The Crusades and their Perception

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Michael16

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I’ve been reading Weidenkopf’s book, The Glory of the Crusades. It’s a really good book that reaffirms for me that the Crusades really were the right wars to fight. In this book, he wrote something that I didn’t know: That is was Protestants and Enlightenment writers that spread the lie they were wars fought by supposedly greedy and superstitious men against supposedly noble, tolerant and peace loving Muslims.

I think they were the right wars to fight as they were fought for the Faith and against Muslim aggression against the Christian Byzantine Empire, to recover lost Christian lands and to stop the harassment of Christian pilgrims to the Holy Land.

Don’t get me wrong: There were brutalities on both sides and that not all the crusaders were saints. I’m not naive or racist. I’m just saying that the Crusades were much maligned by hostile critics of the Church and people afraid to not look politically correct.

Just saying: I think Weidenkopf set the record straight and Catholics don’t have to hide from them anymore.

I’d like to know what you guys think about the Crusades and why.
 
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Steven Runciman’s three-volume History of the Crusades, published in the 1950s, was extremely influential in determining the sharply critical view generally held in the West. Runciman seems to have allowed his broadly pro-Eastern and anti-Western prejudices to run away with him to some extent, according to a biography that was reviewed in First Things two years ago:

 
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Mistakes were made yes. But the reality is when Muslims took over Jerusalem they banned Christian pilgrims. To me, something good came out of it in that Christians continue to have access to the Holy Land as pilgrims.
 
From two minutes research it looks like Weidenkopf teaches church history at Christendom College. Good for him. At least we know his point of view! As a Medievalist, I have to say I’ve never heard of him, and I have a library of something like 300 books on the Crusades and attend an annual conference where Crusades are a staple topic. In other words, he’s a fringe figure in this field at best.

For me, the bottom line is read some actual historians of the Crusades: and there are many. You could start with Thomas Madden (who gave Weidenkopf’s book a nice blurb on Amazon), Jonathan Riley-Smith, Jean Richard, Christopher Tyerman, and of course the 6 volume History of the Crusades published by U. of Wisconsin.
 
Whatever the best political theory is, deserves to have wars waged for it, and during the Crusades, Christendom was the best political theory, and today it’s classical liberalism.
 
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