Pastor Steve Paulus

Patristics Part Two

The Crusades

XII. The Crusades

A. The Rationale for the Crusades

Since the time of Constantine the emperor’s practice of intervening in church affairs had become an established pattern. In particular, the emperor’s intervention in the Donatist controversy established a precedent. Augustine of Hippo approved the use secular power to bring Donatists in to the Catholic fold. This would later affect the development of the Crusading spirit.

After the rise of Islam, large areas of formerly Christian territories came under the control of Muslim leaders with astounding rapidity. In particular, the places in the Holy Land sacred to Christians came under Islamic control. For centuries Christians had been making pilgrimage to holy sites under the dominion of Muslim powers. Ostensibly, the Crusades were a religious/military campaign to free the Holy Land and its sacred sites from control of the infidel.

First of all in the minds of many was the rescue from the Moslem of the places in Palestine, especially Jerusalem, which were sacred to the Christian. For centuries Christians from the West like those of other regions, had been making them the goal of pious pilgrimages. To bring them into Christian hands and keep them was ostensibly the chief objective of the Crusades.

Another phase of the religious motive was the protection of the Byzantine Empire against the Moslem Turks. As we have said, the Turks were threatening this historic bulwark of Christendom. The Byzantine Emperors appealed to the Christians of the West for assistance and the Popes were disposed to give it.

Intimately related to this second religious motive was a third, the desire of the Popes to heal the breach between the Western and Eastern wings of the Catholic Church and to restore unity” (Latourette, p.409).

B. The Extent of the Crusades

The Crusades were preached by Christian leaders beginning with Pope Urban II in 1096. The first Crusade was successful in regaining sections of the Middle East and Palestine and establishing a “Christian” kingdom in the region. There were several other Crusades to the region which did not repeat the military success of this first Crusade. Over the next hundred years waves of Crusaders left for the Holy Land or other Muslim-controlled destinations. Their efforts met with mixed success. The Christian kingdom in Palestine lasted less than a century. Tragically for Chrisitan unity, a Crusade against Egypt was diverted to Constantinople leading to the infamous sack of this center of eastern Christendom. Even today, Eastern Orthodox Christians will make mention of stolen Byzantine artwork dating to this period later found in the West. There was even a children’s Crusade. The Crusading spirit gave rise to military monastic orders such as the Knights Templar and Knights Hospitallars. Later Crusades turned from fighting the Muslim to fighting against heretics. These took the form of suppressing European heresies by force, including some pre-Protestant sects. The most infamous form of this forceful suppression of heresy was the Inquisition, a Crusade against the Christian and non-Christian heresies of the day.

C. The Result of the Crusades

The Crusades brought Western Catholic and Muslim civilizations into contact with each other. Westerners benefited from the preservation of ancient Greek texts and advanced mathematical systems employed by the Muslims in this era. This contact laid the groundwork for the later Renaissance. To this day, the ill-fated sack of Constantinople poisons relations between Orthodox and Catholic. In addition, Muslim-Christian relations have been permanently tarnished by the Crusades. Even today, western military intervention in Muslim lands is seen by many Muslims as a continuation of the Crusader spirit.

Sources:

John Clare, “The Crusades” in Eerdmans’ Handbook to the History of Christianity, Tim Dowley, ed. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1977.

Kenneth Scott Lautourette. The History of Christianity. New York: Harper and Row Publishers, 1953.

Philip Meyer, “Constantinople,” in The New Schaff-Herzog encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, vol. III, S.M. Jackson, ed. Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1950.

Jaroslav Pelikan. The Growth of Medieval Theology, Vol. 3 in The Christiqn Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine.Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1978.

Timothy Ware. The Orthodox Church. New York: Penguin Books, 1963

Friedrich Wiegand, “Crusades” in The New Schaff-Herzog encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, vol. III, S.M. Jackson, ed. Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1950.

HOME