The Crusades cause people too much confusion. The view seems to be, there is little to defend in them, and even many Catholics tend to grow weary of “Crusades apologists.” Weren’t the Crusades an appalling example of an excess of violent zeal to beat down infidels? (For the Church only sent warriors after the Muslims because they were not Catholic. That is what we are told.) Even John Paul II apologized for them*, and surely no one wants to repeat that sad episode in Church history.
[*That’s the presumption, anyway. The pope did not apologize for the Crusades of themselves, but only for misdeeds done in battle.]
Myths
Outside the Church, the view seems to be that the Crusades are to blame for radical Islam today. If that statement seems far-fetched, consider that it was made just last year, on a prominent anti-Catholic blog, by an ex-Catholic named John Bugay. Read the wild things he says.
In Rome’s historical quest to dominate the world, it has perpetuated all kinds of falsehoods. Insofar as Rome disfigured the gospel … it was an enabler of Mohammad. And through some of its machinations in the Middle Ages (such as the quest for world domination—domination of the east—and the Crusades, the Inquisition, and the opponent of Jews), it became a teacher of, a motivation for, and an example to, radical Islam today: that heretics must be tortured and killed.
In a follow-up post the very same day, Bugay went further, claiming that “Roman crusading fossilized Islam into a fanatic posture.” The Crusaders, we are asked to think, so hardened the hearts of Muslims toward Christians that, even today, one thousand years later, they are sawing off heads. The Crusades are to blame for ISIS!
Now, if this kind of thinking were to be found only on wild sites like Triablogue, it could probably be laughed at and ignored, but in fact it is a very common myth about the Crusades. In the wake of 9/11, no less a person than Bill Clinton said the following, in a 2001 speech at Georgetown:
[W]hen the Christian soldiers took Jerusalem [in 1099], they … proceeded to kill every woman and child who was Muslim on the Temple Mount. … [T]his story [is] still being told today in the Middle East and we are still paying for it.
“We are still paying for it.” The idea here, in what Mr. Clinton said, is that not only are Christians guilty of atrocity too, but that Islamic violence today can be blamed directly on the Crusades.
Facts
This view of the Crusades is false, and medieval historians have long known it to be false. President Clinton’s speech prompted a reply in the Intercollegiate Review by Dr. Paul Crawford, an expert in the Crusades. Here are some facts that seldom get mentioned by Mr. Bugay, Mr. Clinton, and those who share their jaded view of Church history.
In A.D. 632, Egypt, Palestine, Syria, Asia Minor, North Africa, Spain, France, Italy, and the islands of Sicily, Sardinia, and Corsica were all Christian territories. Inside the boundaries of the Roman Empire, which was still fully functional in the eastern Mediterranean, orthodox Christianity was the official, and overwhelmingly majority, religion. …
By A.D. 732, a century later, Christians had lost Egypt, Palestine, Syria, North Africa, Spain, most of Asia Minor, and southern France. Italy and her associated islands were under threat, and the islands would come under Muslim rule in the next century. The Christian communities of Arabia were entirely destroyed in or shortly after 633, when Jews and Christians alike were expelled from the peninsula. Those in Persia were under severe pressure. Two-thirds of the formerly Roman Christian world was now ruled by Muslims.
Now, what happened in the hundred years between 632 and 732 was that Muslims invaded and conquered every one of those lands. Only now and then did Christians push back. And it did not end in 732. Let us read more.
In the hundred years between 850 and 950, Benedictine monks were driven out of ancient monasteries, the Papal States were overrun, and Muslim pirate bases were established along the coast of northern Italy and southern France, from which attacks on the deep inland were launched. Desperate to protect victimized Christians, popes became involved in the tenth and early eleventh centuries in directing the defense of the territory around them.
The popes were “desperate,” but not to do ill deeds. Their purpose was “to protect victimized Christians.” That’s the history. That’s the truth. It was not until 1095—more than 450 years after all this Muslim plunder of Christian nations began—that Pope Urban II at last called the First Crusade to drive the enemy out of their lands.
Dr. Diane Moczar also writes about all this. The title of her book is Seven Lies About Catholic History. Here is some of what she says.
Unprovoked Muslim aggression in the seventh century brought parts of the southern Byzantine Empire, including Syria, the Holy Land, and Egypt under Arab rule. Christians who survived the conquests found themselves subject to a special poll tax and discriminated against as an inferior class known as the dhimmi. Often their churches were destroyed and other harsh conditions imposed. For centuries their complaints had been reaching Rome, but Europe was having its own Dark Age of massive invasion, and nothing could be done to relieve the plight of the eastern Christians.
… By the eleventh century, under the rule of a new Muslim dynasty, conditions worsened. The Church of the Holy Sepulchre, site of the Crucifixion, was destroyed, and Christian pilgrims were massacred. In 1067 a group of seven thousand peaceful German pilgrims lost two-thirds of their number to Muslim assaults. By this time the popes, including St. Gregory VII, were actively trying to rally support for relief of the eastern Christians, though without success. It was not until the very end of the century, in 1095, that Pope Urban’s address at Clermont in France met with a response.
But let us not forget the misdeeds of the Crusaders. They were really a bad lot. I am sure glad people like Bill Clinton are always bringing this up with wagging finger, since it is no doubt right to point out how truly evil is the man who fights to free a nation from tyrants and aggressors. I am all broke up about the men who threw the tea off the ships. I am all broke up about the men who stormed the beach and took the cliffs. That kind of thing just should not be stood for.
Dr. Moczar gives us a few more facts to bear in mind here.
The Muslim occupiers of Jerusalem, from inside and on top of the walls, kept pace with the Christian army as it moved slowly around the city, jeering at and mocking the soldiers. They went further: they took crucifixes and profaned them in full view of the troops. Horrified, outraged, and nearly maddened at the sacrileges, the armed groups stormed the city furiously. Lack of coordination among the several units of the army made for a chaotic situation, with commanders losing track (and often control) of their men.
Brutal the fighting was, as no doubt it is in any city in warfare. But were large numbers really slaughtered unmercifully? Did the horses really wade in blood up to their knees and the men up to their ankles? The answer to both questions is, most probably not. … The troops who were left to defend Jerusalem were there to fight, and they did so. …
As it was, the capture of Jerusalem, although a blot on the crusaders’ record, hardly vitiates the whole crusading enterprise. Yes, the siege should have been better organized so that the individual commanders had better control of their men, which would have prevented whatever indiscriminate killing of non-combatants took place and also caused less physical damage to the city. We would like it to have been otherwise, but we were not there and we are certainly not obliged to apologize for it: only the guilty themselves can do that, and both they and those who fought the enemy honorably have long since answered to God for their behavior.
We need to keep in mind what this kind of taunting, blasphemous gesture would have meant to a medieval Catholic who had already had his homeland conquered by Muslims. They were fighting not for their own cause, but for all that the Cross meant to them. Context matters. Nor do we have to answer for what they did. They have already done so.
But keep in mind one more thing. Nothing the crusaders did was out of character for the nature of warfare at the time. That can not be said about ISIS. That cannot be said about the demons and monsters who cut off heads, with a knife, in front of a camera. That cannot be said about the demons and monsters who make a video showing a man being caged and torched. That is the kind of thing the Crusaders were trying to stop.
But what can we say of Muslim attitudes toward the Crusades? Dr. Crawford’s article helps us there too. “Up until quite recently,” he says, “Muslims remembered the crusades [only] as an instance in which they had beaten back a puny western Christian attack.” The Crusaders lost. There was no Arabic word for the Crusades until the nineteenth century. In fact, all the histories before that time were by Christians, and their attitude toward the Crusades was positive. The first Muslim history would not be written until 1899. That is hardly what one would expect if there had been all this violent anger waiting to boil over. Dr. Crawford tells us more. Note this.
What we are paying for is not the First Crusade, but western distortions of the crusades in the nineteenth century which were taught to, and taken up by, an insufficiently critical Muslim world.
Imagine that! The Muslims have been getting all their ideas about the Crusades from anti-Catholics. So if the violence today has anything at all to do with the Crusades, it has to do with myths about them. It does not have to do with anything based in fact.
The facts show why Islam is an inherently violent and murderous ideology. It has been from the start. Far from the Church being eager to take up arms and send people into battle to kill the infidel, it had the supernatural patience of waiting through 450 years of plunder before Pope Urban II called the first Crusade.
But if radical Islam is rising up and getting out of control once more, it is the wrong time for a game of false equivalence. It is, instead, time, once again, for a serious moral evaluation of the causes for just war to protect the lives and homes of Christians.
I would not wait 450 years this time.
21 thoughts on “The Truth About the Crusades”
Brian Zambau clearly you ignore the many times catholic priests have molested kids and gotten away with it unpunished because the pope has seen nothing wrong with it being over looked. And so clearly you are double standard in you’re it is ok for Catholic priests to molest children unpunished but it is not ok for Muhammed to marry a 9 year old daughter. Your supporting the pope who has offered clemency to miscellenious pedophile priest. is 1000 times worse then what age muhhamed married a wife besides the act you claim muhammed commited was many centuries ago unpunished cases of priest sex offenders is as old as christianity itself it is because of christians ignorant of there own history that these things continue
Ok, let’s get this straight. An epileptic false prophet who has an aberrated attraction to small girls who decides to make his sickness a religious edict so that others can join in on it and therefore create the illusion that it is somehow normal is a far cry from bad Popes and clergy hiding their sin so that others won’t find out about it. I, sir would GLADLY sit in a jury box to defrock and convict EVERY single one of these molesting preists, and award the families and the victims whatever THEY thought was fair from the corrupt Vatican bank accounts. We Catholics who KNOW the Truth, SEEK the Truth and DEMAND the Truth will eventually achieve that when Christ returns. And listen up real close here son…it’s not about everything going perfect in this world. That cannot be achieved with mere humans running things. We are corrupt, selfish and full of pride. Christ knew that, and knew it when He established His Church…the TRUE Church…the ONE and ONLY Church and the only way to salvation. It is about how we battle against the wrongs of this world through the moral laws set down by our Saviour. Has the Church done wrong? Darn skippy it has! And those responsible will be held accountable for their actions. Has society done wrong? Darn skippy it has, and we will ALL BE HELD ACCOUNTABLE FOR WHAT WE DID, SAID, SUPPORTED, OR DIDN’T SAY, DIDN’T SUPPORT, OR DIDN’T DO! That being said big guy, preist molestation isn’t an edict that the Church deems acceptable, regardless of whether or not there is an element in the Church that indulges in it. We are fighting against that right now, and doing a damn good job of exposing the culprits. May I ask what YOU are doing, besides spouting B.S. about things you know nothing about? I suggest a few tips that might elevate your knowledge above the kindergarten level. First, You strike me as the kind of “useful idiot” that finds all of his information on Wikipedia, which is nothing more than people contributing to an open form, more or less, and none of the information given is checked or verified; there are other sources that are more reliable, but please, check who the author is and the affiliates; try to find out how reliable THEY are. Second, it seems that you thoroughly enjoy the view of where you head is place…….pull it out, and take a deep breath, and maybe…..just maybe you’ll learn something before your nurse Berta has to wheel you down to the rec. room for a retro game of Space Invaders and chocolate pudding.
p.s. that’s Z U M B A U G H not Zumbau
Kofoid – Yours is an incredibly ignorant and discordant comment, not worth any further response on my part.
To Mr. Omar, by this true Muslims live and die??? And WELL over 3/4 of all lands converting to Islam, the (false) religion of peace converting those nations by one means only and that being the sword? There is a concept we Catholics have called “forced attrition.” That you are sorry for your sins but not because you love God, but because you are paying for them. This may be a poor analogy, but it’s what has always come to mind when I think of the Islamic invasion of Europe. They were NOT converted because of any love for “allah” they were forced to convert out of fear. Huge difference son. Always remember the battle of Lepanto. Holy Mother Mary and the the Catholic faithful ROUTED the Muslim navy off the seas through the prayers of the Holy Rosary. What little success Islam has enjoyed is only temporal. Holy Mother Mary, the Immaculate Virgin and Mediatrix will return will the second person of the Holy Trinity, God’s Son, Our Lord Jesus Christ and none of this will matter.
Good day my fine sir.
My comment above is directed at Kofoid (the confused), not at Zumbaugh.
I would love to know who feeds this crap to all of you guys as an episcopalian who has read the Koran the Islam of the crusades was far from anti the enemy of Christianity you guys are the ones that are wrong and don’t know what you are talking about. Jesus is mentioned as a holy prophet of Allah in the Koran who Muhammed paid homage to they believed and many muslims of good character believe to day as which is most of them that he was a prophet of god. If they were the enemy of Christianity there would be no homage to them in the Koran. You guys have clearly never read any religious text beyond the bible and so are clueless what you are talking about it is a minority that are evil and cruel I have known many dear muslims in my life you guys are the ones that are religiously intolerant.
Why would I waste my time and endanger the salvation of my soul by reading false texts from a delusional demigod who “visions” where nothing more than the result of epileptic seizures? Paying homage to Christ won’t cut it in the end. There is one name only under which salvation is found. Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, Born of the Father before all ages. God from God, Light from Light.
Besides, I have a severe problem paying attention to anything a man who ordains the practice of marriage to a 9 year old has to say.
Many individuals one BOTH sides of the Crusades engaged in atrocities, but if we might just focus for a moment on…….O let’s say the last 50 -60 years?… I’ve never seen or heard of the Pope ordering followers to strap on a bomb and run into a mosque, or Mother Therese spraying gun fire into a crowd of people who don’t think the same as her. Nor have I ever heard of a Franciscan friars of the Immaculate flying jumbo jets into buildings. We don’t have to do that sort of thing because we KNOW that Christ wins in the end, not Islam.
Good day son, and may Christ be in your heart.
Catholics murdering Christians: The Albigensian Crusade 1209 to 1229 Why were the Cathars such a threat to Rome?
Simple. They were leading souls into error. Duh.
The calumnies uttered against the crusades, in which some atrocities were committed in an otherwise honorable enterprise, roughly compares to Sherman’s march to the sea which also was not carried out in a particularly gentle manner. In social activities, especially war, unlike physics, actions do not precipitate equal and opposite reactions. See Japan and atomic bomb.
interesting how some people can know the proper context of the crusades, and still cry foul at the things the crusades got wrong. yes, it is sad that bad things happen in war. show me a war that has not had bad intelligence or collateral damage or some troops gone evil. these are unfortunate. but these things happen not only in crusades, but in all wars. and such things are not the reason why any war is waged. President Bush didn’t wage war on terror so that he could revel in the collateral damage or lack of intelligence that the troops may have suffered at times. they waged a war because it was a just war, it was a war against terror and tyranny. period.
While we may or may not justify the Crusades, we cannot justify some of the atrocities of the Crusaders nor their offshoots…like the outrageous Rhineland massacres of Jews, etc. Some good directions can and do spur bad actions by bad people….times have not changed,
We don’t have 450 years to deal with this problem! I certainly hope we all wake up, and pluck up the courage to fight this enemy and this time defeat it for good.
Thank you for these facts about the Crusades! I will say this: some fundamentalists DO agree with the Crusades. In fact it is the one thing they will give us Catholics a gold star on 🙂
Good article – ISIS today is nothing new. The original Crusades were fought to combat the first ISIS, the enemy of Christianity and civilization…
quiet the opposite. Rome was known to be a civilization built for the elite, using ultimate religious (pope speaks for god and provide forgiveness) and political (one emperor dictator with generals) powers to benefit themselves. Every land the Muslims concurred was ruled by force and the population was paying more in taxes to Rome then can be imaginable. The proof is obvious, what Rome has left in these lands was nothing and what Muslims have left was true civilization. the Muslims only fought for the right of free speech, to be able to convey the true message of god, but the power hungry false gods residing in Rome did not allow that, thus Muslims fight the army of evil to have fair access to the minds of the people.
Christianity is not the religion sent by god, it is a false interpretation, Catholicism is a miss guided attempt to control the masses by merely using and abusing this false interpretation. Gods religion is simple The Creator our lord and the lord of the universe is only worthy of worship, without association he created time and space he created reproduction and earth among his vast creations the rules of biology and physics that run our lives are created by him so non of them apply to him as he existed before that and will exist after that. He is just so no one being is blamed for another’s mistake. He is just and requires justice of us, thanking and praying to him for his bounty, doing good and forbidding evil, and maintain justice on earth and fight the powers of unjust lusts abused by humans, by this true Muslims live and die.
Too bad the Crusades were unsuccesful in wiping out this scourge. The devil never gives up. Still roaring its ugly head in the “religion of peace.”
I feel sorry for you look at what your leaders have done and try to objectively justify it.
Mr. Omar, our leaders don’t fly jets into buildings to and kill innocent people of a different ideology. Justify that
May Jesus Christ, the SON of God…..(not Allah), in union with the Holy Ghost, who lives and reigns forever and ever without end, Amen, be in your heart.
BAM!!!You said it. Well stated
The First Crusade Began in 1095…
460 years after the first Christian city was overrun by Muslim armies.
457 years after Jerusalem was conquered by Muslim armies.
453 years after Christian Egypt was taken by Muslim armies.
443 years after Muslims first plundered Italy.
427 years after Muslims armies first laid siege to the Christian capital of Constantinople.
380 years after France was first attacked by Muslim armies.
249 years after the capital of the Christian world, Rome itself was sacked by a Muslim army.
And only AFTER centuries of church burnings, killings, enslavement and forced conversions of Christians.
By the time the Crusades finally began, Muslims armies had conquered two-thirds of the Christian world.
So much for Islam/Muslims claiming to be the victim.
It was actually THREE-QUARTERS of the area which was predominantly Christian in 632AD, which was forcibly conquered by Islam, with its inhabitants forced to “convert” (at swordpoint or more subtly with discriminatory taxes, discrimination in employment, etc in a process which is still continuing today), emigrate or die. Taking account of population density and cultural importance, it was more like 90% of Christendom was conquered, suppressed and destroyed. Rome alone was the one major centre which survived and even that came perilously close to falling on more than one occasion. The Moslems ruled large ares of Italy and for 100 years ruled what is now the Riviera, cutting off all communication between France and Italy. Over 1300 years until the 19th century, millions of young Christians were kidnapped from the Mediterranean coast of Europe (and some from as far away as England) by Moslems and made into sex slaves and soldiers fighting for Islam.
In fact for more than 5000 years, the Middle East “Fertile Crescent” had been the Cradle of Civilization, home of nearly all the inventions and cultural, technical and scientific advances in the world. With the Moslem conquest, this came to an abrupt end and the Middle East became a backward backwater until the late 20th century when it was propped up by the artificially inflated price of oil which just happened to be in great abundance there.