Crusading ideals in the West were an answer to the greater threat of jihad. They were spurred by fear and necessity in a desperate competition with Islam that, for many centuries, Christians lost — and were aware that they were losing. The extent of Islam’s victories can be seen in the all-but-complete disappearance of the … Read more
In this Crisis Magazine classic, historian T. David Curp takes an honest look at the Church’s record on slavery, and explains why it isn’t all good. Current questions and values can so distort our study of the past that we enact our own version of the "cadaver synod." In this infamous trial, held … Read more
We tend to take the current military, economic, and technological superiority of the West relative to the Islamic world for granted and project it onto earlier centuries. With the luxury of hindsight, many Western historians look back at the expansion of Islam in the context of a decaying Byzantium; the medieval Crusades are seen as … Read more
An important function of history, as opposed to antiquarianism, is to make the past intelligible to the present. Current questions and values can so distort our study of the past that we enact our own version of the “cadaver synod.” In this infamous trial, held in Rome in the ninth century, Pope Stephen VII exhumed, … Read more