Crusades Critical Analysis of Thomas

Crusades

Critical Analysis of Thomas Madden's the New Concise History of the Crusades

According to Thomas Madden's innocently titled book the New Concise History of the Crusades, the crusades that propelled medieval Christians to travel to Palestine to fight the infidel Muslims and secure Jerusalem under Western, Christian, European control were not such a bad thing. Despite the carnage that ensued and the violence that was inflicted against Christians and Muslims alike during the battles for the Holy Land, Madden contends that the crusades 'bought' Christian Europe time from encroaching Muslim influence. He sniffs at any sympathetic portrayals of Muslims of either the middle ages or today. Instead he condemns "the steady Muslim conquest of Christian lands over the centuries," which excuses the crusades as a means of "securing borders" between the states dominated by the two religions (Madden 213). The double standard he holds for Christian and Muslim civilization is unremarked upon, as what were the crusades if not a Christian conquest?

Madden sees the crusades not as aggression but as a kind of self-defense -- of an entirely preeminent sort, even though the crusades were justified as moral, not military struggles at the time. It was Pope Urban II at the Council of Clermont in 1095 who openly declared the first crusade, urging on a burgeoning influx of Christian warriors in European Christendom to take control of Jerusalem in the name of Christ, stating it was their holy duty (Madden 18; 213-214). The elision of religion and politics which Madden condemns in the Muslim world in his introduction, he accepts when done through the voice of a Western, Christian pontiff.

Consistently through his supposedly objective text Madden acts an apologist for the crusades. He speaks not in the dispassionate voice of a historian, but as a Christian hostile to the influence of Islam. He praises the crusades in the conclusion of his volume for slowing the advance of Islam, and destabilizing Muslim power, for two centuries without calculating their human cost, or the cost of diplomatic tensions between the West and Islam that exist up to the present day. Without the crusades, he fears that the Muslim powers would have unified into a single Islamic state and posed an effective counterweight to divided Christian Western and Eastern Europe.

Again, this is assumed to be an 'evil' thing, despite the fact that Islamic civilization was in many ways what moderns might call more 'civilized' at the time, by contemporary standards. While this concept of 'civilization' is admittedly in and of itself a judgment of morality, Madden's biases as a historian are so evident, the reader is almost inevitable placed in the position of attempting to play, no pun intended, devil's (or at very least, Islam's) advocate for the sake of gaining a more balanced view.

Madden praises the Christian democracy of the first crusading army. He admits that many individuals in this supposedly pious and inclusive band went for self-aggrandizement and enrichment, with the intention of pillaging as they went or at minimum improving their social status. Then he blithely states the fact that they were risking all in the name of Christ excuses any other, ulterior motives, and goes on to assume that most crusaders probably had some moral reasons for going. This seems belied by the fact that the poor prospects for social mobility in the Middle Ages no doubt lead many land or wealth poor individuals to seek the opportunity to seize gold in the Holy Land as well as to free it. Even if the crusades admittedly did create a rough democracy of warriors, surely the democracy of going on holy pilgrimages had a similar effect, with a more pacific religious spirit? The cultural exchange that took place on a traveling route, as well as the cultural exchange between the travelers and the foreign nation itself did not require a holy war to occur.

One thing not even Madden can excuse is that cultural and social exchanges between Christians did not lead to compassion towards members of other faiths, particularly Jews. In fact, the crusading impulse invariably, more so with every successive crusade, brought examples of the persecution of Jews in the region. The first crusade almost immediately spawned mass killings of Jews down the Rhine en route to Jerusalem, supposedly because Jews' wealth was obtained through usury, or lending money at interest. Usury was prohibited by the Church, even though many Christians borrowed from Jews, and Jews were denied entry into almost every profession by the Church at the time, other than money-lending (Madden 17-19). Jews everywhere began to dread crusades, because they knew that their safety would be threatened by zealous Christians, or Christians who wanted an excuse to kill and steal from Jews.

The Third Crusade was lead by Richard the Lion-Hearted of England and Phillip of France. This third crusade provided the famous setting, of course, of the Robin Hood epics, which depicted the English populace suffering prohibitive taxes and controls during the reign of Richard's brother John, while Richard was attempting to secure Jerusalem at great political and economic expense to his nation. Richard's abuse of power was not limited to his foregoing his kingdom back home. Although Madden praises Richard's legendary valor, Richard also slaughtered 2,700 Muslims prisoners when negotiating with the Muslim leader of Jerusalem (Madden 84-88).

Even after all of this bloodshed, the 'fruits' of the first, second, third, and fourth crusades did not secure Jerusalem, which fell from Christian control in 1291. Yet Madden optimistically concludes that the "the crusades that failed or did not materialize," at least "forced Muslim powers to divert resources from conquest to their own defense," and freed vulnerable Western Europe in the long run from Turkish influences by weakening the East (Madden 218). The idea advanced by most historians that the reason Europe was so vulnerable during the crusading era to later onslaughts by foreign powers was because of a diversion of manpower from learning, medical, and technological advances to the crusades he likewise dismisses.