Three Myths about the Crusades What They Mean for Christian Witness
Paul Robinson
The Paris attacks carried out by the self-proclaimed Islamic State (ISIS) remain in the headlines as I write this article. By the time you read these words, the memory will have faded somewhat but perhaps only to be replaced by news of the latest terror attack by ISIS, Boko Haram, or another jihadist group. Terror attacks are nothing new, and significant attacks predate the destruction of the World Trade Center by followers of Osama bin Laden. It seems—and this perception is often reinforced by news reporting and political commentators—that conflict between Islam and Christianity has been a constant since the time of the Crusades, which are often portrayed as a sustained attack by European powers on a peaceful Muslim world. In fact, 9/11 and its aftermath provoked a flurry of publications on the Crusades precisely because of this connection.1 In addition, many blame Christianity for initiating and provoking this current state of hostility between East and West. What is fact and fiction in this widely accepted narrative? And what does the truth about the Crusades mean for Christian witness? Those are two of the questions posed in the seminary class I teach on the Crusades. The answers routinely surprise us, because we, too, have consumed through news media, literature, and film certain standard ideas about the Crusades that most often have only a tenuous connection to historical fact. One thing is certain: most people who mention the Crusades in the context of relations between Christians and Muslims or as a criticism of Christianity know surprisingly little about them.
What is a Crusade? So we should begin with a brief summary of what the Crusades were. That is more difficult than it might seem because historians do not agree on what defines a Crusade. For many, only the official military expeditions launched from Europe to the Holy Land and sanctioned by the pope count as Crusades. Historians using this definition normally count eight or nine Crusades beginning with the first (1096−1099) and ending with the fall of Acre (1291), the last crusader-held city in the Holy Land, to the Egyptians. Yet even with this basic definition, there is no agreement after the fourth Paul Robinson is professor of historical theology and dean of the faculty at Concordia Seminary, Saint Louis. Robinson became interested in the Middle Ages precisely because Lutherans seemed to say so little about the time between Augustine and Luther—despite the fact that it comprises one out of two millennia in the history of the church to this point. 28