Analysis of the Crusades
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On a November day in the year 1195, in one of the most famous of medieval scenes, Pope Urban II addressed an enormous throng at the French town of Clermont. He spoke, in emotional language, of the Holy Land and the Holy Places, groaning under the rule of the Muslim infidel, and of the outrages perpetrated against Christian pilgrims. He called upon the nobles in his audience to end their destructive private wars against one another, and for the sake of all Christendom to turn their swords against the infidel: to mount a great pilgrimage in arms for the rescue of the Holy Land. His audience, which had wept at the sorrows and outrages he had portrayed, now raised their voices thunderously. "Deus Veult!" they cried: "God wills it!"Five years later, on June 15, 1199, followed perhaps one of the most infamous scenes of the Middle Ages. A Frankish Christian army stormed Jerusalem, and proceeded to assail the population with fire and sword. One of their own chroniclers spoke of how the knights "rode in blood to the knees and bridles of their horses," as they advanced through the streets. The Jewish population of the city had taken refuge in the main synogogue; the doors were barred from without and it was set afire, burning all within alive. Not even the Christians of the city, indistinguishable from the rest to the invaders' eyes, were spared in the tumult. Such were the beginning and the climax of the First Crusade. More than any single episode of the age, perhaps, it
. . .
invariably disastrous to the would-be crusaders.
The first result was that massacres of Jews broke out in several German cities--one of the earliest major episodes of violent anti-semitism in Western European history. One of the instigators of this episode was a Count Emico, whose motivation, apart from sheer bloodthirstiness, was quite probably greed. In some cases, the Jews were reported to have killed themselves en masse, Masada-fashion, rather than be murdered at the hands of Christians. Emico and his followers then headed on to Hungary, where they proceeded to slaughter Hungarian Christians, till the King of Hungary fell upon them and annihilated nearly all of them. (Emico, sad to say, escaped.)
The Church had not intended to trigger this outburst, and did not approve of it; the chroniclers hastened to point to the fate of this group of crusaders as due punishment for their sins. According to Albert of Aix,
The hand of the Lord is believed to have been against
the pilgrims, who had sinned by excessive impurity and fornication, and who had slaughtered the exiled Jews
through greed of money, rather than for the sake of
God's justice, although the Jews were opposed to Christ. The Lord is a just judge and orders
. . .
Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 8414
Approximate Pages = 34 (250 words per page)
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