The Crusades

There's one. A major in church history that captures the imagination more than just about in the other movies have been made about it. Scores of books written and apologies made for it.

Stay tuned. Renewing Your Mind is next over a period of 200 years, starting in 1095 European armies fought to take back lands conquered by Muslim invaders were talking about the Crusades think many of us would rather just ignore that. In church history is difficult to understand how and why will that happen but it is important to study these events and church history in general featuring highlights of Dr. Robert Guthrie series, a survey of church history as he pointed out yesterday in his introduction history of the church in shape who we are as Christians today and initiate the churches to which we belong, and the better we understand that history, the more we can really understand ourselves as Dr. Godfrey were looking out for the broad theme of church and society and we come to one of the most well-known and controversial elements of medieval experience and that is the Crusades. What were the Crusades.

What was the importance of the Crusades. Why were there Crusades.

It's interesting that as famous as the episode of the Crusades is in medieval history there still a fair level of controversy as to exactly how it happened, how did this come about. Why did it happen what it really mean what were the driving motives behind it, so will try to look at what happened and think a little bit about how this could have happened.

In this lecture today.

The Crusades are a radical break with anything that it happened in Christian history up till that point up until that point, Christians had gone to war. But Christians had always gone to war in support of the state to pursue some political objective. They may have felt that their state was a Christian state, and that, therefore, in going to war for the state they were doing something that was good in the eyes of God.

But then never going to war for the church.

They had always in fact believed that part of the separation of church and state was that the state was given power by God to protect the nation and to promote peace, whereas the church had a spiritual mission on earth but with the coming of the crusading ideal in Europe. That idea began to change and Christians began to think that it was legitimate to use force to advance the church and the cause of Christ, not just to protect and to defend the state.

There's a very interesting recent book came out just last year on the subject of the Crusades. Written by J Rubinstein, which probably means he's not a Christian apologist, but is a very fine historian and he entitles his book armies of heaven.

The first Crusade in the quest for Apocalypse and he argues in there that while to be sure under the surface. There were many causes of the crusade. There are a number of factors that could and should be taken into account. To understand the Crusades that at the deepest level, the Crusades were not an economic or political phenomenon in its deepest meaning not say there were economic motives for some people. There were political effects of the Crusades, but he says when you go back and you study the records and you look at what people were saying about their own motives. At the time it was not political or economic. In the first place.

In fact, he says over and over again. You can see people who acted against their political and economic interests to become involved with the Crusades. He also says that people did not join the Crusades to earn the forgiveness of their sins. The church would come later to teach that people could receive time out of purgatory or forgiveness of sins for participating in the Crusades, but he says that's not the initial motive. That's not what drove people initially to become interested in the Crusades and to participate in the Crusades. He says what was going on in the minds of many people wasn't apocalyptic expectation say that three times fast apocalyptic expectation that the world was coming to an end that the end of time would center in Jerusalem and it was time for Christendom to rally around the needs of Jerusalem, and perhaps hasten the coming of Christ and the end of the world think that's very important. I think it's very insightful. I think it's probably what was happening. After all, the crusading ideal began to emerge just before the 1100s Christendom had been thinking about time Christendom had been thinking at least a little, maybe not overwhelmingly but a little about a millennium coming to an end thousand years, Christians had been thinking about time back in the early 700s, the Venerable Bede interesting historian in England, the Venerable Bede in his ecclesiastical history. For the first time said we should establish a calendar that begins with the birth of Christ. And we ought to call the time after the birth of Christ, the year of our Lord Anna Domine a D and the time before Christ will call before Christ, BC.

So it was the Venerable Bede in about 700 or so who really change the way we thought about calendars and thought about time and so time was on the mind of Christians. Time was a reality that Christians took seriously, knowing that there would be an end of time the Christ was coming again and now Christians began to say. Perhaps we are leading up to that moment and we begin to contemplate that the infidel holds Jerusalem. Now we might say well the infidel had held Jerusalem for centuries. Why all of a sudden would Christians began to think that this was so traumatic, so significant will in part because in the 1000s Christians began to be more interested in pilgrimages. They began to be more interested in traveling to holy sites. They begin to become convinced that this was a way to become more holy to go to holy places and one of the places the really hearty wanted to go to West Jerusalem to see the place where Jesus had died and were Jesus had been raised from the dead and the really hearty because it was a long and difficult trip expensive trip. The Hardy knew that there was the church of the holy sepulcher in Jerusalem built by Constantine's mother, based on a vision that she had where the crucifixion had taken place and they wanted to see those holy sites. They believed it would be a blessing would make them more spiritual truth be physically near to these holy sites and so they wanted to travel there and rumors began to come back to Europe that the Muslims were hassling and making difficult the pilgrimage of Christians to Jerusalem.

It's difficult to know whether that's actually true or not but that was increasingly the conviction of Europeans that the Muslims were interfering with Christian efforts to visit the holy places, and that began to build this sense that Christians ought to be going ought to win again. The holy sites where Christ had lived and died in been raised and that this would have eschatological significance to recapture the holy city, and so in response to the preaching, particularly of Pope Urban the second, right at the end of the 1000s about 1095.

Suddenly there burst out this energy and this passion to travel and to recapture Jerusalem for the Christians and there is a kind of mystery and history.

I think we saw.

We talked very briefly about the rise of Islam. Why wasn't all of a sudden all of this energy amongst the Arabs.

All of this, expansionism amongst the people.

It'd been very sort of quiet and not all that you know expansive before or we go back further to the Romans themselves to go to Italy today.

It's a little hard to think of the times being eager to go out and have an empire of the whole of the Mediterranean basin.

There, there seems to sort of come a moment in history mind. I'm not sure we can always understand all of the mystery that's involved or that suddenly there's a level of energy that's never seen before.

That seems to be happens with the Crusades. All of a sudden common people and nobility, great and small, rich and poor, powerful and insignificant gripped by this vision of doing something for Christ. Doing they thought something really important for Christ by traveling to Jerusalem to capture it for Christ.

Now some of said and no doubt truly that the popes were glad to divert the nobility. This is just the times leading up to the investiture controversy that we already talked about, and it might be that the Pope saw to be nice to have an emperor to up in the Far East. For them, the Far East, as opposed to being here in Europe but but that doesn't seem to have been the principal motivation. There seems to have simply been this ideal and that they didn't initially call it Crusades that was a word that was adopted later may be as much as a century or two later, the Crusades captures the sense of it because Crusade was a French word that meant the way of the cross. They saw themselves sacrificing themselves as Jesus had taking up across taking up self-denial to recapture the holy city for an eschatological purpose. It doesn't seem primarily to have been getting even with the Muslims for having attacked Europe, although as late as 841 St. Peter's in Rome had been sacked by Muslims who'd invaded from North Africa through Sicily and Italy, so the Muslim presence had been real, but after only 41 was hundreds of years earlier.

It's not primarily revenge.

It's this ideal of doing something for Christ and it is estimated that perhaps as many as 100,000 Europeans headed east from Europe in that first Crusade to try to regain Jerusalem and the amazing thing is they succeeded in the providence of God Crusade. The first Crusade went forth at a moment of a great deal of internal dissent and weakness in the Muslim world and the Crusaders were able to enter Jerusalem on July 15. 1099s so the goal of the crusade was in this most remarkable way realized.

And it seemed then of validation of the vision of the expectation of the whole and the capturing of Jerusalem was a terrible thing. The Crusaders slaughtered people. The streets ran with blood and the Muslim world has never really recovered from that vision of Christians slaughtering Muslims but also slaughtering Jews and and others in Jerusalem. Other Christians in Jerusalem.

Again, this this mysterious energy giving vent to this horror.

There in the city now course, it seems to me, in the interest of historical fairness, even though no one is actually interested in historical fairness that it ought to be observed that after all the Muslims had captured the city from the Christian in the 600s, but they had not been as vicious and as violent as the Christians were when the Christians recaptured the city. We have to recognize that. But to hold the Crusades purely against the Christians as if the Muslims had never raised the sword in the proclamation of their faith is a little bit inconsistent. It seems to me, and I have been tempted to say, although I'm too smart to say except to you just amongst ourselves that if there really opposed to crusading.

I suppose I ought to give Istanbul back to us since they took it after the Crusades from the West were over, but reason never get you anywhere in history. Now the history of Jerusalem had been a very curious history in the second century after the Jews had revolted against Rome. Rome put down the Jewish rebellion and forced all Jews out of the city of Jerusalem and renamed the city nearly a I after a minor Roman goddess and Jews were not permitted for a long time to live in Jerusalem and only with the coming of Constantine was Jerusalem reconstituted as Jerusalem, so that he could build the church of the holy sepulcher.

There and it became then a predominantly Christian city until it fell in 638 to the Muslims so Jerusalem and had quite a checkered history and it had great varieties to it and now it was in Crusader hands and the Crusaders determined that one of the leading nobleman who had fought in the crusade should be named King of Jerusalem and that man's name was Godfrey will uncle Godfrey recall in the fan. He was actually from Belgium and he was so pious that he said to be named King of Jerusalem was inappropriate for anyone except Jesus and he wanted simply the title Baron of the holy sepulcher, so that Crusader kingdom was established in several areas of the eastern Mediterranean and the Crusaders held Jerusalem until 1187, so not quite 100 years, but in those days.

It passed in two Crusader hands and was the first sort of holy war that the Christians had fought 1187 the Muslims, who by that time had regrouped and re-strengthened themselves were able to recapture the city but the ideal in Europe did not go away, and there were some five major Crusades in the Middle Ages to try to recapture the city. We Go into all the details of all of them but we might mention briefly the third Crusade, which is probably the one that has inspired the imagination of the West the most. It had the most glittering leadership was launched right after the fall of the city of Jerusalem was launched in 1189 and went on for about some three years. It was led by the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa from the Holy Roman Empire, King Philip Augustus of France and Richard the lion hearted of England. So here are the three really prominent monarchs from Europe, leading the crusade to try to recapture Jerusalem opposed by Saladin, the noble Muslim leader in that part of the world and it's it's in that context of the third Crusade that some of our favorite stories as children have emerged the story of Robin Hood and its wild King Richard was away at the crusade that wicked Prince John was on the throne, and that Robin Hood had to rob from the rich and give to the poor to try to defend the interests of the realm against Prince John and all of his failings so that that living sort of legend. There probably was a real Robin Hood boat. Not all of the things we think we know about them today, but that living legend you see is cast such a long shadow. Almost a thousand years later we're still talking, still thinking of the. The drama something of the romance of this third Crusade in its effort to capture the holy city, the third Crusade was a failure, they failed to capture Jerusalem. They had to return home. In some disgrace, but not abandoning the crusading ideal and only really.

A few years later, in 1200 1/4 Crusade was being mounted 1/4 Crusade that would sail from Venice and would attack with a mighty Navy on the coast near Jerusalem and recapture the city. The Venetians perhaps did not fully share in this crusading zeal and seemed to have been in it more for the money.

There is lot of money to be made by shipping large armies to the east and Venice not only saw money to be made, but also saw another political opportunity. Venice became aware that there was great confusion in the city of Constantinople.

Still, the capital 1200 of the Eastern Empire. There was a fight going on there over the succession to the throne and Venice thought well maybe I can get some money from the Emperor that we side with so that the Emperor will cooperate with us will make money and the Crusaders can march through his territory down to Jerusalem.

The Venetians thought they had a deal and in the Emperor who was on the throne we command couldn't deliver and the Crusaders were livid and they sacked Constantinople the way they had sacked Jerusalem and the first Crusade weakening Constantinople in a way that in a sense it never quite recovered from. And if you want to see the treasures of Constantinople today. The place to go is Venice. If you ever been to Venice forever seen the glory of San Marco's church on the famous payoffs of their central pallets in and Venice and you look at that church and you see its splendors rather Eastern looking splendors and you see pillars of stone decorating all the front of this church every one of those pillars was stolen from Constantinople and when you see the great bronze horses. The four bronze horses on the balcony of San Marco. Those were bronze horses that Constantine had taken from Rome to Constantinople and other than the nation stole in the fourth Crusade and brought back to Venice and you can go into San Marco and see all sorts of golden cloisonné and other jewels that were pirated from Constantinople to Venice in the fourth Crusade. It was it was a tragedy for Christendom. Although maybe if those treasures had stayed in Byzantium, they would all been lost.

Who knows, and the curious courses of history, but this sacking of Constantinople and then the establishment of what came to be known as the Latin kingdom of Constantinople. It lasted for about 60 years.

This was an offense that the Eastern churches never forgiven the Western church because there is still a Latin bishop of Constantinople. In addition of the Greek orthodox bishop of Constantinople and the competition between these competing clergy's never was really overcome never really reconciled and as I say.

The fourth Crusade greatly weakened Constantinople in the Byzantine Empire.

The last Crusade will talk about for the crusade led by the Emperor Frederick negotiated and actually recapture Jerusalem through negotiation which he was able to hold only for about 15 years.

That was the last time the West was able to hold Jerusalem, but the ideal.

The ideal of the Crusades continued for centuries thereafter. There were still efforts to mount Crusades in the 15th and the 16th century to recapture Jerusalem.

It's a curious moment curious development in western experience and a major shift in attitude that it might be right to take the sword and shed blood to advance the church of Christ, not just Christian states, but the church and the Christian because in his left. I think a very dark wound on Christianity in the mind of many and especially course in the mind of Muslims, they tend to see Christianity as every bit as much cultural and political as religious because of course that's where they understand their own religion. And so it is a battle of cultures for them not just about all religions and as battles of cultures.

There's no real way to ultimate toleration in that bad so the Crusades both illustrate and cause a lot of problems face is Dr. Robert Godfrey in your listing to Renewing Your Mind. I'm Lee Webb and that I so appreciate that Dr. Gottfried is open and honest treatment of a very dark time in church history. This is one of the lessons from Dr. Godfrey series of survey of church history. It is a comprehensive 73 part series when you contact us today with a donation of any amount we'd like to send you part two of Dr. Grand Prix series. It is a two DVD set with 13 messages covering 8500 through A.D. 1500 calls to make your request and 800-435-4343. You can also make your request online@renewingyourmind.org and let me thank you in advance for your generous gift. At times, of course, the church is experienced oppression and persecution that other times as we discovered today. The church is been the source of persecution regardless God has promised to present his bride, without spot or wrinkle, we can take great comfort great hope in that so contact us and with your gift of any amount request part two of a survey of church history, you can make your request and give your gift online@renewingyourmind.org or when you call us at 800-435-4343 blogger at our website and hope you'll share the program with a friend or family member under the title of today's program you will see the share button.

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