Quotes About Crusades

The Crusades - the most signal and most durable monument of human folly that has yet appeared in any age or nation.

To our question Who killed Jesus? the answer too often has been The Jews! The unconscionable anti-Semitism and anti-Judaism promulgated by this verse started in the early church and runs through the Crusades and Hitler to white supremacy in our own day.

Over the centuries, and even today, the Bible and Christian theology have helped justify the Crusades, slavery, violence against gays, and the murder of doctors who perform abortions. The words themselves are latent, inert, harmless - until they aren't.

There is nothing intrinsic linking any religion with any act of violence. The crusades don't prove that Christianity was violent. The Inquisition doesn't prove that Christianity tortures people. But that Christianity did torture people.

Probably the most lasting result of the crusades was the trade which the Italian cities established with the Orient

Cuceririle amoroase sunt cele mai egoiste dintre cruciade.

The historical crusades against Muslim lands, the colonization of Spain by the Muslim Moors and India by the British were all driven by economic interests, despite the advertised reasons that were used to mobilize their armies at the time. In my opinion, the invasion of Iraq was not about spreading democracy or weapons of mass destruction, it was about the oil.

The crusades were a great historical novelty; they were the first wars fought for an ideal. Naturally the ideal was promptly corrupted and falsified. But the fact remains that the crusades were conceived as a service to the Christian God, and the crusaders thought themselves, at least intermittently, the consecrated servants of holy purpose. The crusades were many things, but originally they were a beautiful, noble idea.

The crusades began with grotesqueries, comic and horrible. A band of Germans followed a goose they held to be God-inspired. Peter the Hermit, a fanatic, filthy, barefoot French monk, short and swarthy, with a long, lean face that strangely resembled that of his own donkey, preached a private crusade - known as the Peasants' Crusade - and promised his followers that God would guide them to the Holy City.

And to make things worse we started mixing religion with politics. An old argument just like the Crusades. Our God is better than your god. 'God Is with Us' on the Nazi belt buckles. Holy Wars against women and children, Catholics killing Protestants in Belfast. We went into Iraq for the wrong reasons and we left our friends behind. More people have been killed in the name of God and so-called 'faith-based values' than for any other reason.