TS Eliot on the First Crusade

I love what Eliot says about the (first) Jerusalem Crusade:

"In spite of all the dishonour,
the broken standards, the broken lives,
The broken faith in one place or another,
There was something left that was more than the tales
Of old men on winter evenings."

From his Choruses from 'the Rock'

Madden: Inventing the Crusades

This is a great little article from Thomas Madden, a professional historian of the Crusades. It appeared in First Things 194 (Summer 2009). I love how he approaches the topic. Here are a few select quotes:

“The truth is that medieval Muslims came to realize the Crusades were religious but had little interest in them. When, in 1291, Muslim armies removed the last vestiges of the Crusader Kingdom from Palestine, the Crusades largely dropped out of Muslim memory.” (Madden 2009: 43)

“All the Crusades met the criteria of just war.” (42)

“In the Middle East, as in the West, we are left with the gaping chasm between myth and reality [regarding the Crusades].” (44)

“The Crusades were a medieval phenomenon with no connection to modern Islamist terrorism.” (41)

Bernard Lewis: Of Crusades and Jihad

The jihad was a sacred mission enjoined by scripture and incorporated into the holy law, to continue until all the world was open to the light of Islam. The crusade was a human enterprise, not enjoined--some might rather say forbidden--by Christian scripture, and undertaken for a limited purpose, to defend, or, where lost, to recover Christian territories.

Bernard Lewis, 'Europe and Islam' in From Babel to Dragomans, 2004.

Kenneth Cragg on the Crusades

The Crusades were served with a devotion that, had it been wise and true as it was fervent and undaunted, would have blessed the Eastern world. [...] The really important matter was not the possibility of pilgrimage but the obligation of witness. Christ's concern was, and is, for men not monuments, for souls, not sanctuaries.

Kenneth Cragg, The Call of the Minaret, Third Ed. pp. 238, 9
Oxford: Oneworld 1956, 2000

Chesterton's apologia for the First Crusade

From Ch. 11 of The New Jerusalem:

The Crusader would have been quite justified in suspecting the Moslem even if the Moslem had merely been a new stranger; but as a matter of history he was already an old enemy. The critic of the Crusade talks as if it had sought out some inoffensive tribe or temple in the interior of Thibet, which was never discovered until it was invaded.

They seem entirely to forget that long before the Crusaders had dreamed of riding to Jerusalem, the Moslems had almost ridden into Paris. They seem to forget that if the Crusaders nearly conquered Palestine, it was but a return upon the Moslems who had nearly conquered Europe.
There was no need for them to argue by an appeal to reason, as I have argued above, that a religious division must make a difference; it had already made a difference. The difference stared them in the face in the startling transformation of Roman Barbary and of Roman Spain. In short it was something which must happen in theory and which did happen in practice; all expectation suggested that it would be so and all experience said it was so.

Having thought it out theoretically and experienced it practically, they proceeded to deal with it equally practically. The first division involved every principle of the science of thought; and the last
developments followed out every principle of the science of war. The Crusade was the counter-attack. It was the defensive army taking the offensive in its turn, and driving back the enemy to his base.

Map: Kingdom of Jerusalem

The Logic of Islam

I found this interview to be quite fascinating, though it does contain some errors. Specifically:

"Warner: Political Islam has annihilated every culture it has invaded or immigrated to. The total time for annihilation takes centuries, but once Islam is ascendant it never fails. The host culture disappears and becomes extinct."

Actually, Spain was entirely regained for Christendom upon the completion of the Reconquista in 1492 (special year, wasn't it?) Also, parts of the Balkans (like Greece) were purged of Islam--though both came at a great price. Also, both purgings were military in nature, so there are ethical questions involved. Finally, the loss of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem was not due to a religiously-motivated jihaad, but to illegal infringements on commerce by the Christian governer of what is now Karak in Jordan. Saladin was protecting his commercial routes. (BTW, Saladin was not even an Arab.)

Nevertheless, the strongest section of the interview is about the two different kinds of logic at play in Islam and Western thought. Because of there are two kinds of logic dialogue is often entirely fruitless

Interview_with_Bill_Warner