The Crusades (1096 - 1270):
Killing Muslims and Jews "in the name of Jesus"
Background: There were eight major military crusades inspired by the
Roman Catholic Church in the attempt to free the Holy Land (ancient Israel) from
Muslim dominance and Jewish influences.
Pope Urban II’s sermon kicking off the 1st Crusade:
"Begin the journey to the Holy Sepulcher; conquer that land which the
wicked have seized, the land which was given by God to the children of
Israel and which, as the Scripture says, ‘is all milk and honey’....Undertake
this journey, therefore, for the remission of your sins, with the
assurance of ‘glory which cannot fade’ in the kingdom of heaven....When you
make an armed attack on the enemy, let all those on God’s side cry out
together, ‘God wills it! God wills it!’"
(Source: The Crusades: A Documentary Survey, James A. Brundage, ed.,
1962, pp. 19-20)
The slaughter at Jerusalem as reported by an anonymous eleventh century
chronicler of the 1st Crusade:
"An enormous host coming from all regions and all nations, went in arms
unto Jerusalem and obliged the Jews to be baptized, massacring by thousands
those who refused" (Dan Cohn-Sherbok, The Crucified Jew: Twenty
Centuries of Christian Anti-Semitism, 1992 , p. 41).
2000 – The anticipated "Crusades apology" to Muslims and Jews
(e.g., Jonathan Petre, "Churches prepare Crusades apology," The
Washington Times, 3-22-99, p. A15), turned out to be a bust. Unfortunately,
the "apology" itself doesn’t directly address the Crusades, but it
does vaguely condemn such things as "intolerance" and "the use of
force in the service of truth" (cf., Memory and Reconciliation: The
Church and the Faults of the Past, 03/07/00, @ www.vatican.va)
