by Judy Joyce

Created on: July 25, 2009

Historical Perspective on the Crusades

Present-day tension between the West and Muslim countries has very little to do with the Crusades, says a historian. Thomas Madden, chair of the history department at St. Louis University and author of "A Concise History of the Crusades". Madden explains that, from the Muslim perspective, the Crusades were not worth noticing. That perspective only changed when 19th-century revisionists started to recast the Crusades as imperialist wars, he says.

From the time of Mohammed, Muslims had sought to conquer the Christian world and after a few centuries of steady conquests, Muslim armies had taken all of North Africa, the Middle East, Asia Minor and most of Spain. By the end of the 11th century, Islam had captured two-thirds of the Christian world. Palestine, the home of Jesus Christ; Egypt, the birthplace of Christian monasticism; Asia Minor, where St. Paul planted the seeds of the first Christian communities these were not the periphery of Christianity but its very core, Madden has been quoted as stating. They continued to press westward toward Constantinople, ultimately passing it and entering Europe itself. As far as unprovoked aggression goes, it was all on the Muslim side. At some point what was left of the Christian world would have to defend itself or simply succumb to Islamic conquest.

The Crusades were seen as a safety valve rather than marauders sending belligerent men far from Europe where they could carve out lands for themselves at someone else's expense. Modern scholarship, assisted by the advent of computer databases, has exploded this myth. We now know that it was the "first sons" of Europe that answered the Pope's call in 1095, as well as in subsequent Crusades. Most weren't interested in an overseas kingdom. Much like a soldier today, the medieval Crusader was proud to do his duty but longed to return home.

Setting the Stage for the Second Crusade

The Crusader States of the First Crusade were not new plantations of Catholics in a Muslim world akin to the British colonization of America. Catholic presence in the Crusader states was always tiny, easily less than 10% of the population. These were the rulers and magistrates, as well as Italian merchants and members of the military orders. The overwhelming majority of the population in the Crusader states was Muslim. With the exception of the First Crusade virtually every other Crusade launched by the West and there were hundreds were unsuccessful.

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