They use this latter point to summarize the goals of the First Crusade (357). Po-chia Hsia, and Bonnie Smith in their Challenge of the West (1995) also emphasize the papacy's desire to lead and quote the pope's admonition to "wrest that land from the wicked race, and subject it to yourselves" (355). In 1208, Pope Innocent III proclaimed a Crusade against the Albigensians, a heretical sect" (284).
"Crusades were also mounted against groups perceived as Christian Europe's social enemies. To give but two examples from good textbooks: John McKay, Bennett Hill, and John Buckler, in A History of Western Society (1995), 282–86, emphasize the role of the papacy in secular affairs in Europe and in religious leadership over the Orthodox Church: "the papacy claimed to be outraged that the holy city was in the hands of unbelievers" and "the papacy actually feared that the Seljuk Turks would be less accommodating to Christian pilgrims than the Muslims had been" ( sic, 282). The crusader states, too, had Near Eastern roots in the Armenian and Arab Christian communities, with whom the Franks occasionally intermarried, and in their frequent alliances with Moslem states.Ī subtheme to colonialism emphasizes Realpolitik, power politics, and Christian fanaticism. The understandable modern Arab nationalist version is that Israel is the new crusader state, a military/religious embodiment of European colonialism this finds increasing support on American campuses even though more than half of the Hebrew-speaking population of Israel is descended from Near Eastern Jews (inaccurately referred to as Sephardic) and, therefore, fits poorly into the stereotypical view of the Israeli citizen as a Zionist, an escapee from the Holocaust, or an emigrant from Russia. They conclude, "Western colonialism in the Holy Land was only the beginning of a long history of colonialism that has continued until modern times" (329). In addition, the Crusades opened the first chapter in the history of western colonialism" (322–23). Thus, the Crusades can be seen as part of a chapter in papal and religious history. New York: Norton, 1998), "The rise and fall of the crusading movement was closely related to the fortunes of the high-medieval papal monarchy. To cite from one of the better textbooks, Robert Lerner, Standish Meacham, and Edward Burns, Western Civilizations: Their History and Their Culture (13th edition. Many textbooks present the still dominant view that the Crusades were a form of European colonialism. Our current interpretations of the Crusades, powerful though they were in their day and capable as they still remain of providing important insights into their motivations and outcomes, are at least a generation out of date. And since the present is always in a state of flux it follows that interpretations and judgments alter with time" (256). As Jonathan Riley-Smith noted in The Crusades: A Short History (1987), "history is a reconciliation of the past with the present otherwise it would be incomprehensible to those for whom it is written. Students and educated laity expect to see the relevance of anything they read or watch. This observation, crudely put, is more subtle than it might appear issues that seem burning bright in the ivory tower are, for average citizens, hazy faraway flashes from the lighthouses of the mind. In the case of the medievalist, there are good reasons for a time lag: not only is there an age difference between lecturer and audience, but in the age of specialization, faculty have more incentive to publish for their peers than to address their students or the educated general public. Instant updates are possible only in Orwell's 1984. Teachers may find it harder to buy legal-sized yellow note pads, but the harried lecturer recycling outdated material will exist forever. Just as great books go out of print, so stimulating theories go out of date. Instead, historians continue to emphasize aspects of the crusading experience that apply better to the first decade of our century than to the last.
Today's historians have been slow to see connections between medieval efforts to protect commerce, ensure access to holy places, and build coalitions that could give potential aggressors pause, and modern international peacekeeping operations. This seems to be especially true regarding the Crusades, one of the greatest adventures of Western civilization, fraught as they were by impressive feats of arms and spectacular defeats. Sometimes there is a certain inertia in interpretations, a rigor mortis grip by the dead hand of the past. It may be a commonplace to say that interpretations of historical events often tell us as much about the historian's own era as about the age that is supposedly being described, but it is at best only partly true.
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