and thusly something to be desired:
Indeed we have seen these Franks in the same regions, often right with us, or we have heard about them in places distant from us, suffering dismemberment, crucifixion, flaying, death by arrows or by being rent apart, or other kinds of martyrdom, all for the love of Christ. They could not be overcome by threats or temptations, nay rather if the the butcher’s sword had been at hand many of us would not have refused martyrdom for the love of Christ. (Fulcher)
And, understandably, Fulcher of Chartres had no benevolent opinions regarding the Turks or Arabs. He was greatly in favor of Pope Urban’s original plan of reestablishing cordial relations with the Byzantine emperor and the orthodox church. He actually admired the Emperor Alexius. When people like Baldwin and Bohemond invaded parts of the Byzantine empire he had no objections and when Bohemond clashed with Alexious (1107-1108), Fulcher bought into Bohemond’s propaganda, stating that Alexius had used “trickery and open violence” to impede the journey of the pilgrims by both land and sea. Unfortunately, Fulcher appears to be chiefly interested in popularizing the crusade, and doesn’t talk about the things that might be helpful and more interesting to this topic. According to Fink: Fulcher was in most respects a very ordinary person whose attitudes present interesting contradictions. He considered the crusade to be a sacred cause, but didn’t fail to notice that it allowed some Franks to become rich. “He believed himself to be a devout Christian; but by today’s standards he exhibited a most un-Christian attitude toward his fellow men who happened to be Muslims.” But, there is one inconsistency that in my opinion is of utmost importance and interest. Fulcher typically hyped the crusade as a holy cause, but did once write, “Oh war, hateful to the innocent and horrible to the spectators! War is not beautiful although it is thus called…I saw the battle, I wavered in my mind, I feared to be struck…One struck, his enemy fell. The one knew no pity, the other asked none. One lost a hand, the other an eye. Human understanding recoils when it sees such misery.” (Fink)
According to Fulcher’s example, even one hell-bent on crusading could have his doubts. Other things learned are that if one was for the crusade then he most likely started off with good intentions of reconnecting with the Byzantine empire and reclaiming the all-important Holy Land that had basically been destroyed by the Arabs. Second, the fact that Fulcher devoted much of his energy to popularizing the crusade tells me that there must have been some sort of significant resistance to it from the people. Third, people participating and promoting the crusades, apparently did it with full belief in their and its Christianity.
Parnoud further supports this idea that Christians at that time surely had no sense that they were committing an aggression. “They believed that they were repairing an injustice, using violence only to reconquer what had been torn from them by violence, and bringing to an end the oppression endured by those populations which had remained Christian.” And to further explain it he says, “If in our day the Moslem world nurses a grudge against the Crusades and still celebrates, after seven centuries, the anniversary of the captivity of Saint Louis, one can understand that the Christians should have felt a similar grievance against the Moslems because of a conquest which had taken place four centuries earlier, but which recent events had just then aggravated.” [The massacre of the Arminians and then tearing down the silver cross which “surmounted the cupola of their cathedral” and then was melted down to act as a doorstop for a mosque. (Parnoud)]
For an even more comprehensive understanding of what the “reconquest of the Holy Land meant to an eleventh century Christian,” we have to consider the whole idea in that time of the importance of a fief (which I have learned is “the piece of land to which you belong, which nourishes you and over which you possess certain rights” and was the very essence of feudal society) So, for every Christian at that time, the Holy Land was the common fief of all Christendom. We can see how that notion affected people of that time with the example of Charlemagne, who as soon as he re-established the empire began to concern himself and the empire with the fate of that same land. As it goes, no Christian back then could be content thinking that the Holy Land was gone for good. So when pilgrimages became increasingly difficult, the Pope as the spiritual leader, pushed for Christians to reconquer their fief (their land). “This was the impulse that gave birth to the First Crusade.” (Parnoud)
In seeing this background and how the people of the time thought about certain things, it makes sense that when Pope Urban called for liberation, the people responded. In 1095 Urban proclaimed war with “two distinct liberation goals.” The first was to free the eastern churches, especially in Jerusalem, from the “savagery and tyranny” of the Muslims. The second goal was perhaps more influential in convincing the people than the idea of freeing their fellow Christians. That was the idea of the liberation of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem which was a receptacle for sacred relics. (Riley-Smith)
As the Crusades continued, there became other interests and motivations, “born partly of the desire to keep Palestine once it had been reconquered,” which caused the original interests to become distorted and turned the Crusades into more primarily a “struggle against the Islamic world.” (Parnoud)
It’s interesting to look ahead to the end of crusading, which for all intents and purposes began to start dying around the 16th century. One big contributing factor was that in the 16th century the idea of using “Christ’s authority for the use of force” began to be questioned or challenged. This idea was perpetuated by Dominican Francisco de Vitoria who had quite a critical reaction to the violence committed by his fellow citizens against the “New-World Indians.” For Vitoria and his followers, the main “justification for violence could not be a divine plan.” (Riley-Smith) So it took people about 400 or 500 years to come to a realization that these Holy Wars were not actually holy at all, a concept that seems so obvious to Christians today. But what started in the name of God, in part, came to end in the same name.
In conclusion, the evils that the Crusades are so well known for, while certainly not something to be proud of, can in fact be understood to make sense. If you take in the factors that were so important to Christians back then, the significance of pilgrimages, the cherished Holy Land, the incorporation of Christianity into life in a way that we can’t even really understand, and so on; you can start to understand the reasoning and justification behind the Holy Wars. While you probably still won’t be okay with the atrocities committed, understanding the fairly reasonable motives for the original Crusades might help you become a little more comfortable with a dark part of our Christian history.
Works Cited
Cox, George W. The Crusades. John B. Alden Publisher, New York: 1962.
Fink, Herald S. A History of the Expedition to Jerusalem, 1095-1127 by Fulcher of Chartres. University of Tennessee Press, Tennessee: 1969.
Pernoud, Régine. The Crusades. Capricorn Books, New York: 1964.
Riley-Smith, Jonathan. The Crusades, A History. Second Edition. Yale University Press, New Haven: 2005.
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