The Crusades

Few periods in history have been boiled down to a bumper sticker level of knowledge than the Crusades.  It’s one of those periods that everyone has heard of, but knows little about.   When I teach adults and talk about this period in the larger context of Islamic invasions, I’m taken by how few have heard that Islam ever tried to invade Europe.  Or anywhere else for that matter.   They usually have some vague ‘Didn’t Islam convert by the sword?’ notion of history, which itself isn’t accurate.  But then they are amazed to hear that, from almost the beginning all the way up to the late 17th century, forces from the Islamic world pressed into Europe in an attempt to sweep the continent.   In that context, you have the Crusades.  Far more than the History Channel once described them, as an excuse for a bunch of Tony Sopranos to get loot and power.   They were a long, complex historical phenomenon that lasted slightly less time than the United States has been a nation.

Mr. McClarey is right, this isn’t exactly an in depth study.  It’s a Protestant pastor coming to grips with the history vs. the Monty Python versions.  As I said about my own conversion to Catholicism, part of what helped me was the growing realization many Protestants had that constantly trashing Catholic history in our secularized, non-Christian world didn’t work.  Too many hear that as affirmation from Christians that the Church in general was always a wicked institution, not that ‘those Christians over there are the problem.’  So let this be a good place to start rethinking what we think we know about the period.