Trump says the US will go into Nigeria “guns a-blazin’ “ to stop persecution of Christians! Wow, Vézelay revisited! Pope Urban II called the First Crusade in 1095 for exactly that reason, at the Council of Clermont, followed by a rally for Christendom at Vézelay.
Muslims were harassing Christian pilgrims to the Holy Land, charging them prohibitive fees to enter Jerusalem, etc. People now seem to think the Crusades were about oil, but the reality is it was religious zeal, among all economic classes, and it was the flower of Christendom who went, at great personal cost and hardship. (And yes the Pope promised salvation to anybody who died in this struggle, mebbe taking a leaf from the Koran).
Personally I think any action we take would be like kicking an anthill. It causes disarray and chaos and kills quite a few individuals, but the structure itself endures and will quickly be restored. It took only 88 years for the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem to be restored to the Muz, although the Crusaders had actually taken control of the government there. Is the U.S. gonna militarily conquer Nigeria?
But all I wanted to tell you is, I love the mixed metaphor of the Crusades and the Wild West! In fact we’d be better off if the entire “West”, that is Western Civilization as a whole, WOULD get a bit “wild” in the cause of preserving its own hard-fought values and freedoms.
Let’s hear it for the man with the (golden) gun! Dieu le veult! And Yee-ha!
No doubt that was a significant part, at least of the earlier Crusades. Another part was the dynastic issue (back in the days when people had families and thought they were important) of what to do with the younger sons and some of those uppity barons. A Crusade with an expected high death rate had certain advantages.
Today, our problem is too many people graduating from Women’s Studies programs and the like and expecting life-long well-paid government sinecures. See where I am going with this?
Indeed! Kings went too – back in the days when kings led their forces into battle. Still, the death rate on Crusades did help to keep inheritance problems manageable for many families.
My point is—and I’m sure you’re not suggesting—that winnowing out heirs was the impetus for the crusades.
It reminds me of what people said about Vietnam war: that the reason for it was to reduce the number of young black men. That was an effect, but even I don’t think that’s WHY we were there.