Term Paper on "Crusades Critical Analysis of Thomas Madden"

Term Paper 4 pages (1271 words) Sources: 1 Style: Chicago

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Crusades

Critical Analysis of Thomas Madden's the New Concise History of the Crusades

According to Thomas Madden's innocently titled book the New Concise History of the Crusades, the crusades that propelled medieval Christians to travel to Palestine to fight the infidel Muslims and secure Jerusalem under Western, Christian, European control were not such a bad thing. Despite the carnage that ensued and the violence that was inflicted against Christians and Muslims alike during the battles for the Holy Land, Madden contends that the crusades 'bought' Christian Europe time from encroaching Muslim influence. He sniffs at any sympathetic portrayals of Muslims of either the middle ages or today. Instead he condemns "the steady Muslim conquest of Christian lands over the centuries," which excuses the crusades as a means of "securing borders" between the states dominated by the two religions (Madden 213). The double standard he holds for Christian and Muslim civilization is unremarked upon, as what were the crusades if not a Christian conquest?

Madden sees the crusades not as aggression but as a kind of self-defense -- of an entirely preeminent sort, even though the crusades were justified as moral, not military struggles at the time. It was Pope Urban II at the Council of Clermont in 1095 who openly declared the first crusade, urging on a burgeoning influx of Christian warriors in European Christendom to take control of Jerusalem in the name of Christ, stating it was their holy duty (Madden 18; 213-214). The elision of religion and politics which Madden condemns in the Muslim world in his introduction, he accepts when done through the voice of a Western, Christian pontiff.

Consistently through his supposedly objective text Madden acts an apologist for the crusades. He speaks not in the dispassionate voice of a historian, but as a Christian hostile to the influence of Islam. He praises the crusades in the conclusion of his volume for slowing the advance of Islam, and destabilizing Muslim power, for two centuries without calculating their human cost, or the cost of diplomatic tensions between the West and Islam that exist up to the present day. Without the crusades, he fears that the Muslim powers would have unified into a single Islamic state and posed an effective counterweight to divided Christian Western and Eastern Europe.

Again, this is assumed to be an 'evil' thing, despite the fact that Islamic civilization was in many ways what moderns might call more 'civilized' at the time, by contemporary standards. While this concept of 'civilization' is admittedly in and of itself a judgment of morality, Madden's biases as a historian are so evident, the reader is almost inevitable placed in the position of attempting to play, no pun intended, devil's (or at very least, Islam's) advocate for the sake of gaining a more balanced view.

Madden praises the Christian democracy of the first crusading army. He admits that many individuals in this supposedly pious and inclusive band went for self-aggrandizement and enrichment, with the intention of pillaging as they went or at minimum improving their social status. Then he blithely states the fact that they were risking all in the name of Christ excuses any other, ulterior motives, and goes on to assume that most crusaders probably had some moral reasons for going. This seems belied by the fact that the poor prospects for social mobility in the Middle Ages no doubt lead many land or wealth poor individuals to seek the opportunity to seize gold in the Holy Land as well as to free it. Even if the crusades admittedly did create a rough democracy of warriors, surely the democracy of going on holy pilgrimages had a similar effect, with a more pacific religious spirit? The cultural exchange that took place on a traveling route, as well as the cultural exchange between the… READ MORE

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