The Foundation and Legacy of the Medieval Christian Crusades

In an effort to unite the fractured Christian empire of a Rome-centered, Latin-based Catholicism and a Constantinople-centered, Cyrillic-based Eastern Orthodox, Pope Urban II encouraged Christian Crusaders to "recapture" the Holy Land in his announcement at the Council of Clermont in 1095. Additionally, Urban was concerned about the continuing lack of support to the Church by feuding European princes and kings. This coupled with the rise to power of Seljuk Turks who interfered with the pilgrimage of Christians to the Holy Land led Urban to promise spiritual favors to warriors who fought in the name of the Cross. The resulting efforts to recapture and hold the Holy Land created decades of deadly conflict (1096-1291) between Christian invaders and people who lay in the path of the Crusaders' trail to Jerusalem via Constantinople, a deadly legacy that lasts to today.

Peter the Hermit, the French priest and leader of the failed First Crusade of 1096, was to murder scores of Jews in Worms, Germany on his way to "liberate" the Holy Land in the eleventh century. This murderous passion, fomented during the Crusades, would be passed to the Western World as a shameful tradition of hatred of Jewish people. Peter the Hermit's murders of Jews along the road to the Holy Land were the first of many to come pogroms in Europe. As Crusader scholar and theologian Karen Armstrong asserts, the murder of Jews was not the intention of Pope Urban; the church policy toward Jews was that the Jews were involved in the execution of Christ and subsequently they were wicked people who had lost their link with God and therefore should be ignored and shunned by Christians, but their lives should be spared. However, it is clear that the Crusaders more than once rejected such mercy. Though bishops in Germany protected Jews by making efforts to hide them, the Crusaders were able to burn Torahs and destroy synagogues and whenever they found a Jew they presented them with a choice of baptism or death. Hitler's attempt to destroy the Jews in the twentieth century was fueled by what Armstrong calls "submerged crusading myths."[1]

Another group of Crusaders entered Jerusalem in 1099 and slaughtered 40,000 of its Jewish and Muslim inhabitants, people who had lived together in peace for 460 years. The massacre was similar to the Roman invasion of Jerusalem in the first century. Subsequent waves of Crusaders resulted in a temporary holding of Jerusalem and Constantinople throughout the many decades until at least 1291.

Knights Hospitaller and Knights Templar

Two orders of Knights came from the crusades. The Knights Hospitaller of St. John of Jerusalem was originally a religious order that, with the permission of Muslims, established a hospital in Jerusalem in 1070 to care for sick Christian pilgrims. After the success of the 1099 Crusade, they wore a black habit with a white eight-pointed Maltese cross and became more militaristic. Eventually they captured the island of Rhodes in 1310 and retained it until 1522 when they were given the island of Malta, which they controlled until Napoleon conquered it. An English branch of the order was revived in 1830 and continues the care of the sick.

With the successful capture of Jerusalem and the placement of the French Crusader Godfrey of Bouillon as the first Defender of the Holy Sepulchre (effectively the first of a line of "Kings of Jerusalem"), a knight named Hugues de Payens established the order of Knights Templar whose purpose was to protect Christians in their quest to travel to Jerusalem. They became a powerful group of knights that accumulated vast amounts of wealth throughout Europe. Though a knight could not own material wealth, the order could and the Holy See as well as European monarchy rewarded the knights with control of valuable land. Their power became a concern to France's King Phillippe IV who sought their eradication through charges of idol worshipping, homosexuality, and other sins. In 1314, the end came to the Templars when Jacque deMolay, the Templar leader, was burned to death in front of Paris' Notre Dame cathedral.[2]

Ever since the death of their spiritual head, the Templars have become subjects of legend and mystery. Their spirit, if not their physical presence, has been part of various European battles and searches for riches as rare as the Holy Grail itself.

Counter-Crusade and a Bizarre Plan for Peace

The philosophy of Islam clashed with Christianity. Muslims believed Christians to be unbelievers in the deity of the prophet Mohammed, thus they were polytheists, idolaters, and blasphemers of the one true religion as defined in the holy Koran. "In the Name of God... by the Troops shall the unbelievers be driven towards Hell, until when they reach it, its gates shall be opened... for just is the sentence of punishment on the unbelievers. . ." - Koran, XXXIX

The Muslim general Saladin struck back at the Christian knights in 1187 and killed thousands of knights and foot soldiers in the Horns of Hattin battle near the Sea of Galilee. The knights traveled with the Bishop of Acre who controlled one of the most sacred relics in Christendom, the remnants of what was believed to be Christ's True Cross found by Constantine's mother Helena in her travels to the Holy Land sometimes after 312 A.D. After the defeat of the Crusaders, Saladin had the True Cross stuck upside down on a lance and sent to Damascus never to be heard of again. The shocking news that the King of Jerusalem, Guy of Lusignan, was defeated by Saladin's Auyybid dynasty allegedly killed Pope Urban III. Captured knights and soldiers who did not convert to Islam were beheaded by order of Saladin. Saladin declared that kings don't kill kings. With this promise he sent Guy of Lusignan to Damascus who was eventually ransomed.

Violence was the rule in the Crusaders' quest and the Muslim's counter attacks, but England's celebrated Richard the Lionhearted tried a creative use of European diplomacy when he suggested that his sister Joanna marry the Sultan Saladin's brother al-Adil, creating a Christian-Muslim alliance that could rule Jerusalem in peace.[3] The offering was thought to be bizarre by everyone but Richard. [4]

Attacking Constantinople and the Cathars

In 1204, Crusaders, without the permission of the pope, sacked Constantinople, destroying libraries and art, which led Pope Innocent III to comment, "How is the Greek Church to be brought back into the ecclesiastical Church . . . when it sees the Latins as an example of perdition and works of darkness so that now the Greek Church, with good reason, detests Latins more than dogs?" The validity of the Crusades was questioned as the bitterness between the two churches grew, and Innocent's outrage over the 1204 attack of Constantinople was short-lived as he offered eternal salvation and land to anyone who would take up a crusade against the heretical Cathars of France.

Catharism was the dominant religion in southern France from 1150-1300. It was based on simple living, the belief of reincarnation, and non-violence to any animal. The Catholics interpreted the Cathars' belief that Jesus was the spiritual and not the literal Son of God as heretical. In 1139, the Catholic Church officially condemned the Cathars. Following the 1208 pronouncement from Pope Innocent III that eternal salvation as well as land and property would be granted those who took up a crusade, the Albigensian Crusade, against the Cathars. This crusade resulted in a 30-year slaughter of Cathars in the Languedoc region of France (roughly west of Marseille along the Mediterranean coast and east of the Pyrenees).

The pathetic children's crusade was undertaken in 1212 when a huge group of European children, with an average age of 12, began a march to the Holy Land. The crusade ended within a year because most died of hunger or were kidnapped and sold into slavery, many Crusaders throughout the decades being victims to slavers in the Balkans. However, a study in 1977 by historian Peter Raedts reported that this crusade was likely populated by a variety of people and ages, nevertheless, the result was no less sad and hopeless.[5] The end of the Crusades in 1291 did not create a peace for the region.

The Modern Crusade

The Gulf War (aka Operation Desert Storm), the United States' and its allies' operation against Sadam Hussein's unprovoked attack on Kuwait in 1990-91, was answered by many in the Arab world with the cries of "al-Slibiyyah" - "A Crusade!"

In February of 1998, Al Qaeda ring leader Osama bin Laden said, "First, for over seven years the United States has been occupying the lands of Islam in the holiest of places, the Arabian Peninsula, plundering its riches, dictating to its rulers, humiliating its people, terrorizing its neighbors, and turning its bases in the Peninsula into a spearhead through which to fight the neighboring Muslim peoples . . .

"All these crimes and sins committed by the Americans are a clear declaration of war on God, his messenger and Muslims . . . jihad [holy war] is an individual duty if the enemy destroys the Muslim countries . . .

"On that basis, and in compliance with God's order, we issue the following fatwa [holy decree] to all Muslims: The ruling to kill the Americans and their allies -- civilians and military -- is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it, in order to liberate the al-Aqsa Mosque [Jerusalem] and the holy mosque [Mecca] from their grip . . ."

In May of 1998, bin Laden announced that he had created a new sacred terror group, International Islamic Front for JihadAgainst the Jews and Crusaders, whose main purpose was to simply kill any Jew or Christian. Bin Laden encouraged all Muslims to kill Americans and any Christians who "conquered" Muslim lands.

After the September 11, 2001 attacks on America, President George W. Bush declared a "crusade against terrorism." His use of the word "crusade" was not lost on many Europeans.

Soheib Bensheikh, Grand Mufti of the mosque in Marseille, France, said of the powerful word "crusade" that its use " . . . was most unfortunate. It recalled the barbarous and unjust military operations [by Christian knights] against the Muslim world."

Bush countered by saying that "the face of terror is not the true faith of Islam. That's not what Islam is all about." A September 2001 editorial in Paris' Le Monde newspaper declared, "If this 'war' takes a form that affronts moderate Arab opinion, if it has the air of a clash of civilizations, there is a strong risk that it will contribute to Osama bin Laden's goal: a conflict between the Arab-Muslim world and the West." [6]

End Notes

[1] Armstrong, Karen. Holy War, Anchor, New York, 2001, p. 71.

[2] http://www.templarhistory.com/who.html

[3] Armstrong, Karen. Holy War, Anchor, New York, 2001, p. 267.

[4] Armstrong, Karen. Holy War, Anchor, New York, 2001, pp. 271-274.

[5] Raedts, Peter. "The Children's Crusade of 1212," Journal of Medieval History, v. 3 (1977).

[6] Ford, Peter. "Europe Cringes At Bush 'Crusade' Against Terrorists," Christian Science Monitor, September 19, 2001.