More than two hundred years after Islamic armies conquered the Middle East and forced their way into Europe, the Christians finally did strike back. Rallied by the pope and the ruling dynasties of Europe, in the eleventh century the Christians attempted to recover the heartland of Christianity and defend it against militant Islam. These efforts are now called the Crusades. (The term is a later invention; it was not used by the Christians and Muslims who fought in those battles.)
Who were the Crusaders? Historian Jonathan Riley-Smith disputes the idea that theywere rapacious conquerors or murderers. Rather, he says, they were pilgrims. They were responding to Christ’s call to Christians to “deny yourself and take up your cross and follow me.” Many of them put their fortunes and their lives at risk. Their rulers provided nothing—the Crusaders were expected to bring their own horses, pack animals, and equipment. The proof that they were not in this for gain is that virtually all of them returned poorer than they left. Yes, there was looting and foraging on the way, but Riley-Smith says this is because the Crusaders had to make provision for their own survival.”
The First Crusade was a success. The Christians captured Jerusalem in 1099 and held it for several decades. Eventually the Muslims regrouped and routed the Crusaders. Saladin reconquered Jerusalem in 1187. Subsequent Crusades were failures, and Jerusalem remained under Muslim rule. So the Crusades can be seen as a belated, clumsy, and unsuccessful effort to defeat Islamic imperialism. Yet the Crusades were important because they represented a fight for the survival of Europe. Without the Crusades Western civilization might have been completely overrun by the forces of Islam. The Crusades are also seen as a precursor to Europe’s voyages of exploration, which inaugurated the modern era. Certainly one can dispute the worthiness of these objectives, and there were expeditions of rape and murder committed during the Crusades that no one can justify. Even so, these rampages do not define the Crusades as a whole. In the context of the history of warfare, there is no warrant for considering the Crusades a world historical crime of any sort. The Christians fought to defend themselves from foreign conquest, while the Muslims fought to continue conquering Christian lands.
And the Inquisition? Contemporary historians have now established that the horrific images of the Inquisition are largely a myth concocted first by the political enemies of Spain—mainly English writers who shaped our American understanding of that event— and later by the political enemies of religion. Henry Kamen’s book The Spanish Inquisition is subtitled “A Historical Revision.” and it is a long book, because Kamen has a lot of revising to do. One of his chapters is called “Inventing the Inquisition.” He means that much of the modern stereotype of the Inquisition is essentially made up.
