or the BBC/A&E documentary, The Crusades, hosted by Terry Jones. Both are terrible history yet wonderfully entertaining......

.....I'm reading a book by Hillaire Belloc about the Crusades. It is so refreshing to get the REAL story ......

I guess I need to read some more. I thought when I was ploughing through Runciman I was getting the straight poop.

What is the Belloc title?