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A New Look at the Crusades
With H. C. Felder
www.GivingAnAnswer.org
Road Map
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Introduction
Traditional View
Historical View
Evaluation of Views
Summary
©Copyright H. C. Felder
www.GivingAnAnswer.org
Road Map
•
Introduction
©Copyright H. C. Felder
www.GivingAnAnswer.org
Introduction
• What were the Crusades?
- That depends on the perspective of the teller
» There is a traditional politically correct, yet
historically inaccurate view
» There is a politically incorrect, yet historically
accurate view
- This presentation will present both views and
make the case for the politically incorrect, yet
historically accurate view
- Covers only the first Crusades
©Copyright H. C. Felder
www.GivingAnAnswer.org
Road Map
•
•
Introduction
Traditional View
©Copyright H. C. Felder
www.GivingAnAnswer.org
Traditional View
Background
Example of Christian
intolerance
• “On the eve of the second
Christian millennium, the
Crusaders massacred some
thirty thousand Jews and
Muslims in Jerusalem,
turning the thriving Islamic
holy city into a stinking
charnel house. For at least
five months the valleys and
ditches around the city were
filled with putrefying corpses,
©Copyright H. C. Felder
www.GivingAnAnswer.org
Traditional View
Background
Example of Christian
intolerance
• which were too numerous for
the small number of
Crusaders who remained
behind after the expedition to
clear away, and a stench
hung over Jerusalem, where
the three religions of
Abraham had been able to
coexist in relative harmony
under Islamic rule for nearly
five hundred years.”
(Armstrong, 2005)
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Traditional View
Background
©Copyright H. C. Felder
• “The Crusaders marched
across Europe to the Middle
East. Once there, they
pillaged and murdered
Muslim and Jewish men,
women and children
indiscriminately, and forced
the survivors to convert to
Christianity….They were the
setting for the world's first
mass killings, and are a blot
on the history of the Catholic
Church, Europe and Western
civilization.” (Spencer, 2005)
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Traditional View
Motivations
Church Power grab
• Christianity “rallied an
increasingly dissident society
against perceived enemies,
instigating attacks upon
Muslims, Eastern Orthodox
Christians and Jews”
(Ellerbe,1995)
• “In the roughly 200 years of
crusades, thousands, if not
millions, were killed.”
(Ellerbe,1995)
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Traditional View
Motivations
Forced Muslim Conversion
• “Far from gaining converts to
the Roman Catholic Church,
the crusades spread a bitter
animosity that still lingers
today” (Ellerbee, 68)
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Traditional View
Legacy
Reason for current relations
between Middle East and the West
• “Indeed, in the first Crusade,
when the Christian soldiers took
Jerusalem, they first burned a
synagogue with three hundred
Jews in it, and proceeded to kill
every woman and child who
was Muslim on the Temple
mound…I can tell you that that
story is still being told today in
the Middle East and we are still
paying for it.” (Bill Clinton)
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Traditional View
Legacy
Blamed for 9/11
• “When Osama bin-Laden
issued his Declaration of
Jihad on February 23, 1998,
he did so against the “Jews
and Crusaders” (Madden,
2005)
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Traditional View
Legacy
Taught Muslims to be Warlike
• The BBC/A&E documentary
The Crusades (1995) hosted
by Terry Jones claims that
the Islamic world was a place
of complete peace before the
crusaders arrived and taught
the Muslims to be warlike
(Madden 2005)
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www.GivingAnAnswer.org
Road Map
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Introduction
Traditional View
Historical View
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Historical View
Background
Rise of Muhammad and Islam
• Lived from 570-632 A.D.
• “That Islam sees the world as
an open-ended conflict
between the Land of Peace
(Dar al-Islam) and the Land
of War (Dar al-Harb) is the
most important legacy of
Muhammad” (Trifkovic,
51,2002)
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Historical View
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Historical View
King Alexius I Comnenus
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Pope Gregory VII
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Historical View
Nature of the Crusades
• Pope Urban II responded to
the call and set August 15,
1096, as the departure date
for the armies of the
crusades (Madden, 13)
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Historical View
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Historical View
• Nature of the Crusades
- “By the standards of the time, adhered to by both
Christians and Muslims, the crusaders would have
been justified in putting the entire population of
Jerusalem to the sword…It is true that many of the
inhabitants, both Muslims and Jews were killed in the
fray. Yet many were also allowed to purchase their
freedom or were simply expelled from the city. Later
stories of the streets of Jerusalem coursing with
knee-high rivers of blood were never meant to be
taken seriously. Medieval people know such a thing
to be an impossibility. Modern people, unfortunately,
often do not.” (Madden, 2005)
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Historical View
Nature of the Crusades
• On August 11th, the crusaders
took Ascalon and wiped out
the entire Egyptian force,
securing the Holy Land
(Madden, 2005)
• At this point, most of the
crusaders returned home
• Christians and Muslims lived
side-by-side in peace for
nearly 200 years (Madden,
2005)
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Historical View
Nature of the Crusades
• In 1187, the great cities fell
to the Muslim leader Saladin
culminating with the fall of
Jerusalem on October 2nd
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Historical View
• Motivations
- Turn back Muslim aggression
» “Within a century, Arab Muslims had conquered
Persia, Egypt, and Syria” (Madden, 2005)
» When the Muslim forces originally exploded into
Byzantine lands Christians were too fragmented to
oppose Islam (Madden, 2005)
» “The crusade, first and foremost, was a war
against Muslims for the defense of the Christian
faith” (Madden, 2005)
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Historical View
• Motivations
- Act of Mercy
» The Christians of the East were suffering at the
hands of the Turks (Madden, 2005)
» In 1004, caliph Abu 'Ali al-Mansur al-Hakim (9851021) ordered “the destruction of churches, the
burning of crosses, and the seizure of church
property...Over the next ten years, thirty thousand
churches were destroyed, and untold numbers of
Christians converted to Islam simply to save their
lives. In 1009….he commanded that the Church of
the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem be destroyed,
along with several other churches.” (Spencer, 2005)
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Historical View
Motivations
Reclaiming Jerusalem
• Jerusalem is the most holy
city for Christianity
• “Jerusalem—the center of
the world, the focus of
God’s interventions in
history and a relic, since its
streets had been walked by
Christ and its ground had
soaked up Christ’s blood”
(Riley-Smith, 6, 1987)
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Historical View
Motivations
Personal
• “Knights were willing to make
profound sacrifices for the
crusade because it was in
their nature to do so…By
defending the church, they
defended all that was good
and true in the world. In
short, most noblemen who
joined the crusade did so
from a simple and sincere
love of god” (Madden, 2005)
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Historical View
• Motivations
- Personal
» “Each crusader took a pilgrim’s vow to reach the
Holy Sepulcher. He was a pilgrim, first and
foremost. The oath he swore was to God, not to
the pope or to any other man” (Madden, 2005)
» “A crusader received a remission from sins, just as
would a pilgrim who traveled to a holy shrine”
» “A crusader army was, in effect, a loosely
organized mob of soldiers, clergy and servants, and
followers heading in roughly the same direction for
roughly the same purposes. Once launched, it
could be controlled no more than the wind or the
sea.”(Madden, 2005)
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©Copyright H. C. Felder
Historical View
• Motivations
- Personal
• “Approximately 150,000 people across Europe responded
to Urban II's summons by donning the cross of the
pilgrim. The vast majority of these where poor, and
many were women and elderly (or both). "(Madden,
2005)
• “What is clearest in the documentary record is that the
vast majority of these knightly crusaders were not spare
sons but instead the lords of their estates. It was not
those with the least to lose who took up the cross, but
rather those with the most." (Riley-Smith, 1987)
• “The chief motivation was a genuine idealism” (RileySmith, 1987)
©Copyright H. C. Felder
www.GivingAnAnswer.org
Historical View
• Motivations
- Personal
• Very few crusaders remained in the Holy Land once their
vows were fulfilled (Madden, 2005)
• “When the Crusaders were victorious and established
kingdoms and principalities in the Middle East, they
generally let the Muslims in their domains live in peace,
practice their religion freely, build new mosques and
schools, and maintain their own religious tribunals”
(Spencer, 2005)
• “The Crusaders’ sack of Jerusalem was a heinous crime—
particularly in light of the religious and moral principles
they professed to uphold. However, by the military
standards of the day, it was not out of the ordinary”
(Spencer, 2005)
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Historical View
Legacy
Sir Steven Runciman’s History of the
Crusades (1951-1954)
• Has had the greatest impact
on current views
• A historian who used Sir
Walter Scott fictional work
The Talisman published in
1825 as his guide
• Portrayed the crusaders and
simpletons and barbarians
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Historical View
• Legacy
- The Muslim world was unaware of the
crusades until recently
» “As late as the seventeenth century the crusades
remained virtually unknown to the Muslim world”
(Madden, 2005)
» “The ‘long memory’ of the crusades in the Muslim
world is, in fact, a constructed memory—one in
which the memory is much younger than the event
itself” (Madden, 2005)
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Historical View
• Legacy
- The Muslim world was unaware of the
crusades until recently
» “For the vast majority of Muslims in Iraq, Iran,
Central Asia, Malaya, Afghanistan and India, they
were remote border incidents. It was only in the
twentieth century, when the West had become
more powerful and threatening, that Muslim
historians would become preoccupied by the
medieval Crusades” (Armstrong, 2002)
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Historical View
Legacy
No Real Connection to 9/11
• “When the Muslims finally
united they dispatched the
infidels and that was all. It is
not the crusades, then that
led to the attacks of
September 11, but the
artificial memory of the
crusades constructed by
modern colonial powers and
passed down by Arab
nationalists and Islamists.”
(Madden, 2005)
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Historical View
Legacy
©Copyright H. C. Felder
Muslims acted worse than Crusaders
• “Slaughters did occur in the
initial wave of the conquest:
during the Muslim invasion of
Syria in 634, thousands of
Christians were massacred; in
Mesopotamia between 635 and
642, monasteries were
ransacked and the monks and
villagers slain; in Egypt the
towns…were put to the sword.
The inhabitants of Cilicia were
taken into captivity. In Armenia,
the entire population of Euchaita
was wiped out.”
(Trifkovic, 2002)
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Historical View
Legacy
Muslims acted worse than Crusaders
• When the Muslim Ottoman
Empire sought to suppress
reforms of its Armenian
subjects between 1894-96
“Estimates of Armenian
victims murdered in this twoyear period range up to
300,000, with associated
destruction to livelihood and
many thousands forcibly
converted to Islam” (Riddell
& Cotterell, 2003)
©Copyright H. C. Felder
www.GivingAnAnswer.org
Road Map
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Introduction
Traditional View
Historical View
Evaluation of the Views
©Copyright H. C. Felder
www.GivingAnAnswer.org
Evaluation
• The current conception of the crusades is
based on modern prejudices that ignore
recent scholarship
» “Even before Runciman wrote his book, however,
professional historians had begun to discard the
projection of modern agendas onto the medieval
crusades, seeking instead to understand the
campaigns on their own terms and within their own
context….However, hundreds of scholarly books
and thousands of scholarly articles written have
thus far failed to move popular perceptions of the
crusades much beyond Runciman. “ (Madden,
2005)
©Copyright H. C. Felder
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Evaluation
• The historical perspective is based on
recent scholarship
» Thanks to the works of scholars like Jonathan
Riley-Smith, who analyzed large quantities of
documents relating to those who actually
participated in the crusades, we have a very
different picture of the Crusaders than the
popularized version
©Copyright H. C. Felder
www.GivingAnAnswer.org
Road Map
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•
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Introduction
Traditional View
Historical View
Evaluation of Views
Summary
©Copyright H. C. Felder
www.GivingAnAnswer.org
Summary
• The main purpose of the crusades was to
turn back Muslim aggression
• The majority of the people who
participated where sincere Christians who
volunteered out of a sense of duty to
Christ
• The current politically correct view of the
Crusades in inaccurate and based on antiChristian and anti-West bias
©Copyright H. C. Felder
www.GivingAnAnswer.org
Summary
• There is no connection between the
Crusades and hostilities between Islam
and the West today except those invented
by Muslims
• The acts of the Crusaders where not at all
out of line with the times and pales in
comparison to acts committed by Muslim
before and after the Crusades
©Copyright H. C. Felder
www.GivingAnAnswer.org
Bibliography
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Armstrong, Karen. Islam: A Short History. Modern Library ed. New York:
Modern Library, 2002. Kindle Electronic Edition.
Ellerbe, H. (1995). The dark side of Christian history. San Rafael, CA.:
Morningstar Books.
Madden, Thomas F. The New Concise History of the Crusades. Updated ed.
Lanham, Md.: National Book Network, 2005.
Riddell, Peter G., and Peter Cotterell. Islam in Context: Past, Present, and
Future. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2003.
Spencer, Robert. The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades.
Lanham, MD: National Book Network, 2005. Kindle Electronic Edition.
———. The Truth about Muhammad: Founder of the World's most Intolerant
Religion. Washington, DC: Regnery Pub., 2006. Kindle Electronic Edition.
Riley-Smith, J. (1987). The Crusades: A short history. New Haven: Yale
University Press.
Trifkovic, Serge. The Sword of the Prophet: Islam: History, Theology, Impact
on the World. Boston, Mass.: Regina Orthodox Press, 2002.
©Copyright H. C. Felder
www.GivingAnAnswer.org
The End