Broken_Shoelace said:
I agree in full. It is indeed more detailed, as evidenced by some of the details glossed over or just casually mentioned in the very article above (which otherwise raises valid points) such as the Massacre at Ayyadieh, the Jerusalem Massacre during the 1099 siege, and many others committed by the crusaders. In fairness, in the case of the latter, it is claimed that some Muslims and Jews were actually spared...as long as they left the city.
You probably didn't have much time to read the article closely, but Madden addresses this point directly, and like Kieran said, he was doing so in a brief manner suitable for an article, not a book.
But allow me to re-quote this one key part of the article. Does the first portion that I bold jibe with murat's lazy as can be, sittin-on-my-couch-eating-potato-chips assertion that Madden is just a biased Catholic? To the contrary, Madden is acknowledging that the Christians did some terrible things and he is addressing these instances head-on; he's not dancing around them or skirting the issue:
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The Crusades were wars, so it would be a mistake to characterize them as nothing but piety and good intentions. Like all warfare, the violence was brutal (although not as brutal as modern wars). There were mishaps, blunders, and crimes. These are usually well-remembered today. During the early days of the First Crusade in 1095, a ragtag band of Crusaders led by Count Emicho of Leiningen made its way down the Rhine, robbing and murdering all the Jews they could find. Without success, the local bishops attempted to stop the carnage. In the eyes of these warriors, the Jews, like the Muslims, were the enemies of Christ. Plundering and killing them, then, was no vice. Indeed, they believed it was a righteous deed, since the Jews' money could be used to fund the Crusade to Jerusalem.
But they were wrong, and the Church strongly condemned the anti-Jewish attacks.
Fifty years later, when the Second Crusade was gearing up, St. Bernard frequently preached that the Jews were not to be persecuted:
Ask anyone who knows the Sacred Scriptures what he finds foretold of the Jews in the Psalm. "Not for their destruction do I pray," it says. The Jews are for us the living words of Scripture, for they remind us always of what our Lord suffered.... Under Christian princes they endure a hard captivity, but "they only wait for the time of their deliverance."
Nevertheless, a fellow Cistercian monk named Radulf stirred up people against the Rhineland Jews, despite numerous letters from Bernard demanding that he stop.
At last Bernard was forced to travel to Germany himself, where he caught up with Radulf, sent him back to his convent, and ended the massacres.
It is often said that the roots of the Holocaust can be seen in these medieval pogroms. That may be. But if so, those roots are far deeper and more widespread than the Crusades.
Jews perished during the Crusades, but the purpose of the Crusades was not to kill Jews. Quite the contrary: Popes, bishops, and preachers made it clear that the Jews of Europe were to be left unmolested. In a modern war, we call tragic deaths like these "collateral damage." Even with smart technologies, the United States has killed far more innocents in our wars than the Crusaders ever could. But no one would seriously argue that the purpose of American wars is to kill women and children."
So to Broken's point that there were moments of savagery and anti-Semitism in the Crusades, I say, yes, absolutely. But we also have clear evidence that Church leaders and clergy, such as St. Bernard, went out of their way to stop the ordinary fighters from perpetrating further massacres. And at no point was official doctrinal sanction from the authorities on high given to these actions.
