This week’s topic is the idea of Crusading as an Act of
love. Pretty much right away the phrase “Crusading as an act of love” doesn’t quite
add up. These violent wars do not conjure up ideas of love. But in this week’s readings
Jonathan Riley-Smith explains to us how they were viewed as an act of love by
Christendom and those who preached for the Crusades. The love of their neighbours,
the fellow Christians of Jerusalem and the Byzantine Empire, of Christ, and
even of their enemies were all ideas, showing crusading as being an act of christianly
love and are espoused by Riley-Smith in the first reading.
These ideas are not so hard to reconcile with the ideas of
the Crusades. As the Crusades show us brave Christians going to the Holy Land to
liberate their fellow Christians out of love. Of defending the realm of
Christendom out of love, as Cardinal Odo of Chateauroux preached to his
audience. “It is a clear sign that a man burns
with love of God and zeal for God when he leaves country, possessions,
house, children and wife, going overseas in the service of Jesus Christ” There
is no doubt that the Crusades were not only regarded as holy missions, but also
as acts of love.
The issue therefore comes when discussing the Fourth
Crusade. A topic that is dealt with in the readings of this week, the Fourth
Crusade in which the heavily in debt crusaders sacked the Christian city of
Zara and then sacked the great capital of the Christian (Eastern Orthodox)
Byzantine Empire, Constantinople. This desecration of Constantinople goes against
the ideas of Christian love guiding the crusades, of love of their Christian
neighbours and the rescuing of the holy land. In this case, they were attacking
the very Christian neighbours of the Byzantine Empire that they were meant to
be liberating from the Muslim Threat.
As for those who preached the Crusades as being acts of
love, such as Pope Innocent III. He was infuriated, ashamed and quick to rebuke
the actions of the Crusaders against Constantinople. He was shocked at the
actions of them, against those whom he saw as still being Christian. This was
not the act of love that he had preached for. However, his reaction was short
lived, as eventually, when the Crusaders returned bearing riches and holy
treasures as well as the changing of many formerly Eastern Orthodox areas to Western
Catholic under the authority of the Pope he quickly rescinded the excommunication of the Crusaders.
--Jake
[Editor's note: Greg's contribution to follow...]
