Were the Crusaders and
Inquisitors Christians?
Yes, No, Maybe
PART ONE: The Crusaders
“Crusader”
is a negative word to many, and maybe deservedly so, but we may have to
reconsider the negative position. Following is a summary and examination of the
history of the crusades themselves.
There
were eight crusades in all, from 1095 to 1294. Oddly enough, no Arab tribes
played much of a role, if any, in fighting the crusaders. This is not to say
that Muslim armies were not involved, but exactly who within Islam actually
participated is another issue.
The French initiated the first crusade led by Godfrey of
Bouillon. The
purpose was to wrest control of Jerusalem away from the Muslim Seljuk Turks,
who had taken it in 1070. Jerusalem had previously been part of the Fatimid
Empire, composed mostly of Shi’a Berbers from North Africa, and during their
control of the Holy City, Christians were allowed to visit their special
religious sites. But such was not the case with the Seljuks, who violently
persecuted the Christians and desecrated and destroyed churches. After a time,
Pope Urban II called for the rescue of the Holy City from the Islamic infidels.
Bouillon,
certainly a member of the Roman Catholic Church, managed to murder 70,000
Muslims and even burned down synagogues crowded with Jewish people hoping to
escape the violence around them. Despite the slaughter, many of the European
soldiers married local Muslim and Jewish women; they settled down, and for at
least forty years, the Christians and Muslims lived peacefully side-by-side.
The fact remains, however, that Crusaders slaughtered a host of people.
The second crusade in 1144 was undertaken when a Kurdish army from Mosul (now
in the modern state of Iraq) attacked a Christian fortress in Edessa (now in
the modern state of Turkey). As a result, Pope Eugenius III called for a
crusade. Two Christian armies, one French, the other German, were completely
decimated by the Seljuk armies while on their way to join the battle at Edessa.
A monk named Bernard of Clairvoux was engaged in this one. Following the
crusade nearly forty more years of peace ensued.
The third crusade was called in 1189 by the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick
Barbarossa after the army of Saladin (1137–1193), the famous Kurd who became
the Sultan of Egypt, defeated the crusader army on July 4, 1187, at the Horns
of Hittin, a site just above the Sea of Galilee. It proved to be the most
famous of all the battles during the crusade period. Jerusalem surrendered, and
Saladin dealt humanely with the survivors; there was no sacking or murdering,
and the city was kept open to Christian pilgrims. But Jerusalem’s fall inspired
Barbarossa to lead a French army into Turkey, where he died crossing a creek.
The Seljuks quickly destroyed his army.
There was, however, more to the third
crusade. King Richard the Third of England (the “Lion Heart”) gathered an army
of Norman Knights, set off for the Holy Land, and proceeded to capture Acre and
Jaffa on the Mediterranean Coast, even defeating Saladin at the battle of
Arsuf.
The two commanders treated each other with
respect and signed a peace treaty on September 2, 1192, the terms of which left
Jerusalem in the hands of the Muslims, while the Christians retained the
coastal areas where Acre, Caesarea, and Jaffa are located.
Pope Innocent III in and around 1195 called
the fourth crusade. This one
had nothing to do with the Holy Land or Muslims, but the goal was to liberate
Jerusalem. The French crusaders entered Constantinople, home of the Greek
Orthodox Church, who resented the presence of the Roman Catholics and rose up
against the crusaders. In the battle that resulted, the crusader “Western”
Christians did not kill many Greek “Eastern” Christians, but they did
completely pillage the city. After a short period, the crusaders made off with
their loot and headed for home. Nothing was accomplished.
Pope Honorius III, Innocent’s successor,
could not accept the results of the fourth crusade and called for a fifth
crusade. This time mainly Germans and
Hungarians marched off to Jerusalem by way of Egypt in 1217. The army spent
three years in skirmishes with the Kurdish Ayyubids in Egypt. They failed to
make headway and finally called it quits and sailed home.
The sixth crusade’s outstanding personality
was the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II, who was the grandson of the famous Barbarossa. Frederick II’s daughter
was married to John of Brienne, who now ruled Jerusalem. Thinking that marriage
gave him authority over Jerusalem, he called for the sixth crusade in 1225. Due
to the knowledge and negotiating skills of the remarkable Frederick, the
crusade was peacefully conducted without one battle or casualty.
Frederick had studied a great deal about
Islamic literature, science, and philosophy, which gave him a solid platform
for interaction with the leader of the Islamic army, Malik al-Kamil, who was
the nephew of the great Saladin. The two leaders resolved the confrontation by
signing a ten-year treaty in 1229. (Ten years was the maximum time allowed for
a treaty according to Sharia Law.) Christians and Muslims alike welcomed the
terms of the treaty. Unhappily, the new pope, Pope Gregory IX, hated Frederick
and refused to ratify the treaty, denouncing it vigorously.
Things went from bad to worse after Sultan
Kamil’s death in 1238, when a maverick Turk from Russia named Baibars led a
Mameluk (Muslim) army against Jerusalem, sacking it and slaughtering the
citizens in 1244.
King Louis IX of France called the seventh
crusade. In 1250 King Louis brought an
army to Egypt and sailed up the Nile to Cairo, where Baibars demolished that
army. Baibars warred against everyone, Christian and Muslim alike, in an effort
to establish his power and authority. His hate and murderous anger were mostly
directed toward Christians, and he attacked one city after the other along the
Mediterranean coast—Caesarea, Safad, Jaffa, and Antioch. He killed and enslaved
thousands of Christians. Jerusalem was now firmly in the hands of Muslims, and
the seventh crusade came to an end.
The eighth crusade flowed out of the outrage perpetrated
against Christians in the seventh crusade. Louis IX demanded a new crusade in
the year 1270. His plan was to come through Tunis on the way to Egypt, but a
few days after landing in Tunis he died of dysentery.
Baibars died in 1277 (these crusades could
last for years), and his successor, Sultan Khalil, managed to finally defeat
the crusaders at Acre in 1291, killing or enslaving some 60,000 Christians
there.
Impact
of the Crusades
The
crusades deepened the divide between the Eastern and Western wings of the
Catholic Church, a rift that was already well underway centuries earlier.
Related to that, the crusades greatly
weakened the Byzantine Empire, which succeeded the Holy Roman Empire.
The crusades also permanently embittered
relations between Christians and Muslims, and they are used to this day to
rationalize a continuing hatred that often erupts into violence. The fact that
both Christians and Muslims committed horrible atrocities is often forgotten or
conveniently submerged. Muslims have cited Christian crusader actions as
justification for their own brutality. This is not a surmise, but openly
declared by contemporary Islamic jihadists, whose portfolio of rallying cries
includes something close to, “Remember the crusades.” They legitimize their
call for revenge by pointing to what the Christians did in the crusades. This
is, of course, completely disingenuous but nevertheless effective.
Promotion of religion by force of arms
demonstrates the weakness of Muslim ideals, ethics, and message. To spread the
faith by means of intimidation is the worst possible program, one that no one
can respect. Not only the Muslims but also Christians have been guilty here.
(This topic will be explored in greater detail in the second section of this
essay, “The Inquisitors.”)
As early as the fifth century, and many say
long before, becoming a Christian required baptism by an ordained priest of the
one Catholic and Apostolic Church. Faith and grace now abandoned, the Church
became a power structure and fell into the same tactics employed by many other
secular institutions. Some use the word “Christendom” to describe the Church as
empire, combining religion with the state.
The crusades marked a departure from the
Church’s mission to preach the Gospel to all nations. By picking up the sword,
it was giving in to the barbaric culture of that day. The Church was
intertwined with the state, the state using the Church and the Church using the
state to advance goals and consolidate power.
As a result, the core doctrine of conversion
was severely compromised. To coerce a person into leaving one faith for another
is absolutely unbiblical. Requiring a choice of whether to convert, die, or pay
the tax is not exactly proper evangelism, but the Church was guilty of this
just as were the Muslims, and contemporary Muslims still employ these means. It
cannot be said today that the Christian Church advances by means of force and
fear. (Note: Instances of wrongly motivated attempts to convert so-called
“primitive” people groups were occurring well into the nineteenth century,
e.g., the forcing of Western/Christian culture and religion on Native Americans
on reservations and similar activities by British missionaries in India.
Broadening the argument to include these examples or others is not possible in
the space allowed, but we acknowledge needing to discuss this elsewhere.)
The same mentality that was seen in the
crusades also resulted in the persecution of those we today call evangelical
Christians, especially those who reject infant baptism, transubstantiation
(Jesus being actually present in the Bread and the Cup), and the necessity of
receiving other sacraments in order to go to heaven—in other words, those who
adhere to salvation by grace alone, faith alone, and Christ alone.
***
The story of two ancestors of mine might be
of interest now. The first concerns Sir John Philpott.
John Philpott was a “Salter and Pepperer” (a
grocer) who lived in the latter part of the fourteenth century in London,
England, while the One Hundred Years War with France was underway. He relied on
his merchant fleet to bring foodstuffs into England from the Continent, but a
combination of a weak English king and an aggressive French king meant
Philpott’s business was faltering. He was able, however, to convince the
English king to allow him to outfit his ships into a navy and be crewed by
convicts from London’s prisons, of which there were plenty. The result was a
series of victories by Philpott’s navy, and on the strength of that he was
elected Lord Mayor of London in 1388 and 1389. He was a faithful Christian, and
in his will, he left 100 pounds to be distributed amongst the poor of London at
Christmas time each year. In the old city of London there is still Philpott
Lane where a plaque commemorating this faithful Catholic and Christian man has
been installed.
Then there was another Englishman, again
named John Philpott, this time living in the sixteenth century. He was a
Puritan, meaning he hoped that the newly founded Church of England that broke
away from the Roman Church, precipitated by King Henry VIII, would be
purified—that is, would conform more closely to what we see of the church in
the New Testament. Philpott was forced into the Court of the Inquisitors and
found guilty. Refusing to recant, he was burned at the stake in 1555. (Burning
at the stake was desirable form of execution because it was thought the
destruction of the body made resurrection impossible.)
PART TWO: The Inquisition
Although
the story of the development of the Church in the centuries leading up to the
“Dark Ages” (stretching from approximately AD 500 to 1500) is not so easy to
uncover, there is evidence that the faith of Jesus and the early disciples was
not extinguished. That it was diverted, perverted, and undermined, especially
toward the end of the third century, is plain history, at least as evangelicals
read it.
During that dark time, the vibrant faith we
see in the New Testament gradually shifted to a more formalized, mechanical,
ritualistic, even magical understanding of what it meant to be a follower of
Jesus. Especially after the so-called conversion of Constantine in the early
fourth century, people became members of the Church and were counted among the
faithful, despite their never hearing the real Gospel message or knowing much
of anything about the core doctrines of Scripture.
The power of the Church over salvation, the
only really important issue in life, was under the control of an ecclesiastical
hierarchy. Those who rebelled against this were the targets of the Inquisition,
the first court of which was formed around the year 1231 and continued for some
three or four centuries. From the Church’s point of view, the Inquisition was
necessary, because many good Catholics were turning away from the doctrines of
the Church, especially after publication of the Bible in common languages,
which allowed people to see what the Bible actually taught. For nearly a
thousand years it had been hidden in a dark covering of non-intelligible Latin,
Greek, or Hebrew.
The renaissance of Biblical understanding
forced the established Church to react, and energetically; heresy became the
most heinous of all crimes. There is
evidence that many were troubled by the means used to keep the Church pure.
Ecclesiastical leaders would often plead with secular authorities for sentences
to be carried out mercifully. In the early days of the persecution, Roman
Church officials acted ruthlessly. For instance, the Cathari (or Albigenses)
and the Waldenses were persecuted, sometimes to death, during the 1220s by the
order of Pope Gregory IX.
Fringe Christian groups were not the only
ones to be sought out by the Inquisitors. As with John Philpott in 1555, the
point at the center of the trials had to do with the elements of the Mass,
otherwise known as Communion, Eucharist, or the Lord’s Supper. Along with the
Reformers (i.e., Martin Luther and John Calvin), Philpott believed the bread of
the Eucharist was just bread and the juice in the cup just juice. But the
Church had developed the concept that the bread was transformed by an act of
the priest into the actual body, the flesh, of Jesus. Likewise, the juice
invisibly, magically, became the actual blood of Jesus.
Two Latin words were pronounced by the priest
before the Mass began—hocus pocus—and when the words were pronounced,
the magical power inherited from Peter and passed down through the properly
ordained priesthood transformed the substances, shazam!
How this came to be is not possible to
describe here, but there is an actual history to it. The short version is this:
The Church had become far too Western in its understanding of the Middle
Eastern document we call the Bible, both Old and New Testaments. And when Jesus
said, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man
and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever feeds on my flesh and
drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. For
my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink” (John 6:53-55), the Roman
Church took His words literally.
To take Jesus’ words literally, however,
would have been ludicrous for a Jewish person in the first century. And the
early history of the Church clearly reveals that the passage was taken
metaphorically—after all, the Church was composed mostly of Jews for the first
generation. The point was that the disciples were to trust in and believe in
Jesus as the Savior and that His death on the cross, with His broken body and
shed blood, was the once-forever sacrifice for sin. Therefore, long after the
“Eastern” sense of things was lost, the “Western” mindset misunderstood much of
the nature and means of salvation.
The Inquisition was aimed at Christians, but
Muslims and Jews were also tried, and many were executed. It is only natural
that Muslims and Jews would have a negative reaction to this, and it is
certainly possible that it yet lingers as something else horrible that
Christendom perpetrated and thus could be avenged in whatever era.
During the period of the Inquisition there
were undoubtedly thousands of bishops, priests, and regular members of the
Roman Church who sincerely thought they were being faithful Christians to
support and participate in what they perceived as a cleansing of their Church
from heretical doctrine and practice. Undoubtedly, there were thousands of
Christians who were horrified at what was being done in the name of Jesus
Christ. And during the period of history when the Church and state were wed,
significant resistance was virtually out of the question. Such resistance
finally came in 1517 under the inspiration of a Catholic monk named Martin
Luther.
PART THREE: Yes, No, Maybe
Were those who conducted the Inquisition real
Christians?
Were the crusaders real Christians?
Were the Muslims who fought against the
crusaders real Muslims? Or, to put it another way, are those Muslims who engage
in violent jihad today the real Muslims?
To these questions the answers are, Yes, No,
and Maybe.
Looking
at Christians
It must be
said that no one could possibly know for sure whether real and actual
born-again Christians committed atrocities against Muslims and Jews, in that
day or in this. If a group of careful observers had watched the murder of
Muslims and Jews at the hands of people known as Christians during the crusades
and at other times, would they have known for certain which was the right
conclusion? The proper answer would have to be, No!
Why is this so? The core of the answer lies
in the mystery of conversion. While one can be baptized, join a church, and
even reform his or her life, this is far from genuine Christian conversion.
Being a part of a church does not mean one is a Christian. Conversion means
that the Holy Spirit indwells the one believing in Jesus, the one who has had
all sin removed and forgiven. It is a profound spiritual experience not an
intellectual or emotional one. It is something God does completely apart from
anything an individual can do. It is miracle and mystery. Every pastor who has
ministered to a congregation for ten or more years knows that in that
congregation are those who have truly been born again and those who have not.
Not that every real Christian does right and
lives right. The Christian life is a growing up into the fullness of Christ,
little by little—first as an infant, then a toddler, young child, older child,
adolescent, teenager, young adult, adult, older adult, and senior. Still after
a lifetime of maturing, the Christian is not anywhere perfect until in heaven
and in the presence of our holy God.
Is it possible that a Christian could be
deceived into thinking that killing and persecuting others because they
believed differently is justified? Yes, it is possible.
Might Christians commit horrific acts because
they were told to do so by powerful religious authorities? Maybe. Might
Muslims? Maybe.
Would a Biblically literate Christian believe
he or she was serving God by persecuting or even killing “infidels”? No, unless
there was some unknown source of intimidation going on behind the scenes and/or
such Christian had his or her mind bent to the point that they became merely
tools of evil.
Perhaps the right answer for all of these
questions is, Maybe!
Would persecuting or killing a non-Christian
win approval with God? Would it ensure a place in heaven? To both, the answer
is an unequivocal, No!
Would defending the cause of Christianity,
the Church, a Christian leader, or anything else in all creation by harming
others merit the favor of God? Certainly not! Would dying in defense of the God
of Scripture assure a place in paradise? In no way!
This is my solemn opinion as a follower of
Jesus.
