What were the crusades?
Every now and then, one must deal with the question of the Crusades. The Crusades were a military expedition sanctioned by the Roman Catholic Church to invade and annexed territory from Muslims, pagans and heretics. Due to horrific atrocities committed during such expeditions, the Crusades are often used as a sore point to show that Christianity promotes violence.
The word "Crusades" have a negative connotation till this day. The Campus Crusade for Christ changed their name to Cru to avoid the controversy. The Roman Catholic and Orthodoxy churches had bad blood with each other because of the actions of the Fourth Crusade (the Crusaders sacked Orthodox churches during that Crusade).
For this post, I will be focusing the expeditions to the Holy Land (Judea and the surrounding territory) that lasted from 1095 to 1291.
Whose land?
Judea (roughly Israel, Palestine, Jordan, Syria and Egypt) once belonged to the Christian Eastern Roman Empire.
With the rise of Islam, Judea fell to Muslim armies during the 600s and 700s. In 1095, the Eastern Roman Emperor Alexios I asked Pope Urban II for military aid. Stirring religious emotion, many knights, nobles and even peasants committed to the cause.
Due to the success of the First Crusade (against overwhelming odds), the attractiveness brought more and more adherents to the cause. This resulted in escalation of violence, which included the massacre of 60, 000 Jerusalem inhabitants during the First Crusade and execution of 2, 000 Muslim prisoners during the Third Crusade,
Points to think about
While the Crusades left a dark stain on the perception of Christianity, let us note the following:
1) The Crusades was a military response to the loss of land
2) Wars have been fought in the name of religion, and Christianity is hardly immune to it
3) Atrocities were committed by all sides.
For further reading:
wikipedia
