The Crusades: For Christ or for conquest? 

When I was 12 years old, one game dominated my life.

Castle Crashers.

It was a crude yet immensely addicting beat ‘em up in which you played as a knight embarking on a grueling quest to save four princesses in a colorful and comical medieval-styled world.

And the visuals, to this day, remain one of the game’s most endearing qualities. 

Lead artist Dan Paladin did a great job in making creatively stylized, cartoonish, and memorable characters. Namely, the game’s four main knights you can see pictured above.

Those boxy characters with their cross-shaped insignas owe their existence to our topic for the week.

That topic is a moment in Church history that has a long, painful, and lasting legacy that’s very much alive today.

I’m talking about the time the Church went to war.

The Crusades

The Crusades are the title of several military conflicts spanning the 11th to 13th centuries.

From the 7th century onward, Islam erupted across the Middle East. And in this eruption, many lands that were once thoroughly Christian turned Muslim…

…Egypt, Syria, and, most strikingly, Jerusalem itself.

By 1095, Muslim forces were sitting on the doorstep of the Eastern Roman Empire. Fearing the worst, Emperor Alexis I reached out to Pope Urban II in Rome for military support.

And so the Crusades began.

“Deus vult”

“God wills it”, (Latin: Deus vult) was the response of those at the Council of Clermont when Pope Urban II made his calls to arms.

What followed was one of history’s greatest bastardizations of the Way of Jesus.

As the Crusading forces went east, they pillaged and slaughtered along. As they retook Christendom's former cities, the Crusaders zealously fought the enemy, sparing not even the women of some cities.

And then they made it to Jerusalem, their Holy Land.

It wasn't long until the Crusaders achieved what they set out to do. On July 15th, 1099, Jerusalem was taken from Arab control and captured by Christendom.

What followed were reports of rape, infanticide, and the mass slaughtering of Jews.

It was only the beginning.

“Deus vult.”

It’s important for us as followers of Jesus not to neglect the low points of our history. This week on Theophilus, we’re going to look at this tragic part of Church history and see what we can learn from it so as to seek Christ to heal the pains of the past and build a way to a better future.

For now, be blessed.

Jon,

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