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Crusades

The "Holy wars" were calculated to extort property from the heathen or heretic enemies of orthodox Christianity. Crusades were usually fought by vassals of Christian overlords, including the wealthy clergy. Warriors were promised not only the standard soldiers' spoils, but also indulgences, like instant remission of sins and admission to paradise (heaven) guaranteed no matter what crimes the crusader may have committed.

From the 8th to 10th centuries, the Holy Roman Empire was harassed by Norsemen, who owned many northern trading centers and dominated the seas. They also opened negotiations with foreign powers in North Africa and the Middle East. In 834, Arabian legates visited Denmark to contract military and trade alliances.1 The Holy Roman Empire saw itself trapped between two anti-Christian forces: the pagan Normans in the northwest, and the Moslem Saracens in the southeast. Norsemen controlled trade routes through the Danube and Black Sea to the Turks, and were acquiring hoards of Arabic silver, gold, and gems. They also sailed the Atlantic coasts down to Gibraltar, and founded colonies in Libya. The Kingdom of God was nearly encircled.

Pope Urban II (1040?-1099, Pope 1088-1099) tried to solve the problem by initiating crusades in, the east, on the pretext of converting the Saracens' possessions in the "Holy Land" into Christian fiefs. In 1095 he instigated the People's Crusade as a combination of penitential pilgrimage and a war of conquest. It was advertised throughout Europe. All who participated were placed above restrictions of law, and promised forgiveness of sins and eternal bliss in heaven without any time spent in purgatory.

A rabble of some 150,000 to 300,000 persons, mostly the dregs of society mixed with military mercenaries, set out across southern Europe, killing, torturing, and looting as they went. One division slaughtered 10,000 Jews in the Rhineland, then forgot about the Holy Land and dispersed. Two other divisions did so much harm in Hungary that native soldiers rose up against them and destroyed them all. Multitudes died along the way, of sickness, hunger, or injuries brought on by their violence. A remnant survived to plunder the too-hospitable Greeks, then to enter Constantinople. There, stronger crusaders sold off the weaker ones as slaves, to finance their own provisions. Finally, a remaining 7,000 or so crossed the Bosporus and were attacked by the Turks, who soon killed them all.2

One might think the fate of Pope Urban's crusade would have discouraged future experiments of this kind. Not so. It seems to have been an idea whose time had come.

Later crusades were better organized, with more experienced soldiers and fewer penitential pilgrims. Their primary motive was loot. For the next 400 years, Christian knights went forth to astonish the Saracens with their intellectual naivete and their military sophistication, developed in a feudal society based on warfare. Salomon Reinach, in his book, Orpheus, describes the Crusaders in a less-than-favorable light:

    "The Crusaders in general, in spite of their sacred cause, behaved like highway robbers. The first host which set out in 1095, and was annihilated by the Turks at Nicaea, killed, burned and pillaged all they encountered. The army commanded by Godfrey de Bouillon massacred the entire population of Jerusalem (1098). The astuteness of Venice turned aside the fourth Crusade upon Constantinople, and the sack of this city is a dark blot on the history of Western Christendom (1204). It was abominably ravaged, and the very church of St. Sophia was the scene of bloody and sacrilegious orgies."3

Richard the Lion-Hearted.In his book, Man & His Gods, Homer Smith said Jerusalem withstood a month's siege. Upon its fall, crusaders rode into the city with their horses wading "knee-deep in the blood of disbelievers." Jews were herded into their synagogues and burned alive. On the next day, the knights slaughtered "a great multitude of people of every age, old men and women, maidens, children and mothers with infants, by way of a solemn sacrifice" to Jesus.4 At the battle of Acre, Richard I (called Coeur de Lion or Lion-Hearted (1157-1199), king of England (1189-1199); shown at right.) violated his pledge of truce, and had his hostages slaughtered and flayed. "His conduct stands in strong contrast with the dignity and forbearance of Saladin, ((1138-1193), Muslim leader, who recaptured Jerusalem from the Crusaders.), before whose eyes the outrage was committed, and who would not stoop to retaliate on his dastardly opponent."5

Once the crusading system was established, it was turned on other enemies of the church closer to home and became the standard method for dealing with European heathens and heretics. Between 1236 and 1283 a crusade of extermination was preached against the pagan Prussians by Pope Honorius I, (died 638), pope (625-638), who was posthumously declared a heretic.) and carried out by the Teutonic Knights. The Christian Brethren of the Sword similarly converted Livonia and Courland. Armies of the Christian Dukes of Poland forced the Wends to accept Christian baptism and vassalage. The Lithuanians stubbornly clung to their paganism to the end of the 14th century, but eventually they too were Christianized by the sword.6

It was noticed in the 13th century that the semi-barbarous Stedingers of the lower Weser river maintained their ancient tribal system, paid no attention to the church, and contributed no tithes. Pope Gregory IX ((circa 1147?-1241), pope (1227-41), founded the Inquisition.) sent bulls to the bishops of Minden, Lubeck, and Verden, ordering crusades against these recalcitrant peasants, whom he described as heretics because they consulted wise-women, made waxen images, and worshipped "demons." Crusaders were promised blanket pardon for their sins. However, the Stedingers fought back stubbornly, and several campaigns against them failed. At last in 1234 a huge army marched into their land, ravaged every home with fire and sword, and wiped them out. Their property was divided between the church and the barons.7

It has been estimated that Europe was Christianized at a cost of about 8 million to 10 million lives. 8 Even after nominal conversion, there was much residual resistance to the new cult, which was alien and unappealing to the people it was imposed on. The clergy claimed authority from an unfamiliar eastern savior and his God, defaming all the pagans' local, ancestral deities - many worshipped since the Neolithic age - as demons. Moreover, familiar laws and lifestyle were declared wholly sinful. It's hardly surprising that there arose heresy after heresy to confront the conquering church, which became increasingly fanatical in its dictatorial policies, yet in the end failed to overcome the people's need to assert their own religious heterodoxy.9 Many refused to give up their pagan Goddess, or their notion that sexuality contained an element of the divine. Many remembered a time not so long before, when "holy communion" was a taste of divine bliss through sensual pleasures: an idea that was especially prevalent in the south of France.

Crusades against the Catharan or Albigensian heretics of southen France were particularly virulent, since these people were prosperous enough to attract plunderers, and bitterly opposed to the Roman church, which they called the Synagogue of Satan. They condemned its worship of holy images as idolatry, denied the power of its sacraments, scoffed at the Trinity, insisted on reading the Bible for themselves, and revived the old Gnostic belief that the Jehovah worshipped by the Roman church was a demonic demiurge who created the world of matter to entrap souls in wickedness. Pope Alexander III anathematized the Catharan communities and sent ecclesiastical judges to investigate their offenses in 1163. Of these judges, the words "inquisitor" was used for the first time.10

In 1209 Pope Innocent III ((1160?-1216), pope (1198-1216)) preached a great crusade against the French rebels. This has gone down in history as the Albigensian crusade, one of the bloodiest chapters in Christianity's past.11 Half of France was exterminated. When the papal legate was asked how heretics were to be distinguished from the faithful, he replied, "Kill them all; God will know his own."12

Soon the legate was able to report that in Beziers alone, "nearly twenty thousand human beings perished by the sword. And after the massacre the town was plundered and burnt, and the revenge of God seemed to rage over it in a wonderful manner." The killing of heretics went on continually for twenty years, and it has been estimated that more than a million were slaughtered.13

This was more than a police action against heresy. It was the destruction of a whole civilization that had the misfortune to be more advanced than the rest of Europe. Robert Briffault, author of The Mothers, describes the slaughter in the follwing paragraph:
    "In the twelfth century, the south of France had been the most civilized land in Europe. There commerce, industry, art, science, had been far in advance of the age. The cities had won virtual self-government, were proud of their wealth and strength, jealous of their liberties, and self-sacrificing in their patriotism. The nobles, for the most part, were cultivated men, poets themselves or patrons of poetry, who had learned that their prosperity depended on the prosperity of their subjects, and that municipal liberties were a safeguard rather than a menace to the wise ruler. The Crusaders came, and their unfinished work was taken up and executed to the bitter end by the Inquisition. It left a ruined and impoverished country, with shattered industries and a failing commerce. The native nobles were broken by confiscation and replaced by strangers ... A people of rare gifts had been tortured, decimated, humiliated, despoiled ... The precocious civilization which had promised to lead Europe in the path of culture was one, and to Italy was transmitted the honour of the Renaissance."14
Catholic writers made many efforts to justify the destruction. Apologists like Pierre des Vaux-de-Cernay used vituperation, calling the Catharan opinions "this detestable pest ... the poison of superstitious infidelity." He said Toulouse was "marvelously and miserably infected with this plague ... almost all the barons of Provence had become harborers and defenders of heretics." In the 19th century, Abbe Vacandard said, "The Church, after all, was only defending herself The Cathari sought to wound her mortally by attacking her doctrine, her hierarchy and her apostolicity. She would have been ruined if their perfidious insinuations, which brought violent disturbance into men's minds, had prevailed in the end."15 It has ever been the church's habit to regard any skepticism concerning its pronouncements as "violent disturbance"; but of course, all the bloodletting was in vain. Skepticism did prevail in the end.

References and Notes:

  1. Oxenstierna, Eric. The Norsemen. Greenwich, Conn.: New York Graphic Society, 1965. Pg.76.
  2. Smith, Homer. Man and His Gods. Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1952. Pg. 252-53.
  3. Reinach, Salomon. Orpheus. New York: Horace Liveright, Inc., 1930. Pg. 295.
  4. Smith, Homer. Man and His Gods. Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1952. Pg. 253.
  5. Briffault, Robert. The Mothers (3 Vols.). New York: Macmillan, 1927. Vol. 3, Pg. 392.
  6. Reinach, Salomon. Orpheus. New York: Horace Liveright, Inc., 1930. Pg. 294.
  7. Lea, Henry Charles. The Inquisition of the Middle Ages. New York: Citadel Press, 1954; unabridged version published by Macmillan, New York. 1961. Pgs.656-60.
  8. Smith, Homer. Man and His Gods. Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1952. Pg. 251.
  9. Campbell, Joseph. The Masks of God: Creative Mythology. New York: Viking Press, 1970. Pg. 629.
  10. Smith, Homer. Man and His Gods. Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1952. Pgs. 254-55.
  11. Oldenbourg, Zoé. Massacre at Monteségur: A History of the Albigensian Crusade. New York: Minerva Press, 1961. Entire Book.
  12. Campbell, Joseph. The Masks of God: Occidental Mythology. New York: Viking Press, 1964. Pg. 499.
  13. Smith, Homer. Man and His Gods. Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1952. Pg. 257.
  14. Briffault, Robert. The Mothers (3 Vols.). New York: Macmillan, 1927. Vol. 3, Pgs. 487-88.
  15. Coulton, G.G. Inquisition and Liberty. Boston: Beacon Press, 1959. Pgs. 80, 91-92.
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