Revisiting the Crusades

Were the crusades about liberating the holy land, the clash of Christianity vs. Islam, or western colonization?  We explore all these views and provide a descriptor of some key events.  

Transcript

Revisiting the Crusades

February 2025

The idea that the Crusades and the fight of Christendom against Islam is somehow an aggression on our part is absolutely anti-historical.

Rick Santorum

If there ever was a religious war full of terror, it was the Crusades. But you can’t blame Christianity because a few adventurers did this.

Moustapha Akkad

Few historical periods or events have gone through more revision than the Crusades.  And by the Crusades, I mean the time period from Pope Urban II preaching of the first Crusade at the Council of Clermont in 1095 to the Ninth Crusade, also known as Lord Edward’s Crusade.  The Ninth lasted from 1271 to 1272, and its failure led to the fall of Acre to the Muslim Mamluks in 1291. This date is considered to be the end of the Crusades.  And in the middle, we had everything from the Albigensian Crusade in southern France to the fourth Crusade in which Constantinople was sacked by other Christians, to Louis IX’s campaigns in Egypt, all hundreds of miles from Jerusalem. 

There is a certain romanticism to the Crusades.  Mythological, to be sure, but still there.  Figures include Raymond of Toulouse, Bohemond of Otranto, Eleanor of Aquitaine, Saladin, the Mamluks, and Richard the Lionhearted.  

There was even a 2005 movie, Kingdom of Heaven, which depicts my favorite Crusader, Baldwin the Leper, King of Jerusalem. And unlike the usual mythmaking, his story was largely corroborated. The courage and perseverance shown by his life are inspirational.  

When I was a schoolboy, the concept of the Crusades, and especially the first, was something to be lauded and celebrated.  This was obviously a reflection of a Judeo-Christian mindset then prevalent in an East Central WI high school in the 1980s.  

This ethos was captured in even earlier times by early 20th-century writer GK Chesterton, “The Crusade was the counter-attack. It was the defensive army taking the offensive in its turn and driving back the enemy to his base.’ Critics of the Crusades, he argued, ‘seem entirely to forget that long before the Crusaders had dreamed of riding to Jerusalem, the Moslems had almost ridden into Paris. They seem to forget that if the Crusaders nearly conquered Palestine, it was but a return upon the Moslems who had nearly conquered Europe.’

Chesterton adds,

“When people talk as if the Crusades were nothing more than an aggressive raid against Islam, they seem to forget in the strangest way that Islam itself was only an aggressive raid against the old and ordered civilization in these parts. I do not say it in mere hostility to the religion of Mahomet; I am fully conscious of many values and virtues in it, but certainly, it was Islam that was the invasion and Christendom that was the thing invaded.”

However, as progressives moved from their dominance of the universities to K-12, we have seen a reversal of that view.  The Crusaders were then seen as colonialists trying to steal land from the native Muslims.  Crusaders were no longer liberators but rapacious barbarians far more interested in plunder than religion.  

In a 1998 textbook, Western Civilizations: Their History and Their Culture, authors Robert Lerner, Standish Meacham, and Edward Burns note, “Western colonialism in the Holy Land was only the beginning of a long history of colonialism that has continued until modern times.”

On the right, a minor process is at play related to the use of medieval Christian holy war iconography. Flags supposedly representing the 12th-century military religious order Knights Templar were spotted at the 2001 Capitol riot, and imagery of knights with crosses emblazoned upon their chests or their shields have been a staple of Far Right internet and protest culture pre-dating even Donald Trump.

Matthew Grabiele, writing for the American History Association, captures the progressive reaction to this latest turn of Crusader interpretation, “The roots of this appropriation of medieval holy war go deeper, with the bridge from medieval to modern again being constructed by 19th- and early 20th-century scholarship. Medieval Christian holy war was deployed at that time in service to European colonialism to justify current occupations and explain ongoing conflicts between European powers in North Africa and the Middle East. In this telling, a racially and religiously “pure” West had to defend itself from a racially and religiously barbarous Islam. Those wars may have “failed,” but they “saved” Europe and began a “Clash of Civilizations” that continues to this day. Contemporary scholarship, often unconsciously but sometimes maliciously, repeats some of these claims even into our own day—of a homogenous West defending itself from an invader.” 

The progressive side correctly notes that many crusades were directed against Christians and Jews hundreds, if not thousands, of miles away from the Holy Land. It was the powerful Pope Innocent III who directed the power of the Crusades against the Albigensian because he believed they were a heretical sect. And there was no overt religiosity to the Venetians sacking Constantinople. It was less about Catholics vs. Orthodox and more about Byzantine wealth.  

In a refutation of the progressive concepts, William Urban (love that his name dovetails with the pope) writes, “In these stories, the Turks are somehow forgotten, as though they were not a dangerous enemy at that time, or are confused with Arabs, while the Armenians, Byzantines, and other Near Eastern Christians are ignored for lack of time and space to discuss them. What is emphasized most strongly is the moral superiority of “natives,” non-Christians, and nontraditional Christians. Secondly, the victimization of culturally superior Moslems by ethnocentric Westerners whose crudeness is equaled only by their love of violence and cunning. Lastly, any questioning of this thesis is dismissed as racism.”  

Urban captures the progressive historians’ common fallback position.  Question nonwestern motivations and expose oneself to a charge of racism or Islamophobia. 

More recently, in another turn, there has been a newfound interest in the Crusaders, not as villains but as something a bit more nuanced.  

Mark Galli, writing from the Christian History Institute, notes, “Recently, a group of Christian leaders, mostly missionaries to the Muslim world, gathered in Jerusalem, at the spot where 900 years earlier Christian knights and soldiers stormed the walls. They read historical accounts of the Jerusalem massacre. Then, they formally apologized for the Crusades. I apologize for their apology. Not because I’m a cheerleader for the Crusades. I cringe when I think of the centuries of slaughter and pillaging done in the name of Christ, with the blessing of the church. I’m saddened by what Muslims and heretics suffered. As philosopher David Hume put it, the Crusades are a “durable monument to human folly.”

But the crusaders were real Christians. They deplored their sins, longed for forgiveness, loved fellow Christians in the East, and yearned to do something noble and lasting for their Lord. They prayed and fasted before battles and praised God after victories. Their devotion and courage make ours look juvenile.

Writing for Faith Magazine, Nicholas Schofield states, “Unlike many people today who see the Church and ask, ‘What’s in it for me?’ the crusaders asked, ‘How can I serve the Faith?’ They made the long journey because they believed and yearned for salvation. Even Edward Gibbon admitted this in his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire – ‘I will dare to affirm,’ he wrote, ‘that the spirit of enthusiasm prompted all, the belief of merit, the hope of reward, and the assurance of divine aid.’

To be fair, not all of it was faith. Schofield alludes to the “hope of reward,” I am not talking about a place in heaven.  In a canny moment, Urban II was said to note that the Holy Land was made of “milk and honey,” which would have translated that riches were to be had. There is little doubt that the 11th-century Seljuks, or the Fatimids and Mamluks of Egypt, had more incredible wealth than the Western Powers of England, France, Germany, and Italy.  

After the initial Crusade, the Christians were largely on the defensive. The first almost stumbled into victory. Often, the division and dissension of their Islamic enemies produced victory as much as the Crusaders’ military prowess.  

It was also not a coincidence that the first Crusade was led by a collection of Dukes and Counts looking for a royal patrimony of their own. It was Godfrey of Bouillion, Duke of Lower Lorraine, who traded that title for the King of Jerusalem 

King and emperors from Western Europe would begin to come later in the 2nd Crusade, after one of the original four principalities, Edessa, fell to the Seljuks. In this case, the Crusaders were led by the pious Louis VII of France (along with his queen, Eleanor, and Conrad, King of the Germans). This Crusade was a failure.  

After the fall of Jerusalem in 1187, just a little under 90 years after its original capture, the Third Crusade saw the greatest effort of any of these Crusades.  The king of France, Phillip Augustus, the King of England, Richard the Lion-Hearted, and the Holy Roman Emperor, Frederick Barbarossa, all took the cross.  The problem is that Frederick died on the way.  Phillip and Richard had a falling out, and Richard never recaptured the Holy City. However, he captured Acre to prove a Crusader stronghold for the next 100 years.  

Yet the end of the Third Crusade was critical because this was the last time a vast European army would trek about the Holy Land.  

The aforementioned Fourth Crusade never even reached the Holy Land; instead, it sacked the Byzantine capital.  

The Fifth Crusade initially began in Syria but later moved to Egypt.  With the collapse of the Seljuks in 1194, the thought that the best way to capture Jerusalem was to destroy the Eyptian Fatimids.  Following the successful siege of Damietta in 1218–1219, the Crusaders occupied the port for two years. Al-Kamil, now sultan of Egypt, offered attractive peace terms, including the restoration of Jerusalem to Christian rule. The sultan was rebuked by Pelagius several times, and the Crusaders marched south towards Cairo in July 1221. En route, they attacked a stronghold of al-Kamil at the battle of Mansurah, but they were defeated and forced to surrender.

The Sixth Crusade (1228–1229), also known as the Crusade of Frederick II, was a military expedition to recapture Jerusalem and the rest of the Holy Land. It began seven years after the failure of the Fifth Crusade and involved very little actual fighting. The diplomatic maneuvering of the Holy Roman Emperor and King of Sicily, Frederick II, resulted in the Kingdom of Jerusalem regaining some control over Jerusalem for much of the ensuing fifteen years and other areas of the Holy Land.  

The seventh and eighth were the Crusades led by Louis IX of France. These aimed to reclaim the Holy Land by attacking Egypt, the main seat of Muslim power in the Near East, after the fall of the Seljuks. The Crusade was conducted in response to setbacks in the Kingdom of Jerusalem, beginning with the loss of the Holy City in 1244, and was preached by Innocent IV in conjunction with a crusade against emperor Frederick II – the leader of the sixth Crusade!  Showing how the concept of crusading had lost the theme, Innocent also called for them against Baltic pagans and Mongol incursions. 

After initial success, Louis’s Crusade ended in defeat, with most of the army – including the king – captured by the Egyptians.

Much of how someone views the Crusades will be determined by who you think owns the region now known as Israel.  I did a podcast a few years ago, and that determination depends on where you start the clock of history.  If pre-1800 BCE, then the caanites owned it.  From 1800 BCE to 60s CE, the Jews owned the lands.  However, the Romans kicked them out and revised the Greek word Phillista into Palestine, giving us that term for the region. From this period to 700, the area was Christian.  If you start the clock post 700, the Arabs, who practiced Islam, have the right, but post 900, and it is the Turks.  But which Turks?  One group of Turks, the Ottomans, controlled the region from the 1500s to 1918.  And if one starts the clock in 1948, it is the Israelites.   

Obviously, there are other factors as well. The oppressor/oppressed narrative is popular on the left, with Muslims, particularly Palestinians, assuming the latter role and the West, in general, the former; it is easy to put those pieces in place.  The issue with that is that today’s West is wealthier and more militarily advanced than the Middle East (with the notable exclusion of Israel), but in the 11th through 13th centuries, those roles were reversed.  

And then there is Israel.  Though the Jews suffered significantly in the Crusades, the concept of their being, well, Western, nicely drops them into the narrative.  

Throughout Europe and, to a lesser extent, America, the presence of larger Muslim populations, who have proven difficult to integrate, revives the narratives of West vs. East, Christianity vs. Islam, or civilized vs. Barbarian. As if this narrative were something new, Herodotus, writing in the early 400s BCE, could have positioned this story in much the same terms.  

These narratives are just too pat, too simplistic.  The original Crusades were originally about religion, but not always.  They were also about land and wealth.  They were about a clash between Christianity and Muslims.  But not always.  

They were about Romance and adventure. But not always. Here is the description of arguably the most decisive battle in the entire period that took place after the Second Crusade but before the Third. The Battle of Hattin took place on 4 July 1187 between the Levant Crusader states and the Ayyubid Sultan Saladin forces. Though Saladin was not a Seljuk, he led their army and was Vizier of Egypt.  As a direct result of the battle, Muslims again became the eminent military power in the Holy Land, recapturing Jerusalem and most other Crusader-held cities and castles. 

One of Saladin’s tactics at Hattin was to lure the Crusader army away from water sources and then surround the force.  According to Ibn al Athir, the Franks were “despondent, tormented by thirst,” whilst Saladin’s men were jubilant in anticipation of their victory. The Muslim army, by contrast, had a caravan of camels bring goatskins of water up from Lake Tiberias.  Call me crazy, but being tormented by thirst does not seem very romantic.  

Another effect of the Crusades was reintroducing Western and Central Europe to the East.  After the fall of much of the Middle East to the Arabs in the 700s, there was not much interest going on in the East.  The greatest European state of that period, Charlemagne’s Holy Roman Empire, was based in France, Italy, and Germany.  The concept of West going East began to revive only after the rise of the Turks.  The interactions between the Byzantines, Franks, and Muslims were profound for all of the bloodshed.  

To simply sum up the Crusades as defeating Islam or gross colonization is to miss the incredible depth and complexity of one of the most interesting events in European and Middle Eastern history.