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I've witnessed several intellectuals, politicians, manipulating these historical events for a wide variety of reasons.
Mostly for the purpose of demonizing Christianity, which would therefore not be much better than the Islamic faith, and demonization of the whole so called "imperialistic" Occident as well.
But more interistingly, I've also heard random people making claims that led me to believe that not many actually know what were the motives and reality of the crusades, and thus explaining the rethorical success of the demagogues mentionned above.
I can't prevent people from lying, so my post is there to enlighten the ones not too interested in history.
I wouldn't discuss at length of the details of the Crusades, and whether or not they were victorious, I will just situate them in their historical perspective.
![[image loading]](http://www.middle-ages.org.uk/images/crusaders.jpg)
Crusaders
I). Intro
The Crusades were a series of religious expeditionary wars composed of European Christian (Catholic) fighters united under the banner of Christianity.
They were called by the Pope and several European leaders with the goal of fighting Islamic expansionism, which, after trying to invade France through Spain earlier in History (battle of Tours 732), was currently conquering Christian Oriental lands (Byzantine) plus cutting off access to Jerusalem for Christian pilgrimages.
Ironically, the concept itself of "just war" used by Obama to explain the motives of some of the recent American wars, emerged from the Crusades.
I say this because a lot of Obama supporters seem to be at the very least agnostic.
II). Historial perspective
First of, it is very important to keep in mind that the Crusades were reactionary expeditions.
It was the Great Seljuq Empire (sunni Muslims) which initiated the conflict with the Christian Byzantines, and launched a series of invasions and wars which ended up being disastrous for the Byzantine Empire.
The Battle of Manzikert (1071) was the nail in the coffin and signed the military lose of the Byzantines.
The first crusade came 20 years after that.
![[image loading]](http://minimumwagehistorian.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/byzantine-empire-1000-1100.jpg)
Throughout all of them, unnecessary atrocities were commited on the Christian side. No one is denying that.
Sacking of Jerusalem, large massacres, notably during the first crusade after the assieged refused to surrender and that the gates were breached.
![[image loading]](http://warandgame.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/emilesignol-thetakingofjerusalem.jpg)
First crusade victory, Jerusalem is taken
But historically and globally speaking, whether they toke place in the Balkans (later Crusades in the XVth century) or the Middle-East, this was nothing more than a fight between Islamic expansionism and Christian resistance to it.
In the end, Constantinople finally fell to the Islamic Ottomans on 29 May 1453.
![[image loading]](http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_ptAqeqIdoX0/TKV-ux-L4QI/AAAAAAAADwo/LK8o0C2qb8k/S1600-R/The+Fall+of+Constantinople,+29+May+1453+II.jpg)
Fall of Constantinople
After that, the whole region got gradually more and more Islamized and is now 95 to 100% Muslims.
III). Conclusion
I'm under the impression that most people believe Orient has always been Islamic thus see the Crusades as an unjust war of conquest.
This wasn't meant to be a technical essay, but I hope a lot of you will now understand better the stupidity of this claim.
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You should read 'The crusade through Arab eyes'.
Basically everyone did it for their own agenda. The Pope called for the crusades to make the Church more important. Alexius needed help protecting the Byzantine empire (which was created through conquest and unjust invasions in the first place) against the Arabs.
The European nobles that went wanted to conquer new lands to rule.
Suffice to say Alexius wasn't very happy when a mob of unorganized barbarian religious lunatics led by greedy nobles arrived at his gates.
Religion was all an excuse and a manipulation of the common people, as usual. The jews and the orthodox Christians had as much to fear from the crusaders as the muslims did as they say jews, orthodox christians and muslims as basically the same.
There is at least one battle in which arabs and crusaders fought other arabs and other crusaders.
And of all massacres, the cannibalism at Ma'arra was the worst. It was basically crusaders eating whoever they could capture after sacking to achieve 'shock and awe'. The cannibalism wasn't the result of famine among the crusader soldiers. It was meant as intimidation.
Can't believe you want to argue this was a 'just war'. Didn't realize Breivik had internet in his cell block.
User was temp banned for this post.
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On May 12 2012 21:50 Miyoshino wrote:Didn't realize Breivik had internet in his cell block.
This comment is completely unnecessary ...
Anyway i don't really know what you're trying to accomplish in posting this here i mean ... it's not that i dislike this kind of posts but you know, TL general, history lessons... it's not exactly what we ususally discuss i mean, what do you expect ?
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So, I suppose this was written to combat the use of the Crusades against Christianity and to dispel such ideas?
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On May 12 2012 21:50 Miyoshino wrote:
You should read 'The crusade through Arab eyes'.
Basically everyone did it for their own agenda. The Pope called for the crusades to make the Church more important. Alexius needed help protecting the Byzantine empire against the Arabs.
The European nobles that went wanted to conquer new lands to rule.
Suffice to say Alexius wasn't very happy when a mob of unorganized barbarian religious lunatics led by greedy nobles arrived at his gates.
Religion was all an excuse and a manipulation of the common people, as usual. The jews and the orthodox Christians had as much to fear from the crusaders as the muslims did as they say jews, orthodox christians and muslims as basically the same.
There is at least one battle in which arabs and crusaders fought other arabs and other crusaders.
And of all massacres, the cannibalism at Ma'arra was the worst. It was basically crusaders eating whoever they could capture after sacking to achieve 'shock and awe'. The cannibalism wasn't the result of famine among the crusader soldiers. It was meant as intimidation.
Can't believe you want to argue this was a 'just war'. Didn't realize Breivik had internet in his cell block.
What he means, I think, is that the Crusaders claimed this to be a "just war" and not that the OP necessarily thought this.
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The whole idea of the Crusades being reactionary to Islamic extremism is a new perspective being advocated by modern/contemporary mega-Church apologists trying to rewrite history in favourable terms to Christians and has been popping up on many evangelical blogs/forums recently. It's like saying the colonisation of other countries by Christians was to prevent the people from those countries from killing each other when in reality the arrival of Christians murdered more natives than those countries had ever murdered their own throughout history.
Edit: Spelling.
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The original reasoning for the Crusades were not that the Christians wanted to reclaim the Holy Land, it is because the Roman Catholic Church was slowly losing its power over Europe and needed an excuse to unite the Latin states to recoup some of said power. Read The Crusades by Thomas Asbridge. In fact, prior to the Crusades, Christians and Muslims were living peacefully in the Levant.
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Seriously - SiroKO - were you inspired to make this post by a recent Christian blog post you came across or a recent Church sermon you heard, or is this knowledge you've had for quite some time and you've just decided to share it now. I wager that you've only just learnt about this heavily biased information about the Crusades recently. I know this because many of my fundamentalist/evangelical Christian friends have been posting similar status updates recently on Facebook. The truth is you know very little about the Crusades, heard a youth pastor give a half hour talk about it to try and prove that Christianity is good and has a clean slate compared to those evil Muslims and atheists, then decided to quickly start educating others about it.
Edit: It's quite common I know, I used to be a Christian and everytime I heard something new, like for example if a book like The Case for Creation by Lee Strobel came out saying that evolution is wrong, I'd quickly get on my pedastal and start preaching to people about how fantastic this book was without knowing shit about evolution or science. It's just pride. Prove that you actually know something about the Crusades, such as any history qualifications, but my bet is that you've only just recently found out about this from some one-sided Pentecostal sermon/book you attended/read recently.
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Furthermore... FYI religious topics are banned on TL.
Edit: What I mean is, if an atheist started this topic giving the opposite perspective shedding Christians intentions for the Crusades in a negative light, it would very likely be closed.
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On May 12 2012 21:50 Miyoshino wrote:
You should read 'The crusade through Arab eyes'.
Basically everyone did it for their own agenda. The Pope called for the crusades to make the Church more important. Alexius needed help protecting the Byzantine empire (which was created through conquest and unjust invasions in the first place) against the Arabs.
The European nobles that went wanted to conquer new lands to rule.
Suffice to say Alexius wasn't very happy when a mob of unorganized barbarian religious lunatics led by greedy nobles arrived at his gates.
Religion was all an excuse and a manipulation of the common people, as usual. The jews and the orthodox Christians had as much to fear from the crusaders as the muslims did as they say jews, orthodox christians and muslims as basically the same.
There is at least one battle in which arabs and crusaders fought other arabs and other crusaders.
And of all massacres, the cannibalism at Ma'arra was the worst. It was basically crusaders eating whoever they could capture after sacking to achieve 'shock and awe'. The cannibalism wasn't the result of famine among the crusader soldiers. It was meant as intimidation.
Can't believe you want to argue this was a 'just war'. Didn't realize Breivik had internet in his cell block.
Disregarding the cannibalism comment this is all very relevant. I'm not going to say the crusades were wrong, but I'm also not going to say they were right (or "just").
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It is quite clear what he means. Intellectuals lied about the crusaders to make Christianity look bad. That are his words.
In the west the crusader for a long time were seen as brave noble knights fighting the infidels. This is why in ordinary language 'going on a crusade against' is acceptable language..
Then intellectuals, after going through the historical documents, offered a different view. To him this is a 'lie for politicial reasons'.
Of course this happened a few decades ago. But the crusades happened a long time ago and for centuries theese events were still in the collective memory of the people in the west and people in the near east. But their accounts different vastly.
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As someone who has studied medieval history, what I can tell you about this is that the painting of the "fall of Constantinople" is a not a depiction of the 1453 assault of the Ottomans but rather the 1204 attack of the Venetians, during their "Fourth Crusade".
What that could tell you is that because they are both Christians it doesn't mean that Eastern Christians and Catholics were of the same bread.
"Better the Sultan's turban than the Cardinal's Hat" : This is a quote by a Byzantine general during the fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans.
Crusades fighting for Catholic Christianity + no Catholic Christianity in the Levante = no moral justification in my book.
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On May 12 2012 22:10 babybell wrote:
As someone who has studied medieval history, what I can tell you about this is that the painting of the "fall of Constantinople" is a not a depiction of the 1453 assault of the Ottomans but rather the 1204 attack of the Venetians, during their "Fourth Crusade".
What that could tell you is that because they are both Christians it doesn't mean that Eastern Christians and Catholics were of the same bread.
"Better the Sultan's turban than the Cardinal's Hat" : This is a quote by a Byzantine general during the fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans.
I heard about the last quote. Byzantines weren't in good terms with Europe, let's not forget that during the first Crusade, the crusaders sacked Constantinople.
It seems to me the OP is quite ignorant about these wars
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I've always felt blaming religion for wars is pretty ridiculous, they're mostly motivated by human greed and politics. From what i can see Islam and Christianity are pretty indistinguishable from each other in their Hypocrisy and vileness.
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So, what was the Fourth Crusade again?
+ Show Spoiler +I originally intended to write a lenghty post about the many reasons the OP is wrong, but I don't have the time nor motivation...he should just read more about the whole era
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Funny story, I have an exam on this in 3 days.
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On May 12 2012 22:12 Art.FeeL wrote:Show nested quote +On May 12 2012 22:10 babybell wrote:
As someone who has studied medieval history, what I can tell you about this is that the painting of the "fall of Constantinople" is a not a depiction of the 1453 assault of the Ottomans but rather the 1204 attack of the Venetians, during their "Fourth Crusade".
What that could tell you is that because they are both Christians it doesn't mean that Eastern Christians and Catholics were of the same bread.
"Better the Sultan's turban than the Cardinal's Hat" : This is a quote by a Byzantine general during the fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans. I heard about the last quote. Byzantines weren't in good terms with Europe, let's not forget that during the first Crusade, the crusaders sacked Constantinople. It seems to me the OP is quite ignorant about these wars
I know about the Crusaders treason towards their Byzantine allies.
They also took control of some lands rather than declaring them under Byzantine command.
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Constantinople wasn't sacked by the crusaders on the first crusade. They weren't allowed inside the city or given food so they moved on to Antioch. But they were supposed to help Alexios since Alexios had asked for help.
One of the leaders of the crusade was a mortal enemy of the Byzantine empire.
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On May 12 2012 22:17 nttea wrote:
I've always felt blaming religion for wars is pretty ridiculous, they're mostly motivated by human greed and politics. From what i can see Islam and Christianity are pretty indistinguishable from each other in their Hypocrisy and vileness.
That's not a fair statement. Take Islam for example. The Arab expansion was incredible and throughout the Arab sultanates during from the 7th century and for a long period of time that lasted until the 13th or 12th, depends on how you look at it, these areas of Northern Africa, the Iberian Peninsula and the Middle East went from depressed unorganized areas into the world's center of culture. Religion helps to consolidate the masses and provide a clear set of goals. That isn't always bad for the people and good for some supposed "puppeteers".
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EPT
