Crusades Why did they happen?

[wwolverine]

What would be the situation of modern world if there were no cursades?

As to my understanding, Crusades were initially started to stop the muslim conquest of holy lands, and if they were not there, than not only holy lands but also many european Christian lands would have become Islamic.

Do share your views

 

[CDNowak]

Well, with the Crusades Islam still managed to overwhelm the Byzantine Empire, Including much of Hungary. If they hadn’t been pushed back, they may well have succeeded in taking Italy, and on into Germany and France.

If The Spanish Reconquista had also not taken place, Christianity may have been limited to Northern Europe (and perhaps the Isles). (On a positive note, the Reformation would probably not have happened).

 

[viveret]

Of the Crusades, only the first was a military success.
The rest were abysmal failures.
If it proves anything, it proves that Christianity does not spread well by the sword.

It is also important to remember that wherever Muslims occupied in Europe, they raided Christian kingdoms for slaves.

Christians living under Muslim rule were

1. required to wear specific clothing items that marked them out.
2. forbidden to ride horses.
3. forbidden to carry swords.
4. subject to punitive taxes.
5. subject to Sharia law.

Muslims complain endlessly about Christian intolerance in the Middle Ages.
It rings hollow to me.
They also complain about the Crusades, and Westerners are so fond of apologizing for them.
I won’t apologize for the Crusades.
Compared with casualties and atrocities of the Muslim wars of conquest waged all over the Mediterranean and North Africa in the Middle Ages, the Crusades were light.
They were not intended to be conquests of the entire Mediterranean region.
The Muslim conquests were wars of conquest, long-term occupation and oppression.

 

[tomarin]

What would be the situation of modern world if there were no cursades?

The only concrete thing I can think of is that there might be more goodwill today between the Eastern Orthodox and the Catholic Church. Also, it might have taken Europe longer to discover the luxury products such as pepper and fine silk that made life a little nicer for the aristocracy.

Added: and our language would be impoverished: Campus Crusade for Chirst would have to be known by some other name.

 

[Scoobyshme]

What would be the situation of modern world if there were no cursades?

As to my understanding, Crusades were initially started to stop the muslim conquest of holy lands, and if they were not there, than not only holy lands but also many european Christian lands would have become Islamic.

Do share your views

No, the Crusades weren’t started to stop Muslim conquest of the Holy Lands. That happened long before the Crusades started. Within the first 100 years of the start of Islam, they had overrun all of Catholic North Africa and most of the Middle East. They continued attacking for centuries before the Crusades, getting at one point to the middle of Europe before being pushed back! They also attacked Rome and the Vatican, sacking the Vatican and digging up the bodies of some dead Saints and burning them. (The Church’s response to this was to build a wall around Rome.)

Eventually, an Imam in Jerusalem decreed that Christians could no longer make pilgrimages to the Holy Land, and THAT was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

You can hear a lot more detail about all this in the two audio .mp3 files on Church History here:

alabamacatholicresources.com/Downloads/Church_History_1000-1325AD%2001.mp3

alabamacatholicresources.com/Downloads/Church_History_1000-1325AD%2002.mp3

 

[viveret]

I do know that Western resentment of Muslim encroachment had reached a very high pitch by the 12th century.
The point is that the Crusades did not come out of nowhere.
They were a response to frightful conditions.
Hostility begged for hostility in this case.

 

[Justin1982]

the-american-catholic.com/2010/08/26/enough-is-enough-the-crusades-the-jihad-are-not-equivalents/

This one of the better representations of the Crusades that I’ve seen.

 

[SnakeMauler]

ewtn.com/library/HOMELIBR/HERESY4.TXT

 

[Dale_M]

If it proves anything, it proves that Christianity does not spread well by the sword.

hmm… I don’t know very much about the Crusades, but European colonialism (imposed by steel and gunpowder) was very effective in spreading Christianity in Latin America. Granted, it was less effective in parts of the world where traditional government was not displaced, simply superimposed over. In those cases, Christian missionaries were merely the velvet glove providing social services.

Its also worth rememberng the forced boarding school programs of the US, Canada and Australia which sought to strip Native children of their culture, in part by making them Christian. As Richard H. Pratt infamously said, their mission was to “kill the Indian, and save the man.”

 

[Sam_777]

What would be the situation of modern world if there were no cursades?

As to my understanding, Crusades were initially started to stop the muslim conquest of holy lands, and if they were not there, than not only holy lands but also many european Christian lands would have become Islamic.

Do share your views

I don’t believe even if all the European countries were occupied by Islam during that time it would last till now, a good example when we look at the history of Islam and how it collapsed many times since its establishment.

 

[Petergee]

Of the Crusades, only the first was a military success.
The rest were abysmal failures.

That’s an exagerration. Most of the other 8 Crusades had mixed succes and failure.

If it proves anything, it proves that Christianity does not spread well by the sword.

The Crusaders never aimed to spread Christianity by the sword. Their aim was merely to protect Christian (and Jewish) pilgrims to the Holy Land from being murdered by Moslem thugs.
It was only more than 150 years after the Crusades had begun, that St Francis of Assisi was the first to suggest that it would be a good idea for Christians to try to convert the Moslems living in the Crusader states.

Muslims complain endlessly about Christian intolerance in the Middle Ages.
It rings hollow to me.
They also complain about the Crusades, and Westerners are so fond of apologizing for them.
I won’t apologize for the Crusades.
Compared with casualties and atrocities of the Muslim wars of conquest waged all over the Mediterranean and North Africa in the Middle Ages, the Crusades were light.
They were not intended to be conquests of the entire Mediterranean region.
The Muslim conquests were wars of conquest, long-term occupation and oppression.

Actually from the 14th to the early 20th century, very few Moslems had even heard of the Crusades. The Moslems did not even have a name for these wars. Those Moslems who knew about them regarded them as a trivial temporary setback in the overall history of Islam’s military conquest of a vast area of the world.

It was only in the 20th century that anti-colonialists (mostly from the USA) in western countries told the Moslems the preposterous lie that the Crusades were a precursor to 19th century European colonialism, and insinsted that moslems ought to resent them and that Christians/Europeans ought to apologise for them.

Moslems conquered three quarters of Christendom before the Cruisdaes began. After the Crusades ended, the Moslems conquered the Byzantine Empire and all of south eastern Europe which they ruled for centuries.

If the Crusades had not happened, the few remaining Christians would have been back in the catacombs.

 

[autdrew]

hmm… I don’t know very much about the Crusades, but European colonialism (imposed by steel and gunpowder) was very effective in spreading Christianity in Latin America. Granted, it was less effective in parts of the world where traditional government was not displaced, simply superimposed over. In those cases, Christian missionaries were merely the velvet glove providing social services.

Its also worth rememberng the forced boarding school programs of the US, Canada and Australia which sought to strip Native children of their culture, in part by making them Christian. As Richard H. Pratt infamously said, their mission was to “kill the Indian, and save the man.”

If the question is about the reasons behind the Crusades, what is the purpose of bringing up bad things done by Christians? We KNOW that, we have & should continue to be ashamed of some of those things. It has nothing to do with WHY the Crusades were waged sheesh! Everytime Muslim violence is brought up, someone says this stuff

 

[Petergee]

The only concrete thing I can think of is that there might be more goodwill today between the Eastern Orthodox and the Catholic Church.

A funny thing to say because the Crusades happened in response to a specific request from the Eastern Emperor and the Patriarch of Constantinople. After the Eastern Empire had suffered a massive defeat from the Moslems and lost most of its territory, it seemed the Empire itself was about to fall to them unless other Christians came to their aid.
The Crusades delayed the fall of Constantinople by 250 years.

It’s true that after the Pope had previously excommunicated them for attacking Christians instead of crusading, a band of renegade ex-crusaders, Venetians and mercenearies, who** had previously **formed part of the abortive Third Crusade, sacked Constantinople and set up their own state subject to the Venetian Republic, which caused great resentment by Eastern Christians. But this episode was not caused by the fact that there were such things as crusades. Venice was a powerful and wealthy state which sought to expand its empire in any way possible, and which was notorious for its disobedience to the pope.

Also, it might have taken Europe longer to discover the luxury products such as pepper and fine silk that made life a little nicer for the aristocracy.

Pepper and silk have been known and used in Europe since ancient times. And if you’re talking about the knowledge** how to produce** silk and pepper, Europeans didn’t discover those secrets until centuries after the last Crusade.

 

[Petergee]

hmm… I don’t know very much about the Crusades, but European colonialism (imposed by steel and gunpowder) was very effective in spreading Christianity in Latin America.
Granted, it was less effective in parts of the world where traditional government was not displaced, simply superimposed over. In those cases, Christian missionaries were merely the velvet glove providing social services.

Sorry but you have been taken in by a myth invented by anti-Catholics. The Catholic Church always opposed colonialism - the forced conquest, enslavement, murder, rape, armed threats and other mistreatment of non-European peoples, and the overthrowing of their governments, by European (nominal) Christians. Although unable to force the colonialists to desist completely, the Church did manage to protect the non-Europeans from the effects of colonialism to some extent. e.g. the Reduciones set up by the Jesuits in South America to enable the native races to govern themselves and resist the colonial encroachments of the Spanish and Portuguese.

Its also worth rememberng the forced boarding school programs of the US, Canada and Australia which sought to strip Native children of their culture, in part by making them Christian. As Richard H. Pratt infamously said, their mission was to “kill the Indian, and save the man.”

I don’t claim to be an expert on the situation in N America, but I know for a fact that in Australia, full-blood native children were never forced into boarding schools. Only mixed race children, almost invariably the children of a white father who had deserted his family, the children usuallly rejected by the mother’s community, were taken away to schools, and almost invariably with the mother’s permission. Some of the mothers may have not realised what they were agreeing to, and certainly they were usually very sad to be separated from their children, but they usually saw no other choice. These children were generally educated with the view that they would take their place in the general society as their own community had rejecetd them, and until the 1930s it appreaded that the aboriginal races were gradually dying out (and no it wasn’t because white people were systematically killing them.)
Certainly Christians sought to convert Australian aborigines, in obedience to Christ’s command to convert all the races of the world. And it’s true that often Christian missionaries in the 19th and early 20th centuries inadvertently or deliberately discouraged alements of the native culture other than those which were specifically anti-Christian (e.g. “payback” violence, superstitious beliefs) which they very rightly discouraged. Some missionaries though actively encouraged the preservation of native culturesm eg they painstakingly invented written forms for native languages. “Stripping native children of their culture” was never the primary aim of anyone in Australia.

 

[Dale_M]

If the question is about the reasons behind the Crusades, what is the purpose of bringing up bad things done by Christians? We KNOW that, we have & should continue to be ashamed of some of those things. It has nothing to do with WHY the Crusades were waged sheesh! Everytime Muslim violence is brought up, someone says this stuff :

Autdrew, I was responding to another member’s comment that Christianity does not spread well by the sword.

The Catholic Church always opposed colonialism - the forced conquest, enslavement, murder, rape, armed threats and other mistreatment of non-European peoples, and the overthrowing of their governments, by European (nominal) Christians

It is true that some important persons in the Church spoke out against the abuses of indigenous people and helped to ameliorate their suffering. However, my point was not that the Catholic Church was complicit in abuse. It was that Christianity spread via colonialism. The activity and success of missions and missonaries was in large part due to the subjugation of the territories by European powers. Indeed, becoming Christian was sometimes seen as a way to avoid being abused by the colonialists.

I don’t claim to be an expert on the situation in N America, but I know for a fact that in Australia, full-blood native children were never forced into boarding schools. Only mixed race children, almost invariably the children of a white father who had deserted his family, the children usuallly rejected by the mother’s community, were taken away to schools, and almost invariably with the mother’s permission. Some of the mothers may have not realised what they were agreeing to, and certainly they were usually very sad to be separated from their children, but they usually saw no other choice. These children were generally educated with the view that they would take their place in the general society as their own community had rejecetd them, and until the 1930s it appreaded that the aboriginal races were gradually dying out (and no it wasn’t because white people were systematically killing them.)

Thank you for correcting my misunderstanding of what happened in Australia.

 

[Petergee]

It is true that some important persons in the Church spoke out against the abuses of indigenous people and helped to ameliorate their suffering. However, my point was not that the Catholic Church was complicit in abuse. It was that Christianity spread via colonialism. The activity and success of missions and missonaries was in large part due to the subjugation of the territories by European powers. Indeed, becoming Christian was sometimes seen as a way to avoid being abused by the colonialists.

That may or may not be true as a very broad generalisation. But even there it is disputable, e.g. most former European colonies in Africa had only a very small proportion of Christians in the native population at the time they attained independence - the massive growth in Christianity occurred AFTER independence. And there are countries like Korea - never colonised by Europeans, but Christians are now one-third of the population and rising.

However it is a very different thing from what you said earlier, that:

European colonialism (imposed by steel and gunpowder) was very effective in spreading Christianity in Latin America. Granted, it was less effective in parts of the world where traditional government was not displaced, simply superimposed over. In those cases, Christian missionaries were merely the velvet glove providing social services.

• You said that colonialism itself dspread Christianity by force of steel and gunpowder, the “iron fist” camouflaged by Christian missionaries’ “velvet glove”. This is quite a false distortion of history, which is not true of any country.

 

[Nooj]

I don’t claim to be an expert on the situation in N America, but I know for a fact that in Australia, full-blood native children were never forced into boarding schools. Only mixed race children, almost invariably the children of a white father who had deserted his family, the children usuallly rejected by the mother’s community, were taken away to schools, and almost invariably with the mother’s permission. Some of the mothers may have not realised what they were agreeing to, and certainly they were usually very sad to be separated from their children, but they usually saw no other choice. These children were generally educated with the view that they would take their place in the general society as their own community had rejecetd them, and until the 1930s it appreaded that the aboriginal races were gradually dying out (and no it wasn’t because white people were systematically killing them.)

This is a whitewash (no pun intended). Children were forcibly taken away from parents for no other reason than that their parents were Aboriginal, and because the government wanted to assimilate these children into the ‘superior’ white culture. Their community and most importantly their family never rejected them, it’s more like the government rejected the idea that mixed race children should stay and be brought up in the homes of what they thought was an inferior and dying race.

The permission of parents in the instances where they were given, were given under duress or in total ignorance of what was going to be done to their children. This was a racist policy that we apologised for only a couple of years ago. It shocks me to see that the details of the greatest crime our country ever committed are still ‘fuzzy’ in the minds of some Australians, when this subject is taught in schools across the country.

 

[tomarin]

A funny thing to say because the Crusades happened in response to a specific request from the Eastern Emperor and the Patriarch of Constantinople. After the Eastern Empire had suffered a massive defeat from the Moslems and lost most of its territory, it seemed the Empire itself was about to fall to them unless other Christians came to their aid.
The Crusades delayed the fall of Constantinople by 250 years.

Maybe so, but my point is that bad behavior by Western crusader knights including but not limited to the sacking and looting of Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade did not make a good impression on the Eastern Orthodox and contributes to a sense of historical grievance that they hold against Rome even today. If you don’t believe me you can ask them!

Pepper and silk have been known and used in Europe since ancient times. And if you’re talking about the knowledge** how to produce** silk and pepper, Europeans didn’t discover those secrets until centuries after the last Crusade.

My point was that the Crusades exposed Western Europeans to luxury goods that were unknown to them previously. It was a great stimulator of trade in goods and ideas and broadened the horizons of what had been a fairly parochial Western European culture.

 

[Petergee]

This is a whitewash (no pun intended). Children were forcibly taken away from parents for no other reason than that their parents were Aboriginal, and because the government wanted to assimilate these children into the ‘superior’ white culture.

Nonsense. That myth, invented by atheist white anthropology graduates in the 1970s, has long been exposed. No child was ever taken from his parents by Australian government authorities simply because his parents were aboriginal.

Their community and most importantly their family never rejected them,

Nonsense, their fathers rejected them and usually so did most or all of the rest of their family.

it’s more like the government rejected the idea that mixed race children should stay and be brought up in the homes of what they thought was an inferior and dying race.

No it’s more like the governments decided that, as their white fathers had shamefully deserted and rejecetd them, the least the government could do was to give them a better education and a chance to integrate in general society in a way which they never could in their mothers’ aboriginal communities.

The permission of parents in the instances where they were given, were given under duress or in total ignorance of what was going to be done to their children.

Yes, I already pointed that out.

This was a racist policy that we apologised for only a couple of years ago.

You may have apologised for this non-existent policy; I certainly did not. Exactly the same policy was applied at the time to white children whose fathers had not married them and/or had deserted them. If anything, white mothers were MORE likely to have their children taken with their “agreement” under duress or in ignorance - this was the only thing “racist” about the policy.

The ustralian Prime Minister last year said “sorry” to aborigines for all the wrongs done to them by non-aboriginals since 1788. Insofar as this included an implicit “apology” for taking half-caste children from unwed aboriginal mothers, this was exactly reflected in a similar apology which the same PM gave earlier this year to non-aboriginals for the same policy which was applied to them in just the same way.

Actually the number of aboriginal and part-aboriginal children removed from their parents in the last decade is greater than the number in any other decade of Australia’s history. No real protests about that, because it’s obvious that the removals have nothing to do with racism, and everything to do with wanting to do what’s best for the child, which has always been the intention. Indeed those part-aboriginal children who were removed, today constitute nearkly all of the best educated and most articulate leaders of the aboriginal people. The policy was overall an outstanding success, though no doubt accompanied by a lot of heartache.

It shocks me to see that the details of the greatest crime our country ever committed are still ‘fuzzy’ in the minds of some Australians, when this subject is taught in schools across the country.

It saddens me too, but not shocks me since I know how much disinformation is being pulped out there my vested interests.