The Glory of the Crusades

by Steve Weidenkopf

  Additionally, most historians of the early to mid twentieth century viewed the Crusades in a wholly negative light because of a personal animus against religion as a whole. These scholars could not fathom the idea of warriors with actual faith engaging in warfare for primarily religious reasons. Instead these critics believed the “medieval crusades were evil precisely because they were wars of religion.”22

  More recent Crusades scholarship has been shaped by the writings of two historians who had vastly different careers. Carl Erdmann (1898–1945) was a brilliant scholar whose work, The Origins of the Idea of Crusading (1935) examined the Crusades as an outgrowth of the papal reform movement in the eleventh century, which primarily sought to ensure the independence of the papacy and Church against secular interference. He also expanded the scope of the Crusades to any area where Christian warriors, motivated by spiritual incentives, engaged in armed conflict. Unfortunately, Erdmann would die relatively young at the age of forty-seven while serving in the German Wehrmacht in the Balkans.23

  More than any other historian, Steven Runciman (1903–2000) shaped modern popular understanding of the Crusades, and his interpretation continues to influence Hollywood and the media.24 Runciman specialized in Byzantine history, and in his still-influential three-volume History of the Crusades (1951–1954) viewed the Crusades through that prism. Most modern Crusades scholars are highly critical of Runciman’s work, for although it is well written and engaging it is more literature than history, and is colored by Runciman’s Byzantine leanings. Christopher Tyerman wrote, “The scholarship is wide but not deep; the literary technique effective in short stretches but taken in large doses tends to indigestion.”25 Runciman was another historian, in a long line, who failed to view the Crusades from a contemporary point of view, making his work “dated in technique, style and content; derivative, misleading, tendentious; a polemic, masquerading as epic.”26

  Nonetheless, Runciman shaped modern popular perception of the Crusades, Crusaders, and medieval Muslims by illustrating Western warriors as simple barbarians bent on the destruction of a peaceful and sophisticated Islamic culture. He saw Western Europe as over-populated, violent, and economically stagnant; the Crusades were thus “great barbarian invasions.”27 In contrast to the barbaric and ruthless Western warriors, the Muslim general Saladin was presented as the perfect ruler who was merciful, considerate, tolerant, modest, and intellectual. In essence, Saladin was reduced by Runciman “to a catalogue of nineteenth-century English upper-class virtues.”28 Ultimately, Runciman condemned the Crusades as sins against the Holy Spirit:

  In the long sequence of interaction and fusion between Orient and Occident out of which our civilization has grown, the Crusades were a tragic and destructive episode. The historian as he gazes back across the centuries at their gallant story must find his admiration overcast by sorrow as the witness that it bears to the limitations of human nature. There was so much courage and so little honor, so much devotion and so little understanding. High ideals were besmirched by cruelty and greed, enterprise and endurance by a blind and narrow self-righteousness; and the Holy War itself was nothing more than a long act of intolerance in the name of God, which is a sin against the Holy Ghost.29

  Happily, Crusades scholarship over the last generation has greatly enhanced our understanding of the Crusading movement and overturned much of the erroneous interpretations and fanciful tales of the agenda-driven authors of the past. Modern scholars are focused on studying the Crusades from the perspective of the participants and understanding what motivated people to participate in them.30 Yet despite the work of these excellent scholars, popular perception of the Crusades remains fixated in a Protestant/ Enlightened/Runciman orientation.

  Catholic Misunderstandings

  Even good Catholic writers can find themselves relying on old stereotypes when discussing the Crusades. Fr. Robert Barron’s popular video series and companion book, Catholicism, strikes a condemnatory tone when discussing the Crusades. Referencing the four marks of the Church, Fr. Barron addresses the criticism leveled against the Church’s holiness and remarks, “How could one possibly declare as holy a church that has been implicated in so many atrocities and outrages over the centuries? How could a holy church have supported the Crusades, the Inquisition and its attendant tortures, slavery, the persecution of Galileo… and the burning of innocent women as witches?”31 In Father Barron’s assessment, the Crusades are one example in a long “litany of crimes” in which even high-ranking clergy did “cruel, stupid and wicked things.”32 He even suggests that the saintly Bernard of Clairvaux was probably “wrong, even sinful, to preach the Second Crusade.”33

  Fr. Barron’s work in this area betrays a lack of awareness of the recent and authentic scholarship on the Crusades (as well as the Inquisition) and instead relies on old, formulated, and erroneous criticisms of the Church’s historical past. Regrettably, the popularity of his (otherwise excellent) series ensures that these false narratives continue to influence the understanding of Catholics today.

  Critics of the Church and even those within the Church argue that Pope St. John Paul II addressed the Crusades when during the Great Jubilee of 2000 he “apologized” for the sins of the Church; therefore, Catholics should not view these events in a positive light.

  This view is not supported by the facts. John Paul II did not apologize for the Crusades; in fact, he never even mentioned the word during the Day of Pardon on March 12, 2000. In order to set the Church on a renewed footing as it entered the Third Millennium of the Faith, the pope tasked the International Theological Commission34 to study the concept of a purification of memory that aimed “at liberating personal and communal conscience from all forms of resentment and violence that are the legacy of past faults, through a renewed historical and theological evaluation.”35 On the Day of Pardon, John Paul II requested forgiveness from God for the faults and failings of our brothers and sisters who have gone before us in the Faith. His desire was born from a love of God and the Church in order for it to enter the third millennium free from the sins of Church members in the past. The pope not only asked God for forgiveness for the failings of past members of the Church but also called the Church to forgive those who have trespassed against it.

  John Paul also recognized the importance of understanding the historical context in which the events of the past were lived, and he had no desire to pass judgment on our Catholic predecessors.36 He did not reject the Church’s historical past, which is replete with examples of mercy, forgiveness, holiness, and grand achievement. In his September 1, 1999 general audience he expressly said that the Church’s “request for pardon must not be understood as an expression of false humility or as a denial of her 2,000-year history … instead, she responds to the necessary requirement of the truth, which, in addition to the positive aspects, recognizes the human limitations and weaknesses of the various generations of Christ’s disciples.”37

  The Church has not apologized for the Crusades because an apology is not necessary. On the contrary, for centuries the Crusading movement was integral to the lived expression of the Faith.

  An authentic presentation of the Crusades thus centers on viewing them through a contemporary perspective. The Catholic historian Hilaire Belloc understood this truism and illustrated it throughout his historical books. In his work on the history of the great heresies in Christendom, Belloc wrote that “the most difficult thing in the world in connection with history, and the rarest of achievement, is the seeing of events as contemporaries saw them, instead of seeing them through the distorting medium of our later knowledge.”38

  An authentic understanding of historical events begins not with the present time of the historical author, but with the contemporary time of the participant. Failure to adhere to that premise falsifies history and produces a “reading into” rather than a “learning from” historical events.39 Critics of the Crusades and the Church usually fall into the trap of believing that their own opinion or society is sup
erior to those that came before them.

  The International Theological Commission recognized this trap and encouraged those who would presume to judge the actions of Catholics in the past to keep “in mind that the historical periods are different, that the sociological and cultural times within which the Church acts are different, and so, the paradigms and judgments proper to one society and to one era might be applied erroneously in the evaluations of other periods of history, producing many misunderstandings.”40 Understanding the Crusades from the perspective of those who lived during and participated in them is vital. The movement must also be understood as the lived expression of the vibrant Catholicism of medieval people.

  Abandoning the Defensive

  The purpose of this work is to present a restored narrative of the Crusades, utilizing modern scholarship in order to give Catholics today the tools to answer the critics and defend the Church and its history.

  Most people associate the Crusades with armed expeditions by Western warriors against the Muslims in the Holy Land. Although that association is not incorrect, it is incomplete. Because the Crusading movement evolved over time, there were many types of Crusades over the centuries, including those against heretics, pagans, and enemies of the Church. Regardless, this book will concentrate on the major Crusades against the Muslims in the Holy Land, Egypt, the Mediterranean Sea, and Europe, precisely because the major misunderstandings about the Crusades centers on these expeditions. Only an authentic presentation of the Crusading movement and its campaigns against Islam can equip Catholics to defend the Church, countering the false historical narrative prevalent in society today with a proper understanding.

  At the same time, as the Church progresses through its third millennium and in light of the call by recent pontiffs for a New Evangelization, the time is ripe for a reinvigorated sense of Catholic identity. Catholics must know the authentic history of the Church in order to defend it from the many critics in the modern world; however, for a truly vibrant Catholic identity to flourish once more, defending the Church is not enough. We must go on the attack and present the story of our Catholic family with vigor, courage, and resolve.

  In the words of Walter Cardinal Brandmüller, president emeritus of the Pontifical Committee for the Historical Sciences, “[W]e should finally stop being like the frightened rabbit that stares at the snake before it is swallowed by it. This defeatist attitude, this whining self-pity that has gained so much ground … in Catholic circles, is an insult to God. What is needed is a new, forceful consciousness of being Catholic.”41

  1 Rodney Stark, God’s Battalions—The Case for the Crusades (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2009), 6–7.

  2 Which usually involves a negative and unhistorical presentation of such events as the Crusades, the Inquisition, the Spanish Armada, and the reign of Queen Mary (falsely known as “Bloody Mary”).

  3 Charlotte Edwardes, “Ridley Scott’s New Crusades films ‘panders to Osama bin Laden,’” The Telegraph, January 18, 2004, accessed February 2, 2013, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/1452000/Ridley-Scotts-new-Crusades-film-panders-to-Osama-bin-Laden.html.

  4 “Kingdom of Heaven,” accessed February 2, 2013, http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0320661/?ref_=sr_1.

  5 Christopher Tyerman, The Debate on the Crusades (New York: Manchester University Press, 2011), 1.

  6 Ibid., 5.

  7 See Thomas F. Madden, The New Concise History of the Crusades Updated Edition (New York: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2005), 209.

  8 Kenneth M. Setton, “Lutheranism and the Turkish Peril,” Balkan Studies 3 (1962): 142, in Madden, New Concise, 209.

  9 Madden, The New Concise History of the Crusades, 210.

  10 Tyerman, Debate, 67.

  11 This is the true legacy of the Enlightenment in relation to the Crusades. As Christopher Tyerman points out, “The legacy of the Enlightenment had established the Crusades as a reference point for cultural commentary as much on contemporary as on medieval society” (Debate, 95).

  12 Stark, 6.

  13 Tyerman, Debate, 67.

  14 Jonathan Riley-Smith, The Crusades—A History, (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005), 298.

  15 Denis Diderot, Dictionnaire encyclopedique, Oeuvres complètes (Paris, 1821), xiv, 496–511, in Tyerman, Debate, 78.

  16 Tyerman, Debate, 81, and Hume, The History of England, vol. I, 234, Stark, 6.

  17 Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, vii, 188, in Tyerman, Debate, 85.

  18 Gibbon, Decline and Fall, book 6, chapter 58.

  19 Madden, The New Concise History of the Crusades, 215.

  20 Jonathan Riley-Smith, “Islam and the Crusades in History and Imagination, 8 November 1898–11 September 2001,” Crusades 2 (2003): 158. Quoted in Madden, The New Concise History, 215.

  21 Published from 1934–1936.

  22 Thomas F. Madden, The Crusades—The Essential Readings (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2002), 1.

  23 Erdmann was not a Nazi; in fact he despised the Nazi regime. He was conscripted into the Wehrmacht and served as a translator. He contracted typhus in March 1945 and died.

  24 Thomas Madden wrote that “Runciman singlehandedly crafted the current popular concept of the Crusades.” Madden, The New Concise History, 216.

  25 Tyerman, Debate, 197.

  26 Ibid., 192.

  27 Stephen Runciman, “Byzantium and the Crusade,” in Madden, The Crusades—The Essential Readings, 220.

  28 Tyerman, Debate, 195.

  29 Steven Runciman, A History of the Crusades, vol. III (London: The Folio Society, 1996), 401.

  30 Some of these scholars are faithful Catholics, including Jonathan Riley-Smith, who is a Knight of Malta and began the shift of modern Crusade studies toward a religious-participant view. Another Catholic scholar is Thomas Madden, who teaches at St. Louis University.

  31 Robert Barron, Catholicism—A Journey to the Heart of the Faith (New York: Image Books, 2011), 162.

  32 Ibid.

  33 Ibid.

  34 Headed at the time by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger—later Pope Benedict XVI.

  35 International Theological Commission, Memory and Reconciliation: The Church and the Faults of the Past.

  36 The pope’s recognition of the importance of historical context and the work of historians was illustrated in his Discourse to the Participants in the International Symposium of Study on the Inquisition held on October 31, 1998. He said, “This is the reason why the first step consists in asking the historians … to offer help toward a reconstruction, as precise as possible, of the events, of the customs, of the mentality of the time, in the light of historical context of the epoch.” In terms of passing judgment on past Catholics, John Paul II said in his Angelus Address on March 12, 2000: “This is not a judgment on the subjective responsibility of our brothers and sisters who have gone before us: judgment belongs to God alone … Today’s act is a sincere recognition of the sins committed by the Church’s children in the distant and recent past, and a humble plea for God’s forgiveness. This will reawaken consciences, enabling Christians to enter the third millennium with greater openness to God and his plan of love.”

  37 Available online at http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/audiences/1999/documents/hf_jp-ii_aud_01091999_en.html. Accessed March 2, 2013.

  38 Hilaire Belloc, The Great Heresies (Manassas, VA: Trinity Communications, 1987), 127.

  39 The full quote is “Reading history from present to past is reading into rather than learning from it.” Steven Ozment, A Mighty Fortress—A New History of the German People (New York: HarperCollins, 2004), 8.

  40 International Theological Commission, Memory and Reconciliation, 4.2.

  41 Walter Cardinal Brandmülller, trans. Michael J. Miller, Light and Shadows—Church History amid Faith, Fact and Legend (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2009), 84.

  2

  Birth of the Crusades

  The Lord is a warrio
r; the Lord is His name!

  Exodus 15:3

  The Crusading movement occupied a central place in European and Church history for nearly 700 years and was a unique cultural and religious phenomenon. Despite its longevity and influence, defining what the Crusades actually were has proven problematic for historians.42 The very nature of the Crusading movement, its evolution throughout its history, and its appeal to contemporaries contribute to the difficulty in definition. During the movement people of all social backgrounds supported the Crusades, and sifting through their views presents “a range of ideas from the most cerebral to the most primitive.”43

  One area of agreement concerns the very word “Crusade”: Those who participated in these expeditions did not use it. “Crusade” is a modern word, not a medieval one. It is a hybrid, derived from Spanish, French, and Latin and first used in 1706, passing into popular usage through the writings of David Hume and Edward Gibbon.44 Crusading contemporaries used the term passagia, among others, meaning an “exceptionally large military expedition declared against unbelievers.”45 Those who undertook the passagia were known as crucesignati, or “those signed with the cross.”

  In essence, “a Crusade was fought against those perceived to be the external or internal foes of Christendom for the recovery of Christian property or in defense of the Church or Christian people.”46 Those who participated in the Crusades were seen as pilgrims and their journey was an armed pilgrimage, which was a revolutionary idea since to that point pilgrims had been obliged to leave their weapons at home.47

  Essential Ingredients of the Crusades

  Although historians disagree over exact definitions, there were several essential ingredients necessary for an armed expedition to be considered a Crusade.48

  The first ingredient was called “taking the cross,” which included a public ecclesiastical vow that bound the aspirant to undertake the passagia. The vow was made to God (not to the pope, a bishop, or any secular lord) and was legally binding; to abandon it was to risk excommunication. Those who took the vow were marked by the wearing of a cloth cross on their garments that was only removed upon successful completion of their journey. In the beginning of the Crusading movement, the vow was also accompanied by the bestowal of the pilgrim’s purse and staff.49 This act illustrates the penitential nature of the Crusades and the view by contemporaries that Crusaders were fundamentally armed pilgrims.