Fletcher wrote:
” . . . the violent Christians [crusaders] were very poor Christians going against the chief commandment of the founder . . . . ”
O.k. you dead-ender commenters, I can see that I’m going to have to bore you dudes into giving up this thread! You asked for it:
Pope Urban, at Clermont, according to the chroniclers, told his audience that they should be ashamed of the violence that Christians were visiting upon fellow Christians. The usual rapine, theft, oppression that brigands visit upon their fellows.
He urged them to undertake war against the infidels. Not least of all because the war would be just. Admittedly, some chroniclers say that Urban claimed it was God’s will; others that the audience said it was God’s will. But throughout the call to arms, there is an argument for just war. And it sounds not unfamiliar to modern ears, including the Muslim beheading fixation. Here’s a spicy excerpt from Robert the Monk’s version:
“From the confines of Jerusalem and the city of Constantinople a horrible tale has gone forth and very frequently has been brought to our ears, namely, that a race from the kingdom of the Persians, an accursed race, a race utterly alienated from God, a generation forsooth which has not directed its heart and has not entrusted its spirit to God, has invaded the lands of those Christians and has depopulated them by the sword, pillage and fire; it has led away a part of the captives into its own country, and a part it has destroyed by cruel tortures; it has either entirely destroyed the churches of God or appropriated them for the rites of its own religion. They destroy the altars, after having defiled them with their uncleanness. They circumcise the Christians, and the blood of the circumcision they either spread upon the altars or pour into the vases of the baptismal font. When they wish to torture people by a base death, they perforate their navels, and dragging forth the extremity of the intestines, bind it to a stake; then with flogging they lead the victim around until the viscera having gushed forth the victim falls prostrate upon the ground. Others they bind to a post and pierce with arrows. Others they compel to extend their necks and then, attacking them with naked swords, attempt to cut through the neck with a single blow. What shall I say of the abominable rape of the women? To speak of it is worse than to be silent. The kingdom of the Greeks is now dismembered by them and deprived of territory so vast in extent that it can not be traversed in a march of two months. On whom therefore is the labor of avenging these wrongs and of recovering this territory incumbent, if not upon you? You, upon whom above other nations God has conferred remarkable glory in arms, great courage, bodily activity, and strength to humble the hairy scalp of those who resist you.”
Maybe the final detail is to the unshaven Taliban types?
