Introduction
The history of the crusades is long and messy spanning over a century. Cases can be made on all sides for the rightness or wrongness of them, for indeed they were filled with good motives and bad, with good actors and bad actors, with pious men and with carnal men, with honor and with dishonor. So my job is to break all that down in one lecture.
What were the crusades? Nick Needham defines them nicely, saying, they were, “a series of military expeditions to the Middle East by Western Catholics, inspired and blessed by the Catholic Church, with the aim of recapturing the Holy Land (especially Jerusalem) from the Muslims.” The crusades were filled with many battles along the way, small and great. The bloodshed was vast, the cost was great, the journeys were grueling, alliances were untrustworthy, disease ran rampant in the camps, and the rewards were few. The overall impression I have of them is sadness, though not without sparks of inspiring feats of courage and endurance.
Historians consider there to be four main crusades, though there were many other smaller ones. The first beginning in 1096, the fourth ending in 1204. The crusades did not just randomly happen out of nowhere. They stemmed from a long tradition of warfare between Muslims and Christians ever since the rise of Islam hundreds of years earlier.
Causes
With that conflict as the longstanding background, what were the causes that led to the formal beginning of the crusades? The obvious fact is that in previous centuries the Muslims had taken Jerusalem and the holy land. And at different times they carried out great acts of violence toward Christians and pilgrims to the holy land, indeed most abominable things they did toward Christians. These stories making their way to western Christians caused a great horror at was going on that something had to be done.
Not only this, but during this time there was an increasing view of the importance of relics and of the “holy land.” Relics are physical remains of saints, as well as physical objects related to the life of Jesus, the apostles, and early saints. For example, they claimed to have pieces of the cross that Jesus was crucified on. It has been said that there were so many pieces of Christ’s cross you could make a hundred crosses with them. There were claims of having teeth of the apostles, or cloaks, or things like that. And these things were extremely valuable and seen as sacred. And you could make a lot of money selling them. And they viewed these relics as objects that would convey grace or blessing upon the one who honors them. So Jerusalem, the holy land, was filled with these kinds of relics, and the muslims at times desecrated and destroyed them, which of course was a great religious and blasphemous offense in the eyes of the Christians at the time. As people still do to this day, people would make journeys to the holy land to see the places where Jesus walked, see His tomb, the Holy Sepulchre, and The Muslims had little regard for this.
1st Crusade
So it was that the first Crusade was sparked because the great Byzantine emperor in the East, Alexius Comnenus appealed to Pope Urban II to help him fight off the Seljuk Turks who had defeated the Byzantines a couple decades earlier and had conquered Asia Minor. It was mainly the Seljuk Turks who committed violence and sacrilege against the Christians and their holy land.
Well, if you recall from Jonathan’s lessons, there was lots of division in the West and rival popes had been set up. So Pope Urban II thought that if he could be the leader of a crusade to drive out the Turks, who the western Christians were enraged against, it would be a popular move for him to gain decisive power. And he was right. In 1095 Pope Urban II called a counsel of clergy and noblemen and on the 9th day of meeting preached a most epic sermon inspiring the men to take up the crusades to rescue the holy land from the hand of the muslims, and the crowds responded in frenzy with shouts of “God wills it!” or “Deus Vult” in Latin, the popular motto of the crusades.
While it seems that Pope Urban II was an insincere political player making moves, we have to remember, as Needham reminds us, “that the crusades were genuine expressions of popular religious enthusiasm. Hundreds of thousands of Western European men sincerely wanted to free the tomb of Christ from the Muslims, as an act of devotion to their Savior.” So it was that the crusaders made patches of the cross on their clothes as they marched to Jerusalem.
Throughout the crusades, fanatical claims from popes increased. The papacy offered indulgences to crusaders, which was pardon for sins. One pope even promised eternal life to crusaders. And by the third crusade, someone could get an indulgence for all his sins by hiring a knight to fight on his behalf. The church taught that fighting and dying in a crusade was a spiritual act that washed away the warrior’s sins.
Now, before this first crusade, there was a crusade called “the people’s crusade,” which was led and inspired by the preaching of a traveling monk named Peter the Hermit. He claimed to have visions and preached the crusades like an evangelist, and he stirred up 20,000 or so peasant types of people to march to Jerusalem, where they were slaughtered by the trained Turkish military. Peter the Hermit was not slaughtered however, and he was actually there when the first real crusade conquered Jerusalem in victory against the Muslims.
2nd Crusade
Eventually the Turks reconquered the area years later, which led to the second formal crusade. Now the main figurehead behind the second crusade is a guy that you may recall from one of Jonathan’s lectures, Bernard of Clairveaux. He was a very influential figure of his time, someone that later, the reformer Martin Luther would speak well of. Bernard of Clairveaux was one of the greatest preachers of the middle ages. He was nicknamed “The Honey-flowing Teacher” because his sermons seemed to drip with the love of Christ. So in contrast to Pope Urban II, Bernard of Clairveaux is a godly preacher of Christ, who inspired the second crusade. The Pope at the time, People Eugenius III did ask Bernard to promote the second crusade, knowing his influence, and Bernard agreed because he believed in it.
Here is an excerpt from a typical crusade sermon, “The earth trembles and shakes, because the King of heaven has lost His country, the country where once He appeared to men, where He walked among them for more than 30 years, the country made glorious by His miracles and holy by His blood, the country where the flowers of the resurrection first bloomed. And now, because of our sins, the enemy of the cross has begun to lift his blasphemous head there, and to devastate with his sword that blessed land of promise. The great eye of providence surveys these acts in silence; it wishes to see if there is anyone who seeks God, anyone who suffers with Him in His sorrow, anyone who will restore His heritage to Him. I say to you, the Lord is testing you!”
So you can see how persuasive this could be if you are able to put yourself in the shoes of someone living in that time and place. It is hard to do, but if you can, you can see it. However, this second crusade was an unsuccessful disaster. And Bernard of Clairveaux’s response was humility. He said this, “It seems that our sins have provoked the Lord, and He has forgotten His pity and has come to judge the world before the appointed time. He has not spared His own people; He has not spared even His own name. The Pagans say, “where is their God?” We promised victory; behold – desolation!”
3rd Crusade
Well in the late 12th century you eventually had the third Crusade. This one might be the most popular, because it involved the famous King Richard the Lionheart, and the famous Turkish Military leader called Saladin. These were two of the greatest warriors and military leaders of their time. King Richard I of England, Richard the Lionheart is a historical figure worth noting. He was a mighty figure as a young man in a much more rough world. By all accounts he was genuine in his faith and mighty in battle. How else do you get the name Lionheart? A contemporary English chronicler wrote this of Richard: “So great were the man’s strength of body, mental courage, and entire trust in God.” Even enemy Muslim chroniclers wrote of him, “He, the accursed one.. Was brave, valiant, and expert in battle.” It was said that in battle he looked like a porcupine with arrows stuck in his armor, plucking them out when he had a chance, but never ceasing to fight. Indeed it was an arrow, in an ill-advised skirmish that eventually led to his death. Nevertheless he is described thus, “At six foot five inches tall, and of an athletic build, Richard was an imposing figure of a man. The sight of him was a pleasure to the eyes. His hair was between red and gold, and his arms were powerfully made for drawing a sword and wielding it most effectively. And with the not insignificant addition of his suitable character and habits – he was well educated and articulate. He was a figure worthy to govern.” He sold much of his own property to increase his war chest to be able to go on the crusade, which was very costly. He explains his reasoning thus, “To serve the living God we too have accepted the sign of the cross to defend the places of His death that have been consecrated by His precious blood and which the enemies of the cross of Christ have hitherto shamefully profaned, and we have taken upon us the burden of so great and so holy a work.”
One historian says that Saladin “thought King Richard so pleasant, upright, magnanimous, and excellent that, if the land were to be lost in his time, he would rather have it taken into Richard’s mighty power than to have it go into the hand of any other prince whom he had ever seen.” Saladin feared the entire crusader army less than he feared Richard alone.
The third Crusade was rather anticlimactic in certain ways. Richard did not capture Jerusalem, but he did capture the city of Acre, which was economically more important than Jerussalem, and because of the mutual respect between him and Saladin, Richard was able to strike a truce, to allow Acre to have peaceful access to Jerusalem. So geo-politically this was kind of a good result, yet it betrayed the religious fervor which the crusaders so very much believed in.
4th Crusade
The fourth crusade was a disaster and it was extremely dark. The Western crusaders ended up fighting the Eastern Christians in Constantinople and ransacked it. And this fall of Constantinople to a crusading army in 1204 hastened the fall of the great Byzantine empire, and Byzantium’s weakness paved the way for the Muslim conquest of Eastern Europe.
Children’s Crusade, 1212
There was another crusade shortly after this, and it was a terrible event. It was believed the problem with the crusades’ lack of success was the impurity of the crusaders, so children were sent since they were seen as most pure and innocent. This was called the Children’s Crusade. It was of course a disaster where most of them were sold into slavery.
Questions to be Considered
So, a few questions are to be considered about the Crusades.
Were the Crusades justified? Was it an offensive or defensive war from the Christian West? I read this somewhere and thought it was a great line: the crusades were defensive in principle, if not always in practice. In other words, the original mission was a reaction and a response to Islamic aggression and expansion, even if they didn’t always maintain good chivalry.
This isn’t really a question so much as it is a sad consequence to consider. It seems to me the biggest blunder of the Crusades was the turning of their sword upon the Eastern Church at various moments. There was no reason for this at all, it was the worst of the crusades when it happened. At best the aggression toward the East was because of their theological and ecclesiastical disputes and the best motive you can possibly assume is that Western Christians were killing those they viewed as heretics. So the result of more division and more distrust between the East and West was a sad consequence. Imagine how successful the crusades could have been if the East and West were united together against Muslim aggression. Instead, there were even times where Eastern Christians joined the Turks in fighting off Crusaders. It was a sad big mess.
I believe it is important as the Christian Church to maintain a good catholicity among one another in order to be a united front against the evils of this world. Let the in house debates be fought out in house, and let us face the world, the flesh, and the devil together.
Despite all the mess, the western Christians truly kept Islam at bay, and kept it from expanding west. Islam wanted to continue to spread west and conquer it by the sword. These crusades and many other battles and moments where the West took a military stand against a military aggressor, was God’s providential preserving of the West through the medieval ages. And in that, we must see and be grateful for God’s providence, as one historian puts it, “Many Christians today are quick to denounce the men who fought against Islamic expansion as racist, xenophobic, etc. Rather ironically, such modern day Christians fail to realize that without their ancestors’ sacrifices, they themselves would very likely be Muslims today (as most of the descendants of the once fiercely Christian Middle East, North Africa, and Turkey are today).”
So I say, let us thank God for our ancestors who had the courage to fight and preserve the Christian West, while learning from their sins and mistakes, and not falling into the same errors.
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