Who Were the Crusaders

Interpreting the Crusades: A Holy or Cynical War?

Crusading has become a synonym for something negative, usually as an action which is zealously undertaken without thought and consideration to the needs of outsiders or in light of alternative points of view. But when the actual crusades were embarked upon, according to Jonathan Riley-Smith’s article “Crusading as an Act of Love,” they were praised as an action “fired by the ardor of charity” (Riley-Smith, 2002, p.32). Riley-Smith (2002) notes that during the era of the crusades, the concept of loving war was not seen as oxymoronic by Christians. The act of crusading was also viewed as acting in imitation of Christ, taking up one’s cross in sacrifice. In Pope Innocent’s own words at the time of the fifth Crusade, the crusader’s burden was a “soft and gentle” cross in comparison to the suffering for all humanity borne by Christ for the sins of humanity (Riley-Smith, 2002, p. 35).

While interpreted in modernity this may seem like rank hypocrisy, or at best a misinterpretation of the true message of love of Christ, it is important to remember that all of medieval society was structured upon a relationship between lord and vassal, or the idea of a chain of military obligations. In other words, the idea of a loving war was embedded into the medieval worldview. Violence as an expression of brotherly Christian love was also a way to liberate the Christians under the supposedly tyrannical rules of the Ottoman Turks.

Furthermore, even some of these attitudes might not be entirely as antiquated as one might like to think. Riley-Smith cites Peter Lombard, a contemporary Christian theologian, who has advocated that while Christians should love all people, given that this is not always realistically possible, then loving fellow Christians more might be considered the greater imperative. It was this type of prioritization, Riley-Smith argues, that the crusaders were showing. Even if their actions were often bloody and xenophobic from modern standards, they viewed themselves as defenders of the faith and fellow Christians in a society where war was viewed as a zero-sum game where there had to be victors and losers. Tolerance was not a celebrated value in the era of the crusades.

Peter F. Crawford (2011) in his essay “Four Myths About the Crusades” likewise agrees that the crusades are often depicted as “deplorable” acts of violence in the popular media, from political speeches to popular culture, and criticizes textbooks that portray them as acts of “pugnacity, piety, and greed” (p.13). Crawford contextualizes the crusades in a larger context whereby Islam was also engaged in an expansionist program “deliberately designed to expand Muslim territory at the expense of Islam’s neighbors” (Crawford, 2011, p.14). In other words, this contextualizes the crusades in a largely warring Europe, where there was a constant jockeying for power between Christians and Muslims. It is not a question of Christianity consistently being the more aggressive faith. Crawford cites a Muslim ruler he describes as mentally unbalanced, a leader who destroyed the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem and engaged in active persecution of non-Muslims, including Jews.

Christian fears of persecution and the desire to defend their co-religionists in the Middle East, in other words, were not solely based upon hatred of other religions, but had a basis in recent past memory. There were actual reasons to engage in protection of Christian in Christian holy spaces outside of Europe, in addition to physical monuments sacred to Christianity. Five of the major episcopal seats (Jerusalem, Antioch, Alexandria, Rome, Constantinople) had been either taken or attacked, and Crawford (2011) calls the crusades a justified and necessary counterattack to increasing Muslim encroachment. Muslims were not the underdogs in this religious struggle.

Christians who went on the crusades, even if there are undeniably accounts of atrocities perpetrated by crusades, also suffered considerable hardships themselves, leaving family members, property, and encountering significant physical risks. Travel during this period of history was extremely hazardous. At the time, the Pope used Christ’s own words of putting aside immediate family obligations to one’s own father and other and putting one’s heavenly father above all (Riley-Smith, 2006). In short, crusading was not a decision lightly undertaken by the warriors, and was based in their belief structures, not simply a desire for self-enrichment, given the perils they likely faced.

The idea that the crusaders became rich as a result of their efforts may in part be due to contemporary propaganda, which was intended to encourage crusaders to take up the cross and fight by any means necessary. Crusaders were often forced to sell the majority of their possessions to finance their expeditions (Crawford, 2011). More people, he argues, were bankrupted by crusading. This is a powerful argument against the idea that the holy wars were cynically motivated for monetaristic gain. This disparaging view of the crusades has early roots itself in anti-religious philosophers like Voltaire, who cynically parodied the motivations of the crusaders as part of a larger anti-religious philosophy (Crawford, 2011). Casualty rates were often high on crusades and the majority of crusaders prepared their affairs with the expectation they were unlikely to return (Crawford, 2011). Again, this counters the cynical notion that the crusaders were solely motivated by financial gain.

Speeches encouraging people to embark upon the crusades stressed that “deprivation, suffering, and often death,” as well as deprivation to one’s family, all for the promise of laying down one’s life for one’s fellow Christian brethren were what persuaded people to fight, Crawford (2011) argues, not the riches of the East (p.18). Crawford (2011) even argues that Muslims themselves did not think very much about the crusades themselves at all for many centuries, given the extent to which they often dominated Christian-Muslim conflicts. It was only in the wake of later European colonialism and anti-Catholicism that the crusades began to be portrayed in such a hard, negative light by Europeans themselves. Nationalism and Pan-Arabism in the 20th century likewise recast the crusades as a symptom of Western, Christian imperialism against peace-loving Islam that had existed since the beginning of time.

Both authors make many persuasive arguments to moderate the view of the crusades and to not accept the cynical view that no one could have really believed that Christendom and Christians were being threatened when they were waged. However, it is also important to still remember the negative view many Christians as well as Muslims held of outsiders, specifically of Jewish people, and while both Christians and Muslims may have both engaged in wars against one another, Jewish populations were almost inevitably the losers. It is also arguable that even if European crusaders did not benefit financially from the crusades, they were being urged to take very risky actions by church leaders who themselves would not suffer the same financial privations.