Crusades-Encyclopedia Quotes on the Crusades
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Now put this down in your notebook, because it will be on the test: The crusades were in every way a defensive war. They were the West's belated response to the Muslim conquest of fully two-thirds of the Christian world. Dr. Thomas Madden, In Crusades Propaganda:The Abuse of Christianity's Holy Wars, National Review Online, Novemeber 2, 2001
It was, for example, during the Crusades, when it was Christians who had instigated a series of brutal holy wars against the Muslim world, that Islam was described by the learned scholar-monks of Europe as an inherently violent and intolerant faith, which had only been able to establish itself by the sword. The myth of the supposed fanatical intolerance of Islam has become one of the received ideas of the West. Karen Armstrong Islam: A Short History, 179-180
Christendom might quite reasonably have been alarmed if it had not been attacked. But as a matter of history it had been attacked. The Crusader would have been quite justified in suspecting the Moslem even if the Moslem had merely been a new stranger; but as a matter of history he was already an old enemy. The critic of the Crusade talks as if it had sought out some inoffensive tribe or temple in the interior of Thibet, which was never discovered until it was invaded. They seem entirely to forget that long before the Crusaders had dreamed of riding to Jerusalem, the Moslems had almost ridden into Paris. G.K. Chesterton In The Meaning of the Crusade, 1920
High ideas were besmirched by cruelty and greed, enterprise and endurance by a blind and narrow self righeousness, and the Holy War itself was nothing more than a long act of intolerance in the name of God, which is a sin against the Holy Ghost. Sir Steven Runciman, In The History of the Crusades
The first point to be made in defense of the Crusades is that they were initially a response to Islamic aggression. Islam, from its inception, had espoused the use of force. Where Jesus had died for his beliefs, the Prophet Mohammed had wielded a sword. Though Christianity was later to be exploited for political ends, the Christian religion as such had, in the first three centuries of its existence, spread peacefully--thriving, in fact, on the blood of its martyrs. I say this not to score a point in favor of Christianity but to emphasize an historical truth: The spread of Islam from the Arabian peninsula to southwestern France in the eighth century; and to the gates of Vienna in the seventeenth, came as a result of conquest by Islamic armies. Piers Paul Read In Hooray for the Crusades! Woman's Quarterly, Spring 2002
Nine hundred years ago, our forefathers carried the name of Jesus Christ in battle across the Middle East. Fueled by fear, greed and hatred, they betrayed the name of Christ by conducting themselves in a manner contrary to His wishes and character. The Crusaders lifted the banner of the Cross above your people. By this act they corrupted its true meaning of reconciliation, forgiveness and selfless love. On the anniversary of the First Crusade we also carry the name of Christ. We wish to retrace the footsteps of the Crusaders in apology for their deeds and in demonstration of the true meaning of the Cross. We deeply regret the atrocities committed in the name of Christ by our predecessors. We renounce greed, hatred and fear, and condemn all violence done in the name of Jesus Christ. Where they were motivated by hatred and prejudice, we offer love and brotherhood. Jesus the Messiah came to give life. Forgive us for allowing His name to be associated with death. Please accept again the true meaning of the Messiah's words: 'The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because He has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.' Text of an Apology for the Crusades- The Reconciliation Walk Movement, 1998-1999
I am fairly sure that those who are now demanding an apology for the crusades are themselves, without knowing it or understanding how rapidly the ground is shifting beneath them, sharing in a new consensus which is au fond not very far from the war theology they are condemning. A stance that justifies a "humanitarian" war on moral grounds has placed itself at least in the same field as that once occupied by crusade theorists. The language that demands that our ancestors be posthumously anathematized is not too distant from that of the men who wanted the corpse of Pope Boniface VIII to be exhumed and burnt. We may be entering a period of conceptual uncertainty about the most difficult of all society’s dilemmas—when or when not to use force—and we need not emotion, but cool heads and an objective analysis of the past. Dr. Jonathan Riley-Smith, In Rethinking the Crusades, First Things, March 2000
.The principle of the crusades was a savage fanaticism; and the most important effects were analogous to the cause. Each pilgrim was ambitious to return with his sacred spoils, the relics of Greece and Palestine; and each relic was preceded and followed by a train of miracles and visions. The belief of the Catholics was corrupted by new legends, their practice by new superstitions; and the establishment of the inquisition, the mendicant orders of monks and friars, the last abuse of indulgences, and the final progress of idolatry, flowed from the baleful fountain of the holy war. The active spirit of the Latins preyed on the vitals of their reason and religion; and, if the ninth and tenth centuries were the times of darkness, the thirteenth and fourteenth were the age of absurdity and fable. Edward Gibbon, In The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Chapter LXI Part III
[Dr. Paul Halsall to CNN interviewer Jonathan Mann] I think there is just as much bad information, for instance, in Christiane's [Amanpour] report or in your previous segment, than is in the film. For instance, the idea that the Muslim world has this memory of the Crusades is very largely incorrect. It is a recovered memory. The idea that Jerusalem is Islam's third holiest place, Islam has many third holiest places. The idea that the capture of Jerusalem in 1099 was particularly horrific. All of these things are truisms repeated repeatedly on television, but they are not in fact correct. Dr. Paul Halsall, In Insight: Kingdom of Heaven, CNN Online Transcript, May 9.2005
Some Christian ideals change with time and culture. Today, we do not share many of the assumptions of medieval Christians. The modern world exalts democratic individualism, religious liberty, and the separation of church and state. Urban II and the crusaders lived in a world with different ideals. Still, we consider it unfortunate that the crusaders never understood two basic truths: Christianity’s highest satisfactions are not guaranteed by possession of special places, and the sword is never God’s way to extend Christ’s kingdom. Dr. Bruce Shelley In How Could Christians Do This? Why Followers of the Prince of Peace Waged War. Christianity Today, 1997
Many Muslims, for instance, still reckon that the crusades initiated centuries of European aggression and exploitation. Some Catholics want the pope to apologise to the world for them. Liberals of all stripes see the crusades as examples of bigotry and fanaticism. Almost all these opinions are, however, based on fallacies. The denigrators of the crusades stress their brutality and savagery, which cannot be denied; but they offer no explanation other than the stupidity, barbarism and intolerance of the crusaders, on whom it has become conventional to lay most blame. Yet the original justification for crusading was Muslim aggression; and in terms of atrocities, the two sides' scores were about even. Jonathan Riley-Smith In Religious Warriors: Reinterpreting the Crusades- The Economist, December 23, 1995
The Crusades form one of the maddest episodes in history. Christianity hurled itself at Mohammedanism in expedition after expedition for nearly three centuries, until failure brought lassitude, and superstition itself was undermined by its own labors. Europe was drained of men and money, and threatened with social bankruptcy, if not with annihilation. Millions perished in battle, hunger, or disease; and every atrocity the imagination can conceive disgraced the warriors of the Cross. But there is a law of compensation in nature; good often comes of evil; and the Crusades broke up the night of the Dark Ages. G.W. Foote & J.M. Wheeler The Crusades In The Crimes of Christianity, 1887
The story we tell about the crusades is that of ambitious nobles and merchants; intolerant Christians who kill innocent Jews, peaceful Arabs, and non-conventional Christians [heretics]; and scheming popes. Most of these villians are half competent fools and knaves who enrich themselves through taxes and trade, excusing their excesses through pious hypocrisy. In these stores the Turks are somehow forgotten, as though they were not a dangerous enemy at that time, or are confused with arabs, while the Armenians, Byzantines, and other near-Eastern Christians are ignored for lack of time and space to discuss them. What is emphasized most strongly is the moral superiority of "natives," non-Christians, and non traditional Christians. Secondly, the victimization of culterally superior Moslems by ethnocentric Westerners whose crudeness is equaled only by their love of violence and cunning. Lastly, any questioning of this thesis is dismissed as racism.In short, an aging collection of anticolonial sentiments has merged with mild political correctness (opposition to violence, skepticism toward Western religious traditions and practices, concern for social issues reflecting race, gender, class, and ethnicity) to dominate current historiography of the Crusades. Dr. William Urban Rethinking the Crusades Perspectives, Newsletter of the AHA, October, 1998
Pope John Paul II decided to return the bones of the two most revered saints in the Orthodox Church, ‘St. John Chrysostomos and St. Gregoriou of Nazianzus’, to Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I. This gesture of conciliation annoyed me. The theft was in 1204, when Constintinople was sacked by the crusaders. The crusaders were ‘sent’ by the Holy Roman Emperors (neither holy, nor Roman, nor emperors (Bryce’s words)), with the Vatican’s blessings, to ‘rescue’ the holy places from the conquering Islamic hordes. In reality, the third crusade was a front to sack and destroy Constantinople, the center of Greek Orthodoxy, to weaken it, to guarantee the preeminence of the Papacy. This ‘sacking’ was one of those events leading to the fall of Constantinople in 1453. Dr. George Gregoriou Gesture of Conciliation or the Kiss of Judas? Greek News December 13, 2003
If the Muslims won the crusades (and they did), why the anger now? Shouldn't they celebrate the crusades as a great victory? Until the nineteenth century that is precisely what they did. It was the West that taught the Middle East to hate the crusades. During the peak of European colonialism, historians began extolling the medieval crusades as Europe's first colonial venture. By the 20th century, when imperialism was discredited, so too were the crusades. They haven't been the same since. In other words, Muslims in the Middle East — including bin Laden and his creatures — know as little about the real crusades as Americans do. Both view them in the context of the modern, rather than the medieval world. The truth is that the crusades had nothing to do with colonialism or unprovoked aggression. They were a desperate and largely unsuccessful attempt to defend against a powerful enemy. Dr. Thomas Madden In Crusades Propaganda:The Abuse of Christianity's Holy Wars, National Review Online, Novemeber 2, 2001
In 1099, the armies of the First Crusade (representing the Catholic Church of Western Europe) captured Jerusalem and were popularly reported as wading in the blood of their slain Muslim foes...The West's apparent lack of regret for the crusades, the close identification of Israel with the crusader kingdom of Jerusalem and the memory of the atrocities committed against the Muslims of the Levant fan the flames of the jihad today. Dr. Jonathan Phillips Why a Crusade Will Lead to Jihad Independent, September 18, 2001
As Vincent Carroll so eloquently explains, only a historical ignoramus--or, I would add at the risk of redundancy, a tendentious PBS editor --could produce the claptrap statement that the Crusades marked the first time Islam and the West met on the battlefield. Islam began with one man in Mecca and, within less than two centuries, encompassed territory from the Iberian Peninsula to the Hindu Kush. This expansion did not happen peacefully. The Arab Muslim armies attacked and conquered Byzantine Christian territories in Syria and Egypt and, a bit later, Arab-Berber Muslim forces conquered the formerly Roman, but still Christian, cities and towns across North Africa and into what is now Spain and Portugal, ruling there for seven centuries. Muslim armies invaded the Frankish Kingdom, later to become France, in 732 and were defeated by Charlemagne's grandfather, Charles Martel. Over the next three centuries the Sunni Muslim Seljuq Turks further dissected the Byzantine Empire, beginning a process that would be completed by their cousins the Ottomans, who conquered Constantinople in 1453 and ruled southeastern Europe for centuries.So the Crusades, far from being the first time Muslims and Christians fought, were actually merely the first time that Christians, after four centuries of defeats, really fought back. Dr. Timothy Furnish How the Media Misconstrue Jihad and the Crusades History News Network, January 13, 2003.
While Western Europe has largely shaken off the legacy of the crusades, their impact elsewhere in the Christian world shows just how long- lasting and destructive they were. Dr. Jonathan Phillips, In Why a Crusade Will Lead to Jihad September 18, 2001
The Crusades satisfied the requirements of a just war in at least two ways. The Muslims had taken certain Christian territories by force and had thereby denied to Christians, east and west, the opportunity to engage in one of the most important of medieval religious exercises, namely, pilgrimages. The concept of the just war not only permits people to defend themselves when directly attacked, it also permits them to go to the aid of others who have been attacked. It is a major index of the arrogant anti-Christian bigotry now prevalent in “enlightened” Western circles that, while the Crusaders are treated as aggressive interlopers against the Muslims of the Near East, little attention is paid to the means by which Islam had come to dominate that region to begin with. Dr. James Hitchcock The Crusades and Their Critics Catholic Dossier, Jan-Feb. 2002
It is a historical fact that for nearly two centuries they were frequently at peace rather than war. During these years they traded with each other; the Crusaders sometimes spoke Arabic and they sometimes intermarried with Muslims. They copied Muslim customs in housing, clothing, bathing, even abstaining from eating pork and beginning to veil their own women. Muslim craftsmen made artifacts for the upper echelons of Crusader society. But on the Muslim side, it has to be said that Crusaders were viewed with some justification of hapless, bumbling, ignorant and gauche. Dr. Carole Hillenbrand The Crusades then and Now Presentation Given in the House of Commons, CAABU
If crusades to the Levant were imperialistic, they were expressing a form of imperialism very different from the 19th-century variety, because it was governed by the need to regain or hold the ruined fragments of a cave in the middle of Jerusalem. For most crusaders there was no prospect of material gain, only great expenditure on enterprises that were arduous and dangerous. Christian holy war is abhorrent to us, but we have to accept that fact that our ancestors were attracted by a vibrant ideology, based on a coherent theology which to some extent constrained it. Crusades cannot be defined solely in terms of inter-faith relations as many of them were waged against opponents who were not Muslim, but, what- ever the theatre of war, an expedition could not be launched to spread Christianity or Christian rule, but had to be a defensive reaction to an injury perpetrated by another. Jonathan Riley-Smith Truth is the First Victim U.K. Times, Timesonline May 5, 2005
"The word "Crusade" now has a noble connotation. It is used to describe a brave struggle for a righteous cause. The actual history of the great Crusades in the East belies that interpretation. The Crusaders did indeed believe that they were carrying out God's will; but they were characterized by ignorance, intolerance and savagery. They set out to save Christendom; but to the Christians of the East they brought nothing but disaster. It can be said that Byzantium profited by the First Crusade, which did indeed help the Emperor to recover much of Anatolia more quickly than he could have managed alone. It is possible, too, to maintain that the existence of the Crusader states in the East served to divert Muslim attention from Constantinople. But the Second and Third Crusades did nothing for Byzantium except to create embarrassment and ill-will; and the Fourth Crusade dealt the Empire a wound from which full recovery was impossible. It is true that there were in fact no further Crusades specifically directed against the Greeks, the Sicilian Vespers having prevented what was planned to be a replica of the Fourth Crusade. Even though men from the West who fought against the Orthodox were promised by their religious authorities the same spiritual benefits as were ordained for those that fought against the infidel, in Greece itself relations between the lords of the Francocratia and their Greek neighbours were not always bad. There was social intercourse; there was often intermarriage. But in the background there was always the animosity created and encouraged by the religious authorities, an animosity felt especially by newcomers from the West, an animosity that was part of what the later Crusading spirit had become. All that is why, to me, "Crusade" is a dirty word. Steven Runciman, Greece and the Later Crusades From the New Griffon, A Gennadius Library Publication, American School of Classical Studies at Athens. Editor: Haris A. Kalligas, Director, Gennadius Library. Produced & Distrbuted by Potamos Publishers & Booksellers, Athens 2002.
The "blood libel" -- the belief that Jews used the blood of Christian children to make matzoh at Passover -- first surfaced in England in 1191, when Richard Lion-Heart took the cross and prepared to lead the Third Crusade. The image of the Jew as the child-slayer revealed an almost Oedipal Christian fear of the parent faith. When Hitler started his modern crusade against European Jewry, the ground had been prepared by a millennium of Christian anti-Semitism. Karen Armstrong, The Crusades, Even Now New York Times Magazine, 1999