“Revisionist” theories of the crusades go a long way to secularize the whole affair; but at this point, the revisionist explanations for the origin of the First Crusade (or any Crusade, really) have become the dominant discourse in the western world. What was once taught as noble now reduced to social and economic factors with religion as only the catalyst or enabler for a movement with far different aims. Later movements: colonialism, Imperialism, racial discourse and so forth get reflected back in time. While we can see the dim origin of the mechanisms for these later movements lying in the Crusades, these sorts of reductionist narratives necessarily deny the complexity of the crusading movement.
Perhaps the worst part being the lack of religion. Religion as a front for trade & conquest rather than embedded within the act of Crusading.
There’s an unexpected side-effect with projecting a secularist narrative back into the religion-drenched world of medieval Chistendom. By reducing the importance of Christianity as a motivation for knights to leave Europe on the long journey to the Levant, you end up with a bunch of materialist-minded folks with no stock in superstition. Unsurprisingly, Muslims are rarely portrayed this way in such popular narratives. Only they are capable of Holy War, it seems, playing into an entirely different modern discourse that’s just as distorted.
Never mind that many knights gave up wealth and title to head eastward, obviously it was just an investment in the loot and plunder from a land they knew little to nothing about, on an expedition without guarantee of success unless one actually believed in support from the divine. Of course it was all about the money and land; our proto-capitalists were already gearing up to start off the British Empire and pave the way for the ascendency of the west.
This is what makes Ridley Scott’s Kingdom of Heaven such an odd watch–seeing all these secular humanists dancing around Medieval Europe and Palestine. While the major characters bear the trappings of religion, none of them actually seem to believe in Catholicism, even those belonging to the Holy Orders. Instead you find Enlightenment philosophy alive and well. Even the villains are hypocritical in their approach to religion. The only people with any deep faith are, of course, the Muslims.
While these sorts of films, books and popular histories emphasize the wonders of Islamic civilization in terms of architecture and learning, rarely do they let these achievements stand on their own, but instead frame them in opposition to the rising west. The brute crusaders whose descendants would later colonize their lands. These narratives claim that we, the children of the Enlightenment, are the true inheritors of that noble civilization while the actual descendants have become the barbarians on par with our medieval ancestors. The Victorian narrative of the noble, chivalrous knight out to reclaim the Holy Land from wicked occupiers was a misrepresentation, but what has replaced it in current popular crusading discourse is scarcely any better, and just as insidious.
Further Reading:
John Riley-Smith. What were the Crusades? London: Macmillan, 1977.
Jessalynn Byrd. “The Crusades: Eschatological Lemmings, Younger sons, Papal Hegemony and Colonialism.” Misconceptions about the Middle Ages. Ed. Stephen J. Harris and Bryon L. Grigsby.
Here’s the thing: The Crusades, the Fall of the Western Roman Empire, the barbarian invasions, etc. don’t mean squat except what later humans ascribe to it. All historical discourse is as much about the present as the past. What are the concerns and theories of today? That influences how one looks at the past.
A few years ago, I read an essay that looked at the ascribed meanings of either the fall of the Roman Empire or the barbarian invasions. It was quite interesting to see how each period ascribed different meanings to the same historical event.
Another thing is also important to keep in mind. A lot of people today don’t think like the people of the past. Most historians (and many others) cannot really relate to people of the past, we think in different ways as our culture mutates in new directions. That’s why I question whether the dream of an actual medieval perspective fantasy is possible.
This is going to necessarily go a bit off-tangent, but you’ve got me thinking about a few things:
1. There’s a whole field of history dedicated to examining historiography through the ages, essentially writing the history of history. Fascinating, but also weirdly incestuous.
2. “The Past is a different Country”. On the other hand, it isn’t a different planet, and I still believe that by examining the material culture, texts, art etc. of a given culture in a given time period, we can still have imagination enough to leave our present circumstance behind and make a reasonable guess. One of the fun parts of reading older texts is entering psychologies different from my own; the fun part of writing, to a degree, is the act of imagining people different from me, living under different circumstances, and trying to construct their lives in a convincing way. Even the most alien of ancient narratives–let’s say The Epic of Gilgamesh, tend to have elements to which we can relate (usually emotional). And, of course, the one constant in all human discourse has been the presence of narrative, and narrative structure is an entirely human-constructed way of interpreting events. There is no storyless culture.
3. Do past events have significance outside of what we ascribe to them? It’s a recurring argument in the historical profession. And something covered by so many books and articles, filled with so many other questions and assumptions, that I can’t come up with a proper response without writing something far, far longer than this.
Either way, we should still question present historical discourse for the same reason we’ve discarded many earlier interpretations. Especially in cases where the present discourse is actively harmful by reinforcing systems of oppression via presumed historical justification.
I’ll admit that I haven’t kept up on recent Crusades scholarship (nor have I seen Kingdom of Heaven, but that said, I also find purely secular theories off the mark and reductive. Medieval knights believed in God and had a lot of baggage to atone for in order to get into heaven, and the Crusades were a great way to keep their swords sharp and keep on good terms with the big man upstairs. And if some plunder was to be had as a result, well, bonus! As you’ve alluded to above Crusading made a lot of knights flat-out broke (they had to pay retainers, purchase huge of supplies, and so on), but they were sacrificing in large part for the promise of something greater.
This is a really interesting analysis of modern views of the crusades. I think a lot of modern reinterpretation of the religious fervour of the crusaders must surely derive from modern cynicism about the motives of the church (now and then): pedophile scandals and greed have tended to make most observers of christian movements suspicious of their spiritual underpinnings. But your comparison of christian lack of faith with islamic superstition is an interesting counterpoint to this cynicism. Thanks!
[...] Ambrosious the Warlord: A Summer Glade 19 Jan Tweet of the Day: Crusading without a Cross [...]
reminds me of GURPS Arabian Nights. In campaign suggestions, it says that you can have the characters play Crusaders, but some people have problems with the idea of their being the right, which sounds mild and humane out of context — but just before that, it says you can have your characters fight on the jihad side, and there apparently there’s no need to warn about players who have objections to fighting religious wars.
@Mary
Apparently it assumes that most RPG players are or come from a Christian background and somehow be offended by playing the Crusaders but not a member of Saladin’s armies.
Weird, I know but then again RPGs have avoided the Judeo-Christian god (but not the demons or angels) for a long time, even turning several incarnations of the Devil (Asmodeous) and Christian saints (St. Cuthbert) into deities in their own right (AD&D/D&D Greyhawk setting).