"just why should the Catholic Church underwrite the enterprise"
Were not the Crusades formed by the the Roman Catholic Church at that time? Weren't they fighting in the name of the Roman Catholic Church? Did not the Pope proclaimed that anyone who joined the Crusade would be given full dispensation of all his sins and would be relieved of any criminal penance he might owe? It then seems that the Catholic Church should underwrite the enterprise. It is their history.
Fair point, but attempting the record straight is itself a problematic task, and just why should the Catholic Church underwrite the enterprise? Leave to the historians. In any event, it is a mixed bag. In fact, the Crusaders trashed some Christians towns along the way. (I saw that on the History Channel.) A lot of it was motivated by entrepreneurial greed. Some of these guys were in it for the money, and this was just a convenient vehicle to pursue it.
And things have changed how?
Muslims fought for war booty also - equal shares. But Mohamed said Allah revealed to him that he should receive 20%. Islam allows three options for infidels: conversion, subservience, and death. Those are our choices, unless we find some other. Radical Islam has been in remission in recent centuries. I think things really turned around with Carter favoring the radical Ayatollah Khomeini over the pro-American and pro-Western Shah of Iran. The rest is history.
Oh wow!
Every "historical" program I have seen on the "History" channel has had serious slants and agendas, to the point that I am convinced that certain oil-producing countries underwrite them.
The usual technique is simply to leave out essential parts, and to bow to the politically correct view of Islam. I no longer bother to watch.
Try reading. The literature is rich with history not bought and paid for.
This article simply reports on the Church's correction of a previous mistake. The "apology" for the crusades, which, just as properly was an unnecessary gratuitous dumb idea in the first place.
I agree, the historians should be the proper reporters.
If your image of Western civilization relies on a depiction of the Crusades as an insane and bloodthirsty attack on a peaceful and sophisticated Muslim world, then you are not going to like what recent historians have to say.
Take, for example, what might be called the Myth of the Greedy Younger Son. This myth holds that an increase in population, the development of feudal primogeniture, and a series of bad harvests created a situation in medieval Europe where thousands of well-trained and land-hungry warriors were milling about with nothing to do. Rather than have them make trouble at home, Pope Urban II convinced them to carve out territories for themselves in the faraway Muslim world. This myth more closely resembles the world of nineteenth-century colonialism than it does the Middle Ages. New research has definitively shown that Crusaders were predominantly the first sons of Europe: wealthy, privileged, and pious. Crusading was extremely expensive and more than a few noble families risked bankruptcy in order to take part. They did so for medieval, not modern, reasons. Crusading for them was an act of love and charity by which, like the Good Samaritan, they were aiding their neighbors in distress. Muslim warriors had conquered eastern Christians, taken their lands, and in some cases killed or enslaved them. The Crusader believed it was his duty to right that wrong.
The Greedy Younger Son is not the only myth historians have discarded. It may surprise some to learn that the Crusades were almost never profitable, since booty was so scarce.
For Europeans, the Crusades were a crucially important effort to rescue the lands of Christ. Success in the Crusades became a barometer of the soul of Christendom. They were on everyone’s minds. But in the vast Muslim world, the Crusades were a very small thing. It took several generations before most Muslims even understood that the Crusades existed. Prior to that, they simply assumed that the Crusaders were Byzantine mercenaries -- one more group in an already chaotic political landscape.
Q: What are some common misconceptions about the Crusades [and] the Crusaders?
Madden: The following are some of the most common myths and why they are wrong.
Myth 1: The Crusades were wars of unprovoked aggression against a peaceful Muslim world.
This is as wrong as wrong can be. From the time of Mohammed, Muslims had sought to conquer the Christian world. They did a pretty good job of it, too. After a few centuries of steady conquests, Muslim armies had taken all of North Africa, the Middle East, Asia Minor and most of Spain. In other words, by the end of the 11th century the forces of Islam had captured two-thirds of the Christian world. Palestine, the home of Jesus Christ; Egypt, the birthplace of Christian monasticism; Asia Minor, where St. Paul planted the seeds of the first Christian communities -- these were not the periphery of Christianity but its very core. And the Muslim empires were not finished yet. They continued to press westward toward Constantinople, ultimately passing it and entering Europe itself. As far as unprovoked aggression goes, it was all on the Muslim side. At some point what was left of the Christian world would have to defend itself or simply succumb to Islamic conquest.
Myth 2: The Crusaders wore crosses, but they were really only interested in capturing booty and land. Their pious platitudes were just a cover for rapacious greed.
Historians used to believe that a rise in Europe's population led to a crisis of too many noble "second sons," those who were trained in chivalric warfare but who had no feudal lands to inherit. The Crusades, therefore, were seen as a safety valve, sending these belligerent men far from Europe where they could carve out lands for themselves at someone else's expense. Modern scholarship, assisted by the advent of computer databases, has exploded this myth. We now know that it was the "first sons" of Europe that answered the Pope's call in 1095, as well as in subsequent Crusades. Crusading was an enormously expensive operation. Lords were forced to sell off or mortgage their lands to gather the necessary funds. Most were also not interested in an overseas kingdom. Much like a soldier today, the medieval Crusader was proud to do his duty but longed to return home.
After the spectacular successes of the First Crusade, with Jerusalem and much of Palestine in Crusader hands, virtually all of the Crusaders went home. Only a tiny handful remained behind to consolidate and govern the newly won territories. Booty was also scarce. In fact, although Crusaders no doubt dreamed of vast wealth in opulent Eastern cities, virtually none of them ever even recouped their expenses. But money and land were not the reasons that they went on Crusade in the first place. They went to atone for their sins and to win salvation by doing good works in a faraway land. They underwent such expense and hardship because they believed that by coming to the aid of their Christian brothers and sisters in the East they were storing up treasure where rust and moth cannot corrupt. They were very mindful of Christ's exhortation that he who will not take up his cross is not worthy of Christ. They also remembered that "Greater love hath no man than this, than to lay down his life for his friends."
Myth 3: When the Crusaders captured Jerusalem in 1099 they massacred every man, woman and child in the city until the streets ran ankle deep with the blood.
This is a favorite used to demonstrate the evil nature of the Crusades. It is certainly true that many people in Jerusalem were killed after the Crusaders captured the city. But this must be understood in historical context. The accepted moral standard in all pre-modern European and Asian civilizations was that a city that resisted capture and was taken by force belonged to the victorious forces. That included not just the buildings and goods, but the people as well. That is why every city or fortress had to weigh carefully whether it could hold out against besiegers. If not, it was wise to negotiate terms of surrender. In the case of Jerusalem, the defenders had resisted right up to the end. They calculated that the formidable walls of the city would keep the Crusaders at bay until a relief force from Egypt could arrive. They were wrong. When the city fell, therefore, it was put to the sack.
Many were killed, yet many others were ransomed or allowed to go free. By modern standards this may seem brutal. Yet a medieval knight would point out that many more innocent men, women and children are killed in modern bombing warfare than could possibly be put to the sword in one or two days. It is worth noting that in those Muslim cities that surrendered to the Crusaders the people were left unmolested, retained their property and were allowed to worship freely. As for those streets of blood, no historian accepts them as anything other than a literary convention. Jerusalem is a big town. The amount of blood necessary to fill the streets to a continuous and running three-inch depth would require many more people than lived in the region, let alone the city.
Myth 4: The Crusades were just medieval colonialism dressed up in religious finery.
It is important to remember that in the Middle Ages the West was not a powerful, dominant culture venturing into a primitive or backward region. It was the Muslim East that was powerful, wealthy and opulent. Europe was the Third World. The Crusader States, founded in the wake of the First Crusade, were not new plantations of Catholics in a Muslim world akin to the British colonization of America. Catholic presence in the Crusader states was always tiny, easily less than 10% of the population. These were the rulers and magistrates, as well as Italian merchants and members of the military orders.
The overwhelming majority of the population in the Crusader states was Muslim. They were not colonies, therefore, in the sense of plantations or even factories, as in the case of India. They were outposts. The ultimate purpose of the Crusader states was to defend the holy places in Palestine, especially Jerusalem, and to provide a safe environment for Christian pilgrims to visit those places. There was no mother country with which the Crusader states had an economic relationship, nor did Europeans economically benefit from them. Quite the contrary, the expense of Crusades to maintain the Latin East was a serious drain on European resources. As an outpost, the Crusader states kept a military focus. While the Muslims warred against each other the Crusader states were safe, but once the Muslims united, they were able to dismantle the strongholds, capture the cities, and in 1291 expel the Christians completely.
Myth 5: The Crusades were also waged against the Jews.
No pope ever called a Crusade against Jews. During the First Crusade a large band of riffraff, not associated with the main army, descended on the towns of the Rhineland and decided to rob and kill the Jews they found there. In part this was pure greed. In part it also stemmed from the incorrect belief that the Jews, as the crucifiers of Christ, were legitimate targets of the war. Pope Urban II and subsequent popes strongly condemned these attacks on Jews. Local bishops and other clergy and laity attempted to defend the Jews, although with limited success. Similarly, during the opening phase of the Second Crusade a group of renegades killed many Jews in Germany before St. Bernard was able to catch up to them and put a stop to it. These misfires of the movement were an unfortunate by-product of Crusade enthusiasm, but they were not the purpose of the Crusades. To use a modern analogy, during the Second World War some American soldiers committed crimes while overseas. They were arrested and punished for those crimes. But the purpose of the Second World War was not to commit crimes."
The myth concerning the sack of Jerusalem and "streets ran ankle deep with the blood" was a myth created by some Crusaders themselves in efforts to brag about what they accomplished. Muslim historical records (among others) have debunked this myth. There were many civilian survivors of the sack of Jerusalem.
You wrote: "Some of these guys were in it for the money, and this was just a convenient vehicle to pursue it."
This is true as far as it goes; but it is not the whole story, nor even the main story. Historian Thomas Madden, examining documents from the time (including birth/baptismal records, transfers of lands and estates, inheritances) has found convincing evidence that most Crusaders did not expect to gain plunder and power, and in fact gave up everything that they owned in order to sacrificially defend their faith and their fellow Christians of the East.
See:
www.crisismagazine.com/april2002/cover.htm
Yes, there were shameful massacres and betrayals carried out by Crusaders. We must, and have, repented this. But the most egregious examples are, upon closer study, seen to be exceptions to the Crusader pattern.
For instance, the Fourth Crusade --- the sack of Constantinople --- was a bizarre episode which can hardly be listed with the Crusades, if you define the Crusades as ecclesiastically-sponsored military expeditions to rescue the beleaguered Christians of the East and secure the Holy Land.
The spurious Fourth "Crusade" was basically a bunch of plunder-seeking Venetians who found it expedient to attack and sack Christian cities along the way. First, Zara, (now Zadar, Croatia) a Catholic city on the coast of the Adriatic, as well as nearby Trieste, were attacked, even though Zara had placed itself under the dual protection of the Papacy and King Emeric of Hungary.
This led to the condemnation, in writing, of the Venetian "Crusaders" by Pope Innocent III. This did not deter them from joining in an intrigue to restore a contender to the throne in Constantinople; and when that didn't pan out as planned, they brutally sacked the city, which was the greatest and most beautiful city of Christendom. As soon as the news of the Venetians' bloody plundering reached Rome, an infuriated Pope Innocent III excommunicated them.
The fact that the Venetians were first condemned, and then excommunicated, shows that their conduct was not considered legitimate "Crusading," even at the time. Then and now, the Fourth "Crusade" is considered a criminal enterprise.
LOL. Open a book sometime if you want to discuss history.