Francois Ntone

Obama and Santorum Talk About the Crusades

On February 5, 2015, President Obama spoke at the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, D. C., where he cautioned against directly linking the atrocities committed by ISIS to Muslim beliefs.  He stated that view as follows:

“Humanity has been grappling with these questions throughout human history. And lest we get on our high horse and think this is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ. In our home country, slavery and Jim Crow all too often was justified in the name of Christ.”

One would think such a statement would be received by most without controversy.  But Obama’s words produced an immediate, hostile response from right wing politicians.  For example, former senator Rick Santorum expressed his indignation as follows:

“The idea that the Crusades and the fight of Christendom against Islam is somehow an aggression on our part is absolutely anti-historical. And that is what the perception is by the American left who hates Christendom. They hate Christendom. They hate Western civilization at the core. That’s the problem.”

Both Obama and Santorum consider themselves as Christians.  But one of them is willing to exercise self-criticism in order to learn from the past and avoid mistakes that have stained his religion.  His focus is on identifying bad behavior and correcting it, no matter who is the source of the behavior.  The other one gives the impression that he sees the world in terms of a fight between Christendom and Islam.  In that fight, Christendom is always right, Islam is always wrong, and Christian actions can never be questioned.  Those Americans who, like Obama, think differently are part of the American left that hates Christendom and hates Western civilization.  Santorum also equates Christendom with Western civilization.  How can two people who think so differently both be legitimate Christians?

What Were the Medieval Crusades About?

By Eugene Delacroix

President Obama and former senator Santorum are not the only ones involved in the debate about the meaning of the Crusades.  Historians have been actively debating this topic for decades.  One view simply sees the Crusaders as the aggressors, recognizing the atrocities committed by Christians who, after all, left Europe to wage a violent war far away from home.  Proponents of this view are particularly shocked by the fact that Christianity is a religion that is supposed to emphasize peace and forgiveness.

Other historians try to put things in perspective, and attempt to correct the notion that the Crusaders were primarily motivated by self-interest and the hope of material gain.  They also emphasize the fact that most of the violence perpetrated by the Crusaders was in self-defense, and that their Muslim enemies were far worse.

This article is not an attempt to provide a comprehensive account of the medieval Crusades.  Only a brief summary is presented here.  It is undeniable that the medieval populations of Europe viewed Islam as a threat.  After the death of the prophet Muhammad in 632, Islam embarked on a new quest that changed it from a relatively small religious community to a very large political empire.  In less than 10 years, Islam made strong inroads into the leading civilizations of its day, the Byzantine Empire and Persia.  Within a century, through military conquest, it swept through parts of Asia, Africa and Europe, and brought under its domination an area larger than the Roman Empire.  In later centuries, the threat of Muslim expansion was a reality in Western Europe, and Christians certainly felt they had to defend themselves.

By 638 Jerusalem, considered by Christians as the Holy City, had already been taken by the Muslims.  Since 1054, there had been a schism between the Roman Catholic Church, led by the pope, and the Greek Orthodox Church associated with the Byzantine Empire.  But in 1095, Byzantine emperor Alexios I, feeling that his capital Constantinople was threatened by the advance of the Seljuk Turks who were Muslim, wrote to Pope Urban II, asking for help.  The pope’s response launched the First Crusade.  Whether Urban was motivated by a genuine desire to help fellow Christians, or was merely grabbing an opportunity to unify Christendom under his leadership, will not be debated here.  However, he made an appeal to Christians, informing them of their duty to use their military skills to liberate the Holy Land and avenge the terrible wrongs committed by “an accursed race, a race utterly alienated from God”.  To the sinful knights of Western Europe, who not only were engaged in constant fighting among themselves, but shamelessly exploited the poor and the weak, Urban offered the opportunity to redirect their energies towards a worthwhile cause, promising them in return that sins they had confessed would be forgiven.

I will examine the justification provided for the Crusades in the next section.  As for the events that followed Urban’s proclamation, the response was overwhelming.  The hope to receive forgiveness of sins and escape eternal damnation was certainly a motivating factor.  But there may have been many who truly believed in the mission as defined by the religious authorities, and whose participation came at a great personal cost.  Of course, there were also some who saw an opportunity for material gain, including the acquisition of land in a foreign place.

The First Crusade was joined by warriors from all social classes, with the exception of kings who led later Crusades.  Atrocities started early, when a contingent of Crusaders arrived in the Rhineland and massacred Jews.  They saw their actions as justified, given that they considered the Jews as enemies of Christ, which made it legitimate to plunder them in order to finance the war effort.  Historians tend to distinguish between the undisciplined Christian forces that committed these horrors and the more organized forces that came later.  They also point out that Christian bishops denounced those actions.  However, the violence definitely did not stop there.

The main armies of the First Crusade arrived in Constantinople in 1096 and were led by Frankish noblemen.  By 1098, they had reconquered Nicaea and painfully fought their way through Anatolia, Cilicia and Cappadocia, eventually reaching the Christian lands of Edessa where they formed the first Crusader State, the County of Edessa.  The same year, against great odds, the Crusaders took the city of Antioch which had great significance to them because of its role in the history of the early church.  In 1099, they reached and captured Jerusalem, and put the city to the sword, with a massacre of both Jewish and Muslim defenders of the city.  At this point, many of the Frankish knights saw their mission as accomplished and returned home.  Help from Italian participants who were interested in both the stated goals of the Crusade and their own commercial ventures was necessary in order to achieve any kind of consolidation of the gains made by the Crusaders, including the capturing of coastal cities in Palestine.

In brief, the First Crusade was successful from a military perspective, and resulted in the creation of 4 Christian states: the counties of Edessa, Antioch, Jerusalem and Tripoli.  One of the stated reasons for the Crusades had been that Christian pilgrims had been persecuted or killed by the Muslims.  With the new Christian states, pilgrims enjoyed some protection with the formation of new orders such as the Hospitallers who provided healthcare, and the Templars who guarded visitors along the road to the Jordan River.

Later Crusades were not successful.  The second one was started when the county of Edessa fell to the Turks and the Kurds in 1144.  It was led by Louis VII, king of France and Conrad III, king of Germany, with spiritual leadership from St Bernard of Clairvaux.  Most of the Crusaders died on the way to their destination, and the effort was a total failure, doing nothing to stop Muslim advance.  In 1187 Saladin, who had managed to unify Muslims under his leadership, wiped out the forces of the Christian Kingdom of Jerusalem at the battle of Hattin.  Following the defeat, Christian cities, including Jerusalem, surrendered to him.  The movie Kingdom of Heaven is a dramatization of those events.

The Third Crusade was started after Jerusalem surrendered, and was led by Emperor Frederick I Barbarossa of the German Empire, King Philip II Augustus of France, and King Richard I Lionheart of England.  The aging German king drowned in a river, and the French king returned home early.  King Richard apparently fought valiantly and was able to recapture most Christian cities along the Palestinian coast.  But he eventually gave up on taking back Jerusalem.

The Fourth Crusade was a bizarre one.  The Crusaders first went to Constantinople, where a claimant to the imperial throne promised to support Holy Land efforts when restored to his throne.  However, after he became emperor, he realized he could not fulfill his promises.  Feeling betrayed, the Crusaders then attacked Constantinople, a Christian city, and plundered it.

There were more Crusades, and some of them were internal to the European continent, not necessarily targeting Muslims.  As I stated before, it is not my intention here to provide a comprehensive account.  The above account should be sufficient to illustrate the violence and atrocities which were associated with these enterprises.  Overall, it is estimated that 1 to 3 million people died in those ventures, between 1095 and 1271.  My primary interest is to evaluate the justification put forth by the religious authorities that initiated them, and see if that justification is consistent with the message of Jesus Christ.       

Historians are not guardians of Christian morality, and their criteria for greatness have nothing to do with the teaching of Christ.  But as far as I can tell, even those historians who tend to be sympathetic to the Crusaders do not necessarily praise the violence associated with the Crusades.  Instead, they attempt to present the Crusades as necessary for defensive purposes: the aggressor was Islam, and the Crusaders were merely defending Christian territories.  Furthermore, these historians believe that the Crusaders were not primarily motivated by self-interest.  Many of them were already wealthy and actually had much to lose by leaving their wealth unattended.  They were moved by a desire to serve their Lord and support their fellow Christians.  As for the violence, some historians point out that the human cost of today’s warfare is often far worse.

The fact that Muslims used violence to spread their faith is undeniable and is unacceptable to those who consider themselves as peacemakers (Peacemakers were called sons of God by Jesus in Matthew 5:9, an indication that the attitude of a peacemaker is truly consistent with the character of the Christian God).  However, this fact does not in itself make Muslims worse than Christians since Christians have done similar things and have found ways of justifying them.  Also, as I have stated elsewhere, I do not believe that Islam is a demonic religion, as some Christians do.  Therefore I find unacceptable the suggestion that violence against them is justifiable because they are “a race utterly alienated from God”.  As a Christian, I believe Christianity is superior to Islam (and I suppose Muslims believe Islam is superior to Christianity), but that assumption of superiority also implies that Christians have to hold themselves to the higher standard they claim to have.  In particular, if the best they can do is to imitate behavior by Muslims that is condemned by their own Lord and Savior, then how are they better than Muslims? In fact, Jesus’ teaching suggests that those who have been exposed to the truths of the kingdom of God are to be held more accountable (See for example Matthew 11:20-24).

Just War Theory

Recognizing that violence and warfare were part of daily human lives, thinking people long ago attempted to define what constitutes a just war.  In Ancient Greece, Plato and Aristotle discussed Just War Theory, concluding that the decision to go to war belonged to an entire community or state rather than an individual or a subgroup within the community.  The ultimate goal of a just war was to bring peace.  It had to be a defensive war against aggression from outsiders, and had to be conducted for the good of the community, in order to keep it, for example, from being enslaved.  Furthermore, the war was not to lead to the enslavement of outsiders unless they deserved to be enslaved because of their previous conduct.  Later the Roman orator Cicero, while agreeing that a just war had to be for defensive purposes, added that it had to be a last resort, and had to come after a declaration of war or a demand for reparations.

Since the early Church Fathers were part of the Roman Empire, it is not surprising that they too were interested in Just War Theory.  They adopted much of the reasoning of their Greek and Roman predecessors, but added to it justification from the Bible.  Looking at the Old Testament, they pointed out that the commandment “Thou shalt not murder” (Exodus 20:13) clearly differentiates between justified killing and murder.  To them, that distinction was important since, in fact, there are various instances in the Old Testament where God himself orders the killing of groups of people.  Christians were therefore satisfied with the idea that killing that was ordered by God was not only justifiable, but a matter of obedience.  By extension, they declared that a just war had to be ordered by an appropriate church authority such as the pope.

Of course a 21^st century mind will find problematic the idea of killing that is ordered by God.  One can see how acceptance of the authority of the Bible might lead a Christian to the conclusion that biblical statements that order such killing must be taken at face value. This is a debatable matter, but even if that is the case, a Christian must acknowledge the fact that biblical theology changes from the Old Testament to the New Testament.  While Moses orders killing in God’s name, Jesus preaches about love, peace, forgiveness and turning the other cheek.  As far as I know, only one of these two individuals is called Lord and Savior by Christians.

Christian proponents of Just War Theory evidently understood that they could not justify warfare by only looking at Old Testament examples.  Therefore they constructed some ingenious theories that tend to justify warfare based on what Jesus and his apostles did not say, while disregarding the more explicit teaching that calls for self-denial, self-sacrifice, and acceptance of suffering for Christ’s sake.  In other articles such as Peace or a Sword or One Thing C. S. Lewis Was Wrong About, I have shown that some of the conclusions reached by Just War Theory proponents are gross misrepresentations of the New Testament material.  Such misrepresentations can only appear convincing to those who want to have it both ways: they want to receive the salvation promised by Christ while avoiding the high personal cost associated with the pursuit of the kingdom of God.  Indeed Jesus repeatedly warned his disciples that living by his principles would endanger their lives.  By that, he did not mean that a warrior who dies in battle would be dying for him.  Instead, he meant that those who lived by his principles, and were necessarily peacemakers, would be vulnerable to the violence around them but had to stand firm, fearing for their souls rather than their bodies (Matthew 10:26-27).

To be sure, Just War Theory is an attempt to introduce some humanity into the violent and barbaric atmosphere that characterized early human history and continues even today.  Historians who are sympathetic to the Crusaders are usually pointing out that many medieval warriors were honestly convinced that they were doing the right thing based on the teaching of the day.  Sadly, historians also note that human attitudes have not changed much today, while advances in technology have made warfare far more destructive than it used to be.  My point is that Just War Theory, while being a move in the right direction, falls far short of the standard of the kingdom of God as taught by Jesus.

Justifying the Crusades

In this section, I will examine some of the justification provided by medieval popes and other church authorities for the Crusades.  One major reason as we mentioned before was self-defense against Muslim aggression.  Self-defense was certainly a good reason for war based on Just War Theory.  However, as I mentioned before, Jesus and his apostles were not advocates of Just War Theory.  Jesus wanted his disciples to be models of enlightened behavior in order to change the world.  The disciples were to be “the salt of the world” and were to let their light shine before men, so that men can see their good deeds and praise their Father in heaven (Matthew 5:13-16).  Among other things, they were expected to love their enemies and pray for them rather than kill them (Matthew 5:43-47).

Another reason given to the Crusaders was the fact that the Muslims had taken land previously belonging to Christians, including the Holy Land.  Given Jesus’ known disregard for material wealth and his emphasis on storing up treasures in heaven, the idea of going to war to take back territory previously owned by Christians is not consistent with his teaching.  As for the Holy Land, because of its religious significance, Christian authorities justified the need to take it back by comparing it to the temple, and stating that Jesus himself demonstrated the need for violence when he used a whip to throw money changers out of the temple.  In reality, John 2:15 only says that Jesus used the whip to drive sheep and cattle out of the temple.  Regarding the money changers, he scattered their change and overturned their tables.  He also told those who sold doves to get them out of the temple, and there is absolutely no indication that he used the whip against them (John 2:16).  But even if Jesus had used a whip against the merchants, the claim that this was a sufficient reason to go to war in Palestine, with the associated cost in human lives, is rather laughable.  Furthermore, even though Jesus certainly believed that the temple was an important religious symbol of his time, he made it clear that this symbolism would no longer be important in the future, when true worshipers become aware that God is spirit and must be worshiped “in spirit and in truth” (John 4:23-24).  When he predicted the coming destruction of the temple (Matthew 24:2), he certainly did not give any indication that the temple would need to be rebuilt by his followers.

When Pope Urban II called the First Crusade in 1095, he spoke the following words according to Robert the Monk:

“From the confines of Jerusalem and the city of Constantinople a horrible tale has gone forth and very frequently has been brought to our ears, namely, a race from the kingdom of the Persians, an accursed race, a race utterly alienated from God…has invaded the lands of those Christians and has depopulated them by the sword, pillage and fire…. [It] has either entirely destroyed the churches of God or appropriated them for the rites of its own religion…. On whom therefore is the labor of avenging these wrongs and of recovering this territory incumbent, if not upon you? You, upon whom above other nations God has conferred remarkable glory in arms, great courage, bodily activity, and strength to humble the hairy scalp of those who resist you.”

Urban’s words are not merely a call for self-defense against human aggressors.  To him the enemy was less than human because he belonged to an accursed race and had demonstrated that fact through his actions.  Therefore violence against him was a matter of duty.  On the other hand, the Crusaders themselves belonged to a race that was engaged in constant violence and warfare.  However they belonged to God and therefore any violence they committed was a sign of courage and strength and brought glory to them, while terrifying their enemies.  Violence perpetrated by the Crusaders was good, while violence perpetrated by the Muslims was evil.

Not only crusading was a matter of duty, it was to be viewed as an act of love.  Historian Joseph F Madden, in a May 6, 2005 article in Christianity Today, quotes Pope Innocent III who succeeded Urban II:

“How does a man love according to divine precept his neighbor as himself when, knowing that his Christian brothers in faith and in name are held by the perfidious Muslims in strict confinement and weighed down by the yoke of heaviest servitude, he does not devote himself to the task of freeing them? … Is it by chance that you do not know that many thousands of Christians are bound in slavery and imprisoned by the Muslims, tortured with innumerable torments?”

Following Innocent’s reasoning, one might ask why Jesus failed to rescue John the Baptist who was thrown in prison and later beheaded by the “perfidious” Herod Antipas. Don’t Christians believe that Jesus would have had the power to do so if he had chosen to do so?  Again, while the idea of waging war to rescue a person in distress may be compatible with Just War Theory, it cannot be linked to the teaching of Jesus.  But Innocent III makes a strange attempt to establish such a link when, speaking to the Knight Templars, he declares: “You carry out in deeds the words of the Gospel, ‘Greater love than this hath no man, that he lay down his life for his friends.”  These words are taken from John 15:13, where Jesus tells his disciples that they are his friends and that he voluntarily sacrifices himself for their salvation.  The passage is often misguidedly quoted in reference to soldiers whose lives are at risk when they defend their countries.  It is clear that Jesus was not talking about going to war in order to save others.  There was not a hint of violence in his attitude when he faced death, which he saw as part of his mission.  When soldiers go to war, their intention is to kill in order to stay alive, rather than to offer themselves as sacrifices.  Some may show courage and selflessness during that process, but their goal is not to adhere to the strict non-violence that characterized Jesus and his apostles.  Martin Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi may be adequate examples of non-violent resistance to illustrate Jesus’ teaching.  Warriors simply do not fall in that category.  A little child can understand that.  Did the medieval popes not understand that?

But Innocent III took this matter a step further by suggesting that Christ was actually the one commanding Christians to go to war, and that he would hold them accountable if they disobeyed him:

“Consider most dear sons, consider carefully that if any temporal king was thrown out of his domain and perhaps captured, would he not, when he was restored to his pristine liberty and the time had come for dispensing justice look on his vassals as unfaithful and traitors … unless they had committed not only their property but also their persons to the task of freeing him? … And similarly will not Jesus Christ, the king of kings and lord of lords, whose servant you cannot deny being, who joined your soul to your body, who redeemed you with the Precious Blood … condemn you for the vice of ingratitude and the crime of infidelity if you neglect to help Him?”

With these words, Innocent was calling for the Fifth Crusade in 1215.  His statement equated the retaking of the Holy Land with rescuing Christ himself.  That Jerusalem had been captured by the Muslims 6 centuries earlier did not seem to matter.  But given Jesus’ stated views about the temple, as discussed above, I am simply amazed that a pope could be so mistaken in his delivery of the message of Christ.  Indeed when Jesus was arrested, he rebuked the disciple who attempted to defend him with a sword.  There is not a single example in the New Testament where Jesus told his followers to go to war for any reason.

Of course the idea that Christ/God needed to be rescued might have sounded strange to medieval people since God is believed to be powerful enough to rescue himself.  But St Bernard of Clairvaux had an answer:

“Again I say, consider the Almighty’s goodness and pay heed to His plans of mercy. He puts Himself under obligation to you, or rather feigns to do so, that He can help you to satisfy your obligations toward Himself. … I call blessed the generation that can seize an opportunity of such rich indulgence as this.”

In other words, God pretended to be in trouble in the Holy Land in order to give Christians the opportunity to fight for him and earn the remission of their own sins.  The New Testament teaches that one should believe in Christ, repent and follow his teaching (which is very much about love, peace and forgiveness) in order to obtain forgiveness of sins.  The spiritual authorities of medieval times declared that Christians had a duty to fight wars in Palestine in order to obtain remission of their sins.  What is wrong with this picture?