Onward, Christian Soldiers

"Reinterpreting the Crusades: Religious Warriors" by Jonathan Riley-Smith, in The Economist (Dec. 23, 1995–Jan. 5, 1996), 25 St. James’s St., London SW1A 1HG, England.

The Christian crusades are scorched in the modern mind as repulsive adventures in brutality and bigotry. Historians since the late 19th century have argued that it was greed, in one form or another, that motivated the crusaders. Lately, however, writes Riley-Smith, a professor of ecclesiastical history at Cambridge University, an older interpretation has been gaining favor.

The crusades were not, as many historians have maintained, a venture in imperialism, he says. The First Crusade, launched by Pope Urban II in 1095, "certainly began the process of European conquest and settlement in the eastern Mediterranean," but that was not the original intent. "The Christian knights assumed they would be joining a larger force that would drive back Muslim Turks who had recently invaded Asia Minor, and restore Jerusalem, lost for 350 years, to the Byzantine empire." It was only after Byzantine Greeks failed to join in with much enthusiasm that the knights struck out on their own.

More recent economic interpretations of the crusades hold up no better, Riley-Smith avers.

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