The cursades

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I know many people use the crusades as a reason to attack the church, but wasnt the worst one really started by the church of England?
 
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spacecadet:
I know many people use the crusades as a reason to attack the church, but wasnt the worst one really started by the church of England?
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England was Catholic during the Crusades. There was no CofE until Henry the Eighth. I believe you may be thinking of Protestant persecution of “Papists” who refused to renounce the Catholic Church but this was well after the Crusades.

Of course, someone will correct me if I’m wrong.
 
well i was thinking that too, but i remember someone telling me what i put in the OP. not sure what they were talking about
 
Kingdom of heaven is a superb film,i saw it 3 times at the cinema…good renterpretation of what happened!
 
I believe it was 1534 when Henry the Eighth split off the church. Prior to that year England was Catholic.
 
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godsent:
Kingdom of heaven is a superb film,i saw it 3 times at the cinema…good renterpretation of what happened!
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The movie is NOT an accurate representation of history. You are very mistaken if you think otherwise.
 
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godsent:
Kingdom of heaven is a superb film,i saw it 3 times at the cinema…good reinterpretation of what happened!
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A RE-Interpretation is exactly what it is. A very poor hollywood lie thats been prettied up. Notice how every single clergyman is either a total butt-head or a complete coward who doesn’t stand up for the faith? The church is made to look as if it was made of nothing but greedy fools…

Do not look to Hollywood for history. Not EVER. Everything they put out has an agenda…everything.
 
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Isidore_AK:
A RE-Interpretation is exactly what it is. A very poor hollywood lie thats been prettied up. Notice how every single clergyman is either a total butt-head or a complete coward who doesn’t stand up for the faith? The church is made to look as if it was made of nothing but greedy fools…

Do not look to Hollywood for history. Not EVER. Everything they put out has an agenda…everything.
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AMEN!!!
 
If we really criticize the church for the crusades, it is in that it was 200 years too late!!! The defense of Christendom should have happened around the eigth or ninth century. By the time they got around to doing it, many lands and churches and cultures have already been subjected by Islam.

in XT.
 
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AquinasXVI:
If we really criticize the church for the crusades, it is in that it was 200 years too late!!! The defense of Christendom should have happened around the eigth or ninth century. By the time they got around to doing it, many lands and churches and cultures have already been subjected by Islam.

in XT.
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Very true. Which reminds me, Catholic writer Steve Kellmeyer has a nice CD, “Four Questions”, in which he addresses the Crusades, the Inquisition, Galileo, and the supposed silence of Pius XII during the Nazi regime. He mentions exactly what you do here; namely, that the Church put up with one Islamic outrage after another before it finally launced the Crusades.

Sure, some unforeseen stuff—bad stuff—happened during the Crusades. That’s war, you know…but to be honest, I don’t feel badly about the Crusades.
 
Kingdom of Heaven was just an awful movie. I don’t know if it was the editor or the director but it was just all over the place with zero character development. Of course, that is just my humble opinion. http://forum.catholic.com/images/smilies/smile.gif

We read Triumph over the summer in our parish group and if I recall correctly, the book asserted that the Crusades originally started to provide safe passage for Christian pilgrims. So I think the original intent may not have been as bad as secular history would have us believe.
 
The original intent was very good. Well, it was mixed, as human motivations always are. But I think in the historical context it’s hard to fault Urban for asking Christian knights to go liberate Jerusalem from the Muslims and help their Eastern Christian brothers and sisters in the process.

However, the Crusades as they happened involved plenty of atrocities, and in my opinion their final results were disastrous. They may have helped stave off Muslim invasion of Europe, but I’m not sure about that (with regard to the Crusades in the Middle East in the High Middle Ages–other Crusades in places like Spain and later Eastern Europe are another story). The Muslim powers in the 12-13th centuries were divided and fairly weak. They were mostly fighting among themselves. The Seljuks were making headway against Byzantium, but in the end the Crusades weakened Byzantium fatally, so I don’t see how they deserve any credit there. And it was mostly the Sultanate of Rum that was attacking Byzantium. That was just one among many separate Muslim powers at that time, although Muslim volunteers did sign up to go fight the jihad in Asia Minor, and no doubt the Crusades had some positive effect in giving them other things to worry about!

One misconception is that people look at the map and see the Seljuk Sultanate credited with control over most of the Middle East. In fact the main Seljuk Sultan controlled only part of that territory directly. Most of the Middle East was prey to ephemeral military warlords who fought each other constantly.

Edwin
 
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Contarini:
However, the Crusades as they happened involved plenty of atrocities, and in my opinion their final results were disastrous.
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One notable disaster was the Fourth Crusade, which sacked the Eastern Orthodox Churches of Constantinople and placed precious artifacts stolen from the Eastern Orthodox Churches in Roman Catholic Churches. For example, it is well known that the Roman Catholic Church St. Mark’s of Venice contains hundreds of precious items stolen frofm the Eastern Orthodox during the Fourth Crusade.
My personal opinion is that it is wrong to steal icons, jewels and golden chalices from Eastern Orthodox Churches and place them in Roman Catholic Churches.
 
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AquinasXVI:
If we really criticize the church for the crusades, it is in that it was 200 years too late!!! The defense of Christendom should have happened around the eigth or ninth century. By the time they got around to doing it, many lands and churches and cultures have already been subjected by Islam.

in XT.
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the defense of Christendom was continual from the beginning of the expansion of Islam into Christian countries, but it was done by national and regional armies, and in response to calls for defense from local bishops, not from the universal Church or with international armies. Since Europe was fragmented following the fall of Rome, first the barbarians and then Islam found it much easier to threaten small states, duchies and provinces, which was resisted mightily when their borders were threatened. the Crusades were organized to liberate the Holy Land and its pilgrimage sites from Islamic occupation, and were not possible until the development of stronger armies, stronger European states and the completion of the Christian conversion of Europe. This is a vast historical topic, impossible to treat here, but the history of states such as Spain and Hungary is built on resistance to Islam. Read Lepanto, the great epic poem by Chesterton.
 
There were two “sets” of Crusades. The ones we are sort of familiar with were ten or so into the Holy Land.

There was another set that went into Spain.

Spain had been conquered by Islam from AD 711 until around 800 and then up into France (Battle of Tours, Charles Martel and all that).

The expulsion of the Muslims from Spain took until around 1491 or 1492. The Muslims went back to North Africa and then began attacking coastal towns in Europe, taking the residents as slaves. That lasted until around 1805 when the U.S., England and other merchant ship countries sent their fleets to deal with the “terrorism problem”. Read “Jefferson’s War”. Excellent summary.

The issue of Muslims in the Holy Land is more complicated and more protracted. Check out the Battle of Lepanto 1571. Check out the battle of Vienna where the Polish army defeated the Turks. 1683 (?)

Not a simple issue, as we have been led to believe.
 
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