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What is the Truth About the Crusades?
"Medieval historians have long known that popular culture image of the crusades has nothing at all to do with the events themselves"
-Thomas Madden Professor of History and Director of the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies at Saint Louis University
"Many in today's society believe the false history presented by critics. Enforced by the media, Hollywood and other outlets, popular perception of historical events reigns supreme even when that perception is completely at odds with historical reality"
-Steve Weidenkompf The Glory of the Crusades
“Great historical myths die hard....writers continue to spread traditional myths....even though they are fully aware of the new findings. They do so because they are determined to show that religion, and especially Christianity, is a dreadful curse upon humanity.”
-Rodney Stark Bearing False Witness: Debunking Centuries of Anti-Catholic History
What Were the Crusades?
"Urban viewed the Crusade as a pilgrimage, the aim of which was not to conquer but to visit the place of pilgrimage and then return home. Later popes maintained the understanding of the Crusades as just, defensive wars with the central goal of the recovery of ancient Christian territory. Heroic men and women of faith, rooted in love of Christ and neighbor, undertook the Crusades as acts of self-defense and recovery of stolen property. This is the proper understanding of these important events in Church history"
-Steve Weidenkopf Were the Crusades Just Wars?
“Pilgrimage, not war, constituted the overwhelming response to the capture of the holy land...not all armed pilgrims fought”
--Christopher Tyerman Gods war a new history of the Crusades Harvard U Press Cambridge Mass 2006
The word crusade was not used until 1706. At the time the events took place they were known as armed pilgrimages to the holy land. They were undertaken at great loss of life, money, and earthly gain to go and risk for fellow Christians under persecution, to retake christian lands from Muslim conquerors, to sacrifice for God and to put the holy sites back in christian control. The crusades were controlled generally by the church, but also by kings with rules and regulations such as no prostitution, no gambling, no swearing and violators could be put to death. Often many crusaders went in small groups or alone. A few larger groups that went are now known as the first, second, third crusade etc. For a time line of the major events during the period see links below.
The Truth about Islamic Crusades and Imperialism
Answering Muslims: Islam and the Crusades: A Warped Perspective
“The memory of the long struggle with Islam from the 7th century was not lost 400 years later. If anything it had grown.”
-Christopher Tyerman God's War: A New History of the Crusades Harvard university Press
Crusades Were a Defensive Action Against Muslim Aggressors
“The Crusades to the East were in every way defensive wars. They were a direct response to Muslim aggression—an attempt to turn back or defend against Muslim conquests of Christian lands....Palestine, Syria, and Egypt—once the most heavily Christian areas in the world—quickly succumbed. By the eighth century, Muslim armies had conquered all of Christian North Africa and Spain. In the eleventh century, the Seljuk Turks conquered Asia Minor, which had been Christian since the time of St. Paul. The old Roman Empire, known to modern historians as the Byzantine Empire, was reduced to little more than Greece. In desperation, the emperor in Constantinople sent word to the Christians of western Europe asking them to aid their brothers and sisters in the East. That is what gave birth to the Crusades. They were not the brainchild of an ambitious pope or rapacious knights but a response to more than four centuries of conquests in which Muslims had already captured two-thirds of the old Christian world. At some point, Christianity as a faith and a culture had to defend itself or be subsumed by Islam. The Crusades were that defense.
-Thomas Madden the Real History of the Crusades
"The Crusades were born from the violent aggression of Islam, which had conquered ancient Christian territory in the Holy Land and North Africa and established a large foothold in Europe within a century of Muhammad’s death in the early seventh century. Particularly troublesome to Christian Europe was the conquering of Jerusalem in 638 by an Islamic force that sacked the city for three days and destroyed over 300 churches and monasteries. ".......The invasion of Christian territory, Muslim persecution of native Christians and pilgrims, plus the threat posed to the Christian Byzantine Empire, were all legitimate reasons to engage in defensive warfare and Pope Urban II cited them as justification for the First Crusade.”
-Steve Weidenkopf The Glory of the Crusades
The crusaders saw their cause as a defensive action to protect themselves from further attacks and to reclaim lost christian territories taken by Muslim expansion over the past few hundred years. In 1071 a few years before any pope called for crusade, Islamic Turks captured the byzantine Emperor and destroyed there army. Constantinople was about to fall to the seljuk Turks who raped, tortured, and killed Christians while destroying pilgrimage sites and threatened the largest collection of christian relics in Constantinople. The new Emperor called other christian nations for help. The emperor send word to Pope urban if helped was not received, thousands more Christians would be raped, tortured, murdered and “the most holy relics of the savior” would be lost. With Constantinople under threat and with the emperor recently killed and his army destroyed by invading Muslims. The west believed it would unlock all of Europe to further Islamic expansion, so the west responded.
"For your brethren who live in the east are in urgent need of your help.. For, as the most of you have heard, the Turks and Arabs have attacked them and have conquered the territory of Romania as far west as the shore of the Mediterranean and the Hellespont...They have occupied more and more of the lands of those Christians, and have overcome them in seven battles. They have killed and captured many, and have destroyed the churches and devastated the empire.”
-Pope Urban II (1088-1099): Speech at Council of Clermont, 1095
“The history of Islam has essentially been a history of conquest...the crusaders far from being an outrageous proto type of western imperialism, as it taught in most schools, were...one of the few occasions when Christians took the offensive to regain the “occupied ground.”
-Historian Paul Johnston
“Islamic provocations: by centuries of bloody attempts to colonize the West and by sudden new attacks on Christian pilgrims and holy places.”
-Rodney Stark God's Battalions Harper one 2009
“From the safe distance of many centuries, it is easy enough to scowl in disgust at the Crusades.. But we should be mindful that our medieval ancestors would have been equally disgusted by our infinitely more destructive wars fought in the name of political ideologies.. it is a fact that the world we know today would not exist without their effortsl have followed Zoroastrianism, another of Islam's rivals, into extinction”
-Thomas Madden
“From the safe distance of many centuries, it is easy enough to scowl in disgust at the Crusades.. Whether we admire the Crusaders or not, it is a fact that the world we know today would not exist without their efforts ll have followed Zoroastrianism, another of Islam's rivals, into extinction”
-Thomas Madden Professor of History and Director of the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies at Saint Louis University
“Our fathers were better able than we to estimate the danger with witch Islam threatened Christianity.... the crusade was only a process of driving back the invasion”
-Leon Gautier Chivalry the Everyday Life of the medieval Knight Tumblar House 2015
Help Christians Traveling to the Holy Land and Christians Suffering Under Islamic Rule
"The Crusades were also a response to the severe persecution of indigenous Christians living in the occupied territories, whose lives were severely restricted and who suffered constant pressure to convert to Islam Christian pilgrims were also subjected to harassment and violence, which demanded a defensive response from Christendom. The Seljuks, who were known for their brutality, threatened pilgrims to the holy sites in Palestine. As an example, a group of 12,000 German pilgrims led by Bishop Günther of Bamberg in 1065 was massacred by the Seljuks on Good Friday, only two days' march from Jerusalem."
-Steve Weidenkopf The Glory of the Crusades
“Open extermination of christian populations and the disappearance of eastern christian culture”
-Bat Ye'or “the myth of Islamic tolerance” interview
“The example of our redeemer on the duty of brotherly love demands of us that we should set our hearts upon the deliverance of our brethren. For as he offered his life for us, so we ought we to offer our lives for our brothers.”
-Pope Urban the second
A major reason for the crusades was to help persecuted Christians under Muslim control and to protect their own citizens who wished to travel to the holy lands in safety. Geoffery and Guy of the first crusade gave their motivation as “To exterminate wickedness and unrestrained rage of the pagans by which innumerable Christians have already been oppressed, made captive and killed.” Muslims had made travel to the holy lands expensive, near impossible, as well as dangerous with a real threat of both torture and murder of pilgrims who attempted the travel. In one severe instance in 1065 12,000 unarmed German pilgrims were slaughtered. Under Islamic rule rape, murder, torture, forced into slavery, prostitution, and forced conversions were all things Christians suffered from. No new churches or synagogues were allowed to be built Christians were prohibited from praying out loud [even in churches or houses] or reading the bible. They were not allowed weapons, were taxed and were to “feel inferior, humiliated, punished those who would not convert.” In 705 Muslims assembled Arminian Christians nobles in a church and burned them to death. More than 6,000 Jews were massacred in Morocco and In 1032 as many in Grenada. In 1570 Muslims murdered tens of thousands of Christians in Cyprus. In the 8th century 70 pilgrims from Asia minor were executed. Shortly after 60 were crucified. In the late 8th century Muslim attacked the monastery of Saint Theodosius and slaughtered the monks while destroying churches in Bethlehem. In 796 Muslims burned to death 20 monks from a monastery. In 809 mass rape and murder in Jerusalem. On Palm Sunday 923 churches were destroyed and Christians killed. Egyptians Muslim ruler Hakim had 30,000 churches burned or pillaged and had the Holy Sepulchre destroyed and Jesus tomb partially destroyed. The call for the second crusade by Pope Eugenius the third in his bull Quantum Praedecessors was based on defending the eastern church after the fall of Edessa.
"Muslim Turkish invasions in the 1050's caused much if not more mayhem and destruction than the crusades were able to achieve."
-Christopher Tyerman God's War: A New History of the Crusades Harvard university Press
"We have heard, most beloved brethren, and you have heard what we cannot recount without deep sorrow how, with great hurt and dire sufferings our Christian brothers, members in Christ, are scourged, oppressed, and injured in Jerusadlem, in Antioch, and the other cities of the East... are either subjected in their inherited homes to other masters... they are flogged and exiled as slaves for sale in their own land... has invaded the lands of those Christians and has depopulated them by the sword, pillage and fire; it has led away a part of the captives into its own country, and a part it has destroyed by cruel tortures; it has either entirely destroyed the churches of God or appropriated them for the rites of its own religion. They destroy the altars, after having defiled them with their uncleanness. They circumcise the Christians, and the blood of the circumcision they either spread upon the altars or pour into the vases of the baptismal font. When they wish to torture people by a base death, they perforate their navels, and dragging forth the extremity of the intestines, bind it to a stake; then with flogging they lead the victim around until the viscera having gushed forth the victim falls prostrate upon the ground. Others they bind to a post and pierce with arrows. Others they compel to extend their necks and then, attacking them with naked swords, attempt to cut through the neck with a single blow. What shall I say of the abominable rape of the women? To speak of it is worse than to be silent. The kingdom of the Greeks is now dismembered by them and deprived of territory so vast in extent that it can not be traversed in a march of two months..."at least let the great suffering of those who desired to go to the holy places stir you up. Think of those who made the pilgrimage across the sea! Even if they were more wealthy, consider what taxes, what violence they underwent, since they were forced to make payments and tributes almost every mile, to purchase release at every gate of the city, at the entrance of the churches and temples, at every side journey from place to place: also, if any accusation whatsoever were made against them, they were compelled to purchase their release; but if they refused to pay money, the prefects of the Gentiles, according to their custom, urged them fiercely with blows....They not only demanded money of them, which is not an unendurable punishment, but also examined the callouses of their heels, cutting them open and folding the skin back, lest, perchance, they had sewed something there. Their unspeakable cruelty was carried on even to the point of giving them scammony to drink until they vomited, or even burst their bowels, because they thought the wretches had swallowed gold or silver; or, horrible to say, they cut their bowels open with a sword and, spreading out the folds of the intestines, with frightful mutilation disclosed whatever nature held there in secret. Remember, I pray, the thousands who have perished vile deaths, and strive for the holy places from which the beginnings of your faith have come.
--Pope Urban II (1088-1099): Speech at Council of Clermont, 1095 August. C. Krey, The First Crusade: The Accounts of Eyewitnesses and Participants, (Princeton: 1921), 36-40
"Medieval historians have long known that popular culture image of the crusades has nothing at all to do with the events themselves"
-Thomas Madden Professor of History and Director of the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies at Saint Louis University
"Many in today's society believe the false history presented by critics. Enforced by the media, Hollywood and other outlets, popular perception of historical events reigns supreme even when that perception is completely at odds with historical reality"
-Steve Weidenkompf The Glory of the Crusades
“Great historical myths die hard....writers continue to spread traditional myths....even though they are fully aware of the new findings. They do so because they are determined to show that religion, and especially Christianity, is a dreadful curse upon humanity.”
-Rodney Stark Bearing False Witness: Debunking Centuries of Anti-Catholic History
What Were the Crusades?
"Urban viewed the Crusade as a pilgrimage, the aim of which was not to conquer but to visit the place of pilgrimage and then return home. Later popes maintained the understanding of the Crusades as just, defensive wars with the central goal of the recovery of ancient Christian territory. Heroic men and women of faith, rooted in love of Christ and neighbor, undertook the Crusades as acts of self-defense and recovery of stolen property. This is the proper understanding of these important events in Church history"
-Steve Weidenkopf Were the Crusades Just Wars?
“Pilgrimage, not war, constituted the overwhelming response to the capture of the holy land...not all armed pilgrims fought”
--Christopher Tyerman Gods war a new history of the Crusades Harvard U Press Cambridge Mass 2006
The word crusade was not used until 1706. At the time the events took place they were known as armed pilgrimages to the holy land. They were undertaken at great loss of life, money, and earthly gain to go and risk for fellow Christians under persecution, to retake christian lands from Muslim conquerors, to sacrifice for God and to put the holy sites back in christian control. The crusades were controlled generally by the church, but also by kings with rules and regulations such as no prostitution, no gambling, no swearing and violators could be put to death. Often many crusaders went in small groups or alone. A few larger groups that went are now known as the first, second, third crusade etc. For a time line of the major events during the period see links below.
The Truth about Islamic Crusades and Imperialism
Answering Muslims: Islam and the Crusades: A Warped Perspective
“The memory of the long struggle with Islam from the 7th century was not lost 400 years later. If anything it had grown.”
-Christopher Tyerman God's War: A New History of the Crusades Harvard university Press
Crusades Were a Defensive Action Against Muslim Aggressors
“The Crusades to the East were in every way defensive wars. They were a direct response to Muslim aggression—an attempt to turn back or defend against Muslim conquests of Christian lands....Palestine, Syria, and Egypt—once the most heavily Christian areas in the world—quickly succumbed. By the eighth century, Muslim armies had conquered all of Christian North Africa and Spain. In the eleventh century, the Seljuk Turks conquered Asia Minor, which had been Christian since the time of St. Paul. The old Roman Empire, known to modern historians as the Byzantine Empire, was reduced to little more than Greece. In desperation, the emperor in Constantinople sent word to the Christians of western Europe asking them to aid their brothers and sisters in the East. That is what gave birth to the Crusades. They were not the brainchild of an ambitious pope or rapacious knights but a response to more than four centuries of conquests in which Muslims had already captured two-thirds of the old Christian world. At some point, Christianity as a faith and a culture had to defend itself or be subsumed by Islam. The Crusades were that defense.
-Thomas Madden the Real History of the Crusades
"The Crusades were born from the violent aggression of Islam, which had conquered ancient Christian territory in the Holy Land and North Africa and established a large foothold in Europe within a century of Muhammad’s death in the early seventh century. Particularly troublesome to Christian Europe was the conquering of Jerusalem in 638 by an Islamic force that sacked the city for three days and destroyed over 300 churches and monasteries. ".......The invasion of Christian territory, Muslim persecution of native Christians and pilgrims, plus the threat posed to the Christian Byzantine Empire, were all legitimate reasons to engage in defensive warfare and Pope Urban II cited them as justification for the First Crusade.”
-Steve Weidenkopf The Glory of the Crusades
The crusaders saw their cause as a defensive action to protect themselves from further attacks and to reclaim lost christian territories taken by Muslim expansion over the past few hundred years. In 1071 a few years before any pope called for crusade, Islamic Turks captured the byzantine Emperor and destroyed there army. Constantinople was about to fall to the seljuk Turks who raped, tortured, and killed Christians while destroying pilgrimage sites and threatened the largest collection of christian relics in Constantinople. The new Emperor called other christian nations for help. The emperor send word to Pope urban if helped was not received, thousands more Christians would be raped, tortured, murdered and “the most holy relics of the savior” would be lost. With Constantinople under threat and with the emperor recently killed and his army destroyed by invading Muslims. The west believed it would unlock all of Europe to further Islamic expansion, so the west responded.
"For your brethren who live in the east are in urgent need of your help.. For, as the most of you have heard, the Turks and Arabs have attacked them and have conquered the territory of Romania as far west as the shore of the Mediterranean and the Hellespont...They have occupied more and more of the lands of those Christians, and have overcome them in seven battles. They have killed and captured many, and have destroyed the churches and devastated the empire.”
-Pope Urban II (1088-1099): Speech at Council of Clermont, 1095
“The history of Islam has essentially been a history of conquest...the crusaders far from being an outrageous proto type of western imperialism, as it taught in most schools, were...one of the few occasions when Christians took the offensive to regain the “occupied ground.”
-Historian Paul Johnston
“Islamic provocations: by centuries of bloody attempts to colonize the West and by sudden new attacks on Christian pilgrims and holy places.”
-Rodney Stark God's Battalions Harper one 2009
“From the safe distance of many centuries, it is easy enough to scowl in disgust at the Crusades.. But we should be mindful that our medieval ancestors would have been equally disgusted by our infinitely more destructive wars fought in the name of political ideologies.. it is a fact that the world we know today would not exist without their effortsl have followed Zoroastrianism, another of Islam's rivals, into extinction”
-Thomas Madden
“From the safe distance of many centuries, it is easy enough to scowl in disgust at the Crusades.. Whether we admire the Crusaders or not, it is a fact that the world we know today would not exist without their efforts ll have followed Zoroastrianism, another of Islam's rivals, into extinction”
-Thomas Madden Professor of History and Director of the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies at Saint Louis University
“Our fathers were better able than we to estimate the danger with witch Islam threatened Christianity.... the crusade was only a process of driving back the invasion”
-Leon Gautier Chivalry the Everyday Life of the medieval Knight Tumblar House 2015
Help Christians Traveling to the Holy Land and Christians Suffering Under Islamic Rule
"The Crusades were also a response to the severe persecution of indigenous Christians living in the occupied territories, whose lives were severely restricted and who suffered constant pressure to convert to Islam Christian pilgrims were also subjected to harassment and violence, which demanded a defensive response from Christendom. The Seljuks, who were known for their brutality, threatened pilgrims to the holy sites in Palestine. As an example, a group of 12,000 German pilgrims led by Bishop Günther of Bamberg in 1065 was massacred by the Seljuks on Good Friday, only two days' march from Jerusalem."
-Steve Weidenkopf The Glory of the Crusades
“Open extermination of christian populations and the disappearance of eastern christian culture”
-Bat Ye'or “the myth of Islamic tolerance” interview
“The example of our redeemer on the duty of brotherly love demands of us that we should set our hearts upon the deliverance of our brethren. For as he offered his life for us, so we ought we to offer our lives for our brothers.”
-Pope Urban the second
A major reason for the crusades was to help persecuted Christians under Muslim control and to protect their own citizens who wished to travel to the holy lands in safety. Geoffery and Guy of the first crusade gave their motivation as “To exterminate wickedness and unrestrained rage of the pagans by which innumerable Christians have already been oppressed, made captive and killed.” Muslims had made travel to the holy lands expensive, near impossible, as well as dangerous with a real threat of both torture and murder of pilgrims who attempted the travel. In one severe instance in 1065 12,000 unarmed German pilgrims were slaughtered. Under Islamic rule rape, murder, torture, forced into slavery, prostitution, and forced conversions were all things Christians suffered from. No new churches or synagogues were allowed to be built Christians were prohibited from praying out loud [even in churches or houses] or reading the bible. They were not allowed weapons, were taxed and were to “feel inferior, humiliated, punished those who would not convert.” In 705 Muslims assembled Arminian Christians nobles in a church and burned them to death. More than 6,000 Jews were massacred in Morocco and In 1032 as many in Grenada. In 1570 Muslims murdered tens of thousands of Christians in Cyprus. In the 8th century 70 pilgrims from Asia minor were executed. Shortly after 60 were crucified. In the late 8th century Muslim attacked the monastery of Saint Theodosius and slaughtered the monks while destroying churches in Bethlehem. In 796 Muslims burned to death 20 monks from a monastery. In 809 mass rape and murder in Jerusalem. On Palm Sunday 923 churches were destroyed and Christians killed. Egyptians Muslim ruler Hakim had 30,000 churches burned or pillaged and had the Holy Sepulchre destroyed and Jesus tomb partially destroyed. The call for the second crusade by Pope Eugenius the third in his bull Quantum Praedecessors was based on defending the eastern church after the fall of Edessa.
"Muslim Turkish invasions in the 1050's caused much if not more mayhem and destruction than the crusades were able to achieve."
-Christopher Tyerman God's War: A New History of the Crusades Harvard university Press
"We have heard, most beloved brethren, and you have heard what we cannot recount without deep sorrow how, with great hurt and dire sufferings our Christian brothers, members in Christ, are scourged, oppressed, and injured in Jerusadlem, in Antioch, and the other cities of the East... are either subjected in their inherited homes to other masters... they are flogged and exiled as slaves for sale in their own land... has invaded the lands of those Christians and has depopulated them by the sword, pillage and fire; it has led away a part of the captives into its own country, and a part it has destroyed by cruel tortures; it has either entirely destroyed the churches of God or appropriated them for the rites of its own religion. They destroy the altars, after having defiled them with their uncleanness. They circumcise the Christians, and the blood of the circumcision they either spread upon the altars or pour into the vases of the baptismal font. When they wish to torture people by a base death, they perforate their navels, and dragging forth the extremity of the intestines, bind it to a stake; then with flogging they lead the victim around until the viscera having gushed forth the victim falls prostrate upon the ground. Others they bind to a post and pierce with arrows. Others they compel to extend their necks and then, attacking them with naked swords, attempt to cut through the neck with a single blow. What shall I say of the abominable rape of the women? To speak of it is worse than to be silent. The kingdom of the Greeks is now dismembered by them and deprived of territory so vast in extent that it can not be traversed in a march of two months..."at least let the great suffering of those who desired to go to the holy places stir you up. Think of those who made the pilgrimage across the sea! Even if they were more wealthy, consider what taxes, what violence they underwent, since they were forced to make payments and tributes almost every mile, to purchase release at every gate of the city, at the entrance of the churches and temples, at every side journey from place to place: also, if any accusation whatsoever were made against them, they were compelled to purchase their release; but if they refused to pay money, the prefects of the Gentiles, according to their custom, urged them fiercely with blows....They not only demanded money of them, which is not an unendurable punishment, but also examined the callouses of their heels, cutting them open and folding the skin back, lest, perchance, they had sewed something there. Their unspeakable cruelty was carried on even to the point of giving them scammony to drink until they vomited, or even burst their bowels, because they thought the wretches had swallowed gold or silver; or, horrible to say, they cut their bowels open with a sword and, spreading out the folds of the intestines, with frightful mutilation disclosed whatever nature held there in secret. Remember, I pray, the thousands who have perished vile deaths, and strive for the holy places from which the beginnings of your faith have come.
--Pope Urban II (1088-1099): Speech at Council of Clermont, 1095 August. C. Krey, The First Crusade: The Accounts of Eyewitnesses and Participants, (Princeton: 1921), 36-40