The Origin of the Crusades: How it all began

The Crusades are a very sensitive and complex topic. Christians and Muslims were the key players, representing two of the world’s major religions, both of which remain influential to this day. They fought over Jerusalem, a city that has been at the centre of religious and political conflicts for thousands of years. The Crusades were also initiated by the Pope, who is sometimes portrayed by modern secular media as a fanatical old man who uses the name of God to promote extreme or strange ideologies. Finally, the Crusades were a series of wars, and in many cases religious wars, in which two religious groups fought against each other, resulting in immense suffering, destruction, and loss of life, while ultimately bringing little benefit to ordinary people.

The Crusades are a very sensitive and complex topic. Christians and Muslims were the key players, representing two of the world’s major religions, both of which remain highly influential to this day. They fought over Jerusalem, a city that has been at the centre of religious and political conflicts for thousands of years. The Crusades were also initiated by the Pope, who is sometimes portrayed by modern secular media as a fanatical old man who uses the name of God to promote extreme or strange ideologies. Finally, the Crusades were a series of wars, and in many cases religious wars, in which two religious groups fought against each other, resulting in immense suffering, destruction, and loss of life. For these reasons, it is easy to look at the Crusades through a modern lens and conclude that they were simply a conflict between two groups of religious fanatics, with neither side ultimately doing any good for humanity.

Nowadays, many of the faithful do not fully understand the historical circumstances surrounding the Crusades and may therefore believe that Christians were simply the ones to blame. Some Protestants use the Crusades as an example to “prove” that obedience to the Pope is fundamentally wrong, while secular media sometimes use them as a means of criticising or attacking the Catholic Church. But do we really understand the history of the Crusades? Can we properly judge such a complicated period without first considering what was happening in the centuries before the Crusades began? We will not discuss the entire phenomenon of the Crusades in this short article, as doing so would require much more space and would go beyond the purpose of this discussion. However, we can at least examine the historical circumstances that led to the First Crusade and ask why a Crusade was considered necessary in the first place.

When we normally refer to Rome as the Apostolic See, we rarely stop to consider that there were other important episcopal sees throughout the Christian world. Before the seventh century, there were five particularly important sees that were collectively known as the Pentarchy: Rome, associated with St. Peter and St. Paul; Constantinople, associated with St. Andrew; Alexandria, associated with St. Mark; Antioch, associated with St. Peter; and Jerusalem, associated with St. Peter and St. James. These five sees represented some of the most important centres of Christianity across Europe, Asia, and Africa. Many important Church Fathers, theologians, bishops, and saints came from these great Christian centres, including St. Cyril of Alexandria, St. John Chrysostom, St. Athanasius, and many others.

However, over the following centuries, the Christian world experienced enormous political and military changes. Three of these five great sees — Antioch, Alexandria, and Jerusalem — came under Muslim rule following the Islamic conquests. Large parts of North Africa were also lost to Christian rule, while the outer islands of Italy were conquered and the Italian mainland itself came under repeated attack and siege. The traditional connection between the Byzantine Empire and Rome was severely weakened because of the territories controlled by Muslim powers between them. Southern Spain remained under Muslim rule, and Muslim armies had even advanced into parts of France centuries earlier. The Byzantine Empire attempted on several occasions to recover some of its lost territories, but many of these gains proved difficult to maintain.

Christians who remained in territories conquered by Muslim rulers generally lived under a different legal and social status from Muslims and were subject to special taxes, although the precise conditions varied considerably depending on the time and place. In some periods and regions, Christian communities were able to continue practising their faith and maintaining their churches, while in others they faced persecution, destruction of religious buildings, or other restrictions. The Byzantine Empire and Eastern Christians repeatedly appealed to the Christian powers of the West for assistance. However, Rome itself was facing political instability, military threats, and other serious difficulties, meaning that there was initially very little that could be done.

By the eleventh century, the situation in the East had become increasingly serious. In 1067, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, together with a number of other churches, was destroyed, and reports of attacks against Christian pilgrims further intensified concern in the Christian West. In response to appeals for assistance from the Byzantine Emperor, Pope Urban II convened the Council of Clermont in 1095 and called upon Western Christians to provide military assistance to the Byzantines and to help protect Christian pilgrims and holy places in the Holy Land. Urban II also offered spiritual benefits, including an indulgence, to those who joined the expedition with sincere penitence and the proper intention. The stated aims included assisting the Eastern Christians, enduring the hardships of the journey, and recovering or protecting the Holy Sepulchre and other sacred places.

Thus, before judging the Crusades solely by the standards of modern political and religious debates, it is important to understand the circumstances in which they emerged. The Crusades did not appear suddenly out of nowhere, nor can their origins be reduced simply to two groups of religious fanatics deciding to fight one another. They arose from centuries of political, military, religious, and cultural developments in which both the Christian East and West were deeply involved. Understanding this background does not mean that every action committed during the Crusades should be justified or excused; rather, it allows us to approach the subject more honestly and recognise that history is often far more complicated than the simplified picture presented today.

In fact, the Church often had to discourage people who were physically, financially, or otherwise unfit for warfare from joining the subsequent Crusades, especially after the First Crusade, which resulted in extremely heavy losses. However, many people, whether motivated by a sincere spiritual desire to obtain an indulgence or by more secular intentions, decided that they were willing to risk, and in some cases even sacrifice, their lives in the Holy Land. Crusade sermons frequently warned potential participants about the dangers, hardships, and suffering that awaited them. Those who wished to participate were also expected to obtain the consent of their spouses, since joining a Crusade could mean being absent from home for a very long period of time.

Nevertheless, as happened on many occasions throughout history, the response of ordinary people did not always correspond to the intentions or regulations of the Pope. Some participants joined the Crusades because they sought fame, wealth, honour, or glory, while others may have seen the expedition as an opportunity to escape difficult family or social responsibilities. At the same time, the granting of indulgences was highly attractive to many laypeople. The penitential system of the medieval Church was considerably more demanding than what Catholics are generally accustomed to today, and the sacrament of confession was often accompanied by much heavier forms of penance. Because laypeople were deeply concerned about the state of their souls and their eternal salvation, some were willing to participate in a Crusade even when their physical, spiritual, financial, or social circumstances made them unsuitable for such an undertaking. In this respect, it is important to recognise that not every person who joined a Crusade necessarily represented the ideal participant envisioned by the Church. In fact, some of these actions were contrary to the intentions of the Pope, although there was naturally a limit to how much authority he could exercise over thousands of people travelling across different kingdoms and territories.

The Crusades were therefore a highly complicated historical phenomenon. There was often a significant difference between the official position of the Church, the intentions of the Pope, and the motivations of individual laypeople, knights, nobles, and armies from different countries. Participants did not necessarily share the same goals, and their personal motivations could range from genuine religious devotion to political ambition, economic interests, personal glory, or even the desire for adventure. The enormous scale of the Crusades also had a profound impact on the economies and societies of medieval Europe and the Eastern Mediterranean, sometimes producing consequences that had not been anticipated by the Church or by the original participants. Furthermore, various sporadic military expeditions and popular movements sometimes described themselves as “Crusades” even when they had little or no direct connection with the protection of the Holy Land, Christian pilgrims, or the Byzantine Empire.

We should also acknowledge that warfare, including warfare undertaken with religious motivations, can bring out the worst in human beings. Even people who begin with sincere and noble intentions can become cruel, violent, or corrupt when placed in the extreme circumstances of war. The Crusades were no exception. There were undoubtedly acts of brutality, injustice, greed, and unnecessary violence committed by Christians during the Crusades, and these actions should not simply be ignored or excused. At the same time, however, we should be careful not to reduce the entire Crusading movement to a simple “black-and-white” classification in which one side was entirely good and the other entirely evil. Instead, the morality of the Crusades should also be considered within the historical framework of the medieval understanding of a “just war,” including questions of legitimate authority, defence, intention, and proportionality.

There is no doubt that the Crusades ultimately failed to permanently preserve Christian control over the Holy Land, and they also produced a number of tragic and unintended consequences. Nevertheless, when considering the situation of the eleventh century, it is important to remember how serious the crisis appeared to many Christians at the time. The Byzantine Empire had suffered significant territorial losses, Christian communities in the East were under Muslim political rule, and access to important Christian holy sites and pilgrimage routes was subject to changing political and military circumstances. From the perspective of the Christians who witnessed these events, the situation of Christendom could hardly have appeared more secure. Therefore, while individual actions committed during the Crusades can and should be morally examined, one may still argue that the original purpose of the Crusade could be understood within the medieval concept of a just war: as a response to a perceived crisis and an attempt to defend Christian communities and assist the Byzantine Empire.

Ultimately, understanding the Crusades does not require us to claim that everything Christians did was justified, nor does it require us to deny the suffering experienced by Muslims, Jews, and Eastern Christians. Rather, it requires us to understand why people at the time believed a Crusade was necessary, what the Church actually intended, and how those intentions differed from the actions and motivations of individual participants. The Crusades were a response to a genuine political, military, and religious crisis in the medieval Christian world. Whether one ultimately accepts the argument that they constituted a “just war” is a matter that requires careful moral and historical consideration, but it is important to recognise that the Crusades cannot be properly understood without first understanding the circumstances that gave rise to them.