A last look at the Crusades

In the past few blogs I've looked at Rodney Stark's book on the Crusades--God's Battalions. It's an important book becuase it tells a far different story than the one we hear from Muslims and critics of our Western world, who have twisted history in an attenmpt to make the West (and Christianity) look as bad as possible. This final blog on the topic is going to be a hodgepodge of various pieces of historical information.

For onething, Stark attacks the idea that Crusaders were interested only in taking more land and money for themselves. He notes that an earlier pope in 1063 A.D. had proposed a crusade to drive infidel Muslims out of Spain. That land, unlike the Holy Land, was extremely wealthy, full of fertile lands, and much closer for crusaders. But the pope interested very few in this request. But just thirty-some years later, tens of thousands of Crusaders set out for faraway Palestine. Why? Spain was not the Holy Land where Christ had walked.

Here's another myth that Stark attacks -- the Crusades were possible only because it was a time of hardship and economic distress. It was not true, he says. The Crusades were possible because it was a boom time of rapid economic growth, which explains why these attempts to re-take the Holy Land were relatively well-funded, not only by participants, but by sympathetic donors.

Another problem has been the way historians claim that Crusaders attacked Jews along the way to Constantinople. Most of the massacres were actually the work of German knights who were not part of the Crusades themselves. In fact, almost everywhere along the route bishops attempted, sometimes even at the peril of their own lives, to protect the Jews.

The next criticism of the Crusaders involves a massacre that took place after they succeeded in their attack on Jerusalem. This is a horror story that has been used many times to vilify the Crusaders. Stark, however, notes that dozens of Muslim massacres had already taken place, so this is not a case of bloodthirsty barbarians in contrast to more civilized and tolerant Muslims. He also notes that a common rule of war concerning siege warfare was that if the city did not surrender before forcing the attackers to take the city by storm, the inhabitants could expect to be massacred as an example to others in the future. So, Muslims could have surrendered the city before the fighting started; if so, they would have been given terms to prevent a massacre. He notes that it was a cruel and bloody age, but that nothing is gained by imposing some sort of modern convention on those times. He believes the sources may have greatly exaggerated the extent of the massacre since the same writers routinely reported armies of one million men. One historian noted that what happened was probably not much different than what happened to any place that resisted. Stark says there is very credible evidence that most of the Jews were spared during this time.

How did Muslims fare under the rule of the Christians in the Holy Land after the initial successes? Most were peasants who reportedly were quite content under Christian dominance. Why? For one thing, no land-hungry Christians were eager to confiscate their fields or animals. For another, Muslims discovered taxes were lower in their kingdom than in neighboring Muslim countries. Perhaps most importantly, the Christian rulers tolerated the Muslims religion and made no effort to convert them.

Stark says there is a tendency to put down the Crusaders as barbaric and bigoted warmongers and to praise the Muslims as great paragons of chivalry. He says the example that is put forth of this positive view of Muslims is the famous leader Saladin. It is true that he let the defenders of Jerusalem go without slaughtering them, but this was an exception to his usual butchery of his enemies. In most other instances he demonstrated unchivalrous behavior. Following one battle, for example, he personally participated in butchering some of the captured Christians and then sat back and enjoyed watching the execution of many others.

One final charge raised against the Crusaders has to do with their sacking of the city of Constantinople. This has been offered as proof that the Crusades were a shameful episode in the greedy history of the West. However, Stark notes that many are not aware that the city was sacked by Byzantines themselves more than once. He also says no one acknowledges the centuries of Byzantine brutalities against Latin Christians. He also says people need to realize how often there was Byzantine treachery that occurred during each of the first three crusades that cost tens of thousands of Crusaders their lives. For example, members of the fourth Crusade in 1204 A.D. were deceived by a Byzantine emperor who, after the Crusaders helped restore him to the throne, broke promises and launched fire ships against the Crusaders' fleet. Latin residents of Constantinople fled the city and took refuge in the Crusader camp, leaving the Crusaders without food or money, stranded on a foreign shore. That's when they attacked Constantinople.

Stark has a powerful conclusion to his book that is worth quoting here:

"The Crusades were not unprovoked. They were not the first round of European colonialism. They were not conducted for land, loot, or converts. The Crusaders were not barbarians who victimize the cultivated Muslims. They sincerely believed that they served in God's battalions."

I hope these blogs have helped set the record straight. Were these Crusades a great example of Christian behavior? No, probably not. But they are certainly not as bad as critics and Muslims have maintained. We need to be careful not to jump to conclusions too quickly when confronted with broad attacks on Christianity. They are often motivated not by truth but by anti-religious sentiments.