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The modern state of Israel has much in common with the crusader states of the Middle Ages. When discussing history, it is usually dangerous to rely on analogies; but similar causes produce similar effects. There are many factors that existed in the Near East during the Middle Ages that are still constants today. The first constant is the economics of the region serving as a barrier between the Far East and Europe. The economic revival of Europe in the eleventh century increased the significance of the region. With the importance of oil, the region is just as valuable today as it was in the time of the crusades. Islam still provides the same social cohesion today as it did in the Middle Ages. Even in our modern times Jerusalem still possesses great religious significances, thus conflict in Jerusalem is going to be much more intense than if it were fought in any other region of the world.i Modern Israel and the Kingdom of Jerusalem were both founded on a desire to control Jerusalem. Both were successfully created because although they were greatly outnumbered, their Muslim Arab neighbors were so torn by internal strife that they were not able to effectively oppose the new non-Muslim state. After both countries were founded, the Arabs slowly coalesced in opposition to the new country.ii The Latin warriors, like Israeli soldiers today, were man for man more than a match for their foes; but once their enemies stopped fighting each other, the Crusader States were unable to fend off the Arab attacks on their own and were dependent on aid from Europe to keep their Muslim enemies as bay. This worked as long as the Crusades kept the interest of Europe. A similar relationship exists today between Jews in Israel and non Zionist Jews living around the world.iii The story of the Crusades began in 1095 when Pope Urban II called the first crusade to liberate the Holy Land from the rule of the infidel and restore it to Christian control. The Byzantine emperor asked for aid from the West, but the liberation of Jerusalem was only a pretext: what the emperor really wanted was troops to help him launch an offensive to regain Asia Minor, which was of greater strategic value to him. The emperor was surprised when instead of 10,000 professional soldiers, he received a fanatical army.iv Although, the absolution of sins promised by the pope for those who would give their lives to regain Jerusalem would become the mainstay of all the crusades and was what allowed the pope to raise the army and funds necessary for the crusades, the ultimate goal of Urban and his successors was not the founding of the Latin Crusader States under the overlordship of the pontiff, but ultimately what the popes desired was the re-unification of the Western and Eastern branches of Christianity under the Bishop of Rome.v It is quite unfortunate that the crusades led not to harmony within the body of Christ as was hoped, but to a permanent schism between Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox Christians when the crusaders destroyed the Byzantine Empire by sacking its capitol Constantinople during the fourth crusade.vi The Byzantine Empire was restored, but to keep from becoming the target of a crusade and to receive aid against the Ottoman Turks, the Byzantines had to agree to reunite with the Latin Church on terms dictated by Rome. This reunion was so unpopular with the majority of Greek Christians that they preferred to submit to the Muslim Turks instead of to the Latin Christians who were supposed to be offering them aid.vii In 1095 when the first crusade was preached, many Christians and Jerusalem itself had been under the control of Muslims for four and a half centuries without any calls for crusades. The spark that ignited the crusades was the destruction of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in 1095 by the Fatimid Caliph Al-Hakim biAmr Allah. The news of the outrage was carried back to Europe by returning pilgrims. viii The Al-Hakim persecution was fierce, but he was mad and the persecution stopped after his death. The non-Greek Christians in the Holy Land never requested military aid from the West although they were familiar with many Norman mercenaries. It is doubtful that they would have believed that the Latin Christians would have sent an army even if they had asked for one. When eastern scholars tried to explain the causes of the first crusade, the suffering of Christian, under Muslim control was never mentioned.ix Because of the religious fervor and expansionist tendencies of the Turks that were new converts to Islam, the Byzantine Empire was eroding in Asia Minor. The Emperor Alexis was much more concerned with stabilizing his borders in Asia-Minor and not in a thrust towards Jerusalem motivated by religious zealotry. Jerusalem was not as important to the Greek Christians as it was to the Latin Christians. The Greek Christians did make pilgrimages to Jerusalem, but not in any great numbers except from the neighboring areas. The Byzantine Emperor, believing it vain to ask for aid from the West to regain his territory, made the regaining control of the Holy Lands the central theme of his propaganda to the West. It is doubtful that the Patriarch of Constantinople cared anymore about the return of Jerusalem to the Empire than did the Emperor. It was in this manner that the Holy Land became the object of the Crusade when in reality it was Constantinople that was in the real danger of being destroyed by the Turks and not the Holy Seplecure x The Byzantines requested aid from the pope, but could not have predicted the form that it would take in the end. To the Byzantines, the idea that service of arms could also be a service to the Church was completely alien. The Byzantines had often been at war with the Muslims, and these wars were considered Holy Wars. The symbol of the cross and church officials often took part, but it was never believed in the Eastern Church that a soldier could lessen his penalty for sins by fighting in a war. The idea of crusading to make atonement for one’s sins was a papal innovation.xi The Emperor Alexus originally hoped for aid in the form of mercenaries that would serve strictly Byzantine purposes, and when he discovered the scheme that the pope had in mind was going to be subject to Rome and not Constantinople, he secured oaths from the first crusade’s leaders that they would not conquer and keep any territory that had formerly been part of the Byzantine Empire. The idea that the conquered territory would be restored to the Byzantine Empire was at odds with the pope’s plan. When Pope Urban II first preached the crusade at Clermont, he planned to set up a Latin power in Syria that would owe allegiance to the Holy See in Rome. The pope expected a newly restored Byzantine Empire to gratefully submit to Roman leadership. Soon after the first crusade started, the crusades became something that Urban II never had intended: a mass movement. Urban II had preached the crusade in West Central France and had his subordinates preach it in other places, but the message grew and spread so fast that the Church was losing control of it, thus by 1096 the papacy was trying to dam the flood of people eager to take part in the Crusade. It is true that there were priests in the crusade and the pope got his due for instigating the crusades, but the great barons that were taking part in the crusade were not going to leave the conduct of the war to anyone else.xii Crusaders with honorable motives that drew them to don the crusader cross founded the Kingdom of Jerusalem. The knights and peasants that took part in the crusades volunteered to take on great physical and fiscal hardships. The motives for doing so were religious fervor and the desire to worship in the Holy Land. Pope Urban II promised any crusader that met death on the battlefield that his sins would be forgiven, and that he would be assured entry into Heaven. Certainly there were those who joined with more temporal motives, such as political ambition, desire for adventure, and wealth. Others simply joined because it was the thing to do after listening to popular crusade preachers, the way some do after listening to a revival message.xiii However, the popular picture of landless younger sons of nobility without resources of their own departing for Jerusalem is incorrect. This may have been the case for the many peasants who had nothing and could only hope their lot would improve, but not so for the aristocratic knights. Many knights had to finance themselves, and they required a budget four or five times their annual income.xiv Once the crusade was under way the warriors endured many hardships. Shortages of water were such a problem that many died of thirst along the way. It was the crusaders’ faith in God that kept them going.xv Despite the good intentions of most of the individual crusaders, there were problems that contributed to the downfall of the Crusader States. The crusaders lacked coherence. Each crusader had taken an individual vow with the goal of benefiting their own soul. This did not necessarily make them willing submit to others, and as a result many cowardly deserted the host. A great deficiency for the Crusader States was that the crusades only offered a short-term fix to a long-term problem. The crusaders’ vows did not require the crusaders to remain in the Holy Land indefinitely. Despite their pride in their accomplishments, as soon as the vast majority of the crusaders fulfilled their vow to fight and visit the holy sites they returned to Europe, which the vast majority did. Without a large committed force that considered the Holy Land their permanent home, the Crusader States could never maintain a coherent and sustained defense against the marauding Muslim neighbor who surrounded the Crusader States and who also considered the Holy Land to belong to themxvi Much has been said about various international organizations set up in modern times that were supposed to bring an end to war and a beginning to world peace, but people rarely examine similar efforts from the past. The medieval papacy was one such attempt. Although no one would claim that the crusades were ever supposed to be the war to end all wars, the pope did broker agreements in Europe. Before the first crusade, there was a reform movement in Europe to end all the petty warfare that had plagued the continent for centuries. The pope, who was also a reformer, sought to strengthen the papacy to end wars in Europe and then channel all the energy that had been going into the Christians fighting Christians in Europe, to Christians fighting Muslims in Asia. The popes strengthened themselves when they them cast themselves as the champions of the common good by imposing peace in Europe during the crusades verses the petty nobles that would use any chance to increase their wealth and power at the expense of their neighbor or overlord. During the time of the crusades, the Roman Church had grown more powerful than any state in Europe. The Church could raise funds by direct taxation and thus raise and maintain its own armies. It had its own courts and could bring kings and peasants to justice in those courts. It addition it controlled all education and agencies of public information. The Church was also responsible for public health and charity.xvii Although the popes were able to organize and launch the crusades, they were unable to control them once they were underway.xviii The command in the field fell to the kings and nobles that often bickered amongst themselves for control. This failure to unify behind a single leader led to disaster on the battlefield, which weakened the popes that preached the crusades and not the Kings that led them. Traditionally, when a battle was lost, Christians seeking an answer would blame the defeat on their sins. This ceased to work and more reasonable answers were sought when the Holy Roman Emperor Fredrick II (who had been excommunicated by the church) led a successful crusade and Louis IX (the only French King to be a canonized a saint) led a failed crusade. Many blamed God for the failure. One French monk informed God that it would take a fool to follow Him into battle after the failure of Richard the Lion Heart.xix The Church maintained that the defeats in the crusades were a result of sins, but blamed the secular authorities specifically for their sins of vanity and greed, which caused them to put their own interest above those of the Holy Land.xx This explanation worked for some, but many blamed the papacy and not God for offering spiritual rewards to armies fighting the pope’s enemies in Europe. This meant the pope in the eyes of many in Europe was equally guilty of greed and vanity for putting his own interest above those of the Holy Land. Urban II had preached that Christians should stop fighting Christians and instead, fight the Muslims who were the enemy of all Christians. Leo IX and Gregory VII were busy trying to establish theocracy in Europe, so they abandoned this idea to fight wars in Europe against other Christians while the Muslims triumphed in the Holy Land.xxi The popes are not entirely to blame for the shifting of resources. Pope Innocent III was outraged that the fourth crusade was diverted away from the Holy Land, but once the Latin Empire was established he thought it was necessary to crusade against the Greek Christians that refused to acknowledge the supremacy of the pope. This continued to divert from the Holy Land even more important resources: soldiers and money.xxii The fifth crusade was another failure with the papacy taking the blame for the defeat. The papal legate Pelagius was quite headstrong and prone to squabbling with other leaders. The conduct of the pope’s representative raised much animosity. The churchman’s greed had led to the disaster in Egypt. This also raised the question, “Why was the church leading the army in battle anyway?” Guillaume le Clerc, a poet and social commentator of the era who was critical of the Pope observed the ancient distinction between warriors and priests: “Because of the legate who governed and led the Christians, everyone says in truth, we lost that city through folly and sin. We should be greatly reproached. For when the clergy take the function of leading knights, certainly that is against law. But the clerk should recite aloud from his scriptures and his psalms and let the knight go to his great battle-fields. Let him [the clerk] remain before his altars and pray for the warriors and abrive the sinners. Greatly should Rome be humiliated for loss of Damietta.xxiii As much criticism as there was directed against the pope for the misconduct of the crusades in The East, there was far more abuse leveled against the papacy for launching a crusade against the Albigensian heretics. There had long been widespread heresy in this region, and after the normal threats and punishments failed the pope launched a crusade against the heretics. In 1209, Innocent III offered the same spiritual rewards for those fighting heretics in Europe as those who fought infidels in the Near East. The pope was faced with the serious accusation of causing division between neighbors while the Muslims in the Holy Land rampaged unchecked. Many troubadours expressed this disgust of the popes, casting themselves as pious Christians who had no interest except that the Holy Sepulchre remain in Christian hands while they portrayed the popes as being more concerned with consolidating their control over Western Europe than they were in seeing the Holy Land delivered from the control of the Muslims.xxiv The popes justified their use of crusades against heretics in Europe on the grounds that crusades were to be used to protect the interest of Christendom no matter where the threat came from. The catch was the interest of Christendom just so happened to be the same as that of the papacy.xxv As questionable as the crusades against the heretics in France were, the political crusades in Italy and Germany were that much more questionable. Pope Gregory IX attacked the lands of the Holy Roman Emperor Fredrick II while the emperor was crusading in Palestine. Although full crusading indulgences were not granted and the soldier wore the sign of the keys of Peter and not the cross, resources were still being spent in Europe to attack the lands of an emperor who they should have been supporting in the Holy Land as he fought the Muslims. This political crusade and others like it hijacked the crusading movement to further the material aims of the popes. Taxes were collected all over Europe to increase the pope’s control of Italy. No matter how broad a view the pope and his cannon lawyers took of the crusades, the public at large did not consider crusading in Europe in the same regard that they held for crusading in the Holy Land. This broad view permanently damaged the prestige of the pope in the eyes of Christians at large. The first crusade was initiated because Pope Urban II wanted to bridge the gap to reunite the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox branches of Christianity. The desire for Christians to posses the land where Jesus and all the prophets lived eventually had the opposite effect. The schism was made irreparably wide when the crusaders, for the most part, kept for themselves the land that they were supposed to be re-conquering from the Muslims on behalf of the Greek Byzantine emperor, and then when the Latin crusaders sacked Constantinople in one of the most profitable and treacherous looting expeditions in the history of the world. As the crusades became an entrenched social institution, the papacy expanded the meaning of the crusades. Anything that threatened the papacy’s control over Europe was worthy of a crusade. First the popes, in the name of stamping out heresy, turned neighbor against neighbor in France while promising the forgiveness of sins for those who would participate in the debacle. The popes then used the crusades to consolidate their control over Italy at the expense of the temporal ruler, the Holy Roman Emperor all the while the Muslims were continually eating away at the Crusader States until nothing was left of them. While this diversion of resources sustained the popes’ control as the dominate power in Europe, it only lessoned the regard that Europe’s population had for the papacy. This contributed to the ultimate downfall of the popes as the leaders of Europe, just as the popes themselves debased the lofty goals of the crusades. Bibliography 1. Issawi, Charles. “Crusades and Current Crises in the Near East: A Historical Parallel.” International Affairs (Royal Institute of International Affairs 1944-) 33, no. 3 (July 1957): 269-279. 2. Charanis, Peter. “Aims of the Medieval Crusades and How They Were Viewed by Byzantium.” Church History 21 no. 2 (June 1952): 123-134. 3. Cahen, Claude. “An Introduction to the First Crusade.” Past and Present 6 (November 1954):6-30. 4. i Current crises 269,270 current crises 272 iii current crises 273 iv Aims Of Crusades 128 v Aims of Crusaders 124 vi Aims of Crusaders 130 vii Aims of Crusades 130-131 viii introduction 6 ix introduction 13 x introduction 16 xi introduction 20 xii introduction 26,27 xiii A Crusader 323-324 xiv Book 20 xv Crusader 326 xvi crusader 322 xvii international 7 xviii international 8 xix international 8, criticism 379 xx criticism 380 xxi criticism 380-381 xxii criticism 384 xxiii criticism 384-386 xxiv criticism 388 ii xxv Aims of Crusades 129