Albion

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By our present day way of thinking, most of what was done by everyone a thousand years ago was at least partly wrong. So the answer to the question here would be no; but on the other hand, it was the Moslems who had conquered large Christian areas, thus precipitating what we call the Crusades. Actually, it is just the Christian counter-offensive that gets called "the Crusades."

By that logic, it was Britain and France that "did wrong" in WW2 by resisting the Nazis--but only by that standard.
 
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compassion 4 humanity

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By our present day way of thinking, most of what was done by everyone a thousand years ago was at least partly wrong. So the answer to the question here would be no; but on the other hand, it was the Moslems who had conquered large Christian areas, thus precipitating what we call the Crusades. Actually, it is just the Christian counter-offensive that gets called "the Crusades."

By that logic, it was Britain and France that "did wrong" in WW2 by resisting the Nazis--but only by that standard.

The Crusades were only defensive; therefore, they were justified.
 
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GreekOrthodox

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The major Crusades might start with a "good" intention such as protecting pilgrims but often the Crusaders mainly pillaged whatever they came across.
First Crusade - Rhineland massacre, sack of Antioch (killing the inhabitants indiscriminately)
Fourth Crusade - Sack of Zara, which paid for transportation and would lead to the Sack of Constantinople in 1204
 
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~Anastasia~

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The major Crusades might start with a "good" intention such as protecting pilgrims but often the Crusaders mainly pillaged whatever they came across.
First Crusade - Rhineland massacre, sack of Antioch (killing the inhabitants indiscriminately)
Fourth Crusade - Sack of Zara, which paid for transportation and would lead to the Sack of Constantinople in 1204
Yeah it really depends on who you ask and which crusade, doesn't it?

There's an elephant in the room I think is better left unnoticed.
 
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Root of Jesse

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It's probably a good thing to study the history to come up with the answer. And that answer might be different for nearly everyone. To me, it was the answer to 500 years of Islamic invasion of North Africa, the Middle East, around to Turkey. Invasion of Christian-held lands.
Were there atrocities committed by some Crusaders? Certainly. There were also elements who went 'crusading' who were not incardinated to be on the official Crusades. For the most part, the Crusaders gave up a whole lot for the honor of fighting for the Holy Land. Many also died in the quest.

I've been reading a book about modern Vatican politics, and it's brought me to the realization that, when you speak of the Catholic Church, you have to speak about the politics and the faith separately. The politics is often ugly, worldly and divisive. The faith is what Christ gave us.
 
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compassion 4 humanity

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Like it or not, you DID quote me in your post. See post #3 again if you doubt that.

Whether you like it or not, I didn't even read your post! Just because you think something is true doesn't make it true. I quoted you by accident.
 
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lismore

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In light of John eighteen - thirty six I believe a 'crusade' would be better trying to save souls through the gospel than destroying them through armed conflict. Not to mention the many Christians that the crusaders killed.
 
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tz620q

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In light of John eighteen - thirty six I believe a 'crusade' would be better trying to save souls through the gospel than destroying them through armed conflict. Not to mention the many Christians that the crusaders killed.
And certainly don't mention the number of Christians the Muslims killed.:sigh:
 
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BryanJohnMaloney

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As Westerners--total outsiders, we usually have a very bizarre and screwy view of the Crusades and the lands they took place in. This thread shows that very well. The real history is not that "Islam conquered Christian lands". The lands under contention were Christian, but the Christians therein were looked upon as heretics and schismatics by the Crusaders. They weren't "real Christians". The conflicts were not two-sided, "Islam" vs. "Christianity". The Crusades began as a three-sided conflict.

Originally, the contention was between the Rashidun Caliphate and the Roman Empire. In the West, these are usually wrongly called the "Islamic Empire" and the "Byzantine Empire". The Byzantine Empire never existed, actually, but that's a different matter.

In any case the Rashiduns conquered the Levant, Egypt, etc. from the Romiosini. This was in the 7th century AD, centuries before the Crusades. From that point on, all those lands were held by the Rashidun, Ummayad, and Abbasid Caliphates, then to the Seljuk Empire, in succession. While there were Christians in those lands, they were not "Christian lands" in the sense of having recently been conquered.

Fast-forward to AD1095. Emperor Alexios I Komnenos was at war with the Seljuks over Anatolia. Alexios had been currying favor with Pope Urban for some time. He sent an appeal for Urban to obtain Western mercenaries to help with this purely political war vs. the Seljuks. It was a matter of territory for the original participants.

Time for an aside: By this time, Western and Eastern Christian hierarchies had formally severed ties for about 50 years. To the east were the many Patriarchs of Alexandria, Constantinople, Jerusalem, Antioch, etc. To the west was Rome, alone. There was no longer any single "Christianity" in any organizational sense, and theology had also diverged at least to some extent. However, on a purely political note, Emperors and Popes had no problem dealing with each other.

The Pope of Rome decided to take advantage of the appeal to improve his own status in the West. So he invented the Crusade. This fired up a lot of Westerners, they gathered together, and started the whole mess.

It was never a conflict between "Christianity" and "Islam". It was a foreign invasion by the Ferengi (Franks--Westerners) of lands that had never been theirs in the name of a "Christianity" that was not practiced on those lands. Those territories had been ruled by nominally or devoutly Muslim rulers for centuries. Any conflict over those lands by the local leaders was purely political in nature.

The West invented a religious fig leaf to cover the nakedness of simple foreign adventurism and local politicking.
 
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tz620q

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As Westerners--total outsiders, we usually have a very bizarre and screwy view of the Crusades and the lands they took place in. This thread shows that very well. The real history is not that "Islam conquered Christian lands". The lands under contention were Christian, but the Christians therein were looked upon as heretics and schismatics by the Crusaders. They weren't "real Christians". The conflicts were not two-sided, "Islam" vs. "Christianity". The Crusades began as a three-sided conflict.

Originally, the contention was between the Rashidun Caliphate and the Roman Empire. In the West, these are usually wrongly called the "Islamic Empire" and the "Byzantine Empire". The Byzantine Empire never existed, actually, but that's a different matter.

In any case the Rashiduns conquered the Levant, Egypt, etc. from the Romiosini. This was in the 7th century AD, centuries before the Crusades. From that point on, all those lands were held by the Rashidun, Ummayad, and Abbasid Caliphates, then to the Seljuk Empire, in succession. While there were Christians in those lands, they were not "Christian lands" in the sense of having recently been conquered.

Fast-forward to AD1095. Emperor Alexios I Komnenos was at war with the Seljuks over Anatolia. Alexios had been currying favor with Pope Urban for some time. He sent an appeal for Urban to obtain Western mercenaries to help with this purely political war vs. the Seljuks. It was a matter of territory for the original participants.

Time for an aside: By this time, Western and Eastern Christian hierarchies had formally severed ties for about 50 years. To the east were the many Patriarchs of Alexandria, Constantinople, Jerusalem, Antioch, etc. To the west was Rome, alone. There was no longer any single "Christianity" in any organizational sense, and theology had also diverged at least to some extent. However, on a purely political note, Emperors and Popes had no problem dealing with each other.

The Pope of Rome decided to take advantage of the appeal to improve his own status in the West. So he invented the Crusade. This fired up a lot of Westerners, they gathered together, and started the whole mess.

It was never a conflict between "Christianity" and "Islam". It was a foreign invasion by the Ferengi (Franks--Westerners) of lands that had never been theirs in the name of a "Christianity" that was not practiced on those lands. Those territories had been ruled by nominally or devoutly Muslim rulers for centuries. Any conflict over those lands by the local leaders was purely political in nature.

The West invented a religious fig leaf to cover the nakedness of simple foreign adventurism and local politicking.
I find it odd that Western Christians have adopted the Muslim rhetoric to disparage Catholicism, rather than try to look at this dispassionately. Would you agree that these were wars and not religious campaigns? You are right that Urban used religion to fire up the Western Europeans; but how else was he to convince them to abandon their own lands and fund campaigns against the Muslims in some remote region of the Middle East. You seem to start with the assumption that there were just a bunch of peaceful Muslims living in the Middle East and that the Crusaders were these barbaric conquerors. This ignores the incursions of the Seljuk Turks. I also find it odd that you do not acknowledge the existence of a Byzantine Empire. If there was no Byzantine Empire, then who lost the Battle of Manzikert that resulted in the appeal of the Emperor for help.

I just find your logic to be rather faulty. You say that the conflict was never between Christianity and Islam; but the Emperor's appeal to Urban and Urban's calls for action all centered around just such a distinction. I can understand trying to view this from the aspects of the Western Roman Empire, the Byzantine Eastern Roman Empire, and the Muslims (though I think you need to split the Muslims into the Alexandrian Caliphate and the Seljuks who had taken over the Baghdad Caliphate); but then we have to start talking in details of over 200 years of Crusading that had a checkered history. Painting the Christians (and where were the Byzantines that had a much greater stake in this than the Crusaders) as the aggressors and the Muslims as peaceful, devout men of God is ignoring 400 years of Muslim conquests. Also saying that Christianity was divided between the Patriarch of Rome and the Patriarchs of Alexandria, Constantinople, Jerusalem and Antioch ignores the fact that of the latter group only Constantinople was still within Christian control. Let me ask you another question. Without the Crusades, would Constantinople have fallen in 1453 or would it have been much earlier? And if it had fallen in say 1153, then would the Byzantine evangelization of Russia have survived the Mongols?
 
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tz620q

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How many? Sources? Citations? When was this? Where was this?
This was addressed to another poster. At least you are willing to look into the history of this instead of throwing rocks from the sidelines. As far as the when and where, I would start in the 700's and go till 1683 when the last siege of Vienna was repelled. Though truthfully this did not end Muslim aggression and we could go right into the Ottoman empire after that and keep going until today; but that is such a nonsensical amount of time, maybe we should center on only one part of this history.
 
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BryanJohnMaloney

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This was addressed to another poster. At least you are willing to look into the history of this instead of throwing rocks from the sidelines. As far as the when and where, I would start in the 700's and go till 1683 when the last siege of Vienna was repelled. Though truthfully this did not end Muslim aggression and we could go right into the Ottoman empire after that and keep going until today; but that is such a nonsensical amount of time, maybe we should center on only one part of this history.

The problem with going all the way to the 17th century is that this muddies the moral waters. After AD1095, Muslims can claim (rightly or wrongly) that they were acting specifically as a result of the wrongful invasion by the foreign Crusaders, who never had any rights to the land in question. So, to be honest, we have to restrict our "tu quoque" claims (which are childish, in any case) to before the First Crusade.

So, exact numbers from before thent? Specific circumstances? How many of the killings were primarily military or political in motivation? Let's see some solid analyses.
 
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