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Biblical Pacifism to the
Crusades By
Nat Parry
July 29, 2006 |
Editor's Note: Though the Crusades date back
almost a millennium, that history still colors the events playing out
today in the Middle East. Muslims, across the political spectrum, view
the U.S.-backed military interventions through the prism of the Crusades
-- and many denounce George W. Bush as the new crusader.
But the Crusades also marked a profound change
in Christendom, consolidating a transformation from Jesus's religion of
peace to one that launched invasions of far-off lands and inflicted
unspeakable brutality in Christ's name. In this historical analysis, Nat
Parry looks at the concepts of Biblical pacifism and "just wars" as they
evolved from the Sermon on the Mount to the sacking of Constantinople:
O f
all the questions surrounding the history of the Crusades, perhaps the
most perplexing is how a religion of peace like Christianity could be so
effectively utilized to justify some of the most horrific acts of
violence imaginable.
The Crusades were not the first time that a
religion was used to justify violence nor would it be the last. But the
way that the tenets of Christianity were so thoroughly incorporated into
what could only be called total war provided a theoretical and tactical
justification for religiously motivated violence that continues to serve
as a powerful precedent through today.
While the Crusades naturally enjoy a special place
in history, viewed as mythological by some and cited by others, such as
Osama bin Laden, as evidence of the unique brutality of Christians, in
some ways the Crusades were not unique at all.
The combination of religion, politics, violence,
intrigue and land acquisition that the Crusades represented had
precedents before the launching of the First Crusade, and clearly has
antecedents throughout history. What the Crusades dramatically
demonstrate though is the power of exploiting religion in order to
advance political goals.
One need only place the call to arms issued by Pope
Urban II in 1095 alongside the fatwa issued by Osama bin Laden in 1998
to appreciate the unmistakable parallels between the religious
motivations of the Crusaders and the motivations of modern-day Islamic
militants. Calling upon Christians to liberate their oppressed brethren
of Jerusalem, Urban said:
"We have heard … how, with great hurt and dire
sufferings our Christian brothers, members in Christ, are scourged,
oppressed, and injured in Jerusalem, in Antioch, and the other cities of
the East. Your own blood brothers, your companions, your associates (for
you are sons of the same Christ and the same Church) are either
subjected in their inherited homes to other masters, or are driven from
them, or they come as beggars among us; or, which is far worse, they are
flogged and exiled as slaves for sale in their own land. … Gird
yourselves, everyone of you, I say, and be valiant sons; for it is
better for you to die in battle than to behold, the sorrows of your race
and of your holy places."
Nine hundred years later, Osama bin Laden issued his fatwa for
killing Americans and their allies:
"For over seven years the United States has been
occupying the lands of Islam in the holiest of places, the Arabian
Peninsula, plundering its riches, dictating to its rulers, humiliating
its people, terrorizing its neighbors, and turning its bases in the
Peninsula into a spearhead through which to fight the neighboring Muslim
peoples. … These crimes and sins … are a clear declaration of war on
God, his messenger, and Muslims. On that basis, and in compliance with
God’s order, we issue the following fatwa to all Muslims: The ruling to
kill the Americans and their allies – civilians and military – is an
individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which
it is possible to do it, in order to liberate the al-Aqsa Mosque and the
holy mosque from their grip, and in order for their armies to move out
of all the lands of Islam, defeated and unable to threaten any Muslim."
While the actual motivations of Urban and bin Laden
issuing their respective calls can ultimately only be known to
themselves, the possibility that they were both more concerned with
personal ambitions than they were with the welfare of Christians and
Muslims in the Holy Land should not be dismissed. As Christopher Tyerman
argues, “From its inception, crusading represented a practical
expression of papal ideology, leadership, and power.”
Rapprochement and Liberation
Just as bin Laden hopes to restore the Muslim
caliphate, there is also reason to believe that what Urban was primarily
concerned with was the reunion of the estranged Catholic and Orthodox
churches. According to German historian Carl Erdmann, the First Crusade
was a form of holy war that represented a rapprochement between a
militarized aristocracy and a Church that since its inception had
embraced pacifism.
Urban II was acutely aware of what this meant for his own authority,
argues Erdmann, and feigned concern for the Holy Sepulchre to justify an
ecclesiastical-knightly war upon heathens.
Only as a means of bringing this war about did he introduce pilgrimage
and the liberation of oppressed Christians.
This view has been disputed by numerous scholars,
most significantly H.E.J. Cowdrey, who argues that a man with Urban II’s
background could not have been unconcerned about the status of
Jerusalem. Cowdrey points out that as a former monk of Cluny, Urban
shared its devotional world, in which Jerusalem claimed a central
importance. Cowdrey argues that by examining the sources for the
Clermont sermon, it can be concluded that Urban was just as concerned
with Jerusalem as were the Crusaders.
Whether Urban was primarily motivated by concern
over Jerusalem or by an agenda to reunite the churches or by a desire to
make Christianity compatible with the militarism of the aristocracy,
what is beyond dispute is that his call to arms struck a deep chord
among Christians, just as bin Laden’s call has struck a deep chord among
many Muslims.
The massive response to Urban’s call can be
attributed to several factors, including the certainties of faith; fear
of damnation; temporal self-image; material, social, and supernatural
profit; the attraction of warfare for a military aristocracy; and an
unequivocal good cause. Tyerman points out that the combination would be
“a formula of sustained power for the rest of the Middle Ages.”
But it also appears that over the years of crusading, and particularly
by the Fourth Crusade, there is increasing disillusionment among the
Crusaders with the stated religious basis for the violence. This can be
seen in the abandonment of the Fourth Crusade by many of the Crusaders
when the target became fellow Christians.
What bin Laden may have learned from the Crusades
is not only that portraying Americans and Israelis as “crusaders” is a
winning strategy, but also that appealing to religious solidarity is a
useful way to both rally troops and circumvent religious doctrine that
emphasizes peace and nonviolence.
This doctrine can be found in both the Bible and
the Koran, and to understand the logic of holy war and jihad, it is
useful to examine the transformation of Christianity from a pacifist
religious sect into one that would kill thousands of people in the name
of Christ. Imperative to this understanding is examining the importance
of the Holy Land in the three big monotheistic religions, as well as the
development of just war theory, most notably by Augustine of Hippo, and
how this provided a religious basis for the Crusades.
Pacifism and Violent Tendencies
For hundreds of years following the death of Jesus
Christ, pacifism was dominant in the faith of Christianity. Christians
almost universally shunned service in the Roman military, and were often
mercilessly persecuted for their convictions. According to War and
the Christian Conscience, there were four primary reasons the early
Christians embraced pacifism so uncompromisingly:
Rejection of idolatry. In repudiating the worship
of false gods, the early Christians refused to acknowledge the divinity
of Caesar.
The imminent second coming of Christ. Because the
Christians thought that the reign of God was imminent, they did not see
a need to care about worldly affairs.
An aversion to Rome. This was a product of the
persecution of early Christians.
Love of enemies. The early Christians explicitly
rejected the “eye for an eye” ethic and espoused Jesus’s command to love
their enemies.
Of these reasons, it is believed that the fourth
was the strongest, as it was found throughout the Roman Empire well into
the fourth century.
The basis for pacifism in the New Testament is
evident, with exhortations to “turn the other cheek” and “love your
enemies,” and the Sermon on the Mount in which Jesus proclaimed,
“Blessed are the peacemakers.”
In Matthew 26:52, Jesus rejects the use of violence
by a disciple who attempted to prevent Jesus’s arrest by cutting off the
ear of the high priest’s slave. “Put your sword back in its place,”
Jesus said, “for all who take the sword will perish by the sword.” Jesus
also clearly rejected the military option as a way to redress Jewish
grievances, refusing to lead troops in war against Rome or defend his
own cause by violent means.
With this clear tradition of nonviolence in
Christianity, it must be asked how it is that the religion’s tenets were
adopted as justifications for the Crusades, in which horrific acts of
violence were committed on a mass scale.
Renowned scholar Karen Armstrong argues that in
fact it took very little convincing to get the European Christians on
board for the Crusade. Indeed, she says, “the holy war is a deeply
Christian act” and “when Pope Urban called the Crusade [European
Christians] breathed a sigh of relief.”
Despite trying to hold out against their violent tendencies for over a
thousand years and keep Christianity a religion of peace and love,
Armstrong argues that “Christianity had an inherent leaning toward
violence.” When it came to crusading, “It is as though they felt that at
last they were doing what came naturally.”
This violent tendency was not unique to
Christianity though. Armstrong draws connections between Christianity,
Judaism and Islam, pointing out that all three religions are
historically and theologically related, and all have tendencies toward
violence.
“All three traditions are dedicated in some way to
love and benevolence and yet all three have developed a pattern of holy
war and violence that is remarkably similar,” she writes, ascribing this
pattern to “some deep compulsion that is inherent in … the worship of
only one God.”
This can be traced to God’s revelation to Abraham
and the realization among Jews that their God was not just one god among
many, but rather, the only God and all other gods were simply
human inventions. Armstrong notes that some of the first words that God
uttered to Abraham were, “To your descendents I will give this land.”
In order to realize this promise, a series of holy wars would have to be
fought for the land. In these wars, not only was God considered to be
commanding the conflict, but he was conceived of as being directly
involved in the fighting, battling with the divine forces of the enemy
on the cosmic level while the Israelites fought their human counterparts
on the earthly level.
From the beginning then, control of the Holy Land
would play a central role in the theology not only of Judaism, but also
Christianity and Islam, whose adherents also consider themselves
children of Abraham. Christians and Muslims both claim to be the
recipients of the promises God made to the Jews,
which would play a dominant role in the Crusaders’ individual
motivations.
However, it does not fully explain the ability of the Church to provide
a ready rationale for the Crusades. To understand this, it is useful to
look at the tradition of “just war” developed by Augustine of Hippo, and
how this eventually morphed into the holy war phenomenon of the
Crusades.
Augustine’s Just War
During the fourth and fifth centuries, Augustine,
bishop of Hippo, developed ideas on just war that would play a large
part in official Christianity’s acceptance of war in general and in the
rationale of the Crusades in particular. While dealing on some level
with questions of holy war, his just war theory focused primarily on
other issues, such as just cause.
Three conditions, according to Augustine, could
exist for just cause: defense, retaking something wrongly taken, and
punishment of evildoing. Augustine did not only argue that just wars are
acceptable, but that in fact they are necessary to wage. In The City
of God, he discusses “the necessity of waging just wars,” arguing
that “it is the iniquity on the part of the adversary that forces a just
war upon the wise man.”
Augustine also provided a theological basis for Christians to serve in
the Roman military, arguing that it is imperative to protect the
political community represented by the state.
He also developed the teachings of Christ in a way
that departed from their pacifist origins. Discussing the Sermon on the
Mount, Augustine argued that Jesus’s proclamation “Blessed are the
peacemakers” actually provides a justification for war. “Peace is not
sought in order to provoke war,” Augustine wrote to Boniface, “but war
is waged to attain peace.”
Those who fight wars are peacemakers, then, and through their victory
they can bring the defeated enemy the advantages of peace. “Let
necessity slay the warring foe, not your will,” says Augustine. Once
they are defeated, however, Augustine emphasizes that they should be
treated with mercy and compassion.
While Augustine was instrumental in developing the
tenets of Christianity in a way that provided a ready rationale for
violence, it was Augustine’s mentor, Ambrose of Milan, who may have
offered the most significant contribution to just war theory in specific
relation to the Crusades.
Ambrose argued that in order to fulfill the
Christian duty of loving his neighbor, a Christian must be ready to
protect the neighbor from harm. When confronted with a case of an
evildoer attacking an innocent victim, Christians should intervene and
are justified in using force against the assailant. This paradigm
provides a theological justification for the use of force and decisively
counters the arguments for pacifism based on Jesus’s own nonviolence.
It also fits in very well with Pope Urban’s call in
1095 to defend the oppressed Christians of Jerusalem.
The New Crusade Ideology
The idea of the Crusade incorporated Augustine’s
just war theory and took it a step further. Carl Erdmann argues in his
1935 study The Rise of the Crusade Idea that in the ninth and
tenth centuries, Christian society underwent profound changes in
thinking, particularly in relation to how war was viewed.
Early Christianity, which had grudgingly accepted
Augustine’s justification for the legitimacy of war under certain
circumstances, never had regarded war as virtuous or righteous. The
invasions of Europe in the ninth and tenth centuries by Vikings, Magyars
and Muslims, however, had been viewed by Christians as an attack upon
their faith and demonstrated to them the necessity of the powerful to
defend the weak. Furthermore, the new successes of Christian armies in
Spain, South Italy, and Sicily represented a process by which Christians
came to terms with war.
Far from the days of the early Christians, in which
military service was widely shunned, by the tenth century, Christians
began regarding war and warriors as integral parts of God’s plan for the
world.
By the late eleventh century, historian James
Brundage argues, Western Christendom had arrived at the holy war concept
of war, which was both novel and important. The holy war “was built upon
the Augustinian notion of the Just War” but “went well beyond the
positions which Augustine had set forth.” For one thing, the holy war
was not only considered inoffensive to God, “but it was thought to be
positively pleasing to Him.” Warriors fighting in a blessed cause were
considered virtuous and worthy of God’s special favor.
The Christian version of holy war differed from the
Muslim jihad in significant ways, especially in that the Christian holy
war was not aimed at converting infidels, but rather the recovery of
holy places. Still though, the Crusades were directed toward a religious
end, were proclaimed by the highest religious authority, and included
spiritual rewards. They are therefore properly referred to as holy war.
Holy War and the First Crusade
Another departure from the just war tradition was
the manner in which a war could be waged. Just war theory traditionally
consists of two aspects, jus ad bellum, which prescribes the
necessary preconditions for a just war to be launched, and jus in
bello, which provides requirements to be met in the actual waging of
war.
Though Augustine didn’t deal with jus in bello
issues explicitly, later just war theorists have argued that its
principles of discrimination, proportionality and noncombatant immunity
are implicit in his arguments.
In a holy war, these principles are easily ignored,
due to the fact that the combatants claim to have God on their side and
view the enemy as an affront to God that must be destroyed completely.
As Urban instructed the Crusaders at the Council of Clermont, killing
Muslims is a holy act, because it is a Christian duty to “exterminate
this vile race from our lands.”
This is the rationale that led to the total slaughter of Muslims in
Jerusalem following the liberation of that city by the Crusaders. As
Armstrong describes it, when the Crusaders arrived at Jerusalem, they
were deeply insulted by the Muslim presence in the city, viewing them
very differently than the Turks they had encountered in Asia Minor. In
Jerusalem, the Christians saw the Muslims as the enemies of God.
The Crusaders first tried praying and fasting as a
tactic to inspire a divine liberation of the city, and when that failed,
they were ridiculed and jeered by the Muslims who were watching it all
from Jerusalem’s city walls. To the Christians, these taunts and insults
seemed to be directed against Christ himself, and they vowed revenge.
On July 15, 1099, the Crusaders invaded and conquered the city, killing
everyone in sight, including women and children. The massacre continued
for two days, at the end of which 40,000 Muslims were dead. It was
described later by eyewitness Raymond of Aguiles:
"Wonderful sights were to be seen. Some of our men
… cut off the heads of their enemies; … others tortured them longer by
casting them into the flames. Piles of heads, hands and feet were to be
seen in the streets of the city. It was necessary to pick one’s way over
the bodies of men and horses. … [I]n the temple and porch of Solomon,
men rode in blood up to their knees and bridle reins. Indeed it was a
just and splendid judgement of God that this place should be filled with
the blood of the unbelievers since it had suffered so long from their
blasphemies.
While for the most part Christians greeted the news
of the conquest of Jerusalem ecstatically, there were some Christians
who were shocked by news of the massacre.
Pope Urban, for his part, died two weeks after the
victory, but would have been horrified by the massacre in Jerusalem,
argues Armstrong. What he had foreseen was an orderly war of liberation,
not out of line with Augustine’s prescription for a just war, but
instead, the Crusaders slaughtered tens of thousands of people
indiscriminately.
This massacre would never be forgotten by the
Muslims, and would precipitate Saladin’s reconquest of the city, as well
as many years of sour relations between Christian rulers and their
Muslim counterparts.
Crusading Institutionalized and Constantinople
Sacked
For the next hundred years, the practice of
crusading would become entrenched and popes would learn how useful a
tool it was to appeal to Christians’ faith as a way to raise an army.
The definition of a crusade remained rather fluid,
with the essential element being the taking of the cross. Emperors such
as Henry VI, Frederick II and King Louis IX appear to have taken the
cross on their own authority, but it was necessary for the pope to
bestow the expedition with the character of a crusade. Kings were
permitted to launch “just wars” in the interests of their subjects, but
had no authority to allow warriors to adopt the sign of the cross. Only
the pope could authorize the taking of the cross, and only the pope
could provide an expedition with the character of a crusade.
While in these respects the concept of crusading
was constrained, in other ways it was expanded during this period.
Particularly of interest here is the way in which the papacy broadened
the potential scope of a crusade from being limited to a holy war
against Muslims to being a holy war against anyone who endangered the
faith, broke the peace or undermined the Church or its rights. This
could include other Christians, and in the Fourth Crusade, this expanded
view was put into practice in the sack of Constantinople.
Originally intended to attack Cairo, the Fourth
Crusade was diverted first to the key port of Zara in modern Yugoslavia,
and then on to Constantinople, the seat of the Greek Orthodox Church.
Enrico Dandolo, Doge of Venice, saw a great opportunity in capturing
Zara and Constantinople, primarily for what it would mean for Venice.
Some Crusaders were disgusted by the idea of attacking an innocent
Christian city and left the Crusade. Others stayed on, however, and
eagerly attacked Zara.
Following the sack of the city, Pope Innocent III was distressed and
excommunicated the entire Crusade, but Dandolo was undeterred. He
despised Byzantium for the unfavorable trading terms it granted to
Venice, and was determined to take Constantinople.
This idea was attractive to Innocent, who could not resist the idea of a
newly united Christendom with himself at the helm. Repairing the rift
between the Eastern and Western churches was one of the original
objectives of the First Crusade, and if the Greek Orthodox Church could
be forced to submit to the papacy, this objective would finally be
realized.
It appears however that many of the Crusaders were
unsure about their mission. When they were initially unable to take the
city, some wondered whether it was as a result of their sinfulness.
Robert of Clari, a knight
participating in the Crusade, recounted the frustrations felt among the
ordinary Crusaders. “They were very angry and grieved much,” he
wrote. “When the barons had returned and had gotten ashore, they
assembled and were much amazed, and said that it was on account of their
sins that they did not succeed in anything and could not capture the
city.”
In their view of the holy war, God both willed
their participation, and their successes. When they were unsuccessful,
it was seen by some as God’s displeasure with their mission.
Nevertheless, after 10 days of fighting,
Constantinople fell to the Crusaders. Despite having taken oaths to
conquer the city in a manner appropriate to the occupation of a
Christian city (i.e., no women were to be molested and no churches to
suffer depredations), the attackers sacked the city mercilessly.
According to Jean Richard, the Crusaders spared “neither churches … nor
the monuments and works of art inherited from Antiquity; the population,
without there being a true massacre, suffered badly.” Armstrong goes
into a bit more detail, calling the sack of Constantinople “one of the
great crimes of history.” She writes:
"For three days the Venetians and Crusaders rushed
through the streets, raping, killing and pillaging with a horrible
eagerness. Women and children lay dying in the streets and nuns were
raped in their convents. The Venetians knew the value of the treasures
that they carefully purloined to adorn their own cities, churches and
palaces, but the Crusaders from northern Europe simply went on the
rampage."
Conclusion: Just War or Just a War?
While the word “crusade” has generally taken on a
positive connotation in popular vernacular – as we approvingly refer to
a “crusading journalist” or a “crusade against corruption” – when it
comes to military conflict, the use of the word is decidedly frowned
upon.
It is hard to forget the controversy that ensued
following President George W. Bush’s use of the word in describing the
“war on terrorism,” and how Osama bin Laden so eagerly pounced on the
faux pas as supposed proof of the “Christian-Zionist Crusade”
against Islam.
Europeans were particularly appalled by Bush’s poor
choice of words, because in general, Europeans have a much deeper
appreciation for the impact the Crusades continue to have on relations
between Islam and the West, and in some European countries, the word has
no definition other than its description of the holy wars of the
eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth centuries.
When it comes to just war theory, the word has an
even more negative connotation. According to just war theorists, a
crusade, by definition is not a just war.
Michael Walzer, author of Just and Unjust Wars,
argues that once a military conflict exceeds certain constraints and
assumes a sweeping, all-encompassing mission – such as “spreading
democracy” around the world – the conflict becomes a crusade, and
therefore is an unjust war. The legalist paradigm of just war theory
rules out every sort of war other than those that are waged in order to
defend the rights of a political community.
“Preventive wars, commercial wars, wars of
expansion and conquest, [and] religious crusades,” he writes, “are [all]
barred and barred absolutely.”
Somewhat ironically then, the wars that were
initiated by Pope Urban, relying on the just war theory developed by St.
Augustine, have come to define what a just war is not. Instead, they
have come to define what a holy war is, and in some ways, what total war
is.
In assuming the view that Muslims were completely
irredeemable and that their very existence was an affront to God, the
Crusaders established a precedent for total war that would manifest
itself repeatedly over the centuries, with often tragic consequences.
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