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Socialist Review, April 1995

Mike Evans

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In the name of the father

 

From Socialist Review, No. 185, April 1995.
Copyright © Socialist Review.
Copied with thanks from the Socialist Review Archive.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.

 

Crusades
Terry Jones and Alan Ereira
BBC Books £17.99

‘Blow thy enemies into tiny pieces, O Lord, in thy mercy’, intones the priest of the Holy Hand Grenade in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Terry Jones, who co-directed that film, was back on our screens recently with his television series Crusades, which this book accompanies. Jones has commented on how the events of the Crusades mirror the absurdity of Monty Python. In the name of a faith that professed peace and love, the Crusaders slaughtered thousands – Muslim, Jew and fellow Christian – when they ‘recovered’ Jerusalem for Christendom in 1099. Their belief that God was on their side only seemed to be reinforced by their bloody victories.

This book is refreshing for two reasons. It locates the Crusades in their political context and seeks to give the viewpoint of the Muslims who resisted the Crusader onslaught. While not excusing the excesses of Islamic rulers, Jones and Ereira make it clear that it was Christianity which introduced religious fanaticism to the east. The Muslim counter-crusades were a response to that fanaticism – a point worth remembering today when the media reports ‘Islamic fundamentalist terrorism’ without any reference to the brutality of imperialism which has given rise to it.

The Crusades grew out of the Pope’s campaign to assert his leadership of western Europe. In the 11th century the Pope and the Holy Roman Emperor were locked in a bitter power struggle, ostensibly over the right to appoint bishops, but in effect over who would control the vast landed wealth of the Church at a time when a rapidly expanding economy meant that this land was more productive than ever before.

This economic expansion also meant that land hungry lords were searching for new territories to conquer, and their serfs (unfree peasant labourers) were looking to colonise new land where they could escape the shackles of bondage. In 1095 Pope Urban II had the brilliant idea of asserting his leadership of Europe by calling a holy war under Church authority to ‘liberate’ the ‘Holy Land’. This pulled the rug from under the emperor, provided troublesome nobles with a chance to carve out lordships in the east and allowed peasants an opportunity to escape a famine that was raging in France at the time.

Best of all the Pope offered eternal salvation to all who took part, an attractive bargain for the Crusade preachers to sell to their flock. The emerging class of merchant capitalists in Italy soon joined in as the Christian conquests opened up trade with Asia.

As a political weapon, the Crusade was also directed against other Christians. The Fourth Crusade in 1204 sacked Constantinople, the capital of the (Greek Christian) Byzantine Empire, because the Crusaders had fallen into debt to the Venetian Republic. Even in its infancy, capitalism was using war to further its interests. The Pope justified the conquest by the fact that the Greek church did not recognise his authority. Similarly bloody scenes occurred in the south of France, where a long and bitter Crusade was conducted from 1208 against the Cathar heretics of the region.

This book, and the series, are an excellent introduction to the Crusades. The fact that most academics have disowned it is probably a recommendation. The series is entertaining and accessible, for example the device of having a priest ‘preach’ the Crusades by means of a newsreel gives an idea of the strength of the Church as an ideological force.

Two facts should be remembered, however. One is that the peasants, who are portrayed as credulous, unruly, bloodthirsty mobs, were not always ignorant swallowers of Church doctrine; poor Crusaders of the 13th and 14th centuries posed a serious threat to the ruling order as they began to attack corrupt figures of Church and royal authority who they saw as the real ‘enemies of Christ’. The second is that the brutality of the feudal order is insignificant compared to that of capitalism in its modern crusade for power and profit.


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