The Crusades

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GregoryPalamas

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To dispel the foolish notion sometimes expressed even here that the mean old Catholics were just picking on the helpless and kind hearted Muslims during the Middle Ages I offer…

A brief timeline of the Crusades with some commentary.

632 - Mohammed dies after consolidating the Arabic tribes and conquering most of the Arabian peninsula. While officially rejecting the notion of forced conversion, the general Muslim belief is that the world was to be subject to the control of Islam. Hence the House of Islam (Dar al-Islam), meaning those areas already under Muslim control was to be expanded into the House of War (Dar al-Harb), which meant all non-Muslim areas…

637 - Persia is essentially absorbed into the Muslim empire following the Battle of Kadisiya. The Muslim advance also claims the Byzantine lands of Syria and Egypt, though the bulk of Syria would later be temporarily reclaimed in the mid-tenth century.

638 - Jerusalem falls. Islamic armies continue to expand north and west.

711 - Muslim armies cross the Straits of Gibraltar into Spain.

712 - The Islamic forces armies destroy the resistance of the Christian Visigoths and reach the center of the Iberian Peninsula.

717 - Muslim armies attempt a failed siege of Constantinople.
circa 730 - The Muslim armies reach central France.

732 - The Muslim invasion of France is halted by Charles Martel at the Battle of Poitier.

1009 - Caliph Hakim destroys the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem.

1055 - The Seljuk Turks, now the dominant power in the Muslim world, cement their status by taking Baghdad. The previously tolerant Muslim stance regarding Christian pilgrimage is reversed, and the Holy Land is mostly closed off. Most pilgrimages from this point onward are in the form of large, armed bands of travellers.

1071 - The Byzantine army at Manzikert is destroyed, allowing Muslim expansion all the way to Nicea.

(continued)
 
1095 - Unable to hold off the continued pressure from Muslim forces, Byzantine Emperor Alexius Comnenus seeks assistance from Pope Urban II at the Council of Piacenza. Pope Urban responds by calling the First Crusade, offering indulgences to those who would take up the cross in a pilgrimage to free the Holy Land. The call for military aid to the East is immediately taken up by large hosts of poor knights and peasants who set off for the Holy Land without any real preparation or sanctioning by the Church. Upon arriving in Asia Minor (Turkey), they are slaughtered by the Turks. Another tragedy of the Peasants’ Crusade (as it is now called) is that some of its participants engaged in massacres of Jewish civilians. The Church condemns the oppression of Jews and makes efforts to halt this practice of persecution.

1096 - Frankish nobility, after several months of preparation, depart for the Holy Land in several large groups and by various routes. There are no kings participating, only nobility and a papal legate.

1099 - After much hardship, the armies of the First Crusade reach and take Jerusalem. Four Western states are established to administer the captured land: the County of Edessa, the Principality of Antioch, the County of Tripoli and the Kingdom of Jerusalem. Having completed their vows and pilgrimage, most of the crusaders return home, leaving the four Western states under-populated and largely undefended (problems that would remain for the bulk of their existence).

1144 - Islam, having again united under a single leader (Zengi), attack and capture Edessa. This initiates the Second Crusade, preached primarily by St. Bernard of Clairvaux, a Doctor of the Church, and led by King Louis VII of France and Emperor Conrad II of the Holy Roman Empire. This Crusade is a complete disaster. It also includes persecution of some Jewish populations at the urging of a monk named Radulf. These rogue elements are personally suppressed by St. Bernard.

1187 - Control of the Muslim empire passes to the brilliant military commander Salah el-Din (Saladin). Saladin traps the entire army of Jerusalem at the Horns of Hattin and destroys it, in addition to capturing the True Cross. By the end of the year, he controls the entire Kingdom with the exception of Tyre and portions of Antioch and Tripoli. This sparks the Third Crusade, led by King Richard I (the Lion-Heart) of England, King Phillip Augustus II of Spain, and the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick Barbarossa I. The Third Crusade re-captures much of the territory lost to Muslim conquest, but it cannot take Jerusalem.

1198 - Lotario de Conti is elected pope as Innocent III. He encourages the Fourth Crusade as a means of finishing the work of the Third.

1204 - The pope’s intentions are thwarted by a conspiracy between Venetian nobility and renegade Byzantine princes, resulting in the leaders of the Crusade sacking the Christian city of Constantinople. Pope Innocent declares this act an abomination and decrees a mass excommunication of the parties involved.

(continued)
 
1212- The so-called Children’s Crusade is birthed in an explosion of religious fervor among some groups of European adolescents. Innocent III, having repeatedly admonished non-combatants to pray, fast, and give alms for assisting sanctioned Crusades, tells the participants they must go home. Gathering to march across the sea to the Holy Land, the movement picks up some popular support but begins to break apart upon reaching Italy. It fully disbands when they reach the Mediterranean, as the sea did not dry up to allow them to cross.

1216 - Innocent III dies while organizing the Fifth Crusade. This was directed primarily towards Egypt, as Richard I had consistently argued that Jerusalem and its surroundings would never be safe until the Muslim base in Egypt was broken. Though it gains some success, including the capture of Damietta, the Muslim’s hold on Jerusalem remains firm.

1228 - Holy Roman Emperor Frederick Barbarossa II, having been excommunicated a year earlier for breaking his vow to send support to the Fifth Crusade, sponsors the Sixth Crusade without papal sanction after marrying the daughter of the Christian claimant to the throne of Jerusalem.

1229 - Frederick signs a treaty with the Sultan of Egypt, who agrees to hand over Nazareth, Sidon, Jaffa, Bethlehem, and most of Jerusalem in exchange for support against the sultan’s rivals in Syria. Pope Gregory IX condemns the treaty.

1239 - Frederick’s treaty with the Muslims expires.

1244 - Jerusalem is re-captured by Islamic forces.

1245 - St. Louis, King of France, announces his intentions for a Seventh Crusade. St. Louis takes Damietta but fails to complete the conquest of Egypt. He is captured and ransomed.

1254 - St. Louis returns to France.

1268 - The Sultan of Egypt attacks and destroys the Christian defenses at Antioch.

1270 - St. Louis attempts an Eighth Crusade but dies shortly upon his arrival in Africa.

1291 - Having fully recovered from the Third Crusade, Islamic armies complete their re-conquest of the entire Holy Land.

1375 - The Turks conquer Armenia.

1396 - An attempted crusade assembles in Hungary but is defeated by the Turks at Nicopolis before it can be properly organized.

1453 - The Turkish armies finally capture Constantinople, now known as Istanbul. From this point onward, most items labelled as “crusades” had no real intention of re-capturing the Holy Land but were instead conducted out of local interest.

1480 - Sultan Mehmet II attempts to use Otranto as a base for an invasion of Italy. Rome is abandoned. However, the Sultan dies soon thereafter, and the invasion never takes place.

1492 - After 700 years of warfare, the last Muslim kingdom in Spain falls.

1529 - Suleiman the Magnificent lays siege to Vienna. A series of storms forces him to leave much of his artillery behind, causing the siege to fail.

1571 - The Holy League, under the leadership of Pope Saint Pius V, destroys the invading Turkish armada at Lepanto.

1683 - The Turks are again turned back from Vienna, this time by Jan Sobieski, the King of Poland.

(continued)
 
The Muslim threat began to wane in the 1700s due to the expansion and commercial activity of the West into the New World. The burgeoning economic superiority of Europe made for a difficult target for Islamic rulers, who found themselves at the beginning of a two century decline in power that culminated in the collapse of the Ottoman Empire following WWI.

Regarding the Crusades themselves, the above timeline is quite clear that such wars were waged in response to Islamic expansionism. On a purely secular basis, Christendom had learned its lesson from the protracted Reconquista of Spain and the constant attacks on Byzantium that the Muslim threat was not going away. On the religious end of the spectrum, the idea of recapturing the Holy Land was regarded as an act of pilgrimage, penance, and self-sacrifice. This is evidenced by hundreds of charters and vows that remain from that time period.

While many efforts have been made to cast the Crusades as money/land-grabbing expeditions by kings and popes, the truth is much different. The lords who embarked on Crusade were quite wealthy and had very little need for additional land. Crusading was an expensive enterprise and often bankrupted those involved. Many nobles often sold their lands or mortgaged property to afford such an expedition. As mentioned above, very few Europeans remained in the Western states of the Holy Land following their capture. Those who did remain were either administrators or members of military orders who provided the only standing defense of the area. Trade was scarce with the Crusader states, and they mostly served as a large financial drain for their sponsors in Europe.

It is also clear that Muslim aggression was not some sort of counter-offensive against European incursions. The invasions of Spain and France in the 8th century clearly demonstrate that argument as false, as do the continued attempts at invasion following the failure of the Eighth Crusade.

The above information is taken from the following sources:
What Were the Crusades? by Johnathan Riley-Smith
A Concise History of the Crusades by Thomas Madden
Monks of War by Desmond Seward
The Templars by Piers Paul Read

See also: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Hakim_bi-Amr_Allah

And

inisrael.com/tour/jer/vt_church.htm

CDL
 
That’s fascinating… Thank you for posting. I recently heard that many of the young involved in the Children’s Crusade were sold into slavery and disappeared. Can you shed any light on this?
 
From what I can glean none were really children as we think of children and few were even adolescents. Most were just landless poor who were attracted by a call to peacably convert the Muslim to Christ or wished to have an adventure of some sort. The larger group from France never really went any where. The smaller group from Germany who desired to convert the Muslims began wandering about in Italy and then France. Some found a new life in these areas others were in fact sold into slavery.

The more popular tales are more salacious and therefore more popular. Here’s something from Wikipedia.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children%27s_Crusade

CDL
 
I support the Crusades, and I believe it to be a defensive means to protect Christian community. Though, there atrocities there, I cannot condone it but the Crusade as whole is a justified.

The reason was to combat Islam and protect Christians. An honorable cause.
 
Yes, it is definitely not “PC” in today’s world to say anything positive about the Crusades, but at the time Western Europe and Christianity itself was fighting for its very existence against the Islamic threat. Having said that, sacking Constantinople in 1204 was kind of counter-productive…
 
rr1213 said:
Yes, it is definitely not “PC” in today’s world to say anything positive about the Crusades, but at the time Western Europe and Christianity itself was fighting for its very existence against the Islamic threat. Having said that, sacking Constantinople in 1204 was kind of counter-productive…
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The Pope himself at the time condemned the sacking of Constantinople…
 
Thanks, I copied. I see there is a whole page on Ishmael on wikipedia but unsure what the Catholic churches on this.
 
Mannyfit75
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Re: The Crusades
I support the Crusades, and I believe it to be a defensive means to protect Christian community. Though, there atrocities there, I cannot condone it but the Crusade as whole is a justified.
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Absolutely!

I am sick and tired of Orangmen ramming it down my throat how wicked the Church was in supporting the crusades. I think they were very noble wars. Their combatants brave soldiers for Christ, the liberty and protection of His people on earth.
 
With the rise of extremist Islam, the crusades will likely be studied in a different light in the near future.
 
Another excellent book about the crusades is “The Crusades; The Worlds Debate” by Hilaire Belloc.

“Manzikert, the shock that launched the crusade, would have destroyed us-but for the Crusade. Constantinople would have fallen; all Europe would have been involved- but under that stimulus the west moved. Gaul and the Rhine, Normandy, Flaners, Aquitaine, Lorraine armed, faced east, and went forward. The issue was the life or death of Christendom.”
(The Crusades, page 17)
 
mark_a said:
With the rise of extremist Islam, the crusades will likely be studied in a different light in the near future.
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Interesting thought, although probably inaccurate. Unfortunately, everything is simply too much “PC” today…
 
Catholig said:
Do you have a source?

Catholig
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The Fourth Crusade began as a fundamental part of the reforming zeal of Pope Innocent III. He negotiated with the Emperor Alexius III, who had ascended the imperial throne in 1195 after overthrowing his brother, for a healing of the schism and a joint effort to retake the Holy Land. But under the machinations of the Doge of Venice, Enrico Dandolo, the Crusade was taken from papal hands and turned toward Venetian goals. An attack was launched for control of Dalmatia and a horrified pope condemned this betrayal of crusading goals. The armies then turned toward Constantinople where, in league with the son of the deposed Byzantine emperor, a revolution was hatched to secure Constantinople as a Venetian puppet. When the citizens of Constantinople rejected the young pretender and refused to pay-off the Crusaders, the city was attacked. It was virtually destroyed, it’s art works stolen or destroyed, it’s citizenry ruthlessly murdered. A Western Empire was set up that would last just a short time and Innocent, seeing in it the hope of reunification of Christendom, finally accepted it. But the attack on Constantinople was never planned or ordered by the Church.
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Source: falange.us/crusade1.htm

I can’t cite the official document itself, but I will look into it. However, the source I pointed out that the Catholic Church never condone the sacking of Constantinople.
 
On the Sack of Constantinople,the history book I have says that after the sack, Pope Innocent III excommunicated those responsible for the outrage.

They also Sacked Jerusalem in one of the earlier Crusades because the moslem had poisoned the water in the wells and the men reacted.

Here is the article on Ishmael.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ishmael

This can’t just be a case of sibling rivalry.
 
The so-called Crusades are a source of anit-Catholic propaganda. From Muslims because they were on the receiving end. From Protestants because, well, there were not any Protestants around for those wars, so it’s an easy target (they will not talk about the later religious wars they were involved in.) From the Eastern Orthodox for their own reasons by dredging up Constantinople.

The Crusades probably helped save Christian Europe from Muslim conquest, and may have been more successful if the Eastern Orthodox helped more.
 
What fuels this hatred of Israel and of Christians?

We know from the Bible that the Israelites fought the Assyrians(a minority in Iraq) and Babylonians but that is so long ago and yet the Arab tribes who themselves are semitic tribes still hate the Jewish people.
 
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