An honest reckoning

The Crusades: What They Actually Were

The Crusades were a series of religiously sanctioned wars, mostly between the late 1000s and 1200s, in which Christians killed and were killed in the name of Christ. Crusaders massacred much of Jerusalem's population in 1099, slaughtered Jewish communities in the Rhineland, and even sacked the Christian city of Constantinople in 1204. That blood is real and was shed under the cross. Historians still debate the causes: they were partly a response to earlier conquest and framed as armed pilgrimage, but the killing cannot be reconciled with what Jesus taught.

What happened

In 1095, at the Council of Clermont, Pope Urban II called on Western Christians to march east and recover Jerusalem. The First Crusade ended in 1099 with the capture of the city and a massacre of its Muslim and Jewish inhabitants. Along the way, crusaders slaughtered Jewish communities in the Rhineland. Later expeditions followed for two centuries. The Fourth Crusade never reached the Holy Land at all: in 1204 it sacked Constantinople, the greatest Christian city in the East, a wound between Eastern and Western Christianity that never fully healed. Wars were also turned inward, as in the Albigensian Crusade against fellow Europeans. People died in enormous numbers, and it was done in the name of Christ.

The complexity, honestly

Historians warn against both the medieval myth of holy heroism and the modern myth of simple imperial greed. The Crusades came after centuries in which Christian lands across the Middle East and North Africa had been conquered, and they were framed by the church as a defensive, penitential pilgrimage, an act many crusaders believed would cost them dearly and save their souls. Motives were tangled: genuine piety, fear, penance, and also plunder, ambition, and politics. Scholars continue to debate how much was defence and how much was aggression. What is not in doubt is the scale of the violence, and that it wore the cross.

What Jesus taught

Whatever the causes, the Crusades cannot claim the authority of Jesus. When his own follower drew a sword to defend him, Jesus rebuked him and healed the wounded man. He said his kingdom does not fight, and he told his people to love their enemies rather than kill them.

A war for a holy city, however sincerely fought, is a long way from the man who told his followers to put up the sword.

Frequently asked questions

What were the Crusades?

A series of religiously sanctioned wars, mostly between the late eleventh and thirteenth centuries, launched by Western Christendom to recover or defend the Holy Land. They included the 1099 massacre at Jerusalem, massacres of Jews in the Rhineland, and the 1204 sack of Christian Constantinople.

Were the Crusades defensive or aggressive?

Historians debate this. They followed centuries of Muslim conquest of formerly Christian lands and were framed as a defensive, penitential pilgrimage, yet they also carried plunder, ambition, and terrible violence. Most scholars reject both the pure hero myth and the pure greed myth.

Do the Crusades reflect Jesus' teaching?

No. Jesus rebuked his own follower for drawing a sword, healed the man who was struck, said his kingdom does not fight, and commanded love of enemies. The Crusades contradict his words, whatever the era's justifications.