Editor’s note: this article originally appeared in the April 2002 print edition of Crisis. It has been edited for brevity. Misconceptions about the Crusades are all too common. The Crusades are generally portrayed as a series of holy wars against Islam led by power-mad popes and fought by religious fanatics. They are supposed to have been the … Read more
I’m grateful to Holy Cross for the education I received there years ago, but I can’t help but think that its current identity crisis will negatively affect the quality of the education and formation it now provides. In response to “growing anti-Muslim tensions” in the United States, Holy Cross initiated a yearlong discussion to decide whether … Read more
Show me a Catholic not troubled by the circumstances of these days, and I will show you a Catholic asleep. Society’s woes rock his soul, but the historic perils facing Holy Church do so even more. Not only from outside her walls, but more frighteningly, from within. How are we to keep our spirits from … Read more
In the city of St. Louis there are two great churches honoring its namesake—the “old” cathedral, a Greek revival edifice sitting on a block dedicated for church use by the city’s founder, Pierre Laclede, in 1764; and the “new” Basilica of St. Louis, a massive green-domed neo-byzantine structure adorned with the world’s largest interior expanse … Read more
Modern political discourse is in a sad state today. Ideas are now crafted in sound bites, tweets and slogans to appeal to a world absorbed by the frenetic intemperance of instant messaging. Speech has become dominated by empty rhetoric and posturing. Expressing oneself is complicated by political correctness that suppresses common sense and objective truth. … Read more
When we look back on the Third Crusade (1189-1192) it is all but impossible not to be struck by how close King Richard and the Christian host came to decisively defeating Saladin and re-taking Jerusalem. Twice during the campaign—in January 1192 and again in July 1192—the crusaders advanced to within a dozen or so miles … Read more
One of the more ignorant bits of political correctness subverting our cultural memory is the movement to ban the Crusader mascot from schools. A number of schools already have caved in to the pressure to eliminate such a “divisive” or even “racist” mascot, and some, I am quite sure, were happy to lead the way … Read more
Following 9/11, there was renewed interest in the Crusades as explanations were sought for the brutal attacks. As terrorist attacks have continued throughout the years, and now with the rise of the Islamic State, this interest in the Crusades has not abated. Unfortunately, increased interest has not necessarily translated into increased knowledge. Prof. Thomas F. … Read more
Steve Weidenkopf, lecturer at Christendom College’s graduate program, has written a readable, story-like book that provides a blow-by-blow account of the Crusades that simultaneously counters many of the myths that have sprung up around them. Yet he does so without ignoring the crusaders’ missteps. In the process, he makes a major contribution to addressing the … Read more
It seems that those responsible for the most recent criminal acts of violence in Ferguson have fallen into the all too familiar human mistake of substituting violence for justice. The aftermath of an initial act of violence (which appears to have been an act of legitimate self-defense) has bred more violence, as violence often does. … Read more
The familiar modern image of the medieval knight—a creation of the Victorian romantic imagination, frequently appropriated by Hollywood—can be considered to be, at best, a distant and distorted shadow of its medieval literary ancestor, the knight of the chanson de geste. Knightly virtue, in the modern period, is believed to have consisted in raw physical … Read more
Sometimes the story goes like this: The Catholic Church attacked the Holy Land in 1095 and relations between Christians and Muslims have been poisoned ever since. This simplistic interpretation is not only false, it misses the real significance of the Crusades. They reacquainted Europe with her past, helped bring her out of the so-called Dark … Read more
The Crusades are one of the most misunderstood events in Western and Church history. The very word “crusades” conjures negative images in our modern world of bloodthirsty and greedy European nobles embarked on a conquest of peaceful Muslims. The Crusades are considered by many to be one of the “sins” the Christian Faith has committed … Read more
By the last decade of the 11th century, Muslim armies had conquered two-thirds of the formerly Christian world–Palestine, Egypt, Asia Minor—all now were under their control. And the Turks were pushing westward toward Constantinople, the center of Byzantine Christianity. The Byzantine emperor appealed to the pope in Rome for assistance; and it seemed clear that … Read more