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Wednesday, March 7, 2012

The Crusades


Image from the movie Kingdom of Heaven
The strength and spread of Islam in what was previously the Christian world greatly angered the Church. Islam was seen as worse than heresy and was completely blasphemous as Islam rejected the divinity of Jesus Christ, although the Muslims accepted him as the word of God, as Messiah, and as a very important prophet of God. The conquering of lands and holy places caused Christians to become inflamed with a vengeful zeal. IN 1095 CE, Pope Urban II was especially zealous and called for the destruction of Islam, which had been equated with the evil in Revelations, with Mohammed starring as the antichrist (Global and Tradition). 
Pope Urban II had specific goals in mind regarding how Christian unity could be strengthened with a Holy War against Islam. He wanted to avenge the conquest of Christian lands and holy places, calling for an ongoing war against the Muslims, while at the same time promoting peace and unity within the Christian lands. Unity is often formed by a common enemy, and Pope Urban II and some prominent Christians before him, like John of Damascus, had done a lot of work to show Islam as Christianity’s enemy. Pope Urban II hoped that the common goal to defeat Islam would bring together Christians who were previously divided over differences in opinion of how to celebrate Christianity. One major unifying concept was to reclaim Jerusalem from Muslim control (Global). 
Other goals of the crusades developed over time to include the reclamation of holy relics, protection of Christians on their pilgrimage to holy places, such as Jerusalem. The crusades were originally termed a pilgrim’s war due to this goal. This pilgrim’s war called for the need of Christian Soldiers (the song “Onward Christian Soldiers” comes to mind), which eventually became a defining feature of Western Christianity (Global). A special order of Knights was created during the crusades, called the Knights Templar. They were considered to be the Holy Knights of Solomon’s Temple. They were specifically called to protect pilgrims during their pilgrimages (Global).
Medieval Christians were attracted to the call for Christian soldiers and to the Pilgrim’s War because it offered them a chance to redeem themselves. Even those with a tendency for violence could be fully forgiven for their sins by becoming a crusader (Global and Tradition). The crusades gave them a chance to fight. Previously, Christians were not allowed to fight in wars, as they might end up having to kill someone, which was against the Ten Commandments, “Thou shall not kill”. This ability to have justified warfare and justified death (killing) became a divider between Eastern Orthodoxy and Western Catholicism. Justified killing in the name of Christ was not akin to murder, and was not a sin anymore. Crusading Knights were even sanctified by the Church as servants of Christ (and therefore, God, in Christian theology).
The crusades were not only directed at Islam, but also at those things that the Western Christians found sinful about Eastern Orthodoxy, furthering the Christian divide. It gave Iconoclasts permission to destroy images of the Eastern veneration and crusaders permission to “retrieve” holy relics from the Eastern churches and “return” them to the Western churches. As such, a siege on Constantinople was conducted during the crusades.
Christianity evolved from being the persecuted religion to being the persecuting religion. In the intolerance for any other religion, the crusades also picked up a goal against the Jewish people and sought to punish them to avenge the death of Jesus Christ. From Jewish Perspective though, they were not only wrongly persecuted, but that the Pope of Rome was Satan himself (Tradition). The crusades actually ended up distracting Jewish intolerance of Islam to the new threat of Christian persecution and Jews were called to sward against Christians in this Holy War, just as Christians were called to the sword against all that was not Christian and was a threat to “pure” Christianity (Tradition).             
 I wrote this piece on 11/29/11 for my Christianity class 

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