Weren't the Crusades Just Wars of Conquest?

The Short Answer

The Crusades were a series of military expeditions, called by popes from 1095 onwards, chiefly to recover Jerusalem and the Holy Land and to defend Eastern Christians, after centuries in which Muslim armies had conquered much of the formerly Christian Middle East, North Africa and Spain. Most crusaders were not seeking land or loot; crusading was ruinously expensive and dangerous, and many saw it as an act of penance. But the Crusades also involved terrible crimes: massacres of Jews in Europe, the slaughter at Jerusalem in 1099, and the sack of Christian Constantinople in 1204. The Church today does not hold up the Crusades as a model, and popes have asked forgiveness for the violence done in Christ’s name.

The popular picture is of unprovoked Western aggression against a peaceful, advanced Muslim world, driven by greed, and the beginning of Western colonialism. That picture contains some truth, but much of it would not be recognised by historians of the period. Both the real wrongs and the real context deserve a hearing.

What the Church Does and Does Not Claim

The Church does not claim:

That the Crusades were holy wars in the sense of converting people by force. The Church has never taught that faith can be imposed by the sword, and forced conversion was condemned even then.
That the crusaders’ crimes were justified. Massacres of Jews and Muslims, and the sack of Constantinople, were grave sins.
That Christians today should take up crusading. The Church’s teaching on war has developed, with ever greater emphasis on peace and on the strict limits of just war (CCC 2307–2317).

The Church does claim that faith cannot be forced, that the use of violence in the service of truth was a sin for which she has asked forgiveness, and that Christians are called to be peacemakers: “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God” (Matthew 5:9).

What Happened, and Why

The background

In the seventh century, within a few decades of Muhammad’s death, Arab armies conquered the Christian lands of Syria, Palestine, Egypt and North Africa, and soon most of Spain. Over the following centuries these lands slowly became majority Muslim. In the eleventh century the Seljuk Turks, newly converted to Islam, defeated the Byzantine army at Manzikert (1071) and overran most of Asia Minor. Christian pilgrims to Jerusalem faced growing danger.

In 1095 the Byzantine emperor Alexius I asked the West for help. Pope Urban II, at the Council of Clermont, called on Western knights to go to the aid of Eastern Christians and to free Jerusalem. He offered the crusade as an act of penance: those who went with right intention would receive remission of the penance due for their sins.

Who went, and why

Historians such as Jonathan Riley-Smith have shown that crusading was not, for most, a path to wealth. It cost a knight several years’ income, and families mortgaged and sold land to pay for it. Many never returned. Crusaders’ own letters and charters speak mostly of penance, pilgrimage and devotion to the Holy Places, mixed, as human motives always are, with adventure, ambition and violence.

What went wrong

The Crusades also produced some of the darkest episodes in Christian history.

The Rhineland massacres, 1096. Bands associated with the First Crusade murdered Jewish communities in Germany. Some bishops, such as the bishop of Speyer, tried to protect them. When a monk later preached violence against Jews during the Second Crusade, St Bernard of Clairvaux intervened to stop him.
Jerusalem, 1099. When the crusaders took the city, they massacred much of its Muslim and Jewish population.
Constantinople, 1204. The Fourth Crusade, diverted by debt and Byzantine politics, sacked the greatest Christian city of the East, despite Pope Innocent III’s prohibitions. It deepened the wound between Catholics and Orthodox for centuries.

Common Objections

”The Crusades were unprovoked aggression against Muslims.”

They were a response, centuries late, to the conquest of formerly Christian lands, and an immediate response to an appeal for help from Eastern Christians. That does not make every crusade just, or excuse what crusaders did. But the picture of an unprovoked attack on peaceful neighbours leaves out four centuries of history.

”They were about land and money.”

For some participants, at some times, they were. But for most, crusading was a costly and dangerous act of devotion. The crusader states that were founded were small, precarious and short-lived; Jerusalem was lost again in 1187, and the last mainland stronghold, Acre, fell in 1291.

”The Crusades were the beginning of Western colonialism.”

Most historians see this as a later reading, popularised in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In the medieval Muslim world the Crusades were long regarded as one frontier war among many. Their modern image as the start of Western domination owes more to modern politics than to medieval history.

”Hasn’t the Church apologised?”

Yes. During the Day of Pardon in 2000, St John Paul II asked forgiveness for “the violence some have used in the service of the truth.” In Athens in 2001 he spoke of the “disastrous sack of the imperial city of Constantinople,” when crusaders “turned against their own brothers in the faith,” and asked: “may the Lord grant us the forgiveness we beg of him.”

In Summary

The Crusades were neither the pure holy wars of romantic legend nor the simple wars of greed of modern caricature. They began as a response to centuries of conquest and a plea for help from Eastern Christians, and many crusaders saw them as acts of penance. They also involved grave crimes against Jews, Muslims and fellow Christians, for which the Church has asked forgiveness. Remembering them honestly means holding both truths, and remembering the Gospel the crusaders too often forgot: “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matthew 5:44).

This article follows the method St Robert Bellarmine used in his Controversies*: state the question fairly, clear away misunderstandings, make the case, then answer each objection. See How We Answer Objections.*

Sources

Scripture: Revised Standard Version, Second Catholic Edition (Ignatius Press). Matthew 5:9, 5:44.
Catechism of the Catholic Church, nn. 2302–2317.
St John Paul II, Homily for the Day of Pardon, 12 March 2000. vatican.va
St John Paul II, Address to Archbishop Christodoulos of Athens, 4 May 2001. vatican.va
Jonathan Riley-Smith, The Crusades: A History (3rd ed., 2014).
Christopher Tyerman, God’s War: A New History of the Crusades (2006).
Thomas F. Madden, The Concise History of the Crusades (3rd ed., 2013).