6 myths about the Crusades that many believe

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

Deus Vult!

From the phrase translated from Latin meaning "This is what God wants!" and placed in the subtitle of the article, the era of the Crusades began. More than nine hundred years ago, thousands of Europeans set out to recapture the Holy Sepulcher - this is how Jerusalem and the Holy Land surrounding it were called in a figurative sense. Since then, many myths and legends have developed around the crusaders and their wars. Life hacker talks about the most popular ones.

1. The Crusades were the first clash between Christians and Muslims

To understand why this is not the case, one must turn to the events that preceded the Crusades.

So, by 1096 - the beginning of the era of the Crusades - the Reconquista had been going on for more than three centuries - the process of recapturing the Iberian Peninsula (present-day Spain and Portugal) from the Moors who had captured it. The North African tribes who converted to Islam in the 7th century were called Moors. In just seven years (from 711 to 718), the Moors defeated the Visigoth kingdom, subdued almost all of the Pyrenees, and even invaded southern France. Finally, the Europeans (the inhabitants of Leon, Castile, Navarra and Aragon, who will become a united Spain) will reclaim these lands only in 1492.

At the time of the First Crusade, Jerusalem itself had belonged to the Muslims for more than four centuries, who recaptured it from the Byzantine Empire. Here they, first the Arabs and then the Seljuk Turks, pushed the Byzantines back from the 7th century. Gradually, the Byzantines lost their territories (Egypt, the African Mediterranean coast, Palestine, Syria) and, in the end, retained only a part of Asia Minor and Constantinople. This brought the civilization of the Byzantine Greeks to the brink of disaster by the end of the 11th century.

Also, all this time, the expansion of the fragments of the Arab Caliphate in the Mediterranean did not subside. For example, in the XI century, Europeans conquered Sicily from the Arabs. In 1074, more than 20 years before the start of the crusading movement, the then Pope Gregory VII even planned a holy war against Muslims.

So the campaigns of the crusaders can in no way be called the first clash of Muslims and Christians. This idea was in the air and was embodied by SI Luchitskaya. Crusades. Idea and reality. SPb. 2019 in the sermons of Pope Urban II in the French city of Clermont in 1096.

2. Crusaders fought only with Muslims

The classic Crusades are considered to be the expeditions of European knights to the Middle East, as well as nearby territories from 1096 to 1272. But there are a number of Catholic Church-sanctioned wars fought in the south, north and east of Europe itself. So, from the middle of the XII century, the Crusades were organized not only against Muslims. The enemies of the crusaders were declared to be pagans, heretics, Orthodox and even other Catholics.

The Albigensian Crusade (or Albigensian Wars) of 1209–1229 was the Crusades. History.com directed against the heretics of the Cathars - an Albigensian sect - who did not recognize the Catholic Church.

The campaigns of the crusaders to the south of Italy and to Sicily in 1255-1266 were directed against the brothers in faith from the very beginning. The Pope, who sought to unite all of Italy under his rule, said that the Catholics living there were "worse than the pagans." Thus, the holy war became the political weapon of the Roman pontiff.

The movement of German knightly orders against the followers of pagan cults in the Baltic States is also known. In the XII-XIII century, crusades were organized against the Polabian Slavs, Finns, Karelians, Estonians, Lithuanians and other local tribes. The crusaders also reached the northern Russian lands and fought, including with Alexander Nevsky.

In the 15th century, the Roman Catholic Church sanctioned the Crusades against its opponents, the Czech Hussites and the Ottoman Empire. The last Crusade can be considered the performance of the Holy League of European States against the Ottoman Empire in 1684-1699.

The reprisals against the "disagreeable" were arranged without the Pope's sanction. The first crusade began by Brandage J. Crusades. Sacred wars of the Middle Ages. M. 2011 with mass pogroms of Jews in northern Germany and France. The cruelty of this persecution was such that many Jews preferred to kill themselves rather than fall into the hands of the "soldiers of Christ." It was a common practice to give a choice between death and baptism.

The crusaders behaved no less ingloriously with the Christians of the Middle East, of whom there were many. The fact is that in those days a split between the western and eastern branches of Christianity was already clearly marked. Therefore, it is not unusual for Europeans to regard Orthodox Christians as pagan barbarians. So, having taken Antioch in 1098 after a heavy siege, the participants of the First Crusade staged a massacre in the city, sparing neither Muslims, nor Christians, nor Jews.

And the participants of the Fourth Crusade (1202-1204) took Phillips J. the Fourth Crusade. M. 2010 Constantinople instead of sailing to Egypt. The city was plundered, and many valuables and relics were taken from it to Europe. As you can see, the "civilized" Greeks (Byzantines) for the crusaders were not much different from the "barbarians".

3. Only knights went to the Holy Land

In fact, almost all segments of the population of medieval Europe took part in the Crusades: from kings to the poor and even children.

The very first action of Christians (not to be confused with the First Crusade) was the Peasant Campaign in 1096, it is also called the People's Campaign, or the Campaign of the Poor. Inspired by the sermons of Peter the Hermit and the speeches of Pope Urban II (joining the “holy army”, the Pope offered to atone for their sins) a huge crowd of ordinary people and a small number of knights (up to 100 thousand people in total, including women and children) did not wait for the official start of the Crusade. They didn't even take their supplies with them. This army invaded the Seljuk possessions and was defeated - almost all the participants in the campaign were killed.

Subsequently, the peasants more than once organized their own "crusades", for which the popes even excommunicated the participants from the church, and their own kings smashed their troops.

In 1212, Mesguer E. The Children’s Crusade set out for the Holy Land in 1212 began in Europe. It never arrived. National Geographic movement dubbed the Children's Crusade. It all started with the fact that Christ appeared to the teenager Stephen from Clois, who commanded him to free the Holy Land. Stephen had to do this by the power of the prayer of the immaculate souls of children. A similar "prophet" appeared in the French lands. As a result, up to 30 thousand children from France and Germany rushed after Stephen, believing his sermons. They made it with difficulty to Marseilles, where they embarked on seven ships provided by local merchants. They took the children into slavery in Africa. True, today many historians doubt that children really were participants in this campaign - rather, we are talking about adolescents and young people.

Of course, the campaigns described above were not organized with the permission of the Pope, which makes them not entirely official. But it is also impossible to exclude them from the crusading movement.

Women were also its participants. For example, 42 women with 411 men went on the Seventh Crusade on one of the ships. Some traveled with their husbands, others - usually widows - on their own. This gave them the opportunity, like men, to see the world and "save their soul" after prayers in the Holy Land.

4. Knights went to the crusades just for the sake of profit

For a long time it was believed that the main participants in the Crusades were M. A. Zaborov, Crusaders in the East. M. 1980 the youngest sons of European feudal lords - knights who did not inherit. Accordingly, their main motivation was proclaimed the desire to fill their pockets with gold.

In fact, such a simplification is difficult to take seriously. Among the crusaders there were many rich people, and participation in the holy war was expensive and rarely profitable. So, the knight had to independently arm himself and equip his companions and servants. In addition, all the way to the Holy Land, they had to eat something and somewhere to live. On foot it took months.

The whole family was often involved in collecting these funds. Knights often mortgaged or sold their property.

For example, the leader of the First Campaign, Gottfried of Bouillon, laid the foundation for his ancestral castle. Most often, the crusaders returned back empty-handed or with relics that they donated to monasteries. But participation in the "charitable cause" greatly raised the prestige of the family in the eyes of the rest of the nobility. Therefore, the surviving bachelor crusader could count on a profitable marriage.

To get by sea, again, one had to fork out: “reserve” for oneself (as well as for one's retinue and horses, if any) places on the ship or the whole ship and buy provisions. At the same time, no one could guarantee the safety of either sea or land travel. Crusaders died in shipwrecks, drowned when crossing rivers, died of disease and exhaustion.

The territories seized in the Holy Land not only did not bring profits, but were almost entirely dependent on European funds. To support them, the kings introduced Luchitskaya SI Crusades. Dictionary of Medieval Culture. M. 2007 new taxes. This is how the "Saladin's tithe" appeared, named after the ruler of Syria and Egypt, who recaptured Jerusalem from the crusaders.

Overseas possessions literally siphoned off money. The Seventh Crusade of Louis IX cost Crawford P. F. Four Myths About the Crusades. The Intercollegiate Review is 36 times the annual income of the French crown.

5. The Crusades Awakened Religious Intolerance

Despite the successes of the Crusaders, at first in the East there was no rush to declare jihad on the Christians who arrived, although Jerusalem was also an important city for Muslims. The fact is that the Muslim rulers were more occupied with confrontation with each other than with the crusaders. It got to the point that they invited Christians to participate in their showdown. It was only when the Middle East began to unite under the rule of one ruler (for example, Nur ad-Din or Saladin) that Muslims began to give a real rebuff.

But this confrontation cannot be called the cause of the emergence of religious intolerance. Much earlier, in 1009, the Egyptian caliph Al-Hakim ordered the destruction of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher and arranged the Tribel I. Jerusalem. The secret of three millennia. Rostov on Don. 2007 persecution of Christians and Jews - with murder and forced conversion to Islam. Therefore, it is naive to say that the Crusades gave rise to Islamic extremism.

At first glance, the situation with the crusaders appears a little differently.

For medieval Europe, the Crusades were the first time when war was not only not considered a sinful deed, but, on the contrary, seemed godly and sacred.

Just 30 years earlier, after the Battle of Hastings in 1066, the Norman bishops imposed penance on their soldiers (who, by the way, won) - a form of church condemnation and punishment.

In general, despite the wars, most of the time Muslims and Christians in the Middle East got along peacefully with each other. While Jerusalem was under Arab rule, Christian pilgrims could calmly worship their shrines, which no one destroyed. Muslims also tolerated local Christians, imposing only a special tax on them. Roughly the same situation was in those states of the Crusaders, where the followers of Islam constituted the majority of the population.

6. The era of the crusades brought only death, destruction and disease

The crusaders' campaigns claimed many lives and caused a lot of troubles, but they also had beneficial consequences for the development of society.

Since the wars in remote areas required the Crusades. History.com of the constant supply of supplies, this spurred the development of shipbuilding. Sailing in the Mediterranean has become safer and more lively as ships are less likely to be wrecked. Many products (saffron, lemon, apricot, sugar, rice) and materials (chintz, muslin, silk) came to Europe from the East. After the Crusades, interest in travel increased significantly in Europe. For the first time since the Roman Empire, large groups of people set out not as pilgrims or traders, but out of interest in the unknown.

The Crusades significantly expanded the cognitive horizon of Europeans, who got acquainted with other peoples, cultures and countries. This movement has helped to accumulate immense knowledge and explore significant areas. The Fifth Crusade (1217-1221) served as the basis for the first medieval expeditions to Central Asia and the Far East.

Thanks to the Crusades, Europeans were able to Hitty F. A Brief History of the Near East. M. 2012 to get acquainted with the works from all over the world, carefully collected by Muslims. Numerous texts of ancient scientists and philosophers, lost in Europe, have returned to it thanks to Arabic translations.

Medieval science acquired an unprecedented amount of knowledge in the field of geography, mathematics, astronomy, medicine, philosophy, history, and linguistics. It is believed that the crusaders thus paved the way for the Renaissance for medieval Europe.

However, we must not forget that all this was achieved at the cost of economic destruction History of the East in 6 volumes. Volume 2. East in the Middle Ages. M. 2002 territories of modern Syria, Lebanon and Palestine. Many cities and settlements were destroyed or fell into decay, due to numerous sieges, a huge amount of forests were cut down. And the merchants and artisans, for whom these places were famous earlier, moved to Egypt.

It took the participants of the First Crusade, which lasted from 1096 to 1099, to take Jerusalem three years. This was followed by Brandej J. Crusades. Sacred wars of the Middle Ages. M. 2011 eight more large-scale expeditions. For about 200 years, until 1291, the Crusaders held the lands of Palestine and the Levant until they were finally defeated and driven out of the Holy Land.

Many legends developed around the crusading movement and a kind of romantic aura arose. But in reality, as always, everything turned out to be somewhat more complicated.