Eddie_Raja said:
Johnw1104 said:
I agree with your sentiment, people want to get things done and coopting religion is often a good way of doing it... We've seen terrible things can be achieved without religion whatsoever (Stalin/Mao etc)
The crusades, though, while having some benefits to the land owning dukes and kings (not many) who participated, were indeed primarily motivated by a desire to recapture the holy land for Christendom. It was the kick that got it moving and the glue that kept these disparate classes and cultures together. I'm not anti-revisionist history (I revise myself every time I study it) but I find people are so eager to rewrite history that they just flip it on its head and declare black is white. To fail to appreciate just how all encompassing faith was within the minds of the people of this time is to render any analysis of the Crusades fatally flawed from the start.
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What I learned is it was the same situation as why the Vikings sent raiders everywhere: To get rid of the access wariors before they caused trouble at home.
By the time of the crusades, 90% of the land in Europe was tied up in dozens of treaties due to marriages and agreements. As such largescale warfair was becoming obsolete and there wasn't much fighting anymore. Yet, you have all of these people (Knights, English Longbowman) who were trained 12 hours a day since 7 years old to fight.
These wariors were creating tons of problems starting fights and feuds back home (much like our over-armed Police officers today). Thus the pope said hey those dang muslims took "Our" land, and the Europeans saw an excellent opportunity to give their fighters purpose. They would have found some dumb way to use them either way.
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Well that wasn't the initial cause of the Viking age though it was a later motive. Initially they simply extended their traditional raiding to the British Isles where they found an absurd amount of undefended wealth in monasteries, and this kicked off something of a gold rush. I suppose it depends on how you look at the character of their expansion, as it was indeed motivated by excess sons in a gavelkind system of succession where all were expected to receive land and fathers wanted to acquire enough for them all. Simultaneously, though, there was a cultural/religious motive that really mirrors that which you find in the Iliad or Beowulf, where a truly great man could only be so through renown from exploits martial or exploratory. The shortage of arable land further contributed to this... As you said earlier, there were a great many factors involved here.
The crusades are rather different though, insofar as land was not as scarce and there actually was a great deal of infighting despite the Papacy's attempts to stop Christian on Christian warfare. When it became clear they couldn't stop it they began establishing guidelines which, more often than not, were followed. I have no doubt this was one consideration in launching the crusades, but it certainly wasn't the biggest one.
Each crusade was different in nature so it's irresponsible to generalize, but what you find is that most participants from top to bottom of the social hierarchy were primarily motivated by faith, especially in the early crusades. What you find when looking at the first couple crusades is that the vast, vast majority of participants were the lowest rung of the social ladder, fighting on behalf of Christendom with no hope of temporal restitution for their efforts. The gentry and many nobles, meanwhile, were conscious of all their sins and leapt at the opportunity the crusades presented, as to die on crusade was to gain immediate admittance to heaven without any waiting in purgatory. Indeed, most had to sell much or all of whatever possessions or holdings they had just to finance the venture.
That's really the key evidence for these first couple crusades; nearly all participants went all-in, selling their worldly goods or, in the case of many wealthy noblemen, spending vast sums of money and risking their holdings back home just to make the journey possible. Contrary to what people like to say lately, there was virtually no chance of actually gaining wealth from this endeavor except for a few noblemen, and even then the costs and risks far outweighed any possible gains if one was going solely for temporal (not spiritual) reasons. It took a few minor miracles and good timing for them to succeed at all and, once they'd gained the holy land, the VAST majority returned home, largely dispelling the "we need more land" theory. It benefited those nobles who held the newly formed territories as they could give these titles to potentially troublesome sons who were not otherwise in line to inherit, but there were not otherwise many tangible benefits.
As time went on the crusades certainly became more akin to the tool you describe and increasingly less people would participate while the ventures would grow more organized and professional, but there is little getting around the idea that the first few crusades were propelled more by faith than any other factor. It's difficult for us to see it that way, but that's because we must adopt the mindset of a medieval European to understand their motives and priorities. Faith, even among most of the gentry and nobility, was taken enormously seriously.
