No. 54 of 365 Defend the Crusades

[EmptyTimCup]

Defend the Crusades

Defend the Crusades
as an entirely reasonable response to centuries of Muslim persecution of Christians in the Holy Land, including the crucifixion and execution of pilgrims, and the plunder and destruction of churches-10,000 of them in the early eleventh century, including Jerusalem's Church of the Holy Sepulcher, the traditional site of Christ's burial.

 

[philibusters]

Defend the Crusades

Defend the Crusades
as an entirely reasonable response to centuries of Muslim persecution of Christians in the Holy Land, including the crucifixion and execution of pilgrims, and the plunder and destruction of churches-10,000 of them in the early eleventh century, including Jerusalem's Church of the Holy Sepulcher, the traditional site of Christ's burial.

I am not going to defend the Crusades, but I will say par for that time period and more broadly par for human nature.

The wikipedia page on the Crusades is pretty helpful. I had actually read some books on the Middle Ages which obviously included some chapters on the Crusades, but the wikipedia page was a great refresher as I had forgot a lot of what I read just a few years ago. Norman Cantor is my favorite Middle Age historian.

 

[jrt_ms1995]

Defend the Crusades

Defend the Crusades
as an

attempt to get young middle- and upper-class ne'er-do-wells and troublemakers to go somewhere far away and get themselves killed while killing others no one cared about so that western Europe could have a few moments of relative peace and quiet.

Not that it necessarily worked out that way, but that was one the Papacy's original motivations.