The legacy of the Crusades and their motivating factors

Crusaders and the Church

What has been the legacy of the Crusades? Were the Crusades a negative historical event or was there a positive side to these events? Given that the Crusades were politically motivated, and that there were intellectual and technological benefits to Europe, did the Crusades actually benefit the Christian movement? These issues and others will be critiqued in this paper.

What were the motivating factors of the Crusades?

In his book Norwich University professor of history John McCannon explains that medieval popes had the power to demand troops and financial resources in order to launch "holy wars" that were (and are) known as Crusades. These Crusades were fought in order to "convert nonbelievers to Catholicism, to crush Christian movements" that popes believed were "heretical," and to "resist attacks" by Muslims and other foreigners that did not believe in Christianity.

McCannon lists five factors that are considered important motivational reasons for the launch of the Crusades. McCannon: a) "genuine religious fervor" both with Christians and Muslims; b) an ongoing "geopolitical conflict between Europe and the Middle East"; c) the desire many Europeans had to become "…more involved in the international trade network stretching from the Mediterranean to China"; d) the passion for wealth and land that Europeans had, with an eye towards the Middle East; and e) "racial and religious prejudice" (McCannon, 2010, p. 115).

Looking carefully at the First Crusade -- Facts and Myths

McCannon describes the First Crusade (1096 -- 1099), which he says started when the Byzantine Empire requested military help from European Christians due to the fact that the Seljuk Turks had taken over Jerusalem. Hoping to make a dramatic impression on the European Christians, the Byzantines greatly exaggerated the rumors of "Turkish atrocities in the Holy Land" (McCannon, 115). So Pope Urban II called upon the knights of Catholic Europe to help retake the Holy Land from the marauding Turks, and in 1096, a huge army of Crusaders set out for the Holy Land, reaching Constantinople but battling Muslim forces on the way to Constantinople (McCannon, 115). The first Crusaders arrived in Jerusalem and engaged in a bloody fight that ended in the successful seizing of the city.

More than just retaking the holy city of Jerusalem, the First Crusade fighters "butchered almost every Muslim and Jew within its walls"; in the process the Crusaders also killed Christians in Jerusalem due to the fact that the Christians were mistaken for Muslims, McCannon writes on page 115. In time, two centuries later, the Muslims took control over Jerusalem again, once they became more focused on unity among Turks, Arabs and other Muslims, McCannon explains.

Meanwhile, professor Paul F. Crawford challenges some of the historical accounts of the First Crusade. It is often reported erroneously in historic accounts of the First Crusade that the soldiers "…appeared basically without warning, storming into the Holy Land with the avowed -- literally -- task of slaughtering unbelievers" (Crawford, 2011, p. 13). Writing in the peer-reviewed journal, the Intercollegiate Review, Crawford reports that it is not true that ("thuggish") soldiers from the First Crusade "…trundled off, unprovoked, to murder and pillage peace-loving, sophisticated Muslims, laying down patterns of outrageous oppression" that would occur again and again throughout subsequent history (13).

By Crawford's account, what McCannon writes is fairly accurate. But Crawford's narrative suggests that McCannon fell short in giving the real reasons for the First Crusade. In fact, by 632, Christian territories included Egypt, Palestine, Syria, Asia Minor, North Africa, France, Spain, Italy and island nations Sicily, Corsica and Sardinia. But a hundred years later in 732 Muslims had seized from the Christians, Egypt, Syria, North Africa, Palestine, Spain and the majority of Asia Minor territory, along with France and Italy. Not only did the Muslims seize those territories violently, Jews and Christians were killed or expelled from the Arabian peninsula (Crawford, 14).

Crawford (14) presents "Myth #1: The Crusades Represented an Unprovoked Attack by Western Christians on the Muslim World": Nothing, Crawford insists, based on the narrative reported in the paragraph above, "…could be farther from the truth." Far from being "unprovoked," the Crusades actually represented the "first great western Christian counterattack against Muslim attacks which had taken place continually from the inception of Islam until the eleventh century" (Crawford, 15).

Also according to Crawford's narrative, McCannon is incorrect when he asserts that one of the Crusades' motivating factors was that they were "…hoping to gain wealth and land in the Middle East" (McCannon, 115). Financial considerations did play a role in the planning of the Crusades, Crawford writes (16), as early Crusaders sold many of their possessions to finance their expeditions, but "…very few people became rich by crusading, and their numbers were dwarfed by those who were bankrupted" by their participation in the Crusades.

Did the Crusades advance the cause of Christ?

According to a digitized volume originally published in 1864 by Partridge and Company, the Crusades were instigated chiefly by "the most superstitious and fanatical notions"; and these "soldiers of Jesus…carried destruction to those who knew him not. Is this the spirit of Christ or of his holy gospel? Is it not rather the spirit of Mahomet…" whose propaganda was always 'the sword or the Koran" (Meliora, p. 15). Simon de Montfort, the Duke of Burgundy, executed his task "…with relentless cruelty, ravaged the country, burned the houses, massacred all the people, whether Romanists on not" and inflicted the "most revolting indignities…upon the weak and helpless" (Meliora, 15).

Answering the question for this portion of the paper, Meliora states, "To Christianity as a religion the Crusades did much evil" because the Christian Church "…sank more deeply into superstition; the clergy into ignorance; and all Christendom exhibited a reproach and a scandal to the name which it bore" (Meliora, 16).

In conclusion, while the Crusades certainly contributed to commerce, the arts, science and navigation, the Crusades did not advance the Christian worldview, nor did they advance the cause of Christ, who had preached that when confronted with potential violence, a wise Christian will turn the other cheek. Christ also said in his Sermon on the Mount (the Beatitudes): "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the sons of God" (Matthew, Chapter 5 Verse 9). In Luke 6:35 Christ said "…love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back."