hey welcome back to another episode of the Catholic talk show we are gonna be debunking myths today about the Crusades yeah we're gonna share with you the real history of the Crusades the important figures of the Crusades all nine Crusades and the causes behind them and things that you never knew about one of the most important events in human history so from the battle cry of the first crusade Deus vult [Music] [Applause] [Music] great man well let's jump right in I'm really excited about our guest today Steven whining cough met met you gosh almost for more than ago yeah yeah and I was doing this thing at my parish where we were studying this epic it's the the salvation history right and I love history and so I've learned so much from this guy in his program and I'm super excited to have you on just a little bit about Steve Steve white ink off he's an adjunct professor at Kristen M College the graduate school history so let me try this church history you're the author of a handful of books history of the Catholic Church which we actually have right here we have the real history the real story of Catholic history answering twenty centuries of anti-catholic myths we have the glory of the Crusades which that's gonna be relevant today that's right we have a book on the Reformation you've done things tracts for Catholic Answers twenty answers series booklets a lot of I mean just a lot have you I do yeah either that or hockey with the kids one is oh yeah how do you find balance between that well you know the hours between midnight and 6:00 a.m. are underutilized yeah yeah that sounds like you she'll I'm really looking forward to this because I truly get a sense that that Latin phrase Dave's vault which mean God's what God wills it God does well for us to uncover history so that we can stand on the shoulders of giants and really continue to build out the kingdom here on earth so we welcome you to the show and speaking of God's will Deus vult the will of God is that you would continue to support us by presume we don't know okay we can't we can't say no confidently say we know God's will we can only presume and try to unify and have more theologically pure talk-show well what is God's will love and mercy itself and generosity so you can be generous by going to patreon.com forward slash the Catholic talk show you're gonna support us to continue to have awesome guests like Steve's I want to share some brilliant insights with us today and many more shows to come with your support in your generosity be sure to be going to Catholic talk show com to make sure that you can find us in any way listening in or viewing on YouTube we want you to participate in this great effort so where we going from here she well I mean with the support of our patrons we were able to fly out a professor of church history who's also a member of the Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem yeah so the Knights of the the Holy Sepulchre were organization that's affiliated with the church primarily it's it's one of the actually the history can be traced all the way back to the end of the First Crusade where the initial Knights who guarded the compound of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem but from that military organization stemmed a charitable organization so the Knights today we primarily are a charitable organization focused on maintaining a Christian presence in the Holy Land specifically in the city of Jerusalem itself and we do some charitable works out in other communities outside the Christian communities around that area so is there a religious context to that meaning there are their priests that are involved is it like a-you know prelate or is it you know but it's it's an organization recognize the religious order organize recognized by the church mostly lay members okay but priests can be members as well so thousand-year-old invite-only how do you get associated yes it's a night in the order Breck recommends you nominate to you and then you go through a process so you have to live a holy Catholic life so yeah very cool we're really pleased to have you here and I think you're gonna be able to talk to some of the history of the Crusades and debunk some of the myths that so many people have about the Crusades I think in the modern understanding the Crusades are this completely unjustifiable it totally contrary to the modern sensibility of religion being involved in Wars and and an oppressive nature of the church and it's a money grab or it's it's anti-muslim all these things that are so now really frowned upon and associated with the Crusades those are myths and I think with your help we can start to debunk some of those yeah I hope so I'm very glad to be here so thanks for inviting me so why don't you give us a little context for the Crusades and what really kicked off the Crusades why did the Crusades become a thing and what were some of the the events that led up to pope urban ii calling for that first crusade at claremont yeah so that's great question i mean the origins of the crusades really can kind of trace them all the way back to the beginnings of islam right in the 7th century when you have muhammad as the prophets in the arabian peninsula he tries to unify the various arabian tribes around the peninsula and he does so by creating a community of believers right and that he preached that there was only one god contrary to what the Arabs believed at the time they were multitude of tribes they believed in a pantheon of gods he centered on one God Allah said that he was the prophet of that one God and then he created a community so everybody who believed that was what he called the umma or the community of believers and then Muhammad had a vision of the world where he really divided the world into two camps there was the house of Islam right everyone who believed in the members of the umma and then everyone in the house of war was everybody else and so it was the job of those in the house of Islam to bring those in the house of war into the house of Islam by violent struggle through jihad and so after he died in 632 his followers over the next 100 years went out and conquered most of the ancient Christian territories in North Africa and the Holy Land and even attacks at parts of the Byzantine Empire so in went into Spain and things like that as well so Christendom was really under attack from the 7th through the 8th centuries and then he kind of fast forward a few centuries into the 11th century things really change when a new group of people they're called the Seljuk Turks they come down from the Asian steppe they had been converted to Islam so they're Muslim but they're not Arabs they're a different ethnic group but they come into what is the what was the Byzantine province of Anatolia at the time which is modern-day Turkey and they fight a big battle against the Byzantines in 1071 called the Battle of man's occurred and they defeat this Byzantine army they captured the Emperor of the time actually himself Romanus the 4th and you know this causes significant problems with the Eastern Christian Empire or the Byzantines they lost this great territory known as Anatolia which was a seat of most of their recruitment of their army was a wealthy province and so the later Byzantine Emperor Alexius the columnist decides to ask for Western military help so he sends emissaries and letters to the one ruler in the West he thought could help him raise an army of mercenaries to assist him in recapturing this territory and that was the Pope now this is but this is also roughly about 50 years after the Great Schism right so in the context of the time the church had went through this schism where the East and West is separated and when pope urban ii gets this letter from Alexios saying we need help the pope suit looks at this and says this is a real opportunity to try to reforge christian unity and of course we're gonna help our brothers but we're also going to then bolster I guess the position of the Western power in in the context of the greater Mediterranean society yeah and interesting enough I mean so he knew that but he also knew following on that that it would be difficult to motivate Western warriors to travel you know thousands of miles away from their home risking certain death to help the byzantines help schismatic senescence so if you are the potential crusader what would pull you and motivate you from living a comfortable life in the mountains to becoming a crusader i needs the same same thing you know that motivates people to join the army or the police force it's it's that you know it's the laying down of one's life or the other and it's to do it in a way that you recognize injustice you recognize you know a need and you decide to just take that job and I think that's what's most noble and especially in relationship to the the east and the west the efforts of promoting that who dunam sent the sense that we are called to be one and that requires action that requires you know a true effort and we think of national unity and and and our national pride as Americans and how we pray for the military and now we pray for our people in public service as well you know promoting that greater unity and justice and I think that's a that's a really good and noble sense of what would motivate you to be a crusader but I'm sure there were other incentives that probably you know it's tributed to motivating in what I've read and correct me if I'm wrong I would say that the the Pearl Harbor of the Crusades would have been the destruction of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre by the mad caliphs and put about the 10 10:09 right I don't know that's in Jerusalem Jerusalem away so the context of that is that the Holy Sepulchre pilgrims are going there constantly it's the holiest site in all of Christianity and it was a required pilgrimage for one's life but what happened that led up to the caliph al Hakim destroying that well many different things I mean al Hakim was the Egyptian Calif and he had some different stories of him there's some stories that that whether you believe them or not that maybe his mother was a Christian and so he kind of reacted in a very violent way against Christians and Jews living in his territories what you say mom I'm not gonna be Christian I'm gonna burn everything down I'm fine so he really was not a good guy yeah that's remember he's covering up some some childhood issues or other things and actually the Muslims at the time referred to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre as the Church of the dung heap that was the air if you translate the name in Arabic that was how they refer to it so they didn't see this obviously as a holy place although it was very holy as we as you mentioned to Christians so yeah when news of that got back to the West it was significant I mean it was it was devastating news you know the French in particular had a great devotion to the city of The Jerusalem and to the Church of her sepulchre itself there were copies of the church you know in France so the French would make churches modeled after the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem they would even name their daughters after the holy city so if you were to go back in time to a French nobleman's Court in the 11th century if he had more than one daughter chances are one of them would have been named Jerusalem they had such a devotion to the city yeah so that's clearly a motivator you know in relationship that like you mentioned correlating Pearl Harbor or you know the World Trade Center experience that that almost evokes an immediate response to this is a violation this is something that we need to need to correct when you respond the main or whatever that's the the the light on the powder keg now I think the context of the Islamic conquest of Byzantine areas and the former areas of the Roman Empire where the kindling of that but this I think to in my mind is the thing that really set it off that this is an untenable situation and something needs to be something needs to be done right yeah it was a shock right and then you have you have over time and happen in the early 11th century and so things kind of quiet down after a Hakim gets out of the picture and and so pilgrims were able to go back to Jerusalem and and the churches actually rebuilt in the middle of the 11th century and then added on later when the Crusaders get into Jerusalem but yeah it definitely kind of brings that shot brought that shock to Western Christendom and then then it's the arrival of the seljuqs I mentioned earlier there really then kind of kick-starts the actual campaigns and the motive and a moving of people's and warriors through the east so what we're a number of the other motivating elements to drawing together this this crusade and getting it off the ground and also like how are the Crusaders formed because like where they are all always around how did that you know become something that's offensive where was the leadership yeah the game yeah so in terms of motivations right we'll talk about one first father it's it's the other multiple motivations man I like to kind of dope you can encapsulate them all into just one word love and really that's it sounds kind of trite but I think it's true when you study the sources that these Warriors really had a deep sense of love for the church for Christendom the Pope as you mentioned urban ii calls for the first crusade of the Council of Clermont he motivates these warriors or cause them to do it so out of love for Christ in the church they want to respond this is an age of faith people you know are want to go on pilgrimages and to do things like of this nature and the crusade is an armed pilgrimage they're motivated by love of their neighbors they're hearing reports of Christians indigenous Christians as well as pilgrims who are being killed on the way to Jerusalem or in Jerusalem by the Seljuks and others and then love for themselves so one of the major motivators or privileges really that urban gives the Crusaders is the granting of a plenary indulgence so there's a natural motivation but there's a lot of myths around that indulgence and a lot of myths around the motivations some would say that it was a land grab by the West or is motivated by economic gain bother to gain the riches of the east of the Byzantines or of the Holy Land can you speak a little bit to debunking some of the motivational myths yeah so I know one of the major motivational myths you touched on was greed right that and this kind of falls out of the feudal system in Europe so you have at the time you know land is wealth and you have this relationship between Lord and vassals and so there's this theory that had been taught for years I mean I learned it as an undergrad that you have the second third and fourth Boren sons who are being born in Europe there's a great population explosion 11th century which is all true but then because of primogeniture that all of the land of one family gets inherited by the eldest son that the second third and fourth born sons don't have any land or wealth so the church and they're fighting each other so the church marshals them and sends them overseas to capture this territory in the east from the Muslims and that's how they can get their wealth sounds logical on the surface except when you begin to pull through the documents and look at why they actually left and why they said that they left and who left you find that it wasn't the second third and fourth born sons who actually went on crusade it was the firstborn sons who went on the First Crusade so one who stood the most to lose went what kind of sources are you you know it was there a collection I think does it mean they might have taught you this and then something comes out and you know you can redact it and it just never got redacted right mm-hmm yeah well there was a great British historian he does haven't he died a few years ago now Jonathan Riley Smith who is it was a medievalist who focused on the Crusades and what he did back in the 80s 90s he looked at medieval charters and charters are basically like our real estate transaction like deeds and titles and things like that that we do today so if you sell a piece of property and a middle aged and middle ages you would write up a charter right you would say I'm selling this orchard to this monastery and then usually in those charters you would give a reason why and so historians had known of these charters for centuries but no one really mined them for a specific period of time you know within France for these warriors who went on the First Crusade to see why are they selling this is this land because going to war is expensive right we know that in our own day and age if it's true now it was true then so he Riley Smith went and looked at these charters and found that the reason why these men went on crusade was for multitude of reasons one was because of to fight and to defend indigenous Christians and pilgrims who were being killed because they were motivated by love for Christ in the church they were concerned about their salvation and they wanted to receive the indulgences from from the Pope so it's it's from those charters that then we get a sense that it's the firstborn sons that went and why they actually went as well right now I think we also mentioned you mentioned the indulgences granted by pope urban ii but there was no I think there's a lot of misunderstanding that indulgence was if you go and kill Muslims you're going right to heaven or if you die in battle you're going right to heaven and that's not the case you know yeah that's not the case at all I mean it's it's it's very clear urban very clear in his in his granting of the indulgences says that it's for those those who can receive it go for worthy and honorable reasons right for proper cause you can't go thinking that you're going to go get you know wealth or money or riches or land you can't go with this murderous intent in your hearts and then still receive that indulgence so there's crusade armies were different that kind of comes to your question Ryan earlier about you know they were different than just regular medieval armies these were not armies that were formed to attack a castle or get land from other peoples for the Christians these were seen as penitential and spiritual enterprises in his campaigns hence the whole name etymologically of crusade Crusader crew Sabha you know the sense of you know being marked and literally marked by the cross and I think the the bold underlined statement that you made before these are first born sons who have the most to lose that they are laying down everything for the sake of this cruzada the this this commissioning of the cross and the sacrifice for rebirth of Jerusalem and and healthy how many guys were I mean like what's the was the number yeah well I think that's a good time to interject the fact that the Crusades there was multiple crew says right there was nine Crusades and now that for nine Crusades Wow and they start all the way from 1099 and then the Last Crusade would have been coming in late in 13th centuries well set 1270 yeah so this is a two hundred year period and there's nine separate Crusades and there's you know 50 year gaps between of them not that First Crusade and the one I think that was maybe ostensibly the most successful was the First Crusade right but there's actually a crusade before that correct before the first crusade yes um which that would be yes true say the first crusade the people's people's crusade is kind of part is considered part of the First Crusade right so there's different components to the First Crusade there's the people's crusade or then the princes crusade some historians divided into and the people's crusade right was was when urban preached this in it at Clermont it generated and he didn't just preach it in Clermont he went around and spent the next year or so on the road in France preaching where he went well so he went on like this massive papal roadtrip right to preach the crusade and then he sent preachers out through the rest of Christendom as well preaching it so principally most of the Warriors and people who went come from from France what was monitored a France but they're Crusaders from all over Christendom that are participating in this in this initial one but there's one individual his name his name is Peter the Hermit he was a very gregarious charismatic type of individual the most interesting character yes ever read about it's very true all kinds of stories associated with Peter writes some probably incredibly apocryphal but still you know he motivated a group of people to to go with him and and there's some misnomer in that I mean they they were there were some warriors that went with him but not very many most of them were were women children you know men old men these kinds of things he motivated the go to go to the east and they went so that goes back to Ryan's original question that these these are not armies as we think of armies right these are there's no unified command structure there's no four start four-star general who's in charge of everything you know it means these are individual groups large groups some of them of Crusaders that are rallied around one particular nobleman or in this case Peter the Hermit and the people's crusade and they're just going generally they're going in the same direction generally for the same purpose but not leaving at the same time so the people's crusade leaves before the official departure date which was August 15 1096 and they get down to the Constantinople before the main army groups come they cause some havoc for the for the Byzantines and they quickly kind of you know shuttle them across the Bosphorus and get them on to Anatolia and it's they're they're they most of them run into a near and ICEA they run into a Muslim army that destroys kills most of them so that's and that's one of the things that people kind of use the people's Crusades and other elements of these of the crusading movement to attack the Crusades and attack the church here you have mostly unarmed individuals who are who are you know with this obedience of faith and this love for Christ you know going thousands of miles away from home and then they're massacred so what was the point right that's that comes up a lot mm-hmm yeah it's it's always presented it's like this big one-sided thing you know you see that a lot that Christopher Columbus you know like all these people you know and I'm reading books from actual writings from these guys you know unless they completely just lied about it seem like he had genuine compassion you know so you look at some of the stuff and it's like I think people just use it as a license to just kind of not appreciate something you know in this room yeah so out of curiosity because I think we could get a little confused about the Crusades nine Crusades and and if you were to summarize and and give like the heart of the crusade for the crusade in general what would be the hearts movement of the crusade and how you would sum up you know all these various different Crusades that were going on yeah that's that you don't think that is but it's a loaded question in a certain sense because that's a big debate among the historic about among the crusading historian community of how would you define a crusade but but generally speaking most historians agree that that a crusade was an armed pilgrimage called by the Pope of which voluntarily Christian warriors went on campaign for a specific purpose to which spiritual privileges were attached so I mean that's kind of just a nice kind of concise definition so but the movement lasts several hundred years more so than just you know two hundred years from 1096 to 1291 it it moves on even into the sixteenth century and even into the 17th century late 17th century when an Ottoman Turkish armies at the gates of Vienna in 1683 so and there's different forms of it principally these are campaigns directed against Muslims who had taken over ancient Christian territory in North Africa and in the Holy Land but there are other forms of crusading as well there was a crusade called against heretics in the South of France for example the Alba Jensen heresy of the Kothari there were Crusades called against the Baltic States of Europe today which are Latvia Lithuania Estonia where there were pagan heathens at the time and they're even Crusades called against enemies the church the holy roman emperor frederick ii had crusade called against him because of political issues with the pope so the movement evolves and it takes on different characteristics but at its heart that's what it is it's an armed pilgrimage for a specific purpose called by the pope so out of the nine crusades I think the one that's again you said that's probably the most successful is that first crusade it's the one that established the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem but leading up to that there was a lot of aggression from the Islamic forces and this was not ever all of a sudden the Pope wakes up and says well boy it should be nice to control this land I mean imagine half of the United States was taken over by a foreign country what do you do do you say well they're a different religion we shouldn't mess with that I mean this is a real war of aggression and the Christian nations had been pretty passive in the face of this but for the context I mean this was a complete sweeping over a very of indigenous lands of traditional lands lands that were Christians for hundreds and hundreds of years this is not sweet innocent you know Middle Eastern countries being taken over by aggressive white Europeans this is very very opposite as a matter of fact and they probably killed more than just Christians do you know it's pretty much you know convert or die it's a holy war yeah right in many ways I mean there were some cases of that we're you know Islamic forces come in and they converted the story but for the most part what they do what they do do is is when they took over this ancient Christian territory that had indigenous Christians and is indigenous Jews living in them they really they kept the for the most part they allowed the Christians and Jews to live in those areas and to continue worship in the way they wanted to but they place severe restrictions on them because Mohammed had seen Christians and Jews as members of a of a protected class they were given protection under the Islamic law but Christians and Jews annually had to pay a tax it's known as the Gesu and this was a heavy heavy burden that these families had to pay just to continue to live it's kind of like extortion protections tax right from the Masha and you know you were a second-class citizen your status was barely above that of a slave for example Christians and Jews could not testify in an Islamic court of law as a witness it was subjugation yes there was hundreds of battles and hundreds of cities that had fallen to the Islamic conquest over the course of 300 years really leading up to this I mean this was a long long list a litany of aggressions that were finally answered when it became so much that if the eastern empire would fall to the seljuq turks that creates massive problems and that was kind of that was the the bridge too far that the West can no longer handled like look they've taken and they've destroyed and murdered and demolished their way but this is this is the last this is the straw and the line in the sand it can't be crossed right exactly yeah and by the 11th century now you finally have you know Western Europe and Christendom with kind of the the way that they were Julie situated are politically structured they can actually finally respond right so up until this time from the death of Muhammad in 632 into you know 732 by the time they get into France actually you know two and a half hours southwest of Paris there's a big battle between an Islamic force and the Franks under Charles Martel in battle of poitiers in 732 so over a hundred years they conquer most of this ancient Christian territory and and Europe was in the throes of trying to recover from the fall of the collapse of the Roman Empire back in the 5th century there were multitude of different you know Dukes and princes and other noble men there was no there were kings but they weren't you know as powerful as they later become so it's finally in the 11th century towards the end of it where you do have an opportunity from various European noble men and secular rulers to be able to respond to this militarily you brought up Charles Martel Charles Martel is just a chunk Norris Charles the hammer and Chuck the the the Islamic conquest of Spain and southern France it was very likely that if the Battle of Tours had not went successfully the entire course of history would have been a Islamic Europe and yeah there's a couple decisive battles there I think and he starts talking about those medieval kings in Charlemagne I think is the one that really led to the establishment of the first emperor of the West since the fall of Rome and that he was a descendant of Charles Martel correct yeah he was the his grandson right yeah so I mean there is a thank God for them thank God for the Carolingians and the mayor of Indians and everyone that led up to that because it allowed for the I guess the consolidation of power or at least of influence even even with these medieval kings they weren't directly ruling everyday life it was vassal kings and duchies all these things but you had one king that can have a unified political concept to be able to lead these types of Crusades sure yeah that was and it was and so it really was the Pope I mean who was the one beautifier yeah who could unify all these different disparate secular Lords who were mostly concerned about their own territory or acquiring more of it so that when something's you know kind of supernatural or international you know comma comes to the forefront he's the one orbán the second who's able to rally these men and and motivate them and focus their efforts towards the the liberation really of this Christian territory that had been occupied by Islamic forces and by listening to you I'm really getting a larger picture of the response of love that you were describing earlier and a while back probably about six years ago I received the gift and it's this this cross and on the back of the cross it says cruzada de amor ah hey Suz crucify kado and it's the crusade of love of Jesus the crucified and with all this reference to the cross and wearing the cross on and the emblems and you know I grew up a couple of Halloween's I dressed up as you know a crusader and and I think when you think of life as pilgrimage and you're getting a spiritual benefit from it and this whole crusade is one that's rooted in the cross and rooted in love and responsibility sometimes we get a little lost in what is love and is this armed resistance or this armed liberation is it is it love or is it something that could be open for criticism and clearly this isn't the scholar Haddaway who asked what is love what is love no more I noticed that you have a pattern on your tie yes and that is it's the Jerusalem cross and that's the same cross that's on my my rosary which is actually a relic of the Holy Sepulchre but it's the Jerusalem cross - that was the emblem of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem which is the outcome of the First Crusade and explain how the First Crusade went some of the before he does that I got a tattoo so this is from a tattoo artist whose family has been given Jerusalem ya tattoos for like seventeen hundred years it's just crazy and this was the oldest thing that they would put on they would put this on Crusaders that were that were there and also pilgrims yeah yeah that's you talk about the origin of the word that's what people's have you go back in time they wouldn't have referred themselves as Crusaders because it's more of a modern word actually crusade but what they would call themselves from the Latin was chruch a signet a with those signed with the cross I can say literally as you mentioned father they literally took a cloth cross and sewed it onto their garments when they took the vow to go on crusade and they didn't remove it until they had completed their journey so including the first Crusaders who went to Jerusalem mm-hmm and the first crusade was quite miraculous when you read the different reports of what happened during the course of that crusade so many times that crusade was on the the precipice of disaster where the they had lost all of their food there was great famine disease death you know desertions all kinds of horrible things but at each of the major critical points when it seems like the crusade is going to just disband and fall apart and disaster there's something miraculous happens there in Antioch and they're able to get into besieging the city they're finally able to get after months able to get into the city of Antioch one day before a Muslim relief army shows up that would have been dilated him outside the gate so now they're inside the city and protected from the gates they're able to to you know morale is low but in the city they miraculously find the the lancehead of saint Longinus the roman soldier who had pierced the site of our lord or at least purported there are many different accounts of whether that really was the wreck or not but you know it motivated the rank-and-file to believe that they had found it and they went out and destroyed this Muslim relief army they then marched down to Jerusalem there's only about 12,000 of the 60,000 warriors left at this point and because of death and starvation and desertion they were greatly outnumbered they were greatly outnumbered throughout the entire campaign pretty much every battle they fought yet they continued to win and enter victorious and they finally get to Jerusalem in the summer of 1099 and they're able to get into the holy city and on July 15th and they liberate the holy city of Jerusalem finally and so that first crusade is the only one that really is fully and 100% kind of successful and I'd like to revisit what I was saying before too because there's a concept that's driven at least in my experience of catechesis growing up is that God is love and we draw it with our markers or crayons and it's it's you know rainbow and everything's good and happy resistance doesn't seem to fit in a sense of love you know armed resistance doesn't you know is there such thing as a just war you know do you stand up to the bully the oppressor the oppressing power and is is that is that love and I'm curious to find out your perspective on on that yeah I mean I think in in certain conditions right that our president especially as the church is understood and developed the Just War theory and an understanding of when it would be appropriate to engage in kind of armed resistance right and there's I think there is I think that can be an act of love and these men these warriors who participated in these campaign they saw that that's what that's what they were doing was defending Christendom defending the church we know liberating the Christian patrimony of the holy land where Christ had had sanctified that land by his his birth his death is his resurrection and you know they thought that they were defending those who were they believed they were defending those who were being persecuted as well yeah no one no one would fault the United States for coming to the defense of France in the face of Nazism right right there is not much difference of Christian people's coming to the defense of the Eastern Byzantine Empire in the face of the Islamic invasion it is not much different except for the fact that there's the religious element and modernity hates religion period so it's just an excuse to slander religion but it's kind of a stupid if reason it does doesn't make a lot of logical sense except for realreal bias now you one of the things that you had mentioned was capturing Jerusalem on July 15 one of the big myths and one of the big slanders is the nature of the conquest of Jerusalem and the brutality that was purported that is not true right yeah so that's known as the massacre of Jerusalem right after the the first Crusaders get into the city and so I mean you know historically speaking what did happen is is medieval time when this is all going on warfare the rules of warfare at the time you know dictated that if an army comes to a city beseeches it if the city does not surrender then if the army is able to get into that city and this happens on christian muslim side doesn't matter you kind of there's no holds barred once that army gets into the city doesn't doesn't typically the commander allow a certain period of plunder as payment for interest historically speaking traditionally it's three days worth of plunder and then it comes back to the Romans in the you've been on the road for that was their payment most of the soldiers of the ancient world if the Romans were taken over a Germanic village or somewhere in there at the Celts and in Britain look we're takin over the city that's been fortified as payment you have three days to take whatever you want and that was the payment of the typical rank-and-file soldier and sometimes there were restrictions placed on that right I mean even even our the goth who sacked the city of Rome in the year 410 I mean told his soldiers they could loot everything and take what they wanted you for three days in Rome they just couldn't touch the Christian churches and they didn't so they were German so it was an orderly sack right he said well you can sack the city you just can't burn down the buildings you can take the Vandal afterwards so until I actually didn't sack the city he convinced him not to right but then when a little bit later when Jenna Sara came that's that was the deal that was that way yeah but see that's what happens when you're talking with an adjunct professor the myth was that the Crusaders when they when they breached the walls of Jerusalem they killed so many people that people are up to their ankles in blood yes that the whole city streets there was that much about number one biologically that's not possible yeah and they're in a desert so I mean you know there's some permeability there [Laughter] the taking of Jerusalem first historians recognized that there were a good number of people who had left the city beforehand so estimates vary but the population of the city at the time was probably nowhere from 20 to 30 thousand but many of those had already fled so you're talking about there are some civilians left in the city non-combatants but mostly they're combatants at this point and when they get into the city you know there's various estimates but the best study I've seen on this show is that probably about 3,000 or so people were killed in total that's combatants and non Ben's in the city which is a far cry from you know blood running up to your ankles killing everybody in the city right sometimes used to read that in history books today they killed everyone in the city men women and children that's not true another reason that you'd want to not kill everyone is that in the medieval world there was a lot of focus on ransom so you would capture certain people's or groups of people's and then ransom them sell them you know for a certain amount of money to get money from their for their freedom so if you killed everybody that was you're basically eliminating a large source of economic benefit from that so that just is absurd that they would do that but part of the reason why this myth persists and why it's even utilized and brought up in the modern world I mean even as I mentioned in my in my book on the Crusades President former President Clinton in November of 2001 right after the September 11th attacks gives a speech at Georgetown and he says he's answering the question why did we why the United States get attacked on September 11th and he faults the Crusades and he literally cites a massacre of Jerusalem is one of the reasons why Osama bin Laden and al-qaeda attacked the United States because the memory of this massacre persists in the Arab world which is complete and historical nonsense but that that myth that persists primarily because the chronicles of the time the Christian chronicles would use this imagery they say you know we killed so many people that blood was running up to our ankles that it was running up to the bridle of our horses but we in the modern world misunderstand what they were trying to convey by writing that the chroniclers of the time are not like who we understand war correspondents today right you embed somebody from CNN or Fox News into a unit in Afghanistan talking about going fishing but for the cruises that Christians when they're writing these chroniclers are Chronicle is about the event they're using that imagery because it evokes scriptural imagery and specifically it evokes a revelation 14 20 the angels you know exercising judgment on the earth so I'm an evil Christian hearing these Chronicles of what happened in Jerusalem and the numbers of people who were killed in the blood up to the ankles would automatically understand and realize that this is symbolic language referring to God's judgment on the unbeliever and gods you know graciousness in the success of the crusade so after the conquest then what happened so after the conquest so most interesting enough most of the those who were still alive at the end once Jerusalem had been liberated they leave and go home because it fundamentally Crusades our pilgrimages so just like you and I would go on pilgrimage to Rome or you know Jerusalem today we go we pray at the shrine we leave and we go home that's a pilgrimage so true for us true for them they did the same thing the vast majority of the warriors leave for those who were still alive they go back to their homelands but some just recognize that they have to stay because they had just liberated this swath of territory which about six hundred miles all the way up from the city of Edessa down to Jerusalem and they needed to protect it and preserve it if they just all left on mass then the Muslims would just come right back in and everything would have been for naught right so many of them did about 2,000 or so decide to stay and they create what's known in history as the Crusader States something they didn't call it that but we call it that and they were these four different feudal territories from the county of Edessa in the north all the way down to the Kingdom of Jerusalem in the South that were feudal territories governed by secular rulers and the Kingdom of Jerusalem was was governed eventually by a king great story the first ruler of Jerusalem secular ruler Christian ruler of Jerusalem after the liberation was conferred to be home he was one of the major rulers or secular rulers who participated on the campaign and he refused to take the title King he said I will not I refuse to wear a crown of gold in the city where my savior wore a crown of thorns refused to take the title so he just took the title defender of the holy sepulchre now he dies shortly thereafter his brother whose name was Baldwin decides to come down from the county of Edessa and he's got no problem taking a tailor so he becomes the first king of jerusalem that's like my little brother could you imagine the awe and the responsibility of a medieval christian to be known as the king of jerusalem that is i could not imagine the solemnity and the just the gravity of that coronation and that responsibility over that particular time never easy in the Middle Ages right what does the kingdom of she look like it ain't easy being cheesy look like there I want you to really express yourself streets run but so Baldwin the fourth I'm very interesting character yeah how long is that the the Crusader kingdoms last so the last territory the last Crusader stayed the Falls or the last city I should say the city of Acker falls in the year 1291 so you're talking the King of Jerusalem fell before then so Jerusalem itself was only in Christian control from 1099 to 1187 so 1187 would have been Saladin yes correct and that's the this is one of the things that I've always most interesting events in human history to me who's the horns of head team mm-hmm that was was that the Fourth Crusade third before the third before the third yeah okay the horns of what so team the these Christians had went in and they'd established this Crusader stayed in the Kingdom of Jerusalem but that wasn't gonna last because they were outnumbered yes by a lot and the Islamic forces would obviously retool come back and take this land back so it was really a zero-sum game that they were always pretty what's destined to fail because they didn't have access to resources new troops that they even lasted that long was pretty pretty intense but to me I think that I mean there's been multiple crusades afterwards but really the idea of the Crusades being a winning proposition proposition ends with that with salad and then yes in that battle he actually captured the relic of the true cross tied it to his horse dragged the cross of Jesus from his horse through the sand and then it disappears from history hmm just an absolutely devastating loss Steve is is this true yeah I mean it takes actually it's it gets back to demands last-known whereabouts of the that large relic of the true cross was it was in Damascus he takes it back to Damascus and it's it's you know brought through the streets dragged as a sign of disgrace right is a sign of conquest and then it disappears it's going mm-hmm that's always just been so heartbreaking that it's our yeah and the way that that battle went down they didn't they take the lake and set the lake on fire yeah yeah they said they said well set various things on fire around they were actually the Muslims had occupied a higher ground than the Christian army and so the the background to it right was solid in before the during the time of the First Crusade there were two different kala fits in the Islamic world there was the Abbasid Caliphate in Baghdad and the Fatima Caliphate and Cairo and so the Muslim world in that part of the area was not United but what happens in the late 12th century is solid in this great Egyptian General he unifies the two caliphates and then once the Calif its United then he marshals the large forces now of those that United Muslim Calif ed against the Crusader States and specifically against the Kingdom Jerusalem and that's when he conquers the city of Jerusalem in October 11 87 and before that in July that you have the big battle of the horns of Hattin where you know this this King G was king of Jerusalem at the time he had marshaled the largest army and emptied all of the Christian towns and in all of the different Crusader states to fight about 12,000 men or so and they're just massacred in the summer of 1187 and so that that leaves Jerusalem and these other cities open there's not a lot of defenders left and so soliton comes in and takes over the city again and it's it's it's the loss of Jerusalem will never again be in Christian hands they'll be territory treaties that are enacted especially the end of the Third Crusade and later on in the sixth Crusade where Christians will have access to the city but never again will it be under Christian control so the walls that are around Jerusalem today were put there by Saladin right that some of them are rebuilt during may be rebuilt and rebuilt there's a lot of layers of walls but they're still there is still a lot of infrastructure built by the Crusaders all throughout their through maker tyre sidon and you there's a lot of Crusader sites there and a lot of churches built yeah so I think the last thing that we can really begin to understand about the Crusades as the involvement of the religious orders like the Knights Templar and what role those religious orders played in the Crusades and into what extent they still exist today sure yeah so we talked about that a little bit in terms of you know the creation of these Crusader States and you mentioned that the the Christian warriors who had stay there weren't enough of them to guard the territories and sufficiently so one of the things that kind of grew out of that situation this unique situation of a manpower shortage was the creation of these military religious orders like the Knights of the temple or the Templars or the the Knights of the hospital of Saint John in Jerusalem the hospital tears and all those Knights of the Holy Sepulchre which we talked about earlier in the beginning of the show so these this becomes as one whose crusade historians put it it's it's you know crusading was always a voluntary temporary activity it was something that a man a warrior even women would take the cross you would complete your journey you would take her cross off your garment you'd go home right so it was temporary but the military religious orders became incorporated crusading as a way of life it became something they permanently vowed to do the paths of Pilger to defend the paths of pilgrims to defend the Crusader States the Crusader territory and specifically to defend pilgrims who were coming still from the west to visit the holy sites from Muslim attack because you know much of the money that's much of the territory at some of the territory of it had been liberated it was mostly coastal areas so once you try to go in road you know past that little you know buffer so to speak of the coastal areas you were very much in danger paths and the roads themselves because right not everything was always guarded and a hundred percent all the time right so one way in which that the Christians realized they could protect this territory is to also establish strategic castles all up along and down the the territory of the Crusader States but again they didn't have the manpower to staff it so these were military religious orders then were the unique response to that situation where you could have professed religious warriors who actually took the profession of vows of evangelical counsels of passage poverty chastity and obedience and some of them some of the orders took additional vows as well of protecting pilgrims or these kinds of things and then they would be asked by the king of Jerusalem to go and and garrison in these castles and his strategic areas to protect the territory so one of the things I always thought was very interesting was the actual occupation of the Temple Mount itself and I think that what role did that play in these religious orders I know that some of them take their name from that right yeah the Templars in particular I mean they were a guard a group of warriors who had pledged themselves the service of the pilgrims and in the Latin East and so the King Baldwin decided to give them a part of the temple enclosure as their barracks David's stables and so yes exactly and so they're there garrisoned on the temple and from that they take their name the Knights of the temple or is they've been more commonly known as the Templars yep yeah and then also that the fact that the Dome of the rock was actually a Catholic Church yes it was it was so during the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem the Temple Mount that we know today the gold dome Jerusalem was a Catholic Church and was known as the Templar Domini there's a temple of God yes and that was on the site of the Second Temple on the site of Alaska mosque is hosted air and enclosure mm-hmm so again I think that's a really interesting period of time that this iconic building that is so associated with the Islamic faith was actually a Catholic Church people say well that's maybe a little bit insensitive to think that that's a good thing but I mean all you have to do is look at the Hagia Sophia and they're there no rush to give that back to us so that's the nature of I guess and that's what happened I show threw out a tenor of Jabez that happened throughout most of this Islamic occupied territory that had been Christian right you know Muslims I mean they were the Arabs initially were a group of people that were very nomadic you know they weren't as schooled or as proficient in architecture and art and things as the Byzantines were in Christians and Jews living in these areas and so once they conquered these territories they actually utilized the the Jews and Christians living in them to to build things for them and so you know the Dome of the rock was it was I mean that church or that big structure was was built by Byzantine craftsmen and by architects you know in Spain for example you know there were very few indigenous or very few you know Muslim created buildings they actually took buildings that had been built by Christians and then repurpose them into mosques so maybe the mosques the ancient mosques that are in Spain that are always celebrating the mosque of Cordoba these kinds of things are all Christian buildings that the Muslim occupiers repurposed that's right which is uh I think a lot of that still continues to be a source of strife to this day yeah but that's that's the nature I mean you'll see that same kind of concept with how do you rectify past and justices hundreds of years into the future how do you look at the situation of the Native Americans in in the United States how do you look at the the rights of the Jewish people in you know in versus Palestine how do you look at the rights of Greek Catholics or I'm citing Greek Orthodox in Anatolia food that for by far the vast preponderance of history that was their territory I mean if there was any sort of justice I mean people would be saying well give this back to them but that's not the reality and when you look at countless years and centuries of you know that lasting memory of the injustice that's rooted all throughout Europe all throughout Eastern Europe all throughout the Middle East for us as Americans we don't have that long sense of history we don't have a historical consciousness that we continue to draw on in respect to the injustice so it's hard for us to come in contact with that I think even in you know and as a product of a philosophical system that you know it's just really progressive and and industrial and and what are we doing tomorrow and really you know not have that much interest in what has happened in the past I think it's important to realize that this historical treatment is an important historical treatment of who we are as an identity as Catholics and and who we are still today as men and women of the great pilgrimage of the cross that we are marked with that same cross and commissioned though the cross of Jesus Christ could be brought up to Damascus and lost to history and and draw it very irreverently and and you know defaming it but the cross is still very much intimately a part of what we do today as Catholics and what we are called to do and we need to draw from the historical semblance of what you're sharing with us so it's very important thank you so much for sharing all these insights yeah Crusaders have been the crusades have been throughout history completely maligned and misunderstood and in today's world Crusaders are looked at as really the antithesis of what a modern person should be but I think Western society would do itself a great service by reevaluating the legacy of the Crusaders and understand what they did fundamentally to preserve our culture that was a great worth and of heroic nature mm-hmm yeah and I think when it comes to being a Crusader of today being with us on this show the Catholic talk show is a great contribution to us and we're going to open up a whole nother patreon tier for the Crusaders oh yeah we're gonna sit we're gonna send you guys a patch of the cross of Jerusalem that's you know I just make that I did just make that up there could be a sticker I think it needs to be a cloth okay draw on that sense of what was done and and maybe okay some sentiment we've been happy yeah you know my my the thing I found a new Catholic has always used the crusader cross as its symbol it's something that I think that Christians really need to understand in the context of their life that you are always on crusade and that you always are it's not crusade does not need to be only taken as a armed aggression or even an armed offense crusade really is the way of being marked with the cross and that is everybody indelibly marked with the cross but speaking of aggression and crusade Inquisition is coming and I was hoping that it's leaning to the other side of the table today and we get to draw our good doctor in for a you know an inquisition before before we do that should we tell everybody about that I'll take care of that okay now see you would think that having a guest and an esteemed guest and a very learning man that I would want to test his knowledge and put him on the spot no I don't think we're going to do it in such a violent way but I do want to go that you you father with your well manicured soap opera beard and and your asthma and your soft knees and you need for comfortable beds and 30 minute showers too much called a crusade today yes and the crusade was for the liberation of some people would you respond and do you think that it's still even a feasible thing in the future that the Pope could call crusade for the I guess the reconquest of certain lands so can I put conditions on it like could I take my 30-minute shower can i still manicure my beard on crusade or do I have to go wild man well I think the practicalities of being on crusade would dictate that I guess the question is do Crusades have any place in the future or hadn't been fresco say Crusaders today it is today let's take bullets it's God's will first is God's well - for our lives to be conformed to the mystery of the cross that's the whole sense of our identity as Catholics in our baptism the nature of our baptism is that our lives are being conformed to Christ conform to the cross and that is the response to death because from the cross from that great altar of offering of the person of Jesus Christ he is the firstborn of the Dead so yes the crusade is still very much alive and I am marked with it and and I must be a Crusader in the pilgrimage of today and continue to pass on the the love of Jesus the crucified it's a long shower so for our listeners exodus 90 is one of our sponsors of our show Exodus 90 is a 90 day program for men that helps you to establish the Cenacle practices get fraternity with other Catholic men it allows you to grow in your prayer life and it's a way to I guess go and crusade against your own body in your own I guess the failings that you have to help make yourself a more useful strong virile and the kind of man that the church needs in the modern Crusades which is really for the souls on the hearts of families and for for culture that is where the Crusades of the 21st century are going to be fought are in in the family and in society and Exodus 90 really is a training program and regimen to make men very qualified to do that so go to exes 90 it's a free app you can start on any of the x this is they have at any time they have exes this is multiple times a year it's like really popular - it just keeps growing there's more and more people I hear that are doing it that it just burst it on the scene you know and and it's great it just shows you the anointing of how fasting is is something that God wants you know he wants that intimacy with us and so then I want to give a shout out to our other sponsor covenant eyes I go to covenant eyes calm and put in the code Catholic talk and you get a 30 day free trial for covenant eyes covenant eyes is a an accountability software that helps men and women overcome addiction and struggles with pornography it's a really unique software and program that doesn't rely on necessarily filtering your phone because everyone would find ways around a filter you just go find another device but this gives accountability and a real desire to overcome again one of the major struggles of the modern Christian pornography one of the things that really is cutting at our hearts and Exodus I'm sorry coming in eyes is a program that really is doing doing that in preparing people and putting them in a place where they can overcome their battles with pornography so go to covenant eyes calm and use the promo code Catholic talk and you get 30 days free and try it out yeah I'm really grateful we have support not only from our patreon but also from our advertisers were really grateful yeah we wouldn't take just any sponsor these are programs that we actually truly believe and we've worked with for years we work with them on a deep personal level this is not this is not shilling you know this is really recruiter yeah I mean it's like bringing Steve here by the way Steve's got a book just come out it came out in January all right came out in January timeless a history of the Catholic Church but can I find that you can it's by our Sunday visitor so you go to their website visitor or Amazon carries it as well or any good Catholic bookstore near you timeless a history of the Catholic Church and here's a lot of other books you can go find too so go check them out I mean I think we only scratched the surface of the knowledge that you could provide we really really appreciate you coming in and thank you giving a little bit of a Intelligencia at some class to this thank you so much I appreciate many blessings to christen them and the ministry that God has entrusted you with thank you for doing what you do thank you bless all right thank you and thank you for joining us at the Catholic talk show we'll see you next week [Music] [Applause] [Music] you
