In Defense of the Crusades
We at AP do not claim to be professional historians by any stretch of the imagination. We do, however, pay close attention to cultural trends and their relationship with politics and history. Due to the hyper-polarization of culture and politics, many trends have emerged which anachronistically adopt past cultures and beliefs and paint them in a modern lens. This is referred to as Whig history, which we have referenced elsewhere in our writings. The problem with Whig history is that it isn’t accurate. It inserts modern sensibilities and beliefs and paints them onto people who had no such experiences or beliefs.
The crusades have had a culturally negative reputation as long as I have been alive. They have been portrayed as barbaric expeditions done in the name of religious superstition and zealotry that produced nothing that benefitted mankind. This perception is revisionist history and reflects not the true perceptions of the crusades of the time, but rather a more modern disgust for Christianity, European centrism, and cultural clashes of civilization. In reality, the crusades were entirely justified and paved the way for numerous human advancements in state organization, banking, welfare, and more. It would be conceited to think that this article covers even 1% of the entire history of the crusades, which encompassed a period of over 200 years and thousands of technological and cultural advancements. However, we do hope that these new interpretations of the impetus of the crusades can help balance our perception of a bygone era.
To begin, we must dispel the notion that the Holy Land campaigns were an unprovoked attack by Christians against peaceful Muslims. In reality, the Crusades were a response to decades of Islamic invasions into Christian lands. Under Roman rule, the Mediterranean Sea had been extremely safe. Pax Romana, or Roman peace, ensured that shipping lanes were open to all of Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East, which brought unprecedent levels of prosperity. After Rome’s collapse, there was no great power to police the seas. As the only two remaining regional powers, the Arabs and Byzantines fought fiercely for control of Mediterranean. In 655, the Arabs shockingly defeated the Byzantine Navy at the Battle of Masts, which opened the entire Mediterranean Sea to them for the first time. 400 years of piracy soon followed, which devastated Europe. As Historian Hugh Kennedy notes, “In antiquity, and again in the high Middle Ages, the voyage from Italy to Alexandria was commonplace; in early Islamic times, the two countries were so remote that even the most basic information was unknown.”
In addition to the rampant piracy and closure of trade, land invasions of Christian Europe were extremely common. By the 8th century, roughly three hundred years before the first crusade, Islamic Caliphs had taken roughly half of Rome’s Mediterranean holdings and had gained significant territory in Europe via the Iberian Peninsula.
In the twenty years prior to the first crusade, Christendom had lost all of Anatolia (modern day Turkey) to the Arab caliphate, which put the Muslims directly on the doorstep of Constantinople, the most powerful Christian kingdom in the world. After conquering the major cities of Edessa, Caesarea, Melitene and Sebastea, the Arabs turned their attention to Constantinople. This city was not only the richest and well-fortified city of the time but also served as the seat of Eastern Christendom and was the last major defense of invading forces trying to gain entrance into Europe. As the last remaining bastion of Roman civility, Europeans knew that there would be no line of defense against invading forces if it fell. They would then need to fight an unwinnable three front war; one in Iberia, one in Sicily, and one in Greece.
It wasn’t until 1095 that Byzantine Emperor Alexios I Komnenos, realizing the futility of his situation and what was at stake, asked Pope Urban II for aid. Crucially, this request was not for the reconquest of the holy land, eradicating Islam, or to protect pilgrims travelling there. The full speech is worth reading at length, but the main thrust is quoted here:
“For, as the most of you have heard, the Turks and Arabs have attacked them and have conquered the territory of Romania [the Greek empire] as far west as the shore of the Mediterranean and the Hellespont, which is called the Arm of St. George. They have occupied more and more of the lands of those Christians, and have overcome them in seven battles. They have killed and captured many, and have destroyed the churches and devastated the empire. If you permit them to continue thus for awhile with impurity, the faithful of God will be much more widely attacked by them. On this account I, or rather the Lord, beseech you as Christ's heralds to publish this everywhere and to persuade all people of whatever rank, foot-soldiers and knights, poor and rich, to carry aid promptly to those Christians and to destroy that vile race from the lands of our friends.”
Aside from incursions into Anatolia and Iberia, the Arabs had also conquered Sicily, which gave them a direct line into the heart of Europe and, more importantly, put them directly on the path to Rome, threatening all of Europe as well as seat of the Catholic church. This threat was not taken as an if, but a when. Hundreds of Muslims incursions had occurred across southern Europe, including the east coast of Italy and the West coast of Greece, as well as in Corsica and Sardinia.
Islamic incursions into Christian territory as well as rampant piracy and the closure of shipping lanes were the original impetus to call for a Crusade, but it would be intellectual dishonest not to mentioned the few examples of religious fervor that spilled over the edges. Prior to the first official crusade, a monk named Peter the Hermit led what is known as the People’s Crusade. This mass movement of roughly 100,000 untrained and unorganized peasants was largely motivated by spiritual signs, including meteors, comets, and an eclipse. This crusade ended in utter failure, but did create a nasty PR nightmare for Christians not only today, but also at the time. In 1096, an unorganized mob following Peter the Hermit had run out of provisions and began sacking Jewish cities like Mainz, Speyes, and Worms. Thousands of Jews were killed before the mob continued on their way to Jerusalem. The destruction of Jews was not specifically called for by the Church or any other authority but was likely a result of pre-existing tensions. Christians typically took out debt to finance their trip to the Holy Land. Because the church had banned usury, Christians had to take loans from Jewish moneylenders, which caused great friction as these loans carried high interest rates for an endeavor that Christians believed was necessary and righteous. What is of special note in this instance was that all authorities, both secular and papal, strongly condemned these actions. Not only were these attacks not commissioned by any legal or papal authority, but Emperor Henry IV issued orders specifically forbidding any violence against Jewish communities, and the Catholic priests, including Bishop Cosmas of Hungary, threatened excommunication for anyone involved. Hugo of Flavigny, a Benedictine monk at the time, noted:
“It certainly seems amazing that on a single day in many different places, moved in unison by a violent inspiration, such massacres should have taken place, despite their widespread disapproval and their condemnation as contrary to religion. But we know that they could not have been avoided since they occurred in the face of excommunication imposed by numerous clergymen, and of the threat of punishment on the part of many princes.”
An important lesson can therefore be drawn from this inexcusable event: While unchecked violence was certainly a flaw of the crusades, it is in no way a feature. Another common example of this narrative is the sack of Zara and Constantinople, both Christian cities. The details of these sacks are often overlooked, however. Examples of pre-existing tensions between the two groups include the Latin Massacre where, prior to the fourth crusade, the usurper king of Constantinople murdered the Latin-friendly Emperor Alexios IV and allowed genocide of the Latin residents in the city, leading to the deaths or expulsion of 60,000 Latin Christians. These sieges were not the aim of the Crusades nor condoned by the church. The pope excommunicated the Crusader army that sacked Zara, whose original target was Egypt, and threatened to do the same to the forces that sacked Constantinople. Of eight crusades over two hundred years, these two moments seem to create the narrative that crusaders were bloodthirsty, greedy zealots. The reality, however, is far from it.
As we have seen, the Islamic invasions were a very real and very credible threat to Europeans. If the loss of half of the Christian empire was not enough to persuade modern audiences of this fact, then we must turn our attention to what happened after the crusades. The final crusade ended in 1271 - after this, the Ottoman Turks invaded the Balkans in 1389. Constantinople finally fell in 1453. in 1529, invading Muslim forces laid siege as far into Europe as Vienna, Austria. Not only was the threat of Muslim invasion vindicated, but the Crusades preserved Constantinople for another 200 years and staved off further European invasion for over one hundred years.
Aside from territory, the crusades contributed numerous positive advancements to European development and have been severely underappreciated in common discourse. Of utmost importance is that the crusades directly led to the gradual dissolution of the feudal state and subsequent formation of the modern nation state. Prior to the crusades, feudalism ruled Europe. A king would delegate lands to lords who would ‘lease’ the lands to peasants and take percentages of everything produced on those lands, including food, game, silver, fighting men, and more. Therefore, the most important facet of medieval life was landholding. As Lisa Blaydes and Christopher Paik state, the immense cost of crusading forced nobles to sell land extremely rapidly. Prior to the crusades, selling land was extremely difficult as a landholder required permission from his lord and family. However, papal laws around land dispensation changed to fund the Crusades, and so much land was sold that it severely lowered its value. This process destroyed the feudal model – families who sold land naturally disinherited their heirs from being landowners themselves, thus removing them from the social hierarchy of managing those lands and being a lord themselves. It also depressed the value of land to the point where commoners, such as merchants, were able to buy it. Likewise, when these nobles departed their homelands for the Holy Land, it fostered a sense of pan-European identity that had been shattered since the fall of Rome. Communities that had been segregated for hundreds of years, and who had been warring with one another, suddenly found common cause and a sense of communal purpose. Likewise, the severely depleted ranks of nobility that remained in Europe also lowered the number of challenges that nobles had to titles or property. The decrease in title challenges combined with the increase in common identities across Europe dramatically increased long-term political stability and overall cohesion.
Not only were the crusades justified, but they slowed the Islamic invasion and created a pan-European sense of identity that the continent hadn’t seen in a thousand years. Modern sensibilities around warfare and Christianity do not change these facts.
