Why The Crusades Were Awesome, Actually

in 2005 the film Kingdom of Heaven was released to the world the film takes place during the major historical conflict between the Christian world and the Islamic world that we today call the Crusades beginning in 1096 Catholic Europeans embarked on quests to retake the holy land and spread the faith to new areas of the globe you would think that in historical drama like this we would get a fair portrayal of both sides with the nuances of the conflict being shown we don't the film portrays the Christian Crusaders as bloodthirsty barbarians while their Islamic opponents are

shown as intelligent and peaceful now it should be said that Ridley Scott the director of the film is an atheist so we can see why he deliberately decided to portray things this way but regardless of Scott's motivation the portrayal of the Crusades and Kingdom of Heaven reflects how they've been understood by a majority of westerners for decades documentaries like the History Channel's mankind the Story of Us single out the Crusades as a uniquely evil chapter of human in history I think of all the wars fought over religion the Crusades belong in their own category it

is one of the most shameful undertakings ever embarked upon by our species in all of these cases the same narrative is presented one day crazy Christians decided to attack the peaceful and enlightened Islamic world just because they could the events are held as a staple of why we need separation of church and state and why Catholicism should have no place in government we're led to believe that if Christians have power again they'll start unnecessary Wars of religion just like the Crusades but in reality there are few events in history more misunderstood than the Crusades this

is why I'm making this video the popular understanding of the Crusades is dead wrong and I'm here to explain why in this video you'll be finding out why the Crusades were not only morally Justified but were actually a historic achievement buckle up because there's a lot to cover [Music] let's travel back in time to 600 a day roughly 500 years before the first crusade this is a map of the Christian world at that time all the highlighted areas show where Christianity had spread and become the majority religion wait a minute is that the Middle East

and North Africa yes it is these two areas used to be Christian people today think of these as Muslim lands but that was not always the case it all began when Christianity spread far and wide after being legalized by Emperor Constantine the Great with the Edict of Milan this led to the christianization of both the Western and Eastern Roman Empire even as the western part of the empire fell to barbarians Christianity remained and most of the barbarians also converted so if that happened in Europe what happened in the Middle East and North Africa in the

mid-600s air warlord sprang it of the Arabian Peninsula and began conquering everything in their path they brought with them their own religion Islam and unlike European barbarians they did not convert Christianity the Middle East at the time was dominated by two superpowers the Christian Eastern Roman Empire or the Byzantine Empire and the zoroastrian sassanid Empire unfortunately for them both they had just fought each other in a gigantic War lasting 25 years and it drained themselves of Key Resources because of this neither was prepared for the invasions that hit them the byzantines lost all of Africa

in the Levant while the assassinate Empire collapsed completely the most important loss for the Christian World though was the loss of the Holy Land by 900 A.D Islam had expanded by Conquest all the way to France and southern Italy now I'm not going to moralize about this conquest and Wars of expansion have been common all through history and Islam followed in that same mold however Islam did take things a step further with its concept of jihad or holy war Muhammad was a conqueror who took slaves and Islam has sought to emulate his example ever since

as a note this is also why slavery has always been common in the Islamic world and continues to be practiced there to this very day but regardless of the morality of the Islamic conquests they were nonetheless Invaders who invaded the Christian World Christians in conquered lands were second-class citizens and many were taken as slaves Christian inhabitants had to pay an enormous tax called the Demi tax and their churches were often shut down because of Islamic policies over the centuries Christianity in the Middle East and North Africa shrunk from a large majority to a tiny minority

but it actually gets even worse foreign Empire the Mediterranean Sea was a bread basket of Commerce and trade the Romans had successfully Stamped Out piracy and created some of the safest waterways in the entire world Islamic piracy brought all of this to an end from bases in North Africa and the Middle East they turned the Mediterranean into an unsafe hell hole this crashed the European economy and made Europe a miserable place for Commerce for almost 400 years Islam's so-called Golden Age came at Europe and Christianity's expense this is the true reason that many consider the

year's 600 A.D to 1000 A.D a dark age for Europe it was literally cut off from the entire world and constantly under attack it was in this hellish environment that Christendom finally started to have enough the first Rumblings for a crusade came in 846 when an Arabic expedition to Sicily sailed up the Tiber River and sacked Saint Peters in Rome a cyanide in France called for Chris sovereigns to Rally against the enemies of Christ and the Pope Leo IV offered a Heavenly reward to those who died fighting the Muslims but it was around one thousand

a day when things really escalated on multiple fronts in the west the Islamic caliphate of Cordoba and Iberia began expanding North it conquered burned and enslaved its way through multiple Christian cities including Barcelona and Leon it was this expansion campaign that finally provoked the Christian kingdoms to launch the Reconquista to retake Iberia from Islam but if things looked rough in Western Christendom they were even worse in the east in the late 900s a Central Asian Muslim group called the seljuk Turks began migrating into Anatolia in 1064 they completely conquered Armenia and sacked its capital Ani

the city never recovered from this brutality and remains a ruin to this very day almost all of the Armenian population had to migrate Southeast to Celestia creating an entire New Kingdom called selician Armenia in other words Islam had made the Armenian Homeland unlivable the Turks then turned their expansion into the Byzantine Empire they began invading Western Anatolia in droves the byzantines tried to launch counter-attacks but were ultimately defeated at the Battle of Massacre after this defeat Turks began Mass migrating into Anatolia completely altering its demographics another region of the Christian world had just become Islamic

by force here's how historian John Jay O'Neill describes the circumstances these then are the major political events which prefigured the First Crusade within a span of 35 years the Turks had seized control of Christian territories larger than the entire region of France and now they were a real threat to Europe Now by this point the Byzantine Empire realized it was incapable of stopping the Islamic hordes by itself Emperor Alexius kamninis made a desperate appeal to the pope and Western Christendom for Aid this was a major deal because eastern and western Christendom had been in Schism

for almost 50 years by this point the Catholic pope and the Orthodox Patriarchs did not get along to put it lightly but the issue had become that serious that they were now willing to cooperate what made matters even more urgent was that Turks had begun persecuting Christian pilgrims in the Holy Land priests like Peter The Hermit who would become one of the greatest Advocates of the Crusades witnessed this firsthand this is the geopolitical environment that led to the First Crusade being called now does it seem unreasonable when you get all this other context this is

what Catholic Europeans knew about Islam on the eve of the First Crusade Muslims were enemies of Christ they waged Wars against non-combatants and enslaved women and children and they had conquered all of Iberia Anatolia and threatened France and Italy it was important that this all happened at the turn of the first Millennia by this time the elites of Europe were finally starting to become much wealthier and better educated they were developing a much stronger grasp of history and world affairs Europe was safer and more interconnected than any time since the Roman Empire they were beginning

to truly understand just how much damage Islam had done to the Christian world and how much of a civilizational threat it's still represented all the pieces were now in place for the Crusades to be launched thank you in 1095 the moment had arrived Pope Urban II called for the First Crusade to retake the holy land and drive back Islam it would be the first of many an excerpt from Urban's Crusade speech reads your brethren who live in the East are in urgent need of your help and you must hasten to give them the aid which

has been promised them the heathens have killed many and they have destroyed churches and devastated the Greek Empire if you permit them to continue with impunity the faithful of God will be much more widely attacked by them on this account I or rather the Lord beseech you as Christ's Heralds to publish this everywhere and to persuade all people of whatever rank to carry Aid promptly to those Christians let therefore hatred depart from among you let your quarrels end let War cease and let all dissensions and controversies slumber it's important to point out how Pope Urban

speech emphasized not only the defense of Christendom but also the end of internal Wars between Christian kingdoms the pope envisioned an International Brotherhood of Catholics who fought not each other but their external threats in any case the call for Crusade was extremely well received the news spread through all of Europe like wildfire tens of thousands of faithful Catholics all across Europe answered the Pope's call lowly peasants ambitious Knights even Kings French English Flemish German people from all walks of life and all nationalities were inspired to fight for Christendom it's not really appreciated how much of

an accomplishment that this alone was it's really something entirely unique in human history the Catholic church had created a multinational Network that United Europeans of all stripes and ethnicities under a common Faith with common goals so many different Europeans being united by one religion and engaging in a civilization-wide struggle had not happened before and has not happened since Catholicism achieved what hundreds of other religions and ideologies could not and perhaps this is why our modern secular system demonizes the Crusades been looking back now did every Crusade always go the best it could have gone no

of course not some Crusades were huge successes like the Reconquista While others were dismal failures like The Fourth Crusade but even the failures are understandable in context Crusaders were going halfway across the world to fight unfamiliar enemies on their own home turf the logistics of the Crusades alone were a Monumental undertaking and despite all these challenges the Christian forces still often came out on top the First Crusade could really only be qualified as a roaring success Crusaders defeated almost every Muslim army they encountered and captured Jerusalem for the first time in hundreds of years the

holy land was back under Christian control the First Crusade also established Crusader states that would remain in the Middle East for another century one Crusade I personally like was the sixth Crusade Jerusalem had fallen back into Muslim hands but they had started to fight each other in a civil war Emperor Frederick II of the Holy Roman Empire negotiated a peaceful transfer of Jerusalem back into Christian rule Jerusalem was retaken without a single drop of blood being spilled a decisive diplomatic Victory even if the Muslims would eventually take it back as you can tell during this

time period it was hard for just about anybody to hold on to Jerusalem for long in the end the Crusade secured christendom's Western flank and bought its eastern flank another 300 years it wasn't until the emergence of the Ottoman Empire in the 1300s that Islam once again threatened Europe but even when that happened Crusaders once again went out to stop them the crusade of nikopolis and the crusade of Varna are two big examples of this while they didn't succeed in stopping the Ottomans they did show that Christendom was still capable of uniting to fight common

threats in the name of God and in the end 300 years later in the 1600s hundreds ottoman power would be broken by what was basically a crusade the Christian holy League of Austria Poland Venice and Russia United to defeat the Ottomans and drive them back from Europe despite all of this some people say the Crusades failed but did they Europe was Christian when the Crusades were launched and it's still majority Christian today one thousand years later although it is secularizing due to modernist ideologies ironically it's only after the pope lost his power to call Crusades

that Christianity started to decline in Europe but when we look back at these events history shows it's not a shameful chapter of Catholic history but the total opposite the Christian World defended itself and spread the faith abroad after hundreds and hundreds of years of abuse and that ladies and gentlemen is why the Crusades were awesome indeed this has been Pax and thank you so much for watching if you'd like to see more videos please consider supporting the channel also leave a comment letting me know your thoughts on everything as always I will see you in

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