The Real History of the Crusades

crisismagazine ^ | April 1, 2002 | Thomas F. Madden

[A. Pole]

That is what gave birth to the Crusades. They were not the brainchild of an ambitious pope or rapacious knights but a response to more than four centuries of conquests in which Muslims had already captured two-thirds of the old Christian world. At some point, Christianity as a faith and a culture had to defend itself or be subsumed by Islam. The Crusades were that defense.

Amen!

[browardchad]

The Crusades were the Repo Man going to get all those valuable "Chritian Relics" that a certain church wanted.

Your medieval scholarship is rivaled only by your spelling.

[sonofatpatcher2]

Best short run down on the Crusades I ever read...

and Holly_P 's Far Side Ice Crusades was the cherry topping!

[I_dmc]

Again I say, consider the Almighty’s goodness and pay heed to His plans of mercy. He puts Himself under obligation to you, or rather feigns to do so, that He can help you to satisfy your obligations toward Himself.... I call blessed the generation that can seize an opportunity of such rich indulgence as this.

This is GWB's motivation.  He seeks to raise up his generation to equal his father's.

But no one would seriously argue that the purpose of American wars is to kill women and children.

Many argue precisely this.

The ancient faith of Christianity, with its respect for women and antipathy toward slavery, not only survived but flourished. Without the Crusades, it might well have followed Zoroastrianism, another of Islam’s rivals, into extinction.

The board is set, the pieces are being positioned.  Is it so difficult to see the future?  Contrast the principle of freedom, which basically means freedom to choose, with the principle that the people must be ordered to comply, and one sees the true issue.  As Neo says in the Matrix trilogy, "The problem is choice."

[BunnySlippers]

Wonderful. More! More!

[Fawnn]

Excellent rebuttal!

[dennisw]

Thanks for the history lesson :)

[dennisw]

New ping list for Islamic Jihad and terrorism. 3 pings per day, every day. Some from my old ping list are on by default.

On or off let me know by freepmail. 
Easy on, easy off, via freepmail.

[macrahanish #1]

This was posted in this forum a couple of years ago, but it's good to
see it re-posted.
I distributed this article to my tenth grade World History students
and discussed it in detail to counter the "Islam is peace" crap presented in
their useless textbook.

[Elsie]

START!!!?!?!?

Where have you BEEN for the last 11 years??

[Elsie]

Nevertheless, a fellow Cistercian monk named Radulf stirred up people against the Rhineland Jews, despite numerous letters from Bernard demanding that he stop. At last Bernard was forced to travel to Germany himself, where he caught up with Radulf, sent him back to his convent, and ended the massacres.

 

 

HMmmm..

 

Very interesting that a few centuries later another fellow named (R)Adolph ALSO stirred up HIS people against the descendants of those Jews: massacreing millions of them before being stopped.

[Right_in_Virginia]

Bump for later read. (Thanks for posting)

[centurion316]

bump

[JimRed]

Thanks; bump to finish later.

[bushbiker]

Great read. Additonal info on the True Cross from www.templarhistory.com

The Relic Of The True Cross

One of the outcomes of the Crusades was the production of many religious relics.
Among these alleged instruments of Divinity the more common ones were the bones
of Saints and soil from various places referred to in the Bible. Of a more important
nature were several heads said to be that of John the Baptist and the Crown of
Thorns which was actually sold by King Baldwin II of Jerusalem to King Louis IX of
France who built a shrine to house it. Of all the relics, none caused more furor and
deaths than that of the so-called "True Cross."

The True Cross is described as being part of the cross of Golgotha encased in gold
and studded with priceless gems. The legend of the True Cross begins in the year
326 when it was allegedly discovered by the mother of Constantine I, the Empress
Helena.

"In AD 326, Helena went on a journey to ancient Israel and selected with Macarius the
sites of Christ's birth at Bethlehem and at Jerusalem, the adjoining places of his tomb
burial and Crucifixion, where she happened to discover three ancient crosses in a cavern,
one of which was called the true cross."

Jerusalem "The Endless Crusade
by Andrew Sinclair

Now exactly how Helena determined which of the three discovered crosses was the
one Jesus was crucified on is covered in Michael Grant's book on the Roman
Emperor Constantine:

"Here Bishop Macarius of Jerusalem came to Helena's help, by undertaking, with a
prayer for God's help, to place a sick woman on each of the three crosses in turn, so that it
could then be seen what happened to her on each of the three occasions. When she was
placed on the first two crosses, nothing happened. Next, however, she was made to lie on
the third cross, whereupon she was healed. That, it was concluded, must have been the
True Cross on which Jesus met his death."

Constantine The Great
The Man And His Times
by Michael Grant

Upon Helena's return, the True Cross was kept in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher
in Jerusalem until the year 614 when Chrosroes II of Persia moved it to his own land
when he captured Jerusalem. Thirteen years later the Roman Emperor Heraclius
defeated Chrosroes and retook the relic, which he at first placed in Constantinople
and later, took back to its original Jerusalem. The True Cross is believed to have
been hidden by the Christians in 1009 C.E. and remained hidden for ninety years
only to be produced in 1099 during the First Crusade.

It remained in Christian hands until the Battle of Hattin in 1187, when the Moslem
leader Saladin captured the relic. It is believed that Saladin after the Battle of Hattin
and the capture of Jerusalem, would ride his horse through the streets with the Holy
Relic dragging behind his mount's tail.

"After The Horns of Hattin, Saladin was master of the Moslem world, and rode through the
streets of Damascus with the captured True Cross tied to his horse's tail and dragging in
the dust."

The Crusades
Henry Treece
1962

Despite the valiant efforts of Richard I during the Third Crusade, the True Cross
remained in Moslem hands. The beam itself disappeared, but fragments of the cross
that came off were collected and brought back to Europe after the Crusades. Of
course, If all the fragments were put back together then several hundred crosses
could have been made, as many of the pieces were most certainly fakes.

Although the so named True Cross was an inspiration and death sentence to many
brave men of the time, no trace of the relic is believed to exist today. Was this focal
point of the Crusaders, the True Cross as it was called. Perhaps we will never know.
The important thing remains that for those soldiers who took up the cause of the
Crusades, it was real enough to die for.

[Sir Gawain]

Where have you BEEN for the last 11 years??

Well, where do I sign up? Our side isn't even admitting this is a religious war.

[Bobibutu]

I yeild to you eloquence.

Well said!

[Bobibutu]

They are stuck as you say,

If we choose to drag past garbage (wo is me look at all my stuff - which justifies my situation) we will have a problem awakining to the reality/opportunity that confronts us.

[Elsie]

So true...

I guess that's because we have no religion...........

[technochick99]

bump