In this week’s post, I review Rodney Stark’s book God’s Battalions: The Case for the Crusades. I found this book to be greatly enjoyable and highly recommend it for any who are interested in the topic or who have heard the contemporary culture’s accusations of unnecessary Christian brutality in the Crusades.  

About the Author

Rodney William Stark is an American sociologist of religion. He has been a strong critic of secularization theories and a prolific author of books rejecting secularized historical ideas. Stark has written more than thirty books and many scholarly articles on various subjects. He has won the Distinguished Book Award from the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion twice. Stark served as professor of sociology and comparative religion at the University of Washington for many years. He is currently the Distinguished Professor of the Social Sciences at Baylor University, where he serves as co-director of the university’s Institute for Studies of Religion. He is also the founding editor of the Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Religion.

 Summary

In the period between 1096 AD and 1291 AD, a series of wars arose between the Muslims of the East and the Christians of the West. These conflicts centered on the control of sites in Palestine, which were considered sacred by both groups. They came to be known as the Crusades. Secularists have used these ancient conflicts to blame Christians for recent Muslim aggression. However, the condemnation of the Crusades has existed for hundreds of years, dating to the time of Enlightenment (6). From the Enlightenment to the twentieth century, a secularized theory developed. Stark summarized this theory, writing, “During the Crusades, an expansionist, imperialistic Christendom brutalized, looted, and colonized a tolerant and peaceful Islam” (8). In God’s Battalions, Stark seeks to correct this secularized theory of the Crusades.

Stark begins by examining the history of the Islamic conquest of the area east of the Byzantine Empire, including the Christian holy lands. Stark dispels the notion that vast Arab hordes overwhelmed the Persians and Byzantines, taking control of the area. Instead, he points to the Muslim invasion as accomplished by small but well-led, well-organized Arab armies (14). As these armies conquered the East, the Muslim elites ruled over primarily Christian populations (29). According to Pope Urban II, these Muslims began to torture, rape, and murder Christian pilgrims visiting the holy lands, as well as defile the churches and sacred places (3).

Having lost much of their territory to the Muslim invaders, the Byzantines began to strike back. Several Christian victories preceded the First Crusade (54). As Pope Urban raised the rallying cry for the Crusades, the Christians already knew much about their Muslim enemies, especially how to defeat them (54).

Despite the secular notion of the Dark Ages, Stark claims that there were many advancements in the Middle Ages leading to the Crusades. Stark writes, “the claim that Muslims possessed a more advanced culture also rests on illusions about the cultural backwardness of Christendom” (65). While Christendom lost the Greek philosophy and literature, there were many more practical advancements (62). Improvement in transportation, agriculture, armor, and weapons, especially the crossbow, and naval technology granted Christian Europeans a distinct advantage over the larger Muslim forces. Stark points out that crusaders could march more than twenty-five hundred miles and defeat an enemy which vastly outnumbered them (76).

After many centuries of Christians tolerating the Muslim presence in the Holy Land, Urban II roused the European knights to march this vast distance to expunge the invaders. Christian pilgrims had journeyed to Jerusalem from as early as the second century. Still, under Constantine’s reign as Roman Emperor, it became the norm for vast numbers of Christians to venture there. Constantine had many churches built around the area (80). Jerusalem had long been a Christian holy site by the time the Muslims entered Palestine in 636 and took control of Jerusalem in 638 (83). The Muslim caliph banned Jews in Jerusalem, as was common throughout Arabia (84). It was not long before Muslims murdered Christian monks and pilgrims in large numbers. Despite the danger, Christian pilgrims continued to visit the holy land sites (98).

While the secularized theory of the Crusades claims that the Crusaders were poor men motivated by land and loot, Stark demonstrates that this theory should be put to rest (118). Instead, two primary reasons drove the knights of the Crusades. The voiced reason was the desire to liberate the holy land (117). This was the place where Christ had walked, where He had been crucified, where He had been raised! For some, this was not enough, so the Pope assured the Crusaders that their actions could serve as penance. “Knights were chronically in need of penance, and their confessors imposed all manner of acts of atonement, sometimes even demanding a journey all the way to the Holy Land” (117). Now, this trip would be a holy and noble mission to deliver the Holy Land from the enemy’s clutches.

The first Crusade began with three groups traveling to Constantinople. The first group, the People’s Crusade, was composed of commoners (122). They were not led well as there was a fundamental lack of authority (125). Success in early pillaging raids later turned to the slaughter of the men and the enslavement of noncombatants (125). The second group was the German Crusade. This group began attacking Jews along their route to Constantinople and were later killed by Hungarian knights before reaching their destination (127). The final group is known as the Princes’ Crusade. These groups consisted of mostly wealthy, aristocratic knights led by rich and able commanders. All these groups reached Constantinople (127). The Byzantine Emperor Alexius had not anticipated the thousands of European nobles and knights (137) and did not provide them much assistance. Stark points out that despite the secular theory that the Crusaders were poor and common men, it was the best and brightest of their time (139).

After fierce fighting and heavy losses, the First Crusade recaptured the cities of Nicaea, Dorylaeum, Antioch, Jerusalem, and Ascalon over about two years. Yet almost immediately, many Crusaders began to return home (161). The Byzantines were expected to maintain a freed Jerusalem, but Alexius had determined that Jerusalem was strategically irrelevant to the empire (137). Only about three hundred knights and a small number of foot soldiers remained (161). These crusaders founded the kingdom of Jerusalem in 1099 as a permanent state to be ruled and defended by Christians (164). Due to the low number of military members, military monks arose as a new type of monastic order (173). The two main groups were the Knights Templars and the Knights Hospitallers.

With the abysmal lack of military power, the Crusader Kingdoms were never at peace. They could never have been (184). The Europeans sent several Crusades to resecure the kingdoms under constant Muslim threat. The Byzantine emperor frequently impinged the crusaders’ progress and even joined forces with the Muslims in these later Crusades. The Second Crusade ended with an attack from a Byzantine fleet (191). A treaty between the emperor and Saladin resulted in the fall of Jerusalem to Saladin (198). King Richard the Braveheart attempted to defeat Saladin, but this ended in a treaty allowing unarmed Christian passage into the city (210).

By the Fourth Crusade, relations between Latin European Christians and the Byzantine Empire had so soured that the crusaders sacked Constantinople, the empire’s capital. The city’s sacking was poorly received in the West, but the most critical failure of the Fourth Crusade was that nothing had been done to recapture Jerusalem (217). Pope Innocent III called the Fifth Crusade in 1213 (220). Despite the crusading spirit of Saint Louis, the Crusade also failed. Additionally, Louis had faced widespread opposition to the Crusade, especially the taxes funding it (234-235). Europeans decided that the Crusades were not feasible. Around 1300, the kingdoms long held by Christian crusading forces fell to the Muslims for the final time.

Stark concludes by returning to his main point. The Crusades were not unprovoked attacks or European colonialism against Muslims. They were not conducted for land, loot, or converts (248). This Muslim victimization stems from secularized theorizing of history arising in the twentieth century, primarily prompted by the creation of the state of Israel following World War II (247). Islamic provocations precipitated the Crusades in response to a pope wanting to free the Holy Lands. Surplus sons did not lead it, but the heads of wealthy aristocrats aware of the high cost it would inflict upon their personal wealth (8). The Crusades were conflicts between Christendom and Islam to control the Holy Land (9).

Evaluation

                Rodney Stark wanted to counter the prevailing wisdom of the modern secular understanding of the Crusades. He combats the idea of the brutalization, looting, and colonization of peaceful Muslims by European Christians. Stark demonstrates the conflict between the two as initialized not by the European Christians but by the conquering Islamic forces who began to govern the area and force conversion to Islam. While the critiques of the Crusades have been present in Western society since the Enlightenment, it was political events of the twentieth century that thrust the modern criticism of the Crusades into the limelight. The creation of the state of Israel following the Second World War brought anti-crusader feelings to the forefront. Stark cuts through contemporary secular society’s modern, politically-correct lenses by examining the background causes.

            In examining the backgrounds, Stark shatters some modern myths about the Crusades and the time in general. He calls into question the notion of the Dark Ages. The belief that the Muslims were more learned and sophisticated than the Christian West is the presumption that a society not steeped in Greek philosophy and literature was a society in the dark (62). Stark successfully demonstrates that Muslim technology lagged far behind the West, despite the common claim of superior Eastern culture (55). In so doing, Stark also indicates that the advancements of Muslims rely primarily on dhimmi culture. Dhimmi refers to the non-Muslim people residing under Muslim rule. Muslim fleets were Byzantine (57). Persian and Byzantine contributed highly to praised Arab architecture (58). Many celebrated Arab scientists were Persian, Syrian, Christian, or Jewish (59). Sophisticated Muslim culture primarily originated with the conquered populations (61).

            While Stark dispels many of these notions quite well, he turns toward perhaps his own biases with his coverage of some of the Crusades’ events. For instance, he seems to shrug off the murder of the Jews during the German Crusade. While he builds up the tension between the Byzantine Empire and the crusaders throughout the chapters leading up to it, Stark seems to gloss over the sacking of Constantinople. Considering the outrage it provoked at the time and has continued to enrage people over the centuries. Stark should have covered it in more detail. Instead, it was more like a footnote within a chapter that barely covered the Fourth Crusade. On that note, Stark did an excellent job examining the background leading to the First Crusade. He studied the provocation, the technological advancements, and the mindsets of the initial crusaders. Stark even covered the skirmishes between the Byzantines and the Muslims before the First Crusade. He explored the First Crusade in a fair amount of detail and its immediate aftereffects. Yet by the time he gets to the Second Crusade a later, he was galloping along quickly. The Crusades following seemed more like an epilogue to the first than separate events. Perhaps this is what Stark intended, but it seemed to be a poor treatment of the later Crusades.

            Despite a bias toward the Christian view, Stark sufficiently countered the modern understanding of the Crusades with a thorough investigation into the history and background leading to them. This book is an excellent resource for students of Medieval history and can easily be read by general adult audiences. It is well-written and well-researched.