Quoran Q on Christian Atrocities in Crusades (close up, some debate)

Q

Could somebody tell me about the crimes committed by Christians during the era of the crusades?
https://www.quora.com/Could-somebody-tell-me-about-the-crimes-committed-by-Christians-during-the-era-of-the-crusades

C on Q

(number of victims especially and atrocities against them)

I

James Hough

Catholic who teaches Catechism, RCIA, and Prayer classes.

Answered 15h ago

Upvoted by Alex Pismenny

I know what is going to happen, you are going to get a dozen answers about the crimes committed by Christians, most of which are figments of the imagination, and none about the crimes which necessitated the Crusades: committed by the Muslims AGAINST the Christians. The Crusades were basically a rescue operation of those few who had NOT been already killed by the Muslims.

The Muslims invaded the Holy Land and killed people by the thousands, they killed all the men, and enslaved the women and children. They burned the Churches and shrines. The Crusades were formed for the task of rescuing the survivors from the brutal conditions that they were barely surviving under, and to liberate the Holy Land itself. Pope Urban II made a very public and urgent plea in 1095 to all of Christendom after receiving a letter from the Byzantine Emperor Alexis describing the increasing danger from the Seljuk Turks, Tartars from Asia, who had already conquered the caliphate of Baghdad in 1055 and now were seeking to expand their empire into the Holy Land.

from Modern Catholic Dictionary by John A. Hardon, S.J. Doubleday & Co., Inc. Garden City, NY 1980

Crusades. The military expeditions undertaken by Christians in the eleventh through fourteenth centuries to recover the Holy Land from the Moslems. The name comes from the cross that the crusaders bore on their clothing. There were eight principal Crusades: the first (1096-99) and the eight (1270). However, the term is also applied in a wider sense to all expeditions blessed by the Church against heretics and infidels. (Etym. French croisade; Spanish cruzada; Latin cruciata, a marking with the cross.)

All of the history you have heard about the Crusades is so much hogwash:

from Seven Lies About Catholic History, by Diane Moczar

Unprovoked Muslim aggression in the seventh century brought large parts of the southern Byzantine Empire, including Syria, the Holy Land, and Egypt under Arab rule. Christians who survived the conquests found themselves subject to a special poll tax and discriminated against as an inferior class known as dhimmi. Often their churches were destroyed and other harsh conditions imposed. For centuries their complaints had been reaching Rome, but Europe was having its own Dark Age of massive invasion, and nothing could be done to relieve the plight of eastern Christians.

By the eleventh century, under the rule of a new Muslim dynasty, conditions worsened. The Church of the Holy Sepulcher, site of the Crucifixion was destroyed, along with a large number of other churches, and Christian pilgrims were massacred. In 1067 a group of seven thousand peaceful German pilgrims lost two-thirds of their number to Muslim assaults. By this time the popes, including St. Gregory VII, were actively trying to rally support for relief of eastern Christians, though without success. It was not until the very end of the century, in 1095, that Pope Urban's address at Clermont in France met with a response-though not quite the one he had hoped for. But the response was what we now call the First Crusade.

"The general consensus of opinion among medievalists . . . is that the Crusades were military expeditions organized by the peoples of Western Christendom, notably the Normans and the French, under the leadership of the Roman Popes, for the recover of the Holy Places from their Muslim masters." This seems to sum up most neatly what the Crusades really were and how their participants actually viewed them. The Crusades were not colonialist or commercial ventures, they were not intended to force Christianity on Jews and Muslims, and they were not the projects of individual warlords. Their primary goal, in addition to the defense of the Eastern Empire, was the recovery of the Holy Land for Christendom, and they acknowledged the leadership of the Popes. As French historian Louis Brehier wrote, 'the popes alone understood the menace of Islam's progress for Christian civilization.'"

[Cannot add comment at this time.]

HGL, on blog

[not on quora]

James how has so far not been proven right.

Four crimes have been shown, three of which I had enumerated - the other fourth, see next and my comment. I and others have said that the Crusades were a retaliation.

No crime which he has called figment of imagination has so far been shown.

Sorry, five, the massacre of Jews in people's Crusade, coming to it in answer V.

If one were to talk about atrocities to other Christians, it would be about Antioch and recuperation of Cross which had been hidden, by means of torture. Antioch was refused to rally Constantinople and was forced under Crusader rule, one or two men were tortured to get the Cross. For the second, Saint Helen had given a precedent when finding it.

II

Ernest W. Adams

Game Design Consultant, Author, and Professor

Answered Jan 26, 2015

Richard the Lionheart killed about 3000 prisoners, including women and children, of the town of Acre in cold blood. It took several days.

Massacre at Ayyadieh
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massacre_at_Ayyadieh

[The author has disabled additional comments for this answer.]

HGL, on blog

[not on quora]

Massacre at Ayyadieh links to Fall of Acre, where I learn that Leopold V of Austria had already left Acre after a quarrel with Richard I of England.

Siege of Acre (1189–91)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Acre_(1189–91)

Leopold leaves after soon after capturing Acre, Philipp on July 31:st, and Massacre occurs on August 20th 1191.

Rings a bell, since as child I read a historic novel from the view point of Leopold's armourer - present in Acre, in capturing Richard on his way home and also founder of Wiener Neustadt.

Had forgotten the part of Richard proving ruthless to Muslims, in a way Leopold and Philipp might not have been!

III

Andrei Botu

history enthusiast

Answered 14h ago

So many people have learnt to ask questions here but not to google things.

I want to mention that what you might understand by attrocitty or crime now, might not have been viewed as such then. Second, this was of period of conquest and expansion. Turks were becoming a power, Byzantines were on the retreat but hoping to hang in and they had to fight with a lot of the Christians as well, especially the Normans. Everyone involved was very brutal and death came often and in very horrible ways. If you think that the expansion of Islam or of the Turks was bloodless, you must be severely misinformed. The entire region of interest of the crusades has been in Roman and Christian hands for centuries before being pushed back. Conquering was viewed as a great and glorious feat back then… and up until WWII as well.

Now for your question, you can just visit this, for example:

Christian Atrocities | Victims of Christianity | Catholic Church Inquisition | Crusades
http://www.truthbeknown.com/victims.htm

[while I give the link, I caution against it, see below!]

Hans-Georg Lundahl

“Conquering was viewed as a great and glorious feat back then… and up until WWII as well.”

Indeed, but among Christians (unlike Genghis Khan or Hitler or Stalin), the conquests had to be motivated as legitimate from a point of view of Christian morality.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

“Now for your question, you can just visit this, for example”

Acharya was not a very unbiassed person about Christianity, nor is her history top scholarship.

[As I gave two separate comments, Andrei Botu is free to answer on either or on both separately.]

IV

Linda Hinton

works at Mental Health

Answered Jan 27, 2015

The fourth crusade was mostly criminal: actions not approved by the pope, against other Christians instead of the Arabs they were sent to fight, and very bloody with vast looting and destruction of art, holy items, and church buildings. Even Pope Innocent III was appalled, and he called for it.

Fourth Crusade: Conquest of Constantinople
http://www.historynet.com/fourth-crusade-conquest-of-constantinople.htm

By any accounting these guys did not follow the original plan, they just stole stuff.

You can argue if the others were crimes or wars, who had the moral high ground, who was more brutal, etc. but this one was pillage and plunder against the orders from the top. Much harder to defend.

The only folks pleased with the outcome were the looters, and the Muslims in Jerusalem who were not attacked. Generally not the goal of a war started to reclaim Jerusalem for the Christians.

I know there was bad blood between Roman and Orthodox Churches before this but it did not improve the situation and went down in history as a disaster.

I did not

comment, but I upvoted it.

V

Liu Hongtao（刘鸿韬）

Obsessed with anything gone.

Answered Jan 27, 2015

The most notable one would be the massacre of Jerusalem in 1099.

There's also the massacre of Jews along the Rhine by the so-called "People's Crusade".

Richard killed 3,000 prisoners after he took Acre, but that was a deal went sour, Saladin refused to ransom them, and by convention, they died.

The Fourth Crusade was infamous for attacking a fellow Christian nation, and sacking it's capital, Constantinople. This heralded the ultimate decline of the East Roman Empire.

VI

Dennis Gardner

Master's in Biblical Studies,

43 years as a pastor and student of the Bible

Answered 23h ago

It seems you’ve got your answer, and I would just say that crimes are always committed during wars on both sides. Atrocities against P.O.W.s and civilians always happen. War is no excuse for the behavior of ill hearted men. It happens because the heart of man is wicked and will do horrible things to each other no matter what the rules of engagement state.

Please do not think for one moment that these men in the crusades were true Christians. Some of them might have been, but the majority of them were not. True Christians who are following Jesus Christ will not do such evil against innocent people. I’m not saying anyone is perfect, and they certainly are capable of evil, but if they were under the control of the Holy Spirit and not the Pope it would’ve been very painful for them if they had done the atrocities that were done.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

“Please do not think for one moment that these men in the crusades were true Christians. Some of them might have been, but the majority of them were not. “

I am sorry, but apart from five war crimes, three of which I enumerated myself, I did not find any here.

You are painting Crusaders like a pack of wolves, when in fact most of them were just attacking soldiers on the other side.

“but if they were under the control of the Holy Spirit and not the Pope it would’ve been very painful for them if they had done the atrocities that were done.”

The Pope certainly did not order the massacre of Ayyadieh, while getting the True Cross back was a priority, I don’t think he approved of killing hostages who were civilians. He certainly did not order it.

Philipp Augustus and Leopold V (King of France and Count or Duke of Austria - Austria may already have been a Duchy) may be presumed to have been led by the Holy Spirit as well as by the Pope, since they left before Richard of England committed that.

The taking of Acre itself involved no atrocities, or perhaps on the part of Richard, but not on the part of Leopold.

At the taking of Jerusalem, 1099, the atrocity was indeed very painful to Geoffrey of Bouillon who tried to stop it and failed. So, he can be presumed to have been led by the Holy Spirit as he can be presumed to have been led by the Pope, since the Pope later took him as “advocate of the Holy Sepulchre” (a nonroyal first title of what later became King of Jerusalem).

VII

own answer, see previous post, here both repeating it and giving the ensuing debate:

Hans-Georg Lundahl

History buff since childhood. CSL & Eco added to Medieval lore. + Classics.

Answered 5h ago

OK … I happen to be a Christian and to think the Crusades were, as such, legitimate.

That said, crimes happened.

Especially through the fact that some Crusader armies were basically what would these days be called “roused rabble” by media and were not trained, meaning they had little discipline of the military kind.

In other words, in some cases the Crusader armies acted like lynch mobs.

I think the most notorious ones are:

• the massacre on inhabitants of Jerusalem, which Geoffrey of Boullion tried to stop, but which seems to have gone on for three days, from 15th to 17th July 1099, sources differ on numbers (French wiki says 10 000 acc to Christians, 50 000 according to Muslims);
• the taking of Montségur in 1244 (200 Cathars were burned, but that could have been a legal execution, too);
• taking of Constantinople (after they had shilly shallied about being allies or not to IV Crusade which was meant to go to Holy Land), the losses are more given as monetary values of the sacking than as how many died, so presumably not very many.

In exactly what prolonged war do you find no war crimes at all?

Andrei Botu

Legitimate…. Lol. What made them legitimate? We are talking about a period in time when everyone who could would conquer other lands. No one cared about being legitimate from international point of view

Hans-Georg Lundahl

"What made them legitimate?"

The just defense of the Catholic Faith.

"We are talking about a period in time when everyone who could would conquer other lands."

Among Christians, there was usually at least a formal excuse.

In the case of Norman Conquest, for instance, the Witenagemot was considered as rebelliously breaking a vow of the late king St Edm ... sorry St Edward the Confessor, and also as, since Archbishop Stigand was in Communion with Caerularius, guilty of schism against the unity of the Church.

"No one cared about being legitimate from international point of view"

Oh, yes, unless by "international point of view" you mean a one world federation of states all of whom decide what is legitimate, by voting in UNO, independently of their national faith or infidelity.

I do not see how a thing becomes legitimate if atrocious, just because some UNO organ has voted it, for instance in promoting access to contraception and abortion. Or psychiatry and school compulsion.

VIII

TR Livesey

Philosopher and Scientist

Answered Jan 26, 2015

That would be the Crusades themselves - unprovoked wars that killed many thousands of people.

Joe Fessenden

I would argue that claiming the crusading movement was unprovoked is not supported by most historians. It's certainly not the most shining moment in Christian history, especially some of the massacres in the later crusades, but they were far from unprovoked or simple western/Christian expansionism or aggression.

TR Livesey

Ok, what provoked Europeans to haul themselves to the Middle East and make war on its inhabitants?

Liu Hongtao（刘鸿韬）

The Muslim expansion.

TR Livesey

"The Muslim Expansion"? You will have to be more specific. Also, you need to justify the use of "provoked" instead of "in response to".

Liu Hongtao（刘鸿韬）

Direct cause for the First Crusade would be the East Roman Emperor's call for aid, after losing almost the entire of Anatolia to the invading Turks.

TR Livesey

The Eastern and Western Churches could hardly be considered allies at the time, so it is quite a stretch to label a conflict between Byzantium and invading Muslims a 'provocation'. And since European armies did not act in concert with or to the interests of the Byzantium Emperor, they can hardly be considered coming to his aid. The military objective of the 1st crusade was to capture Jerusalem, which is obviously not even in Anatolia, and had not been part of the Empire for hundreds of years.

The situation could just as easily be read as the losses of the Byzantines represented an opportunity for the Western Church to exert it's influence in the Holy Land, which makes the Muslim Expansion anything but a provocation.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

“The Eastern and Western Churches could hardly be considered allies at the time, so it is quite a stretch to label a conflict between Byzantium and invading Muslims a 'provocation'.”

False, for two reasons:

• 1. we can be allies with even heretics and schismatics when the attacker is a non-Christian - Pius XII strechted this to a de facto alliance with Jews against Hitler;
• 2. the discord between Church of Rome and Byzantium was only 45 years old and had involved no wars so far, unless you count Norman Conquest, in which Byzantium was not trying to give Harold military aid (yes, his archbishop of Canterbury, Stigand, was on Caerularius’ side), so it could be neglected as ecclesiastic stuff one could lay aside when it comes to fighting a common enemy : there was even the Church of Antioch which up to the Crusade was in communion with BOTH successors of Pope St Leo IX AND of Michael Caerularius, and that was still the case when Pope Urban II said “Deus vult”.

There is also this, while Arabs had been in Jerusalem fairly good to Christian Pilgrims, the Seldjuks who had recently taken over in Jerusalem were committing atrocities - among the victims of which were also pilgrims from the West - that is what I had recalled from my mother’s history book.

“The situation could just as easily be read as the losses of the Byzantines represented an opportunity for the Western Church to exert it's influence in the Holy Land, which makes the Muslim Expansion anything but a provocation.”

What is a provocation or not depends on your loyalties. Not just on what opportunities open.

The man who pretended to have killed Saul (who, I recall, but that could be my bad memory, in fact killed himself) had given - if claim had been true - a very golden opportunity to King David.

He had - same observation - also killed the father in law and up to then accepted legitimate King of King David.

King David saw this as a provocation. The man who claimed to have killed Saul was executed.