The Crusades - dpz73qkr83w0p.cloudfront.net · Transcript - CH505 Survey of Church History © 2015 Christian University GlobalNet. All rights reserved. The Crusades 2 of 16 Lesson

Transcript - CH505 Survey of Church History© 2019 Our Daily Bread University. All rights reserved.

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LESSON 10 of 24CH505

The Crusades

Survey of Church History

Greetings once again in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Join me in prayer, if you would, as we begin. Let us pray. Eternal God, we ask that once again You might open us up to that which You have to teach us today. Guide us by Your Spirit that we might faithfully serve you for Christ’s sake. Amen.

Few events within the history of the church have produced as many divergent and vigorous reactions as have the Crusades. For some, the crusader’s spirit is the true spirit of militant Christianity, crushing the enemy and promoting the truth of Christ. We even named some of our sports teams after them. I can recall as an undergraduate at Wheaton College, cheering for the football and baseball and basketball “Crusaders.” For others, however, the Crusades are Exhibit A in the case against the faith, illustrating how corrupt and perverse it is possible for Christians to become, even in quest of good goals—what some have called an unconscionable foreign policy for the church. All of us, however, whatever side we take, need to stop to look specifically at the Crusades to see what occurred there and to see what we can learn from them. Particularly as they relate to the issue of church-state relations and the specialized interest of Christians in our attitude toward war.

Now when we say Crusades, we are talking about the eight major and many more minor military religious expeditions which were carried out between the late 11th century, beginning in AD 1096, and the late 13th century, ending in AD 1270. All of these were occasioned by the political and military success of Islam, especially that of the Seljuk Turks. All of them were given sanction and, in fact, encouragement by the church with the rationale that they were “Holy Wars” to recapture the holy land from foreign hands.

As we come to this study, we need to be aware that there are some wonderful resources available for us. Those of you who are following Latourette’s text will want especially to look at pages 408-415. Others of you may want to refer to the Cambridge

Garth M. Rosell, Ph.D. Professor of Church History and Director

Emeritus of the Ockenga Institute at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary

in South Hamilton, Massachusetts

Transcript - CH505 Survey of Church History © 2019 Our Daily Bread University. All rights reserved.

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Medieval History, volume 5, which deals with the Crusades. Or the older volume, still very useful, of Archer Kingsford, The Crusades, published by Putnam and Sons. Or Steven Runciman’s History of the Crusades, published by Cambridge University Press. These and others can be very helpful to us in understanding the nature of the Crusades not only in terms of their specific content, but in terms of the kinds of issues which they raise for us.

Christianity, you see, has always taught the depravity of human persons—that outside the grace of God, people tend to act selfishly, unkindly, sometimes even viciously: robbing, plundering, abusing, blaspheming. So it shouldn’t be surprising to us that we find in all societies evidence of this kind of depravity. It shouldn’t be surprising to us either that all societies tend to put sanctions against those who break the social guidelines and laws.

What do we do, however, when nations or groups of nations break the social law of other nations or groups of nations? How are we then, as Christians, to respond? This is a particularly difficult question, I think, for Christians. And in fact, the Christian community has answered that question in three major ways across its centuries of existence.

The first of those is the Nonresistance Position. It is often called “pacifism” in which people do not involve themselves in war as Christians.

The second position is the Just War Position. It is war allowed for defensive purposes only and even then within very tight qualifications.

The third position is what we often call, the Crusader Position. It is the use of force not only to defend, but also to promote the faith, to promote righteousness, to do evangelism. And we had occasion to see some of that in the medieval missions outreach, which we have talked about already in this course.

It is interesting to note that the New Testament and the early church practice was almost completely uniform in its adherence to the nonresistant position. The early church asked the question: Should Judea revolt against Rome? And most were prepared to say, “No!” Although there were some zealots who wanted to say, “Yes!” Should Christians use the protection of Rome to preach the gospel? Clearly, “Yes!” Should Christians take arms to protect that right? We don’t know. That question didn’t seem to come up. We do know that from the New Testament period to the time of Constantine, no Christian writer of whom we are aware approved


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of or endorsed Christian participation in war. It seemed to be an era of almost complete nonresistance or pacifism. We do know that some Christians were in the army. But we don’t know how the communities viewed that other than by inference from a number of other things that were said.

Let me give you a few examples. Athenagoras commented, “Christians do not strike back. They do not go to law when they’re robbed. They give to them that ask and love their neighbors as themselves.”

Or if you look at Justin Martyr. And I’ll refer to that section of his writings again that relates to this little collection of Richardson’s Early Christian Fathers that we have been using before. On page 266, chapter 39, Justin comments:

When the prophetic Spirit speaks as prophesying things to come, He says, “For the law will go forth from Zion and the Word of the Lord from Jerusalem. And He shall judge in the midst of nations and rebuke much people and they shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks and nation will not lift up sword against nation, neither shall the learn war anymore.” We can show you that this has really happened for a band of 12 men went forth from Jerusalem. And they were common men, not trained in speaking, but by the power of God they testified to every race of mankind that they were sent by Christ to teach all the word of God. And now, we who once killed each other, not only do not make war on each other, but in order not to lie or deceive our inquisitors we gladly die for the confession of Christ. For it would be possible for us to follow it the saying, “The tongue has sworn, the mind remains unsworn.” But it would be ridiculous when the soldiers whom you have recruited and enrolled stick to their loyalty to you before their own life and parents and native land and all their families, though you have nothing incorruptible to offer them. For us, who desire incorruption, not to endure all things in order to receive what we long for from Him who is actually able to give it.

That interesting paragraph from Justin’s Apology in the middle second century reflects again the kind of attitude toward war, which the early Christians seemed to have. We see this again in Tertullian when he said, “Christ in disarming Peter ungirded every soldier.” Or Cyprian when he wrote, “God designed iron for tilling not for killing.” Isn’t that a marvelous little quote?


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What we know of early Christian life points almost exclusively in the direction of nonresistance or pacifism. So that what we discover is that over the first three centuries, under enormous persecution in this time of martyrdom, Christians tended to stand before their enemies, turning the other cheek, and going even to their death for the purpose of giving witness to their faith. But [they] refused to participate actively in the killing of others. This position, however, began to change when Constantine came to power. And you have, along with the coming of Constantine in the fourth century, the emergence of Just War theology. We see that reflected very clearly in the work of Saint Augustine, with whom we are now familiar.

His own attitude toward war, as a foundation for the Just War Theory, is described beautifully for us in Roland H. Bainton’s little book, Christian Attitudes Toward War and Peace, a historical survey and critical reevaluation. This book, [which] was first published by Abingdon Press, has come out with a revised format and it is a handy little paperback which some of you may want to pick up to read more thoroughly. On page 95 of this book, he describes Augustine’s own attitudes toward the Just War. He says:

It was the code of Plato and Cicero now with Christian additions. War must be just as to its intent. And what is its intent? To restore peace. Peace should be the object of our desire. War should be waged only as a necessity and waged only through it. That God may deliver men from that necessity and preserve them in peace, for peace is not to be sought in order to kindle war. But war is to be waged in order to obtain peace. Therefore, even in the course of war, you should cherish the spirit as a peacemaker. If injustice can be corrected without bloodshed, how much greater the victory? A higher glory it is to stay war than to slay men.

Then he describes the basic elements which are part of “Just War Theory.”

First, the object of a Just War is to vindicate justice, those which may be defined as just which avenge injuries. What sort of injuries? “An attack on the existence of the state,” Augustine held, “was ordinarily an injury to be repulsed by war, but not always.” Other injuries to be forcibly rectified included: failure to make amends, refusal to grant passage, etc. A war then, first of all, must be waged to vindicate justice.


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Second, it must be just in its very disposition which is, in fact, Christian love. And this, Augustine felt, was not incompatible with killing because love and nonresistance are inward dispositions.

Third, the war must be just as to its auspices. It must be waged only under the authority of a ruler. When Christ took the sword from Peter in the garden, that taking of the sword was condemning the practice of private warfare. Only when the prince, only when the properly constituted ruler who is responsible to call for war, does so. And under proper conditions can soldiers, including Christians, participate and involve themselves in killing. The war then must be just in its vindication of justice. It must be just in its disposition. It must be just in its auspices.

And fourth, the conduct of the war itself has to be just. The rules basically for Augustine were taken from classical antiquity. Faith must be kept with the enemy. There should be no wanton violence, profanation of temples, looting, massacre, or conflagration. Vengeance, atrocities, and reprisals are excluded. Ambush was allowed, but the war was to be conducted properly and according to Christian principles.

Furthermore, fifth, clergy, monks included, were not to engage in warfare at all.

And sixth, finally, when one entered a war, one must do so in a “mournful mood,” as Augustine described it. War should not be entered with joy and thanksgiving and singing as we’ll see later happened in the Crusades. War is always a tragedy, it’s something to be avoided if at all possible, but entered into properly; properly constituted, properly called, [and] properly conducted by Christians for the purpose of defending against the wanton violence of a depraved society.

We see then the movement from the early church and its dominant pacifism to a dominance of Just War Theory, which characterizes the church from the time of Constantine in the fourth century up to the 10th century and the time of the Crusades. And then we are going to see, in a moment when we come to the Crusades, the predominance of the crusader attitude: The desire to promote the faith, to promote righteousness, through the use of the sword.

Now it is interesting to note that all three of these positions base their positions on Scripture. And what Scriptures do they tend to use? Well the crusaders like to turn to text such as John 2:15, “the cleansing of the temple;” or Matthew 10:34, with the words, “I came not to send peace but a sword;” or Luke 22, “He that has no


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sword, let him sell his garments and buy one.” You can see how these might be useful for the argument by the crusaders.

The Just War people tend to focus on text such as Mark 12:17, “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and unto God the things that are God’s.”

The nonresistant or pacifist folk tend to turn to the Sermon on the Mount and Matthew 5 in that famous passage with which I think most all of us are familiar. Let me read just a portion of it for you and you can get some of the flavor of the pacifist argument:

You have heard that it was said, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, but I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other. If someone wants you to be sued and takes you to court wanting your tunic, give him your cloak as well. If someone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles. Give to the one who asks you and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you. You have heard that it was said, “Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.” But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” [Then He ends the chapter] “That you may be perfect, even as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

Now you can see how this might easily be used by nonresistant or pacifist advocates.

The classic text, however, that has engaged the interest of all three groups is Romans 13. I want to read that and then try to describe how all three positions deal with this one text. Listen carefully to the text. It is familiar to you, I’m sure:

Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. Consequently, he who rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves, for rulers hold no terror for those who do right, but for those who do wrong. Do you want to be free from fear of the one in authority? Then do what is right and he will commend you, for he is God’s servant to do you good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword for nothing. He is God’s servant, an agent of wrath, to bring punishment on the wrongdoer. Therefore, it is necessary to submit to the authorities not only because of possible


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punishment but also because of conscience. That’s also why you pay taxes, for the authorities are God’s servants who give their full time to governing. Give everyone what you owe him; if you owe taxes, pay taxes; if revenue, then revenue; if respect, then respect; if honor, then honor.

Isn’t that a fascinating text? How do these folk deal with that?

Those who take a pacifist position tend to see this text as arguing that the coercive power of the state is indeed ordained by God, and the reason it is ordained by God is because of depravity and sin. Therefore, it ought to be administered by sinners only. Saints ought to submit unless it breaks their conscience. But they should not participate.

Now if you want an interesting historical illustration of that, you can turn to the Schleitheim Confession of 1527, which emerges out of the radical, or left wing, Anabaptist wing of the Protestant Reformation. This actually comes from the Swiss Brethren, was written by Michael Sattler who was put to death very shortly after he wrote this confessional document. Let me read to you, and I’m reading out of John Leith’s Creeds of the Churches. It is a nice little paperback by John Knox Press which includes a lot of the creeds and confessions of the church. On page 287 there is a description about force and war:

Therefore, there will also be unquestionably for the Christian an elimination of the devilish weapons of force, such as sword, armor, and the like; and all their use, either for friends or against one’s enemies, by virtue of the word of Christ. Resist not him who is evil.

And then later:

The sword is ordained of God outside the perfection of Christ. It punishes and puts to death the wicked, and guards and protects the good. In the law, the sword was ordained for the punishment of the wicked and for their death, and the same sword is now ordained to be used by worldly magistrates [worldly magistrates, you understand]. Therefore, should a Christian employ the sword against the wicked for the defense and protection of the good or even for the sake of love? The answer is no. Should a Christian pass sentence in worldly disputes and strifes, such as unbelievers have with one another? The answer is no. Shall one be a magistrate if chosen as such? The answer


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is no. One should not even take an oath.

You see there, in historical setting, the kind of position that is taken by the nonresistant wing, illustrating their attitude toward this famous Romans text, but dealing with it in their own particular way.

Those who take a Just War Position see this text as teaching “the necessity of restraining evil doers” because of the fall and nature of the world. And in fact, the advocacy of Christians to be involved in that, if properly conducted, according to the kinds of rules that Augustine set down and I read that for you a few moments ago. We see this illustrated in a parallel movement in the 16th century, through the Augsburg Confession. And I suggested earlier that the Lutheran tradition picks up this basic attitude toward Just War in the 16th century. This document written by Philipp Melanchthon takes clearly a Just War position. This in the little Leith collection of Creeds of the Churches, page 72:

It is taught among us that all government in the world and all established rule and laws were instituted and ordained by God for the sake of good order. And that Christians may, without sin, occupy civil offices or serve as princes and judges, render decisions and pass sentence according to the imperial and other existing laws, punish evil doers with the sword, and engage in Just Wars, serve as soldiers, buy and sell, take required oaths, possess property, be married, [etc.].

Condemned here are the Anabaptists (the ones I just read), who teach that none of these things is Christian. Here you have, through the Lutheran Tradition, a picking up of the Just War concept, which runs again and again throughout the history of the church. Wars can be waged, if properly waged, to restrain sin and to stop the advances of the evil doers.

The third position, that of the crusader, sees the use of force not only to restrain sin, as was true for the Just War people, but also to promote righteousness. It is a tool given by God to promote the faith and, in fact, in some cases, to do evangelism. Now we are going to see that emerging, particularly in the crusader period, among those crusader people who are involved in not only defensive war, but now in promoting righteousness through the use of physical force.


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Therefore, we see this pattern emerging—three positions: (1) The nonresistant position dominating the church from its beginnings up to the time of Constantine; (2) the Just War concept, spelled out so clearly for us by Saint Augustine, dominating the church from the fourth century up to about the 10th; and now, (3) we are going to see emerging the third of the positions in the period of the Crusades—this joyful militancy, entering into war as a holy cause, as soldiers of God. And this is exemplified in many places across history, but no more clearly than we find them in the Crusades.

Let’s talk then a bit about the Crusades specifically. The Crusades were rooted in the doctrine of penance. Sins committed by the faithful and confessed to a priest had, during the Middle Ages, increasingly brought a response of penance. This penance, or this response to sinfulness, could be fulfilled in a variety of different ways—through fasting, through manual labor, through prayers, and through pilgrimages. Now pilgrimages became very popular during the Middle Ages. Particularly pilgrimages to holy sites in Israel. From the 700’s on, this penitential pilgrimage became the penance of choice for many within the church. And the most popular site of all was Jerusalem. Many of the pilgrims traveled to Jerusalem in groups, sometimes under arms. Indeed, when the First Crusade finally came in AD 1096, it was actually a penitential pilgrimage under arms, with the additional goal of recapturing Jerusalem from the Islamic forces that had taken it over.

A knight who joined that cause could pursue a military career under the aegis of the church and at the same time gain forgiveness of his sins through this penitential process. As one somewhat cynical writer phrased it:

He might butcher all day until he waded ankle deep in blood, and then at nightfall kneel, sobbing for very joy at the altar of the sepulcher. For was he not red from the winepress of the Lord? One can readily understand the popularity of the Crusades when one reflects that they permitted men to get to the other world by fighting hard on earth and allowing them to gain the fruits of asceticism by the way of obedience to natural instincts.

That may be a little harsh. These are actually the words of Barker in his book on the Crusades. But they point, at least, in a direction that for many has a ring of truth. For the church generally, the Crusades allowed an opportunity to vindicate Christ’s cause by recapturing the holy places and also to diffuse Christianity by


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force of arms. We saw that process in the European mission. But here again, it’s picked up as a desired end and good.

What then caused the Crusades? Along with the system of penance, which was placing increased importance upon Jerusalem and the holy places in Israel, the Crusades were occasioned by the enormous success of Islam. We’ve talked about this a little, but let me refresh your memories again. Muhammad, the great prophet, was born in Mecca, a commercial town in Saudi Arabia, as we call it now. He had very little education. He was a caravan trader [and] became a religious leader in his late thirties. In AD 622, he left from Mecca to go to Medina. There he fused religious and civil authority, [and] came back and reclaimed Mecca. After his death, the conquest began in earnest under the principle of the jihad, this Holy War, righteous cause battle, for the Islamic forces. Damascus, Jerusalem, Persia, India, Egypt all fell.

Within a few years of his movement to Medina, Jerusalem was in the hands of Omar, and it remained in Islamic hands until the very end of the First Crusade in AD 1099. In that interim, relationships were continued actually between the western church and the Latin Church in Jerusalem. The Islamic conquerors allowed this to go on. And in fact, they even promoted some of this. Especially close relations were cemented with Charlemagne in AD 800. He was sent keys to the city of Jerusalem by the Islamic leaders there. In AD 807, Harun ar-Rashid proclaimed Charlemagne, “Protector of Jerusalem and owner of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.” In turn, Charlemagne sent money down to found a hospital and a library and to fund other good things within Jerusalem. Western Christians often sent contributions to Christians in Jerusalem.

Now all of that relationship between Christians and Islamic forces lasted until a fanatical caliph named Hakeem took over power in AD 1010. A caliph is the head of the government of that area of the world. It had been in the hands of the Umayyad family, this dynasty, from AD 661-750 and then transferred to the Abbasid, from AD 750-1258. The Umayyad capital was at Damascus, the Abbasid capital was set up at Baghdad. So this caliph, Hakeem, not only took over power, but in so doing, destroyed the Church of the Sepulcher, he ended this Frankish protectorate of the church and patronage of holy places and he placed enormous restrictions on pilgrimages.

Now it is interesting to note that in our day, we find people quite interested in going over to Jerusalem or to Israel for a kind of modern form of pilgrimage. But in the Middle Ages, this had


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become a big business. In fact, we have evidence that there were guidebooks put out, giving details as to how people should prepare for pilgrimages. “They ought to settle their debts before they leave. They ought not to travel alone but go with groups. They need to hire the proper kind of ship and captain.” And it usually took about a month to get from Europe to Israel for these. “Only licensed captains ought to carry pilgrims,” they said. “And the ships must be seaworthy.” “They ought to make sure that there’s proper food on board and that they will not be exacted prices beyond that which were originally agreed.” They were given specific instructions as to what to bring with them—“a feather bed, a mattress, two pillows, two pairs of sheets, and a quilt. A long overcoat for chilly times at sea. Laxatives to cover problems with the stomach. Biscuits, bread, cheese, eggs, fruit,” and so on. And they went right down the list of things that they ought to study and that they ought to prepare for before coming on one of these trips. It was big business and people vied with

one another in order to gain pilgrim tourists to carry them over to Israel.

Hundreds of them came into Israel for these purposes. So you can understand that this was not a small matter when this whole possibility was cut off by this caliph who wouldn’t have that going on any longer.

Furthermore, the strife between the East and the West, especially after the Schism of AD 1054, made the possibility even more difficult. In fact, some of the Eastern Orthodox areas even charged tolls to their Western Christian counterparts for pilgrims traveling through.

So all of these elements are beginning to emerge as part of this larger picture. Islam has taken over the holy places. This wouldn’t have been so bad if the arrangements could have continued so that people could visit back and forth. But now that that was cut off, now that it was complicated by these growing tensions between East and West, something had to be done. And as a matter of fact, the Crusades emerge now out of that kind of context, as a Holy War to (1) regain those places in Jerusalem that are to be visited by the pilgrims, [and] (2) to restore that holy area of the world back to the church itself.

In AD 1094, then, we have ambassadors from Byzantine, Europe—Emperor Alexius, in particular—requesting military aid against the Turks. You remember they were struggling in their battle against those forces. Pope Urban II planned a small expeditionary


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force. He called for knights to join the cause. He offered a plenary indulgence, a full forgiveness of their sins if they came. And [he] hinted that they might have more material rewards if they became a part of these crusading activities. The response was much beyond anything that he could have possibly anticipated. It was overwhelming. And that great group of folk descended upon Constantinople, some of them desirous for adventure, others of them wanting forgiveness of their sins, some wanting added wealth which they thought would be a kind of pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. All of these different motives were brought together as they descended on Constantinople. And Emperor Alexius was embarrassed that so many had showed up. He didn’t know how to feed or house them. And in fact, they had a difference of opinion as to the ends of this military expedition—Alexius wanted the land for himself; the westerners, of course, wanted it for themselves.

With reluctance, however, the crusaders (because they needed his supplies) took an oath of allegiance to Emperor Alexius. They crossed the Bosferous and captured Nicaea, gave it back to the emperor and then took Antioch. And ultimately, [they] marched on to Jerusalem. And amid bloodshed and great rejoicing on July 15, 1099, they took Jerusalem back for Christian purposes. This, as a matter of fact, is the only successful military campaign in all of the crusader history. All of the subsequent campaigns, and there were many, great major ones as well as minor ones, were militarily failures.

After taking Jerusalem, most of the crusaders returned back to Europe. Some, however, set up camp in the new parts of the country that they had just visited and conquered. Four major colonies emerged out of these crusader activities: (1) Jerusalem, which we can understand would have drawn a number of them, (2) the County of Tripoli, a port area in northwestern Lebanon, (3) the Principality of Antioch, (4) and the County of Edessa.

Tripoli and Antioch survived until the last decade of the 13th century. Edessa fell to the Islamic forces in AD 1144. These were kind of experiments in colonization, and are interesting to study in and of themselves. But [they] will not occupy our attention here.

The Second Crusade was occasioned by the capture again of Edessa, one of these four colonies in AD 1144. Led by Louis VII of France and Emperor Conrad II of Germany, they marched to return these lands again to Christian auspices and control. This crusade


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ended in failure. And then, to add further problems, Saladin and the Islamic forces recaptured Jerusalem in AD 1187 and this led to the Third Crusade.

The Third Crusade was actually led from the West by Richard the Lionhearted of England, Philip Augustus of France, and Frederick Barbarossa, the Holy Roman emperor. Cyprus was recaptured from Byzantium, but Jerusalem still remained in Islamic hands. They weren’t able to recapture it.

The Fourth Crusade brought forces to converge upon Constantinople in AD 1204. Now these folk didn’t originally intend to take Constantinople, but they needed to repay the Venetians for the fare that had brought them to Constantinople. So they attacked this Eastern Orthodox city, putting a little more strain on East-West relationships. And it remained in western hands as, what is called, Latin Constantinople, from AD 1204-1261. Pope Innocent, meanwhile, excommunicated the leaders. But the Byzantine Empire was damaged badly by that conquest. And, in fact, East-West relationships were hurt almost beyond repair.

In between the Fourth and Fifth Crusade was the famous Children’s Crusade of AD 1212. Thousands of children were sent to liberate Jerusalem. The feeling was that children would not be attacked, but that they would be joyfully welcomed and they could do what armed adult soldiers couldn’t do. They didn’t get any further than Italy, as a matter of fact, and many of them were sold into slavery; and it is one of the real tragic stories as part of the Crusades.

In the Fifth Crusade, Christian armies were defeated in Egypt.

In the Sixth Crusade, they went against Jerusalem again and again failed.

The Seventh and Eight Crusades, directed by Louis IX of France, both Crusades failed.

In short, militarily, we have to say that the Crusades were basically a failure. They ended not with the overthrow of Islamic forces and the return of these Christian areas to the church, but in fact, ended up largely reinforcing the power and authority and solidity of the Islamic forces in those very areas they were trying to liberate. So I think any fair person would have to say that the Crusades were, from a military standpoint, almost uniformly failures.

The Crusades, however, did offer some very helpful and productive additions to the life of the church. Certainly they


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spurred missionary activity. Not so much by the sword, but through a peaceful conquest of souls. The Crusades brought the Eastern areas of the world to a kind of new consciousness among Christians in the West. There was a growing awareness that there was need for mission outreach through many of those parts of the world, particularly those that had been taken over again by the forces of Islam.

How is Christianity to spread in those areas? Well new strategies, new impetus and motivation emerged out of these strange events, to bring missionary activity once more into the center of church life. Some of the eastern missionary activity was spawned by Saint Francis, whose name is familiar to all of us. He attempted on the Fifth Crusade to convert the Sultan of Egypt in the 13th century. He and a number of others attempted to promote Christian missionary activity.

In addition, the Crusades tended to encourage colonization, and you have that whole interesting story about those four colonization experiments and many others that came as a result of those.

There was also an encouragement of trade, of mobility. Obviously, with great numbers of people moving back and forth, there’s new interest and awareness of other parts of the world and trade activities, immigration, colonization are all going to be spurred as a result.

They did also tend to aggravate already strained relations between the East and the West. We talked a little bit about that in earlier lectures. Here you have an illustration of another way in which those relationships tended to be strained and those divisions tended to be supported.

The Crusades also raised serious questions about the spreading of the faith by military conquest, an issue that we’ve already talked about in medieval missions. Faith, you see, doesn’t primarily come by the sword. And some would argue it never comes by the sword, but by the loving and joyous encounter of people with the living Christ. Missionary activity ought to be done in a persuasive and winsome way, but perhaps not at the point of the sword.

For many of us the Crusades, however, served the purpose of crystallizing the issue of war. How are Christians to relate in these church-state ties with the military, with war? And I’ve suggested that the three classic positions which have emerged across the history of the church remain with us as options today

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for good Christians who are honestly trying to struggle with and understand this issue: (1) Pacifism, (2) Just War, (3) Crusade.

I would encourage you, as a result of our exploration of the Crusades, to think again about your whole understanding of that important area and relationship. Restudy those texts that we’ve talked about and rethink your position. It’s not something about

which any of us dare be neutral. But it is an important element that we have to wrestle through until we come to a conclusion that we feel is an appropriate one for us and is consistent with the great teachings of God’s Word.

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