Perhaps a better title would be something like Don’t Allow the Crusades to be Thoughtlessly Added to a Parade of Christian Horribles without Knowing More about It, but I wanted to get your attention.
Rodney Stark’s God’s Batallions is an outstanding book designed to help the educated reader (not only the academic reader) understand the Crusades. You know the routine. You want to talk about Christianity and the village atheist wonders just how you are getting past the horrors of the Crusades and the Inquisition. This book answers the question with regard to the Crusades. Stark brilliantly explains how the Crusades started, what happened in the course of events, and why they finally ended. All in all, the western church comes off pretty sympathetically. Readers who know Stark find it easy to trust him because he always questions excessive claims and makes sure to back his own assertions up with data.
What becomes clear is that the Crusades failed for three reasons.
First, despite the fact that the westerners regularly decimated their Muslim rivals in combat thanks to superior tactics and technology, they were always on the wrong end of a numbers game. The western armies arrived in the Holy Land already diminished from disease and harrying attacks along the way. They never had large enough armies to begin with. And whenever they secured their objectives, a substantial number of troops and/or nobles would return home leaving ridiculously small numbers to hold on, which amazingly, they did for decades at a time.
Second, Crusading was expensive. Although it has been suggested the Crusades were about wealth, nobles didn’t get rich on them. They borrowed, scraped, and imposed heavy taxes just to be able to afford equipping, paying, and feeding their armies. When they captured an area, the land was not revenue-producing in the same way their European farm land was.
Third, the Byzantines never came through with the help they promised. Crusaders regularly expected help from the Comnenus family of rulers which began the Crusades by appealing to the pope for help. But the help was virtually never forthcoming. Had the Byzantine empire allied itself with the Crusaders, the Holy Land might still be in Christian hands today.
Read for yourself. I found the book highly enjoyable. Rodney Stark has reached the point to which many academics aspire. He writes about things that interest him for a mass audience with the aid of a major publishing company (Harper). And the books come to us rather than sitting staidly in university libraries.
February 26th, 2010 | 3:01 pm | #1
I have not read Mr. Stark’s book so I wonder if the Had the Byzantine empire allied itself with the Crusaders, the Holy Land might still be in Christian hands today comment is yours or his.
Prior to the First Crusade the Byzantines had been fighting the Muslim hordes more or less continuously for 400 years without any Western help, and then fought them alone for another 400 years after the West quit the field. Is there any mention of the sacking of Constantinople by the Western Crusaders? Or that many Western nobles did not complete the trip to Jerusalem but instead established their own little fiefdoms within the Eastern Empire?
Sorry for the diversion but the record seems a bit spotted. I do not want to diminish the nobility of the First Crusade. Hundreds of Western nobles mortgaged their ancestral lands to finance the campaign with the expectation that they would not survive, or even if they did survive they knew they would likely not be able to redeem those mortgages. Thousands of commoners also gave up everything they had to participate in the liberation of the Holy Land.
Let us not forget that before the Muslim horde rode out of Arabia that the African Mediterranean coast was uniformly Christian, by choice. Their blood is still good title regardless of the passage of time. The closest Mohammed ever got to Jerusalem was in a dream.
February 26th, 2010 | 5:28 pm | #2
Yes, the sack of Constantinople is explored. I have a whole new opinion of that event, now.
February 27th, 2010 | 3:07 pm | #3
[...] Church Architecture, and Liberty University’s Strangest Student Jump to Comments Hunter Baker has a post up at Evangel on Rodney Stark’s new book on the crusades, God’s Battalions. Here’s what he [...]
February 27th, 2010 | 5:59 pm | #4
Hunter: What is your new and mysterious opinion of the sack of Constantinople?
February 27th, 2010 | 11:45 pm | #5
Dear Mr. H. Baker:
I have read God’s Battalions and thought it was excellent. In fact, your post and a post by Mr. F. Beckwith on his Return to Rome blog sparked some insight in me that you may find humorous and that I wrote about on my blog at:
http://radosmiksa.blogspot.com/2010/02/miksas-lawall-catholics-adopt-it-now.html
Take care and God Bless,
RD Miksa
radosmiksa.blogspot.com
February 28th, 2010 | 2:22 pm | #6
Anthony, my new and mysterious opinion is that the Crusaders had been jerked around by Constantinople for a few centuries, agreed to restore one of its rulers to the throne only to have him renege on his promise of support, and they decided to make themselves whole by sacking the place. Not wonderful, but not the kind of unexplainable savagery we often assume it to have been.
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