05a. The Crusades - Pilgrimage or Holy War? Part 1/2 05a. Die Kreuzzüge – Pilgerfahrt oder Heiliger Krieg? Teil 1/2 05a. Οι Σταυροφορίες - προσκύνημα ή ιερός πόλεμος; Μέρος 1/2 05a. Las Cruzadas: ¿peregrinación o guerra santa? Parte 1/2 05a. Les croisades - Pèlerinage ou guerre sainte ? Partie 1/2 05a. Le Crociate: pellegrinaggio o guerra santa? Parte 1/2 05a.十字軍-巡礼か聖戦か？パート1/2 05a. As Cruzadas - Peregrinação ou Guerra Santa? Parte 1/2 05a. Крестовые походы - паломничество или священная война? Часть 1/2 05a. Haçlı Seferleri - Hac Yolculuğu mu Kutsal Savaş mı? Bölüm 1/2 05a. Хрестові походи - паломництво чи священна війна? Частина 1/2 05a.十字军东征--朝圣还是圣战？第 1/2 部分 05a.十字軍東征——朝聖還是聖戰？第 1/2 部分

Hi there! My name’s John Green; this is Crash Course World History, and today we’re going to talk about the Crusades.

Ohhh, Stan, do we have to talk about the Crusades? I hate them...

Here’s the thing about the Crusades, which were a series of military expeditions from parts of Europe to the Eastern coast of the Mediterranean.

The real reason they feature so prominently in history is because we’ve endlessly romanticized the story of the Crusades.

We’ve created this simple narrative with characters to root for and root against, and it’s all been endlessly idealized by the likes of Sir Walter Scott. An there are knights with swords and Lion hearts...

NO, STAN. LIONHEARTS.

Thank you.

[music intro]

Let’s start by saying that initially the Crusades were not a “holy war” on the part of Europeans against Islam, but in important ways the Crusades were driven by religious faith. Lassen Sie uns zunächst sagen, dass die Kreuzzüge ursprünglich kein „heiliger Krieg“ der Europäer gegen den Islam waren, sondern dass die Kreuzzüge in wichtiger Weise vom religiösen Glauben angetrieben wurden. [non-litigious melody reminiscent of a totally litigious melody plays] [Eine nicht-streitige Melodie, die an eine völlig streitige Melodie erinnert, spielt]

Mr. Green, Mr. Green! Religion causes all wars. Imagine no war—

I’m gonna cut you off right there before you violate copyright, Me-from-the-past. Ich werde dich sofort abschneiden, bevor du das Urheberrecht verstößt, Ich-aus-der-Vergangenheit. But as usual, you’re wrong. Simple readings of history are rarely sufficient. Die einfache Lektüre der Geschichte ist selten ausreichend. By the way, when did my handwriting get so much better? I mean, if the Crusades had been brought on by the lightning-fast rise of Islamic empires and a desire to keep in Christian hands the land of Jesus, then the Crusades would’ve started in the 8th century. Ich meine, wenn die Kreuzzüge durch den rasanten Aufstieg islamischer Reiche und den Wunsch, das Land Jesu in christlichen Händen zu behalten, ausgelöst worden wären, dann hätten die Kreuzzüge im 8. Jahrhundert begonnen.

But early Islamic dynasties, like the Umayyads and the Abbasids, were perfectly happy with Christians and Jews living among them, as long as they paid a tax. And plus the Christian pilgrimage business was awesome for the Islamic Empire’s economy. But then a new group of Muslims, the Seljuk Turks, moved into the region and they sacked the holy cities and made it much more difficult for Christians to make their pilgrimages. And while they quickly realized their mistake, it was already too late.

The Byzantines, who’d had their literal-asses kicked at the Battle of Manzikert in 1071, felt the threat and called upon the west for help. So the first official crusade began with a call to arms from Pope Urban II in 1095. This was partly because Urban wanted to unite Europe and he’d figured out the lesson the rest of us learn from alien invasion movies: The best way to get people to unite is to give them a common enemy. Das lag zum Teil daran, dass Urban Europa vereinen wollte und er die Lektion herausgefunden hatte, die der Rest von uns aus Alien-Invasion-Filmen lernt: Der beste Weg, Menschen zur Vereinigung zu bewegen, besteht darin, ihnen einen gemeinsamen Feind zu geben.

So Urban called on all the bickering knights and nobility of Europe, and he saideth unto his people:

“Let us go forth and help the Byzantines because then maybe they will acknowledge my awesomeness and get rid of their stupid Not Having Me as Pope thing, and while we are at it, let’s liberate Jerusalem!” I’m paraphrasing, by the way. „Lasst uns losgehen und den Byzantinern helfen, denn dann werden sie vielleicht meine Großartigkeit anerkennen und ihre dumme Sache, mich nicht als Papst zu haben, loswerden, und wenn wir schon dabei sind, lasst uns Jerusalem befreien!“ Ich paraphrasiere übrigens.

Shifting the focus to Jerusalem is really important, because the Crusades were not primarily military operations; they were pilgrimages. Theologically, Christianity didn’t have an idea of a holy war – like, war might be just, but fighting wasn’t something that got you into heaven. But pilgrimage to a holy shrine could help you out on that front, and Urban had the key insight to pitch the Crusade as a pilgrimage with a touch of warring on the side. Aber eine Pilgerfahrt zu einem heiligen Schrein könnte Ihnen an dieser Front weiterhelfen, und Urban hatte die entscheidende Einsicht, den Kreuzzug als eine Pilgerreise mit einem Hauch von Krieg nebenbei darzustellen. I do the same thing to my kid every night: I’m not feeding you dinner featuring animal crackers. Ich mache mit meinem Kind jeden Abend das Gleiche: Ich füttere dich nicht mit einem Abendessen mit Tiercrackern. I’m feeding you animal crackers featuring a dinner. Ich füttere dich mit Tiercrackern zum Abendessen. Oh, it’s time for the open letter?

Oh, it’s time for the open letter?

[slides through for chair switcheroo]

An Open Letter to Animal Crackers: But first let’s see what’s in the Secret Compartment today.

Oh, it’s animal crackers. Thanks, Stan...

Hi there, Animal Crackers, it’s me, John Green. Thanks for being delicious, but let me throw out a crazy idea here: Maybe foods that are ALREADY DELICIOUS do not need the added benefit of being PLEASINGLY SHAPED.

I mean, why can’t I give my kid animal spinach or animal sweet potato or even animal cooked animal?

I mean, we can put a man on Mars but we can’t make spinach shaped like an elephant?

What Stan? We haven’t put a man on Mars?

Stupid world, always disappointing me.

Best wishes, John Green.

One last myth to dispell: The Crusades also were NOT an early example of European colonization of the Middle East, even if they did create some European-ish kingdoms there for a while. That much later, post-and-anti-colonialist view that comes, at least partially, out of a Marxist interpretation of history.

In the case of the Crusades, it was argued, the knights who went adventuring in the Levant were the second and third sons of wealthy nobles who, because of European inheritance rules, had little to look forward to by staying in Europe and lots to gain – in terms of plunder – by going to the East.

Cool theory, bro, but it’s not true.

First, most of the people who responded to the call to Crusade weren’t knights at all; they were poor people. And secondly, most of the nobles who did go crusading were lords of estates, not their wastrel kids.

But more importantly, that analysis ignores religious motivations. We’ve approached religions as historical phenomena—thinking about how, for instance, the capricious environment of Mesopotamia led to a capricious cadre of Mesopotamian gods. But just as the world shapes religion, religion also shapes the world. And some modern historians might ignore religious motivations, but medieval crusaders sure as hell didn’t.

I mean, when people came up with that idiom, they clearly thought Hell was for sure. To the Crusaders, they were taking up arms to protect Christ and his kingdom. And what better way to show your devotion to God than putting a cross on your sleeve, spending 5 to 6 times your annual income to outfit yourself and all your horses, and heading for the Holy Land?

So when these people cried out “God Wills It!” to explain their reasons for going, we should do them the favor of believing them. And the results of the First Crusade seemed to indicate that God had willed it. Following the lead of roving preachers with names like Peter the Rabbit-Peter the Hermit?

Stan; you’re always making history less cool!

Fine, following preachers like Peter the Hermit, thousands of peasants and nobles alike volunteered for the First Crusade. It got off to kind of a rough start because pilgrims kept robbing those they encountered on the way.

Plus, there was no real leader so they were constant rivalries between nobles about who could supply the most troops. Notable among the notables were Godfrey of Bouillon, Bohemond of Taranto, and Raymond of Toulouse. But despite the rivalries, and the disorganization the crusaders were remarkably — some would say miraculously — successful.

By the time they arrived in the Levant they were fighting not against the Seljuk Turks but against Fatimid Egyptians, who had captured the Holy Land from the Seljuks, thereby making the Turks none too pleased with the Egyptians.

At Antioch the Crusaders reversed a seemingly hopeless situation when a peasant found a spear that had pierced the side of Christ’s side hidden under a church, thereby raising morale enough to win the day. And then they did the impossible: They took Jerusalem, securing it for Christendom and famously killing a lot of people in the al-Asqa mosque.

Now the Crusaders succeeded in part because the Turkish Muslims, who were Sunnis, did not step up to help the Egyptians, who were Shia. But that kind of complicated, intra-Islamic rivalry gets in the way of the awesome narrative: The Christians just saw it as a miracle. So by 1100CE European nobles held both Antioch and Jerusalem as Latin Christian kingdoms.

I say Latin to make the point that there were lots of Christians living in these cities before the Crusaders arrived, they just weren’t Catholic- they were Orthodox, a fact that will become relevant shortly. We’re going to skip the second Crusade because it bores me and move on to the Third Crusade because it’s the famous one. Broadly speaking, the third Crusade was a European response to the emergence of a new Islamic power, neither Turkish nor Abbasid: the Egyptian (although he was really a Kurd) Sultan al-Malik al-Nasir Salah ed-Din Yusuf, better known to the west as Saladin.