Monday, November 23, 2009

Crusaders: Noble liberators or brutal invaders?

With my new novel about the Albigensian Crusade just released, this article was of enormous interest to me. Here is an excerpt:
When Pope Urban II called for a Crusade in 1095, he was hoping to accomplish two tasks, says Stark. First, he hoped to liberate the Holy Lands from Muslim control, which Stark says the pope believed was totalitarian and brutal. Second, Urban hoped to give the warring knights of Europe something better to do than kill each other.

"Pacifism would not have flown at that time," he says. While the knights who went on Crusades believed in their faith, they'd also been trained to fight from the time they were children," Stark says.

"These knights did such terrible things that their confessors kept saying, 'I don't know how you will ever atone for this -- why don't you try walking to Jerusalem barefoot.' And they would do it -- they took their faith very seriously."

More HERE.

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