Published by Anonymous on 11/22/2003 02:01:00 AM
Jeremy, Dustin--A bit more background on the Crusaders' motivations. In a lot of ways, they're similar to the classical sieges/battles of the Iliad, the Odyssey, the Aeneid...
After a peace movement in tenth-century Europe gradually discouraged wars among Christians, they had to send the aggressive people somewhere. With his proclamation of the Crusades, Pope Urban II linked the idea of a military expedition with a pilgrimage. From Urban's point of view, all Crusaders would earn eternal salvation when Jerusalem was returned to Christianity after centuries in Muslim hands. But Crusades and Crusaders are modern words for these concepts. When a Crusader put on the cross, he became a pilgrim; they even called eachother pilgrims. After all, they were going to holy sites; they were just bringing along twenty thousand well-armed friends.
There were no exceptional atrocities in the Crusades, given the standards of the age. That's just the way things went when regions and cities were conquered in those days. It's not that atrocities didn't occur, it's just they were frequently exaggerated.
Because it was so prevalent, violence was seen as morally neutral during this time. Whether violence was good or bad depended on the intentions, motivations, and ends sought of the person who committed or had commanded the violence. This interesting notion of violence was combined with notions of love and family. The Crusades were preached as a way to love God, the Father, and a way to love Christian Brothers. The violence necessary for the Crusading act, an act that cleaned one of all sins and displayed love to God, was seen as a form of piety and worship.
Various papal promises during the Crusades included eternal life to crusaders and parents of crusaders, and plenary indulgence (exchanged for penance or time in purgatory) to anyone assisted the Crusades, whether by going himself, sending someone in his place, or aiding in the construction of ships which would carry the Crusaders.
Many of the noble Crusaders looked forward to getting an estate somewhere in the Holy Land. Many of the peasants escaped their harsh lives by making a pilgrimage to Jerusalem and retaking it as a millennial kingdom. Most Crusaders didn't conceptualize the difference between going on a pilgrimage and gaining worldly blessings. Why wouldn't God bless them with worldly benefits as well?
Many who joined a Crusade were granted exemption from debt, taxation, and interest payments. However, the Crusades were also really expensive for nobles and govermebts; some noble families spent two or three times their annual income to send family members there. During many of the Crusades (there were at least four), those who did not join were required to pay extra taxes. Criminals joined the Crusades in order to escape punishment for their crimes; some criminals even used this indulgence as an excuse to sin with impunity. Many others went merely for the love of adventure.
The motivation for the massacres is really tied to the sense of "us" and "them." Since Christians were going off to reconquer the Holy Land from Islam, seen as the enemy of Christianity, it was a very easy but terrible step to take that any enemy of Christianity was in the way, and should be destroyed.
The first mass killing of the Jews was carried out by the so-called People's Crusades, which attached itself to the army of knights and followed along behind it. Jewish settlements were utterly destroyed by these peasant hordes, who believed that all Jews had to die before the Second Coming. Official Church doctrine said that all Jews must be converted to Christianity before the Second Coming. But one easy way to settle this matter was to kill the Jews, so there would be no unconverted Jews left. And that's what just they did.
Violence done in the Crusades was seen as justified because the violence: 1) was done out of a righteous vendetta against enemies who had wrongfully dishonored, abused and stolen from the family of Christianity; 2) was done as an expression of love, which was the highest duty of a Christian; and 3) was committed under the command leadership of a just God.
Most Turks didn't take the Crusaders seriously because they didn't believe that so many soldiers could have marched that far without supply lines or command structure. It was a miracle that any Crusaders got there, let alone 1 in 20 (of course, they pillaged everything along the way). In a sense, their "miraculous journey" enhanced their religious conception of God's leadership, guidance, and protection. When the armies of the Fourth Crusade finally arrived at Jerusalem, they immediately performed a religious procession around the whole city as a penitential rite to confirm the pilgrimage; then they assaulted the city, knowing God was on their side. After that first attack failed, they constructed many, many seige machines; a month later, they broke through the city walls.
No one really knows how many people were slaughtered when Jerusalem fell. Western sources describe some tens of thousands: the blood from the slaughtered reached up to the knees of their horses; Muslim sources disagree, saying only three thousand were killed. Over the course of the Crusades, the mobs also killed many Christians (even entire cities) because they simply couldn't distinguish a Christian from a Muslim from a Jew by dress or behavior. No matter how many were killed, the miracle of the conquest of the city in 1099, returning it to Christian possession, reaffirmed that the earthly Jerusalem was the heavenly apocalyptic city.
In the fanaticism of the Crusades, we see the beginning of the Inquisition, under which anyone considered a heretic was tortured and killed by the Roman Catholic Church. From warfare against the distant non-believer, it was not a far step to war against the heretics at home. The Inquisition with all its horror could never have taken such deep root without the Crusades' awakening of religious passions.
After a peace movement in tenth-century Europe gradually discouraged wars among Christians, they had to send the aggressive people somewhere. With his proclamation of the Crusades, Pope Urban II linked the idea of a military expedition with a pilgrimage. From Urban's point of view, all Crusaders would earn eternal salvation when Jerusalem was returned to Christianity after centuries in Muslim hands. But Crusades and Crusaders are modern words for these concepts. When a Crusader put on the cross, he became a pilgrim; they even called eachother pilgrims. After all, they were going to holy sites; they were just bringing along twenty thousand well-armed friends.
There were no exceptional atrocities in the Crusades, given the standards of the age. That's just the way things went when regions and cities were conquered in those days. It's not that atrocities didn't occur, it's just they were frequently exaggerated.
Because it was so prevalent, violence was seen as morally neutral during this time. Whether violence was good or bad depended on the intentions, motivations, and ends sought of the person who committed or had commanded the violence. This interesting notion of violence was combined with notions of love and family. The Crusades were preached as a way to love God, the Father, and a way to love Christian Brothers. The violence necessary for the Crusading act, an act that cleaned one of all sins and displayed love to God, was seen as a form of piety and worship.
Various papal promises during the Crusades included eternal life to crusaders and parents of crusaders, and plenary indulgence (exchanged for penance or time in purgatory) to anyone assisted the Crusades, whether by going himself, sending someone in his place, or aiding in the construction of ships which would carry the Crusaders.
Many of the noble Crusaders looked forward to getting an estate somewhere in the Holy Land. Many of the peasants escaped their harsh lives by making a pilgrimage to Jerusalem and retaking it as a millennial kingdom. Most Crusaders didn't conceptualize the difference between going on a pilgrimage and gaining worldly blessings. Why wouldn't God bless them with worldly benefits as well?
Many who joined a Crusade were granted exemption from debt, taxation, and interest payments. However, the Crusades were also really expensive for nobles and govermebts; some noble families spent two or three times their annual income to send family members there. During many of the Crusades (there were at least four), those who did not join were required to pay extra taxes. Criminals joined the Crusades in order to escape punishment for their crimes; some criminals even used this indulgence as an excuse to sin with impunity. Many others went merely for the love of adventure.
The motivation for the massacres is really tied to the sense of "us" and "them." Since Christians were going off to reconquer the Holy Land from Islam, seen as the enemy of Christianity, it was a very easy but terrible step to take that any enemy of Christianity was in the way, and should be destroyed.
The first mass killing of the Jews was carried out by the so-called People's Crusades, which attached itself to the army of knights and followed along behind it. Jewish settlements were utterly destroyed by these peasant hordes, who believed that all Jews had to die before the Second Coming. Official Church doctrine said that all Jews must be converted to Christianity before the Second Coming. But one easy way to settle this matter was to kill the Jews, so there would be no unconverted Jews left. And that's what just they did.
Violence done in the Crusades was seen as justified because the violence: 1) was done out of a righteous vendetta against enemies who had wrongfully dishonored, abused and stolen from the family of Christianity; 2) was done as an expression of love, which was the highest duty of a Christian; and 3) was committed under the command leadership of a just God.
Most Turks didn't take the Crusaders seriously because they didn't believe that so many soldiers could have marched that far without supply lines or command structure. It was a miracle that any Crusaders got there, let alone 1 in 20 (of course, they pillaged everything along the way). In a sense, their "miraculous journey" enhanced their religious conception of God's leadership, guidance, and protection. When the armies of the Fourth Crusade finally arrived at Jerusalem, they immediately performed a religious procession around the whole city as a penitential rite to confirm the pilgrimage; then they assaulted the city, knowing God was on their side. After that first attack failed, they constructed many, many seige machines; a month later, they broke through the city walls.
No one really knows how many people were slaughtered when Jerusalem fell. Western sources describe some tens of thousands: the blood from the slaughtered reached up to the knees of their horses; Muslim sources disagree, saying only three thousand were killed. Over the course of the Crusades, the mobs also killed many Christians (even entire cities) because they simply couldn't distinguish a Christian from a Muslim from a Jew by dress or behavior. No matter how many were killed, the miracle of the conquest of the city in 1099, returning it to Christian possession, reaffirmed that the earthly Jerusalem was the heavenly apocalyptic city.
In the fanaticism of the Crusades, we see the beginning of the Inquisition, under which anyone considered a heretic was tortured and killed by the Roman Catholic Church. From warfare against the distant non-believer, it was not a far step to war against the heretics at home. The Inquisition with all its horror could never have taken such deep root without the Crusades' awakening of religious passions.