jews and the crusades

[oki]

http://www.aish.com/literacy/jewishh...e_Crusades.asp

Ever since the 4th century, the Western (Rome-based) Empire had been shrinking considerably, thanks to the Goths and Franks. It finally disappeared altogether in 476. The resulting vacuum in the economic, legal and administrative infrastructure led to a state of chaos. The Church, aligning itself with the Franks, stepped in to restore order.

Consciously modeling its bureaucratic framework on the model of the old, the Church created titles and administrative positions which people were used to. It's not by accident that the pope (from the Latin papa or "father") was called pontiff (from pontifex maximus or "chief priest") -- a title previously reserved for the Roman emperor.

Today we remember the period of time when the Church ruled Western Europe with an iron hand as the "Dark Ages," although more charitable historians will call it the "Middle Ages."

As the Church's empire grew in size so did its need for more money to support it. While the Crusades were launched in part to curb the growth of the Islam Empire, a key motivation was to gain new lands and wealth for the growing population of Europe. They offered an outlet for the ambitions of land-hungry knights and noblemen.

The ostensible reason given at the time, however, was the reclamation of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem from the Muslims. This church had been originally built on the site identified in the 4th century by Empress Helena, the mother of Constantine, as the site where Jesus was buried following his crucifixion.

THE "NOBLE" QUEST

To our Western minds, reared on the Hollywood version of so much history, the Crusades mean noble knights rescuing damsels in distress. Oy vey -- is that ever a lie.

Now, it's true that there were knights, and there were kings, and there was a chivalric ideal. And that King Richard the Lionhearted, a Crusade leader, (who was incidentally one of the worst kings England ever had) was definitely a macho warrior. But that's pretty much where it ends.

The Crusades turned into campaigns of slaughter, rape, and pillage, and woe to the poor Jews in the way. Indeed, the Crusades mark the first large-scale mob violence directed against Jews which is going to become, unfortunately, the pattern for the next hundreds of years. The later pogroms are just going to be a repeat of this idea.

The Jews were not the only -- and in fact, not the primary -- victims of the Crusaders. Muslims were. If you're a student of Islamic history, you know that a large part of the reason why the Arab world is today the way it is has to do with the Crusades. All the brutality directed toward them devastated the Arab peoples economically, made the Arab world very closed, and contributed to Arab hatred of the West.

(Why do Arabs paint the doors of their houses blue to this day? To ward off the evil eye. Why blue? One explanation is that it was the color of the blue-eyed northern Europeans that came to slay them.)

There were altogether ten Crusades covering a swath of time between the 11th through the 13th centuries:

* The First Crusade, 1095-1099, saw the taking of Jerusalem from the Muslims, the slaughter of both the Muslim and Jewish populations of the city, and the establishment of the Crusader-run Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem (which lasted only until 1187).

* The Second Crusade, 1147-1149, was organized to help the Christians to recover lands which they lost to the Turks, but it ended in dismal failure.

* The Third Crusade 1189-1192 was organized after Saladin, the Sultan of Egypt, recaptured Jerusalem. This is the Crusade in which King Richard the Lionhearted figured. It was a failure.

* The Fourth Crusade, 1202-1204, saw the capture of Constantinople, which at the time was occupied by Greek-speaking Eastern Orthodox Christians, who did not recognize the authority of the Roman Pope.

* The Children's Crusade, 1212, sent thousands of children for the Holy Land, where they were captured by Muslims only to be sold as slaves or to die of hunger or disease.

* The Fifth Crusade, 1217-21, was aimed at Egypt, but failed.

* Four more Crusades mounted in the 13th century failed to reverse the Muslim gains. In 1291 the last Crusader stronghold at Acco fell.

INFIDEL CLEANSING

Pope Urban II mounted the first campaign, in part in response to a plea for help from Christians in Constantinople who were besieged by the Muslims. Its aim was to beat back the "infidels" (as Christians called their fellow monotheists) and to recapture the Holy Land.

To sweeten the pie, the Pope promised those that signed up that there would be plenty of booty, not to mention the spiritual benefit of having all your sins forgiven by God.

Here is one eyewitness account of an attack on the Jewry of Mainz in May of 1096. This comes from The First Crusade by August Krey, and it is a letter written by a Jew who survived:

"The Jews of the city, knowing of the slaughter of their brethren fled in hope of safety to the Bishop of Ruthard. They put an infinite treasure in his guard and trust having much faith in his protection. He placed the Jews in a very spacious hall in his own house that they might remain safe and sound in a very secure and strong place.

"But ... the band held council, and after sunrise attacked the Jews in the hall with arrows and lances, breaking down the bolts in the doors. They killed the Jews, about 700 in number who in vain resisted the force of an attack of so many thousands. They killed the women also and with their sword pierced tender children whatever age and sex..."

This is how about 30%-50% of the Jewish community of Europe met its end. Some 10,000 Jews of an estimated population of about 20,000-30,000 were slaughtered by Crusaders mobs.

What happened after the Crusaders entered the city (Jerusalem)?

We have one account from Ibn Al Kalanisi, the Moslem chronicler, describing hair-raising behavior of unnecessary brutality. The poor Jews had all huddled together in a synagogue and this is where the Crusaders found them, set the place on fire, and burned them alive.

The Knights Templars were stationed on the Temple Mount (hence their name). Interestingly, Knights Templars did not destroy the Dome of the Rock (though the Crusaders did destroy all the mosques that they did not turn into churches). Why? They thought it was the "Temple of Solomon," and that the nearby Al Aksa mosque was the "Palace of Solomon." (See Jerusalem: An Archeological Biography by Hershel Shanks, p. 238-239.)

So what did they do? They removed the crescent from the top of the Dome of the Rock, replaced it with a cross, and called the place Templum Domini, "Temple of God." They turned the El Aksa mosque, as well as the vaulted space below the mosque, into a monastery. Consistent with their other errors, they called this space, which had been built by Herod -- "Solomon's Stables."

The reign of the Crusaders over the Holy Land was short lived. In less than one hundred years, in fact in 1187, the Crusaders are conquered by Sultan Saladin of Egypt (whose family, by-the-way was employing Maimonides as their physician as we saw in Part 44).

Sultan Saladin beat the Crusaders at what was one of the most important battles in the medieval history of the Middle East -- at the Horns of Hattin, which is northwest of the Sea of Galilee. There Saladin very skillfully managed to lure the Crusaders out into the open. In the middle of the summer and burning heat, they found themselves vastly outmaneuvered and outnumbered, and this is how Saladin destroyed them.

Even though they lost Jerusalem, the Crusaders didn't give up. They mounted campaign after campaign to recoup the Holy Land. They never did get Jerusalem back, (although the Moslems did grant them access to Christian holy sites there). Finally, in 1291, the last Crusader stronghold -- in Acco (also known as Acre) -- fell.