THE CRUSADES.
Asa H. Craig, (Asa Hollister), 1847-1934 While a short description of these important periods in the world’s history may not be closely identified with the object of this publication, yet there is so much of Christian ardor, and Christian love and veneration for the Holy City, and the land where Jesus dwelt, that to record […]
THE CRUSADES
The crusades were wars undertaken by the people of Europe to rescue the holy places in Palestine from the Saracens. The first crusade, in the years 1095-1099 ended by Jerusalem being taken by assault in 1099, and Godfrey de Bouillon made king. The second crusade was preached by St. Bernard in 1146 and was headed […]
The Crusades
Victor R. Claveau, MJ The Crusades (1095-1272) were military expeditions under the banner of the Cross, undertaken by the princes and people of Europe to rescue the Holy Land in Palestine from the Saracens, Arabian Mohammedans, who were persecuting resident Christians and pilgrims, and desecrating sacred places. There were eight of these expeditions, but from […]
What the Crusades Were Really Like
THOMAS F. MADDEN Present-day tension between the West and Muslim countries has very little to do with the Crusades, says historian Thomas Madden, chair of the history department at St. Louis University. The Crusaders were not unprovoked aggressors, greedy marauders or medieval colonialists. This early twelfth-century sculpture depicts a crusader and his wife just before […]
The Crusades and Their Critics
JAMES HITCHCOCK While it has become customary to view the Crusades as a historical aberration, they can also be viewed as an important factor in the formation of the Christian West. Many of those who condemn the Crusades fully understand this and wish that the Muslims had conquered Europe and aborted the rise of Christendom. […]
The Crusades
PAUL CRAWFORD “The Crusades were the long-term result of the rise of Islam.” Elizabeth Hallam, Chronicles of the Crusades On November 27, 1095, Pope Urban II gave an important speech at the end of a church council in Clermont, France. In it he called upon the nobility of Western Europe, the Franks, to go to the […]
The Battle over the Crusades
ROBERT P. LOCKWOOD The Crusades, of course, are a far more complicated series of events in history than the anti-Catholic statements of early Protestant historians would suggest. The Crusades should be understood within the context of the times and by their reality, rather than through the myths created for purposes of propaganda. When the Showtime […]
Rethinking the Crusades
WILLIAM URBAN We encourage our history students to venture beyond the memorization of facts and concepts. We should do the same by periodically rethinking the meaning of critical moments in the past. The time is ripe for a reassessment of the Crusades in light of our present concerns. There are four plausible directions this reassessment […]
Rethinking the Crusades
JONATHAN RILEY SMITH Each crusader made a vow, signified by the wearing of a cloth cross, and he (or she) was rewarded with the grant of an indulgence and certain temporal privileges. While holy war had had a long history, the idea of penitential war was unprecedented in Christian thought. It meant that a crusade […]
Not Conspiracies but Mistakes
VINCENT RYAN A new popular account cuts through some popular misconceptions to provide an accurate accounting for the disasters of the Fourth Crusade. Recently, in a course I taught on the Crusades, one of my students was an elderly nun whose ministry was centered on working with Byzantine Catholics and Orthodox Christians. She explained that […]