Mario, I think one of the most important points to be made here is that the Crusades were not much about God and religion and much more about Europe and the situation confronting rulers in the eleventh century. Pope Urban II made the Call for Crusade in 1095. At that time, most of Europe was disorganized; Charlemagne had established himself as the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire in 800 CE; Europe had been without any form of consolidated power for over 350 years at that time. But it was custom for a lord of an estate to go out and attack another estate to gain more land and power. In fact, Richard the Lion Heart was famous for exactly that--marching around all over Europe laying siege to castles and defeating the owners. The ancient Saxons had finally ceased to fight Charlemagne and Christian conversion late in the 10th century but those lands of the Saxons along the coasts of northern Europe were hardly settled. It was a wise move for the Pope to decide to go crusading--it produced the opportunity for thousands of knights to have something to do besides kill each other and ravage Europe. With the promise of forgiveness of sins, not to mention immediate entrance into heaven, there were plenty of knights and others willing to take off for the Levant.

There were also economic concerns. There had been plenty of contact between Arabs and the Roman Empire (I am speaking prior to the arrival of the Prophet Muhammad and Islam in the early seventh century). Plenty of Europeans wanted to cash in on that trade over the Silk Road.By 1095, the Moors had been strongly established in Spain since 711. The Islamic Empire had expanded nearly exponentially within the first century after the Prophet's death in 632 CE. European rulers feared the expansion of Islam into Europe and wanted to do something about it. Maybe that is a "religious" motive but I am skeptical about that point.

I teach World literature and one of the primary points in the course is the Crusades. We look at t he Bible, Qur'an, literature about both, plus literary texts that present the Muslims and Christians. For a strong idea about the passions evoked in Europe by the Crusades, look at the Song of Roland, the story of France's epic hero. The story is designed to present the cosmic battle of good and evil--Christians are good and Saracens are evil. The characterization is so strongly biased that some literary critics wonder aloud whether we should read this text as propaganda instead of "art."

A more balanced view of Christian Muslim relations is evident in Cantar el Mio Cid. When I say "balanced," I am speaking in relationship to Song of Roland. But Roderigo Diaz lived in the period of 1085 and was vassal to King Alfonso VI (I think it's the sixth). The Cid defeats the Muslims but the story is not focused on cosmic good and evil but on the vassal relationship of the Cid to Alfonso. Perhaps because by the late 11th century, Spain had been home to the Moors for nearly four centuries, there is less of the "beat the battle drum" elements in the story. We must also bear in mind that Roland is a "Chanson de geste," so of course much of the story is devoted to the "blood and gore" of battle. But it is interesting, I think, that Spain (next to Italy the strongest Roman Catholic nation in Europe) has a much more balanced view even in war against the Muslims than any other entity in Europe.

Sorry for the length; I too have a literature and history degree so when I can blend them, I get "long-winded." The old saying, " Practice what you preach" still holds true and in battles where both sides believe that "God" is on their side, the viciousness becomes incomprehensible. It has been a sad and even tragic irony that the worst of human nature seems to manifest itself in any situation where God is invoked.

Aysha Bey

University of Alabama at Birmingham

Aysha Bey, thanks a lot for your answer. I wonder how was the way a medieval vassal think about Middle East, and if they travelled a lot of kilometers by land and sea only for the idea of forgiveness or maybe they heard about the richest city of Jerusalem and other lands that they wanted to conquer, I don't know if they could have a global thinking of all the results that may came with the crusades. Thank you again for your answer, and don't worry for the lenght, I enjoy a lot to read about history, is one of my passions.

I don't know if you have a text about the point of view of the muslims in the crusades, because I remember that somebody told me about that Saladin cried because Richard the Lion Heart didn't forgive the lifes of thousand of muslims, and when Saladin took Jerusalem forgives a lot of christian lives, a kind of moral dishonor, a difference of concepts of good and evil. Thanks again.

One of the classic translations of Arab writings about the Crusades is Francesco Gabrieli's "Arab Historians of the Crusades." There is also an Italian translation by E.J. Costello. The Arab authors include Ibn Al-Qalanisi from Damascus; Ibn Al-Athir out of Mesopotamia. He was an eyewitness to Saladin's career and is considered the chief historian of the later Crusades. Kamal Ad-Din of Aleppo (Syria) and Cairo is an authority of the accounts in northern Syria related to the Crusades in that region. Baha Ad-Din was in Saladin's serve and was Qadi to the army and a member of Saladin's household to Saladin's death. His text is the most complete and vivid portrait of Saladin. Abu Sjama's text "The Book of the Two Gardens" covers the dynasties of both Saladin and Nur ad-Din. Even his original sources are available. The Gabrieli text contains these and other related sources about the Crusades, some written a century later but relying upon original sources of the time. You should be able to locate this text in any university library.

When Saladin took back Jerusalem, he did not engage in the slaughter of Christians as had happened when the Christians slaughtered the Muslims in the First Crusade. I cannot say exactly why he refused to engage in that type of revenge, but if he was following both the Qur'an and the Hadith of the Prophet, that type of slaughter was absolutely forbidden. There are accounts that Saladin also sent food and medicinal aid to Richard when Richard was so ill during the Crusade. Saladin is an amazing figure and one whose live and history I still enjoy studying.

As for Europeans of the 11th through 13th centuries having any form of "global" vision, that I doubt. Education was abysmal and of those who were literate, the majority were clergy, monks, and others educated in monasteries and convents. The general public lacked most anything deemed "educational." However, at higher levels of society I am quite sure that traders and aristocrats knew more about the riches of the East--those riches were legendary long before the European traders and businessmen could get to them.

There are some really good documentaries and books about both Saladin and Richard during the Crusades. I will locate the titles and send them to you.

Aysha

Thank you very much (again) for all the authors, I'll look for them in the library. It is one of my favorite themes in Middle Ages, is such a misterious age, when the humans were tested with a lot of sufferings... and some survived.

Dear Mario,

During the reign of the Neo-Stoic emperor Marcus Aurelius, with his strong moral sense, Christians were being killed in public amphitheatres to the delight of the Roman mobs. Try to explain these inconsistencies in history! Virtually impossible! Maybe there was one set of morals for aristocrats and another for the masses. That could apply to medieval European history as well, when warfare was an aristocratic undertaking.

Dear Mario,

Nelson raises a good point about one rule for aristocrats and one for the masses. Medieval society was always divided into three classes: "those who pray (clergy); those who fight (knights/aristocrats); those who work (everybody else)." If you were not part of the first two groups, you were nothing, a nobody. In medieval England, an aristocrat who happened to be a member of the clergy (usually the "job" of the second son in primogeniture-based England), could get off of just about any criminal charge by claiming "benefit of clergy." Peers rarely agreed to punish another peer, not matter how horrible the crime. (And remember the peerage was the nobility). But don't kill a king's deer because that was a capital offense in England, even if the hunter or poacher was starving to death. This privilege of status seems an all-European situation. If you read "El Cid," you see the emphasis on the great Campeador and his closest battlefield warriors like Minaya--who all those other soldiers are that brought down Valencia remains a mystery--they weren't important. In the Song of Roland, we know Roland, Oliver, Bishop Turpin, Charlemagne, but the 20,000 Franks who died because Roland was on his way to be a martyr remain unknown. Beowulf, Cuchulainn, Ulysses, Achilles, Gilgamesh, and the list goes on--only the aristocrats, semi-divine heroes, and others of those upper classes warranted recognition.

Aysha

The mental condition of the crusades (and the medieval people) intrigues me because, maybe in our time is hard to understand how they thought and the frontier between "the good act" in general, and "the good act" only for the people in the same social level. How do they receive the message of Jesus, if he taught about caring for the vulnerable people? How do they decide to kill even the christians in France (albigenses)? Thank you for your answers dear Nelson and Aysha.

While probably no church is free of blame, the Church of Rome, presumed seat of Christianity, has a checkered past and present, Aside from its Inquisition, its bloody secular Renaissance politics, and the recent sexual misconduct of its priests, one could mention its "castrati," mutilated in the name of sacred music.

Dear Mario,

If you pushed me, I could argue that the so-called Conquest of America was ostensibly undertaken to convert the indigenous population and unabashedly to appropriate its wealth. Some conquistadores were more idealistic (Cortés) than others (Pisarro).

It appears that throughout history every campaign undertaken in the name of religion is accompanied by baser motives. Therefore the hypocrisy of the Crusades is not an isolated phenomenon. Perhaps Aysha would agree.

Absolutely! The old saying "For God, Glory, and Gold" (not necessarily in that order) dominates most conquests, settlements, whatever name you give to it. I took an Environmental History course on US History and found so many similarities between the Pilgrim/Puritan settlement in Massachusetts. For instance, "there is nobody living there; it is all wilderness" sounds eerily like the British/American claim about Palestine in the 1930s, "Nobody lives there anyway." The Pilgrims did not come here to practice religious freedom; they came to establish it for themselves and to then deny it to others (like Roger Williams or Anne Hutchinson). They believed that almost anything they did was "good" for the savage, barbarian Indians, even if those Indians wound up dead. The same claim was made by American slave owners about the advantages slaves had by just living on the plantation, exposed to Christianity. The American government picked a fight with Mexico in 1848, not because Mexicans crossed the Rio Grande, but because the government wanted all that land from the southern border of the US all the way to the border of Canada and over to the Pacific. Mexico could not possibly fight the US and the US wound up with the Gadsden Purchase of $15 million dollars for lands nearly priceless even at that time. It is not accidental that the far North states are Colorado, Nevada, Montana and nearly every city up and down the California coast is San (somebody). We picked a fight with Spain in 1898 when the US frontier ended and the US felt deprived of those colonies then so popular in Europe. So we attacked Cuba after the made-up attack on the US Maine in the Havana Harbor. Spain was easier to defeat then than Mexico was in 1848. We wound up with Caribbean territories and the Philippines, a problem for the US from the first transfer of power to the US. But the Philippines gave the US Navy a great outpost in the Far East.

Columbus wanted to get to the East Indies, not because he was interested in exploration; he wanted those trade routes and all that came with it. Europeans wanted access to the East over the Silk Road, controlled by Arab caravans; thus, we have the Crusades. It was also a great way to get all those troublesome, quarreling knights out of Europe and carrying their squabbles and battles elsewhere.

All the way back to Charlemagne, the militant Christian, considered one of the greatest monarchs of Europe, combined his "conversion" tactics with total political domination by the Franks. Of course, his conversion involved killing anyone who refused, including nearly 5,000 Saxons slaughtered on the banks of the river in which they expected to be baptized. Was he chiefly interested in saving souls? That is questionable; was he vitally interested in expanding his dominions? Absolutely.

Even if motives are good (there may be some instances somewhere), there are often the "unintended consequences" that seem to accompany nearly all actions in all realms.

Aysha

I'm agree with you about the moral of the conquistadores, I read some references about Cortés and he was very devoted, but he was interested in the glory of conquering Tenochtitlan and he didn't touch his heart to kill some (well, a lot of) mexicas. Even, he fought to another spanish people that were looking for him for disobey La Española's governor orders (Diego Velazquez). Even now, there's people that occupied an important position with moral representation that sometimes has contradictory acts.

The protagonist of the present historical moment is Vladimir Putin. He has taken the Crimea in the name of Russian unity. But underneath, he wants a warm-water port.

And maybe a natural gas control to Europe...

I'm reminded of a similar episode during the Albigensian Crusade, the 1209 fall and sack of Beziers. Arnauld Amalric, a bishop and one of the crusade's leaders, was asked by the soldiers how to tell good Catholics from heretics. Amalric replied "Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius" - the crusaders should kill them all, God would know his own. Likewise, the men who went on Crusade were no strangers to shedding Christian blood. They were all professional warriors, who had spent their entire lives learning to kill - and in Latin Europe, particularly France which was surrounded by Christian lands, that meant other Christians.

To go even further back in history to answer this question, requires an understanding of the Gnostic movement that broke away from the central tenets of Christianity. The word of God revealed in the historical, wisdom, revelation etc. books that effectively recorded all the essentials of the Christian faith, received a supplement or adaptation. which basically said 'special knowledge could only be understood by special people'. It was in the parameters of 'special knowledge to special people' that Christian tenets could be downsized into values that were little more than pragmatism. In a world of pragmatic paradigms, the empirical adaptation of Christianity, found the justification to commit a variety of highly immoral maneuvers. The adjective "moral" is certainly in question here. Whose "morals"? Whose "values?". The fact that they were there in the first place, sort of answers that question. This was not a war decided upon by the knights, it was decided upon by the then Holy Roman Church who told the knights, in direct contradiction to the bible, that by going on crusades they could buy, not only access to heaven, but forgiveness of their sins! As these were often men of violence, that would have appeared as an attractive offer. What is important to remember however, is that the forgiveness they had bought was not just for their past sins, it was for all their future sins.... including their crimes at Maarrat al-Nu'man!

Thank you for your answer, Amanda Price, it is very clear.

Darius, thank you for your answer.  I know that the First Crusade was special because there was a lot of things in the middle, like the interest of some lords to got new properties than in Europe they coudn´t take.  But I was wondered how was the massacre in Maarrat al-Nu'man, did they thought about or doubt to kill all the people even christians?

I agree with Darius, it is dangerous to generalise about motives. But at the time it was believed that nothing happened without divine approval, everything was under the control of God's will.  Crusaders, or 'pilgrims'  as they referred to themselves were acting out God's will on his behalf and apparently God wanted Jerusalem liberated from infidels who were abusing holy shrines.  Being so close to the end of the millenium there was an interest, bordering on hyseria, in the End of Days, the Last Judgement, the Second Coming, the care of the soul was imperitive. With the exposure to different versions of Christianity, Byzantium, Armenian, the 'heretic' developed which was key in later crusades. it was not unusual in siege situations where negotiations could not  reach a settlement, to attack and slaughter everyone. Another consideration is  the psychological state of mind, the majority of crusaders were suffering from hunger and malnutrition when they got to Maarrat al-Nu'man and it iis here where the reports of cannibalism arose.  Many issues at play here.

 good greeting :

The massacre of Ma'arat al-Nu'man is the blackest moment in the history of the Syrian city of Ma'arat al-Nu'man occurred on 12 December 1098 during the first crusade. With the leadership of Raymond de Saint-Gilles and Bhamand of Trento, the Crusaders succeeded in the siege of Antioch and on 12 December they arrived at the walls and raided its walls and killed 20,000 of its inhabitants as they did with the cities they invaded. But they added a new element, they have taken many residents of the city.

The historian Rudolf of Caen wrote: "At Maarah our troops were given the infidels alive in the pots of cooking; and the children were scattered in the skewers and roasted on fire and ate them."

These events have had a tremendous impact on the Muslims of the East. The Crusaders were previously known for their rudeness and brutality towards Muslims, Jews, and Eastern Christians (and the Crusades began after the Great Ecclesiastical Divide in 1054).

In response to subsequent attempts to justify cannibalism in the shortage of supply during the first Crusade, Amin Maalouf, in his book "The Crusades with Arab Eyes," quoted a line from Albert of Aix: "Not only did our troops not eat the Turks and Arabs who were killed;

Similar things happened in India when foreign invaders attacked and ruled India from 712 to 1707 or so. Possibly 100 Million persons were killed and 25 million were made as slaves in ~1000 years o foreign rule. People of India/Hindusthan suffered so much, but managed barbaric rule somehow. Such things happen in all civilizations. Poor people has to pay the cost. Interestly killers/people has similar mindset even today especially in some parts of world where they are killing their brothers/neighbours even of same religion. Peace is day dream in such regions due to violence being done on the name of religion. 

Not all the crusaders were "devoted warriors", a bast majority of them were just criminals wich crimes would be forgived if they went to the crusades and fight for "the only true faith", also the name "crusader" was applied to anyone who went to a crusade to reclaim the Holy Land (Not necessarily knights or fanatic zealots), so its a term used to define these soldiers more than define a moral value behind their acts. In the other hand the real devoted and holy warriors were the ones of the called "Monastic Knightly Orders" like the Knights Templars, Teutons or Hospitaliers, that had more training and instead of serving a lord these knights served a militar monastic order that had the authority of exist under the church and even these orders continued existing after the end of the crusades.