What is the True Reasons of the Crusades?

[Janissary]

Ummm....The Early Islamic Caliphates did not convert people to Islam. It was in their interest for a majority of their subjects to be non-Muslim.

Correct, because of the special tax system. The Caliphates including the later one: The Ottomans, respected Judaism and Christianity, because the followers of these beliefs were called the people of the book in: The Quran.

[Wild Bill Kelso]

Answer:
Step one find this book:http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog/TYEGOD.html
Step two: read said book
Step three: become knowledgable

Excellent summation by a reviewer here http://www.amazon.com/Gods-War-New-H...138272-9649427

By Loren Rosson III (New Hampshire, USA) - See all my reviews

With the insights of Jonathan Riley-Smith and ambition of Steven Runciman, Christopher Tyerman has written the definitive study of the crusades needed for a long time now. It's heavy reading at times, but well worth it and fun, a fascinating account of an alien era. I agree with the forecast that this will replace Runciman's hostile and misleading (if elegant) classic from the 50s.

Tyerman draws on corrective scholarship, demolishing myths about crusading motives, which had nothing to do with colonialism. Most crusaders expected to return home, and they knew they would take heavy financial losses. Nor was the papacy driven by economic interests: Urban II exploited the Byzantine request for military aid by working a new idea of holy war into his reformist agenda. Alongside the pacifist movement, the abolishment of simony, concubinage, and lay investiture, the crusades represented an attempt to secure papal leadership and power over secular authorities. "The crusade is impossible to understand outside of this wider context of church reform." So while it's true that the First Crusade was a defensive war only in a superficial sense -- Catholic territory wasn't threatened, and the Latins were hardly motivated to help the Greeks out of altruism -- there was no materialist agenda on the part of the papacy.

As oxymoronic as it sounds, the crusades were part of the reform movement stemming from puritan-radicals who took over the papacy in the 1040s. The Peace of God movement at home and holy wars abroad went in tandem, the former playing right into the inception of the latter. Christian knights had been living in contradiction, taught that violence was intrinsically evil even when necessary. What better way for the church to exploit this by channeling such aggression into a radically new cause which made warfare, for the first time ever, and under the right conditions, sacred? Crusaders were driven by religious zeal, the desire to protect holy places and secure their salvation; the papacy by reform and power-politics.

Tyerman also dispenses with lazy comparisons to the Islamic jihad. Unlike the crusade, the jihad was enjoined on the entire faith community (all able-bodied Muslims), and it was fundamental to faith, an actual sixth pillar of Islam. The crusade and jihad were both driven by militant zeal, but other commonalities are superficial.

The crusading phenomenon wasn't born overnight. It evolved, and this book has the length and patience to illustrate how. The success of the First Crusade didn't usher in a "new age" of crusading, especially since with the capture of Jerusalem there lacked an ongoing perceived threat. Enthusaism waxed and waned according to volatile perceptions (it hit a major low between the Second and Third Crusades, during which time holy wars were often mocked and dismissed as foolish and wasteful). Crises like the loss of Edessa in 1144 and Jerusalem in 1187 called forth sudden massive responses, a couple of papal bulls, and minimal doctrinal guidance. Only after the Fourth Crusade, and thanks to the ambitious vision of Innocent III (1198-1216), did crusading really come into its own as an established institution and public devotion, with all the logistics formalized. Now the crusades touched the daily lives of Europe's laity in the form of public processions, special prayers at mass, taxation, alms-giving -- all of this reinforced by popular stories and songs.

Particularly refreshing is Tyerman's analysis of historical figures, who come across as realistically complex. There's no clear division of good and bad guys here. Bohemund of Taranto wasn't the demon he's made out to be. Raymond III of Tripoli, far from a wise and cautious tactician, proved treasonously incompetent, and his rival Guy of Lusignan has been overly maligned. The outrageous Reynald of Chatillon, usually perceived as destructive to his allies as much as his enemies, might have actually been good for the crusader kingdom if not for his sixteen-year absence in a Muslim cell. Tyerman challenges assumptions often made about these people, and you're often unsure whether to dislike or warm to them -- or both.

When you've finished this 1000+ page tome, you'll feel like you've heard the papal bulls and gone on crusade yourself. It's amazing how the more we learn about holy wars the more difficult it becomes to judge them. As Tyerman concludes, "the personal decision to follow the cross, to inflict harm on others at great personal risk, at the cost of enormous privations, at the service of a consuming cause, cannot be explained, excused, or dismissed either as virtue or sin. Rather its very contradictions spelt its humanity."

[Woad-Warrier]

CA couldn't think of anything better...

[ThiudareiksGunthigg]

Answer:
Step one find this book:http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog/TYEGOD.html
Step two: read said book
Step three: become knowledgable

Excellent recommendation. Tyerman's book is a comprehensive (thick!), detailed, and superbly argued by one of the leading guys in this field. It's also a good antidote to many of the modern myths about the motivations for the Crusades - many of which have raised their heads in this very thread.

Myth - "The Pope was looking to increase his power!"

Fact - Pope Urban was as surprised as anyone at the massive and popular reaction to his call for soldiers to head East and couldn't have forseen it. So to pretend he planned the whole thing is fantasy. Like the Byzantine Emperor, he thought the response would be a few thousand knights on a short-lived mission, not a mass movement spanning centuries.

Myth - "The Crusaders were really just after riches and plunder in the East!"

Fact - As Tyerman and others show, going on Crusade was actually a great way to bankrupt yourself and your family. Despite this, the same families kept sending sons on Crusade over several generations. Clearly something other than greed was motivating these people.

Myth - "Nobles could attain vast lands and titles in the Levant that they couldn't in Europe."

Fact - A few did, most didn't. That's because most turned around and went home pretty much as soon as the military objectives of their given Crusade was over. Despite modern attempts to depict the Crusades as some kind of mass migration or early form of European colonisation, medieval people saw them as short-term enterprises: something you vowed to do, completed and then went home from. The Crusader kingdoms suffered from a chronic manpower shortage as a result; a shortage that eventually led to their downfall.

Myth - "Crusaders tended to be second and third sons looking for land in the East"

Fact - Evidence indicates that they actually tended to be lords and/or their firstborn sons, with the second-born or the lord's brother left behind to look after the demense at home. This was another reason Crusaders tended to go home rather than settle in the East. Note what happened when Richard I didn't get home in good time, for example.

Myth - "Religion actually had very little to do with it."

Fact - Religion actually had more to do with it than most modern people could possibly even begin to get their heads around.

[Wild Bill Kelso]

Myth - "The Crusaders were really just after riches and plunder in the East!"
Fact - As Tyerman and others show, going on Crusade was actually a great way to bankrupt yourself and your family. Despite this, the same families kept sending sons on Crusade over several generations. Clearly something other than greed was motivating these people.

I was surprised to read that many nobles actually sold off their lands in order to go on crusade. Something unheard of in a feudal society!

[Centurion-Lucius-Vorenus]

Can i find that in my local Barnes and Nobles or Borders or should i order it on amazon or something ?

[Wild Bill Kelso]

Can i find that in my local Barnes and Nobles or Borders or should i order it on amazon or something ?

I am not sure.. I took it out from my Uni. library

[crazyj]

Good post Gunthigg.

[Hansa]

TG's post sums it up very well. As for the myth mentioned here that the crusades were a way to send marauding nobles causing trouble away to The Holy Land, so that they could do no harm in Europe, this is also wrong. Urban's recruiting focused only on the south and west of France plus a letter to the Flemish, which were relatively peaceful compared to other parts of Europe.

In fact the Papacy was attempting to use the warring noble class to promote peace in Western Europe in leagues of peace, where they could use their power to force people to end unlawful violence. The argument that the pope actually meant to export these nobles to the east to do the same work in Asia minor has been put forward, but does not appear to have support among most contemporary historians.

EDIT: Of course this debate seems to revolve mostly around the First Crusade. If we look at the Second Crusade, that expedition was actually not really instigated by the Papacy but by the king of France, who wanted to fulfill the Crusade vow of his deceased brother. Not by the fall of the obscure territory Edessa, far from the proper Holy Land and of no real importance as a historic place of pilgrimage and Christianity. The fall simply provided an excellent recruitment tool for the crusade.

[Erwin Rommel]

it was all schemed by Alexius Comnenus hihihihih

[Odovacar]

TG said it was not devised by papacy. True. However, papacy oversaw the crusaders, and papal legates had great respect among crusaders. Some legates had a rather harmful influence on crusaders.

In the fight of HRE and papacy for supremacy in the christian world, crusades were important matter to show superiority and religious zeal.
Thats is one reason besides religion why Friedrich Barbarossa went on crusading. His grandson, the athestic Friedrich II only went to a 'crusade' to gain reputation in the christian world.

This was the same reason the hungarian king , András II went there, besides collecting reliquies and making diplomacy.

[KaerMorhen]

I add only one maybe petty and simple but still does count - many of them gone looking for live full of adventures and opportunity to gain fame, wealth.

[iudas]

Thiudareiks, religion had everything to do with it, I agree. It's just not that Christianity caused it, but people's blind belief in it.

[ThiudareiksGunthigg]

TG said it was not devised by papacy. True.

Ummm, not quite. What I said was that what the Crusades were to become in scope, duration and significance was not and and could not have been forseen by Pope Urban. So to look at them in retrospect and imagine Urban rubbing his hands with glee and imagining his power extending into the Holy Land and the Catholic Church gaining authority at the expense of the Orthodox Church is plainly wrong. Urban had no idea how things were going pan out and he definitely didn't plan them that way.

However, papacy oversaw the crusaders, and papal legates had great respect among crusaders. Some legates had a rather harmful influence on crusaders.

I'm not sure what you mean by that last point, but there's no doubt that the Crusades were part of a wider Papal policy which evolved as the Crusading movement evolved.

In the fight of HRE and papacy for supremacy in the christian world, crusades were important matter to show superiority and religious zeal.

Urban's initial call and his successors' crusading policies can certainly only be understood within the context of the ongoing struggle between the Papacy and the Holy Roman Empire and, more broadly, the struggle of the Papacy to free itself from secular dependence and domination. This is where the common, cliched, cartoon ideas of the medieval Papacy as some kind of all-powerful theocracy are so utterly stupid - in 1098 the Papacy was not anything like "all-powerful" and Western Christendom was no "theocracy". Quite the opposite - Urban was an heir to the Tenth Century Reformation (yes, there was a Reformation before Luther) and was a reformer of the Cluniac movement. This meant he was part of a tradition that was devoted to cleaning up corruption and, especially, the corruption caused by dependence on secular sponsors, protectors and dominators.

His call for a crusade was one of many things that he and his fellow reformers did to try bring the Catholic Church out from under secular domination, to influence the secular world and to assert its independence. It wasn't doing this from a position of strength and power, it was actually doing this from a position of relative weakness, but with a new burning ideal regarding the role of the Church in the world.

One of these days I'll have to get around to writing a post about the Papacy and the reform movement in this period. Suffice it to say it won't fit neatly with what most people have learned about "the medieval popes" in Sunday School, because what most people understand about the medieval Papacy is - like so much else about the medieval period - total crap.

Far from being strong, for most of its history the medieval Papacy was weak. Far from dominating secular politics, for much of its history the medieval Church struggled to free itself from secular domination.

But that will have to wait for another time.

[jimkatalanos]

The true reasons were the conquest of M.East and it's valuable resources, the devitalization of the orthodox church and the enhancement of pope's power.

[Odovacar]

Far from being strong, for most of its history the medieval Papacy was weak. Far from dominating secular politics, for much of its history the medieval Church struggled to free itself from secular domination.

Hmm...depends on the measure..
Medieval papacy, just emerging from the influence of german imperators, managed to force Heinrich IV. to seek forgiveness in Canossa. It was successfull in reforming the church during the Clouny movement, as you wrote.
It was successfull under Innocentius III in forcing kings to accept the overlordship of the pope, such as Aragonia.
When I studied the history of medieval Hungary I was always suprised by the strong influence and effectiveness of papal diplomacy in inner matters.

Also the papacy outlasted the Hohenstaufen dynasty and the power of HRE...
The popes contributed to the fall of Hohenstaufens, and in phisically wiping out of the family. It is to me a chain of success, even though hardly earned.

Shortly thereafter however, the inner weakness came to the light, while HRE lost its power, the french kingdom gained power, and begun to bring church under its influence.

However in my opinion, medieval papacy from 1122 till 1305 was very powerful, even having no army, and just very few actual 'power'.
It had an increasingly effective administration though, having enormous influence.

[ThiudareiksGunthigg]

The true reasons were the conquest of M.East and it's valuable resources, the devitalization of the orthodox church and the enhancement of pope's power.

Wrong, wrong, wrong and wrong.

Please read the thread before posting.

Or if you want to post things that have aready been argued against in detail in the thread you're posting to, back your assertions up with arguments, evidence and references.

Try again.

Hmm...depends on the measure..
Medieval papacy, just emerging from the influence of german imperators, managed to force Heinrich IV. to seek forgiveness in Canossa.

Yes, but that was a remarkable turning point in the political power struggle between the Church and the secular forces that had dominated it for centuries. And a short-lived one: note how Pope Gregory ended up.

It was successfull in reforming the church during the Clouny movement, as you wrote.

An episode in the history of the Papacy and the Catholic Church that non-specialists generally know nothing about.

It was successfull under Innocentius III in forcing kings to accept the overlordship of the pope, such as Aragonia.

Innocent III was a high point in the power of the Papacy - one that was not to be repeated. Yet that kind of influence is what most people think of when they think "Medieval Pope". The weird thing is, Innocent was very much the radical exception to the rule. And a wiser and more able ruler than most of his secular contemporaries.

Also the papacy outlasted the Hohenstaufen dynasty and the power of HRE...
The popes contributed to the fall of Hohenstaufens, and in phisically wiping out of the family. It is to me a chain of success, even though hardly earned.

A combination of skill and luck. Mainly the latter.

However in my opinion, medieval papacy from 1122 till 1305 was very powerful, even having no army, and just very few actual 'power'.
It had an increasingly effective administration though, having enormous influence.

The way it developed that influence despite a lack of an army and territory is a remarkable story. The fact that, in the course of trying to free itself from secular power and domination, it became a temporal power in its own right - with the violence and corruption that goes with this - is one of the great ironies of history.

In trying to free itself from temporal domination, it became a dominating temporal power.

But the fact remains that for most of the period 500-1500 the Church in general and the Papacy in particular were not some kind of great, independent power. For most of that period they were either (i) utterly weak and dominated by secular powers or (ii) struggling desperately to free themselves from that domination. Innocent III represents a period when that struggle was successful. The Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries represent periods when the corrosive effects of that struggle became blatantly obvious.

The Reformation of the Sixteenth Century was a reaction against that corrosion.

[jimkatalanos]

I'm saying my opinion.

[iudas]

Thiudareiks, all you posted was disproving the myths. I would really appreciate if you posted the fact, not only the myths' disproving.

[ThiudareiksGunthigg]

I'm saying my opinion.

Big deal. There's a guy who sits in the park over the road from my building whose "opinion" is that the SAS is coming to get him because of what he knows about the CIA and the aliens. He happily states his "opinion". It's crap.

If you want your "opinion" to be taken seriously in a discusssion forum, then discuss it. The thread you've posted to has already moved on to a discussion of why many aspects of your "opinions" are baseless. So you can't just poke your head up and state your "opinions" without backing them up with some pretty good evidence and argument that takes the rest of the thread's analysis into account.

Sorry, but this weird hippy idea that any "opinion" is as valid as any other "opinion" is total garbage. Many "opinions" are utter nonsense. What's your view on the "opinion" that the Earth is flat, for example? :hmmm:

Getting the picture?

Thiudareiks, all you posted was disproving the myths. I would really appreciate if you posted the fact, not only the myths' disproving.

Eh? I outlined why the myths were wrong. What part of what I outlined would you like me to elaborate on? I can go into great detail if you like.