Crusades and the Bible?

Question

Can the crusades be justified by the Bible? I mean it goes against atleast half of the 'Ten Commandments'. So was it really in "The name of God", or just for the moneny and hype?

Answer 1

No, the Bible does not justify the Crusades. In any way. As a Catholic, it's a dark part of our history, and one that is rather embarrassing. :/

Answer 2

Of course, the crusades *can* be justified by the bible. The bible can be misused (unfortunately) to justify nearly any action someone wishes to justify.

Also, it does *not* go against half of the 10 commandments. You could make a case for 3 or 4 (depending on how you divide them - murder, steal and covet). However, it is not really clear (as mentioned very well by other answers) if these were the cause for the crusades (I mean murder, stealing and covetousness). No doubt, there were many who had these reasons for *joining* a crusade, but that is not the same as a reason for *initiating* a crusade.

Personally, I always felt that it was "in the name of God", but gained support because of 1) the potential gain 2) a hatred for the Muslims 3) a desire to serve God. The reason for *initiating* the crusades may very well have been the recovery of (traditionally) Christian land, the defeat of a "heretic" religion that was believed to be leading people to hell, and as a pre-emptive strike against the (eventual) attacks on Europe by the Muslims. Rome very nearly did fall to the Muslims, and Constantinople did. More crusades may have prevented the latter.

Jim, http://www.jimpettis.com/wheel/

Answer 3

Yes, the Crusaders were justifiable ...Islam/Muslims have been slaughtering Christians since its beginning 7th century...Crusaders came about in the 11th century to defend the Christians from such Barbarians called Islam...And YES Crusaders were brought about by the One True God...If any of YOU really read the Holy Bible you have known there are many wars mentioned in the Holy Bible...There was even a War in Heaven when Lucifer and other fallen angels were cast out of heaven upon the earth known by the name (Iraq) is where they have fallen upon the earth... Islam is very well known as a Satanic cult and they even carry the symbol "Crescent Moon & Star" known as Satanic symbol... Islam the devil is at WAR with the One True God and those that follow the One True God...It was the devil that gave birth to Islam 500 years after the crucifixion of Jesus The Son Of God...
(Allah is the devil that carry many names)

Answer 4

The real reasons behind the Crusades are not as simple as some would have us believe. Some of the Crusaders were evil, some were virtuous. Some believed they were acting in the interests of Christianity, others were acting out of desire for power and wealth.

There is an excellent essay on the Crusades by the Rev. Sir George William Cox (see source below) which is definitely worth reading and will give some interesting answers to your question.

The final sentences of Cox's essay are as follows:

"If, again, of their leaders some showed themselves men of merciless cruelty and insatiable greed, there were others who like Tancred approached the ideal of the knightly chivalry of a later generation, and others again whose self-sacrifice, charity, and heroic patience furnish an example for all time. The ulterior results of the crusades were the breaking up of the feudal system the abolition of serfdom, the supremacy of a common law over the independent jurisdiction of chief who claimed the right of private wars; and if for the time they led to deeds of iniquity which it would be monstrous even to palliate, it must be admitted that in their influence on later ages the evil has been assuredly outweighed by the good."

Answer 5

No, they cannot. Forcing the Gospel by bloodshed is never condoned.

It was most likely for the money and the hype and the glory of being a "warrior for God." Some Crusading knights found out the hard way. They were leaving their family and their livelihood behind to go find riches with little chance of coming back home (considering that the guy is the breadwinner of the family).

Answer 6

The crusades were a mistake in the history of Christianity and an example of what happens when a bunch of ignorant people follow the word of one man of questionable motive.

Answer 7

You are correct. It was a human need to own and occupy the holy land. Jesus even said , there would be a time when the true believers would flee to the mountains, that God was a spirit and could be worshiped in spirit from anywhere.
He warned of the abomination of desolation, that is The devil sitting in the holy places , would occur.

The Bible has nothing to do with the crusades.

Answer 8

The crusades were defensive actions (at least the ones endorsed by the church where) to counter muslim aggresion and expansion into christian (more accuratly into byzantine) territory. And as muslims are hell-bent on wiping out every religion till Islam rules the world it seems to be a very sensible thung to do. (E-mail me and I can prove [e-mail]) As to it being justified the Bible does say it alright to save the innocent from the guilty. And if the guilty refuse to stop and the only way to stop them is extreme measures then it is justified.

Answer 9

It was a simple "believe in my version of god or die" and money/control. All religions are about money and control, that is why they were invented

The hardcore will find the all justifacation they need in whatever bible they read.

Answer 10

Misconceptions about the Crusades are all too common. The Crusades are generally portrayed as a series of holy wars against Islam led by power-mad popes and fought by religious fanatics. They are supposed to have been the epitome of self-righteousness and intolerance, a black stain on the history of the Catholic Church in particular and Western civilization in general. A breed of proto-imperialists, the Crusaders introduced Western aggression to the peaceful Middle East and then deformed the enlightened Muslim culture, leaving it in ruins. For variations on this theme, one need not look far. See, for example, Steven Runciman's famous three-volume epic, History of the Crusades, or the BBC/A&E documentary, The Crusades, hosted by Terry Jones. Both are terrible history yet wonderfully entertaining.

So what is the truth about the Crusades? Scholars are still working some of that out. But much can already be said with certainty. For starters, the Crusades to the East were in every way defensive wars. They were a direct response to Muslim aggression-an attempt to turn back or defend against Muslim conquests of Christian lands.

Christians in the eleventh century were not paranoid fanatics. Muslims really were gunning for them. While Muslims can be peaceful, Islam was born in war and grew the same way. From the time of Mohammed, the means of Muslim expansion was always the sword. Muslim thought divides the world into two spheres, the Abode of Islam and the Abode of War. Christianity-and for that matter any other non-Muslim religion-has no abode. Christians and Jews can be tolerated within a Muslim state under Muslim rule. But, in traditional Islam, Christian and Jewish states must be destroyed and their lands conquered. When Mohammed was waging war against Mecca in the seventh century, Christianity was the dominant religion of power and wealth. As the faith of the Roman Empire, it spanned the entire Mediterranean, including the Middle East, where it was born. The Christian world, therefore, was a prime target for the earliest caliphs, and it would remain so for Muslim leaders for the next thousand years.

With enormous energy, the warriors of Islam struck out against the Christians shortly after Mohammed's death. They were extremely successful. Palestine, Syria, and Egypt-once the most heavily Christian areas in the world-quickly succumbed. By the eighth century, Muslim armies had conquered all of Christian North Africa and Spain. In the eleventh century, the Seljuk Turks conquered Asia Minor (modern Turkey), which had been Christian since the time of St. Paul. The old Roman Empire, known to modern historians as the Byzantine Empire, was reduced to little more than Greece. In desperation, the emperor in Constantinople sent word to the Christians of western Europe asking them to aid their brothers and sisters in the East.

That is what gave birth to the Crusades. They were not the brainchild of an ambitious pope or rapacious knights but a response to more than four centuries of conquests in which Muslims had already captured two-thirds of the old Christian world. At some point, Christianity as a faith and a culture had to defend itself or be subsumed by Islam. The Crusades were that defense.

Pope Urban II called upon the knights of Christendom to push back the conquests of Islam at the Council of Clermont in 1095. The response was tremendous. Many thousands of warriors took the vow of the cross and prepared for war. Why did they do it? The answer to that question has been badly misunderstood. In the wake of the Enlightenment, it was usually asserted that Crusaders were merely lacklands and ne'er-do-wells who took advantage of an opportunity to rob and pillage in a faraway land. The Crusaders' expressed sentiments of piety, self-sacrifice, and love for God were obviously not to be taken seriously. They were only a front for darker designs.

During the past two decades, computer-assisted charter studies have demolished that contrivance. Scholars have discovered that crusading knights were generally wealthy men with plenty of their own land in Europe. Nevertheless, they willingly gave up everything to undertake the holy mission. Crusading was not cheap. Even wealthy lords could easily impoverish themselves and their families by joining a Crusade. They did so not because they expected material wealth (which many of them had already) but because they hoped to store up treasure where rust and moth could not corrupt. They were keenly aware of their sinfulness and eager to undertake the hardships of the Crusade as a penitential act of charity and love. Europe is littered with thousands of medieval charters attesting to these sentiments, charters in which these men still speak to us today if we will listen. Of course, they were not opposed to capturing booty if it could be had. But the truth is that the Crusades were notoriously bad for plunder. A few people got rich, but the vast majority returned with nothing.