Revisiting the Crusades: Defense, Faith, and Survival

Islamic Aggression and the Justification for Crusades

“The Crusades were born from the violent aggression of Islam…The invasion of Christian territory, Muslim persecution of native Christians and pilgrims, plus the threat posed to the Christian Byzantine Empire, were all legitimate reasons to engage in defensive warfare and Pope Urban II cited them as justification for the First Crusade.” – Steve Weidenkopf, The Glory of the Crusades

Challenging Modern Retellings of the Crusades

Modern retellings of the Crusades imply bloodthirsty Christian warriors who turned from the peaceful teaching of Christ and grabbed the battleaxe, seeking the conquest and destruction of others, converting the world through force. The truth is that for hundreds of years, there was an expansionist society, conquering new territories to bring everyone under the control of their religion. They were converted by the sword, persecuted, and terrorised. But this society was not Christendom; it was Islam. It is wishful thinking for moderns to assume that Christendom could play nice, preach diversity and tolerance, and expect a corresponding response. Hundreds of years of history, the actions and words of Muslims, and the teaching of the Qur’an and hadiths proved the opposite.

Islamic Expansion and Christian Response

For centuries, Islam showed it would continue to expand and to subjugate or eradicate other cultures, conquering territories previously under Christian rule, including Egypt and the rest of North Africa, Syria, Palestine, Cyprus, the bulk of Iberia, Anatolia, Armenia, Sicily and eventually much of the Balkans and further into Central Europe. During the ninth century, Muslim forces attacked Rome and pillaged Christian churches, and in the 11th century, destroyed the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem.⁸ Medieval scholar Christopher Tyerman wrote, “The memory of the long struggle with Islam from the 7th century was not lost 400 years later. If anything, it had grown.”⁹

Crusades as a Defence Against Islamic Conquests

Medieval scholar Professor Thomas Madden wrote that the Crusaders directly resulted from the “Muslim conquest of Christian territories.”¹⁰ Professor Rodney Stark explained that Urban II and the Crusaders did not embark on a conquest but rather viewed it as an armed pilgrimage to visit the Holy Land and return. They aimed to recover ancient Christian territory in a just and defensive war. He wrote, “Heroic men and women of faith, rooted in love of Christ and neighbour, undertook the Crusades as acts of self-defence and recovery of stolen property. This is the proper understanding of these important events in Church history.”¹¹

The Just War Theory and the Crusades

In the same way, if any pagan peoples invaded, Christians defended themselves against the ruin of their homes, religion, and culture. Over half of Christendom had already been conquered when a response (the First Crusade) was called.¹² The Gospel and God’s laws were too vital to be allowed to be wiped off the earth; they had to act.¹³ The crusades were not offensive but defensive-minded; when a crusader force besieged Lisbon, the Archbishop of Braga said, “You have held our cities and lands already for 358 years. Return to the homeland of the Moors whence you came, leaving to us what is ours.” ¹⁴ The crusading period put Islam on the defensive and began to restore regions that were formerly Christian to the faith. And when the crusading fervour ended, Islam once more went on the offensive, capturing Constantinople, overwhelming the Balkan kingdoms and pushing into Hungary.

Understanding Medieval Motivations for War

Perhaps an imagined modern scenario might help us understand why Europe was prepared to arm itself for war against the rise of Islam. What if an armed mob of white supremacists invaded New England, forced people to consume their propaganda, killed minorities or mistreated them, raped, enforced their beliefs, harassed or killed anyone who tried to protest or speak out against the injustice, and promised to expand into all of America? What if this occurred for hundreds of years? Would not the U.S. government and the people themselves call for military action to restore New England to the beacon of supposed equality that it is? And would they not feel justified in military action? One culture might define evil in its way, but we would react against it just the same if what we cherished was under assault, as it was to those people in medieval Europe.

The Church and Just War Theory

The extensive time the Church and West spent allowing persecution should not surprise us; its patience, tolerance, and so on were part of the “just war” theory of Saint Augustine and the Church. A just war must be reactive and defensive and eradicate a more severe evil than the war itself would bring. Thus, something like massive persecution over time and in the future must finally cause a war to be called.

Safe Travel for Pilgrims

“How does a man love according to divine precept his neighbour as himself when knowing that his Christian brothers in faith and in name are held by the perfidious Muslims in strict confinement and weighed down by the yoke of heaviest servitude, he does not devote himself to the task of freeing them? … Is it by chance that you do not know that many thousands of Christians are bound in slavery and imprisoned by the Muslims, tortured with innumerable torments?” – Pope Innocent III

Christian Persecution and the Call for Crusades

Despite losing vast tracts of land (including the Holy Land) to its expansion over centuries, Christianity as a whole and the Church did not take action against Islam. But the recently intensified level of persecution, not only against native Christians in the East but also against pilgrims from the West, especially from the Turkish Muslims, drew the attention of Western Christian powers. Professor Christopher Tyerman wrote, “Turkish invasions from the 1050s destabilised the region … causing as much if not more mayhem and destruction than the crusaders were able to achieve.”¹⁵ Muslims had made travel to the Holy Land impossibly expensive as well as dangerous, with a real threat of torture, being sold into slavery, and murder for attempting to travel.¹⁶ Crusader brothers Geoffrey and Guy went “to exterminate wickedness and unrestrained rage of the pagans by which innumerable Christians have already been oppressed, made captive and killed.”¹⁷

Historical Examples of Muslim Aggression

For example, some of the major incidents in 705, Muslims assembled Armenian Christian nobles in a church and burned them to death.¹⁸ In 1570, Muslims murdered tens of thousands of Christians in Cyprus.¹⁹ In the 8th century, 70 pilgrims from Asia Minor were executed. Shortly after, 60 were crucified. In the late 8th century, Muslims attacked the monastery of Saint Theodosius and slaughtered the monks while destroying churches in Bethlehem. In 796, Muslims burned to death 20 monks from a monastery. In 809, mass rape and murder occurred in Jerusalem. On Palm Sunday of 923, many churches were destroyed and Christians killed. Fatimid Caliph al-Hakim had many churches burned or pillaged, and the Holy Sepulchre was destroyed, and Jesus’s tomb was partially destroyed. On Good Friday, March 25, 1065, a massive multitude of pilgrims, around 12,000, including women, priests, and children, were ambushed, and most of them were massacred on their way to the Holy Lands.²⁰ Journeying to the Holy Land became increasingly perilous, with pilgrims frequently attacked and killed by Muslim tribesmen and bandits.

Pope Urban II Preaching the First Crusade by Francesco Hayez

Pope Urban II’s Call to Action

During his famous sermon at Clermont that ignited the crusading spirit, Pope Urban II urged his listeners to consider the suffering and, at times, brutal torture of pilgrims forced to endure the journey to the Holy Land, stating,

“They not only demanded money of them, which is not an unendurable punishment, but also examined the callouses of their heels, cutting them open and folding the skin back, lest, perchance, they had sewed something there. Their unspeakable cruelty was carried on even to the point of giving them scammony to drink until they vomited, or even burst their bowels because they thought the wretches had swallowed gold or silver; or, horrible to say, they cut their bowels open with a sword and, spreading out the folds of the intestines, with frightful mutilation disclosed whatever nature held there in secret. Remember, I pray, the thousands who have perished in vile deaths, and strive for the holy places from which the beginnings of your faith have come. Before you engage in His battles, believe without question that Christ will be your standard-bearer and inseparable forerunner.“

Aid from the West

So, help came from the West to aid both pilgrims and persecuted Eastern Christians.²² After the First Crusade’s success and the establishment of knightly orders of monks, such as the Knights Templar, guarding the pilgrims on the roads and in the Holy Lands, the number of travellers significantly increased as they were made relatively safe again ²³

Persecution of Eastern Christians

Even if a crusade was not yet called, the defence of persecuted Christians was on the mind of the Church hierarchy; for example, Pope Gregory VII wrote a letter to Countess Matilda of Tuscany in 1074 expressing his intense desire to assist the Christians who were “being slaughtered like sheep by pagans.”²⁴ Even if theological and authority disputes existed between Western Catholicism and the Orthodox of Byzantium (not to mention the various, even at times “heretical” Christian sects that existed in the East), Christians were Christians, and those of the West should aid their brothers. Catholic Archbishop William of Tyre wrote that despite being viewed as schismatic, out of communion with Rome, or even heretical, the Christians in the Holy Lands were “true Christians.”²⁵

Pope Urban’s Call to Crusade

Igniting the first Crusade, Pope Urban sent a letter to Spanish nobles stating the cause of the Crusade was to end the “tyranny and oppression” Christians were enduring.²⁶ He called all of Latin Europe to come “to the aid of your brothers living on the eastern shore.”²⁷ Urban informed his audience at Clermont that Eastern Christians and pilgrims were facing persecution and death, which would only escalate unless they received aid. A section is worth quoting at length to understand what motivated Western Catholics to react: 

“Our Christian brothers, members in Christ, are scourged, oppressed, and injured in Jerusalem, in Antioch, and the other cities of the East…they are flogged and exiled as slaves for sale in their own land… A race from the kingdom of the Persians, an accursed race, a race utterly alienated from God…has invaded the lands of those Christians and has depopulated them by the sword, pillage and fire; it has led away a part of the captives into its own country, and a part it has destroyed by cruel tortures; it has either destroyed the churches of God or appropriated them for the rites of its own religion…They circumcise the Christians, and the blood of the circumcision they either spread upon the altars or pour into the vases of the baptismal font. When they wish to torture people by a base death, they perforate their navels and drag forth the extremity of the intestines, bind it to a stake; then, with flogging, they lead the victim around until the viscera, having gushed forth, the victim falls prostrate upon the ground. Others they bind to a post and pierce with arrows. Others they compel to extend their necks and then, attacking them with naked swords, attempt to cut through the neck with a single blow. What shall I say of the abominable rape of the women? To speak of it is worse than to be silent…Think of those who made the pilgrimage across the sea! Even if they were more wealthy, consider what taxes, what violence they underwent, since they were forced to make payments and tributes almost every mile, to purchase release at every gate of the city, at the entrance of the churches and temples, at every side journey from place to place: Also, if any accusation whatsoever were made against them, they were compelled to purchase their release; but if they refused to pay money, the prefects of the Gentiles, according to their custom, urged them fiercely with blows….”²⁸

Pope Eugene III announced a Crusade (the Second Crusade) on December 1, 1145. He wrote to the King of France, telling him the objective of the First Crusade had been to liberate the Eastern Church. Now that Edessa had fallen, he wanted to send aid once more, after priests had been murdered and sacred relics destroyed in its loss to Muslim forces. The aim was “to defend the oriental church…and to snatch many thousands of your captive brothers from their hands.”²⁹ Rallying knights for the second crusade, the lyrics of a famous song titled Chevalier Mult estes Guariz read, “Edessa is taken, as you know, and the Christians are sorely afflicted because of it; the churches are burnt and abandoned…knights make your decisions, you who are esteemed for your skill in arms; make a gift of your bodies to him who was placed on the cross for you.”30

Christian Suffering Under Islamic Rule

Under Islamic rule, rape, murder, torture, enslavement, and forced conversions were all things Christians suffered from. No new churches or synagogues were allowed to be built. Christians were prohibited from praying out loud, even in churches or houses or reading the Bible. They were not allowed weapons, had to pay a special tax, and when they did not face worse, they were treated as second-class citizens and pressured to convert. When the Crusader armies came east, various Christian groups sought the aid of the Crusaders in liberating their towns from Muslim rule. Often, these groups would join the crusade after their areas were freed or utilise the Crusaders’ presence to throw off their Muslim rulers.

The Primary Motivator for Crusades

This remained perhaps the primary motivator for the Crusades. The call for a second crusade by Pope Eugenius III in his bull Quantum praedecessores was based on defending the Eastern Church after the fall of Edessa. Instead of abandoning the Eastern Church to Muslim rule, which would have ultimately led to its destruction, Church leaders decided to reclaim those territories, free them from oppression, and create an environment for the Church to flourish. This would ensure that the Gospel would continue to spread and not be wiped out entirely.

Portrait of the Byzantine Emperor Alexios I Komnenos (r. 1081-1118)

Byzantium Calls for Aid

In 1071, the Islamic Turks defeated the Byzantine army and captured the Emperor. Threatening Constantinople and the most extensive collection of Christian relics. In 1074, Gregory VII called for a Crusade to help Byzantium and the Christians suffering tyranny and being murdered in the thousands at the hands of the Turks. He quoted the gospels, saying Christians ought to lay down their lives as Christ did to help them. Later, in 1095, the Byzantine Emperor Alexios I Komnenos requested aid from the Pope due to their desperate situation, having recently lost most of their former lands. The Emperor sent word to Pope Urban that if help was not received, thousands more Christians would be raped, tortured, and murdered, and relics, which meant so much to medieval Christendom, would be lost. The formerly vast and mighty Byzantine empire was on the brink of destruction before, in desperation, aid was sought from the West, and they responded.

Modern Reflections on the Crusades

It’s easy for modern Christians to feel morally superior to Christians of the past when they are safe and a long distance from being forced to convert when their friends and family are not being kidnapped, tortured, raped, robbed, or murdered while visiting the Holy Land. Yet many of these modern Christians will, with as much religious fervour, run off to wars in distant lands to protect “freedom,” “democracy,” or “America.” They defend a secular government and society, even if it is tyrannical and discriminating against Christianity, with the same intensity as the Crusaders of old, not for the love of Christ or of a persecuted brother, but for “patriotism.”