Solomon's Temple by Alan Balfour

Author:Alan Balfour
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Published: 2012-07-29T16:00:00+00:00

The First Crusade

No attempt was made to rebuild Constantine's 700-year-old church. There was neither the means nor the technology to even attempt it. The Anastasis was reassembled, albeit crudely, from the remains of the rotunda that had framed the tomb of Christ: this was paid for by the Byzantine Emperor.26 The destruction of the great church did not cause the Crusades, but it did make western Christians hostile to Islam. William of Tyre included it in his list of issues he believed had helped the cause. The destruction did however, allow the Byzantine Emperor to become directly involved in the administration of Jerusalem, giving the Christian community relative autonomy in the city.

In previous centuries Christianity had shown little interest in Islam, but by the last decade of the eleventh there was increasing anxiety throughout Europe on the threat to Christians in Muslim lands. This was the major topic at a council on church reform called by Pope Urban II in 1095.27 It became so because of a letter from the Byzantine emperor Alexius I Comnenus. In it he made an urgent plea for the western church to join him in the struggle against the Muslim Turks. At the conclusion of the council Urban II gave a sermon of such vehemence that it alone can be seen as having willed western Christianity into the Crusades. The sermon has not survived but some who were present recorded it. This from a monk named Robert:

From the confines of Jerusalem and the city of Constantinople a horrible tale has gone forth and very frequently has been brought to our ears; namely, that a race from the kingdom of Persians, an accursed race, a race utterly alienated from God, a generation indeed which has neither directed its heart nor entrusted its spirit to God, has invaded the lands of those Christians and has depopulated them by the sword, pillage, and fire; it has led away a part of the captives into its own country, and a part it has destroyed by cruel tortures; it has either entirely destroyed the churches of God or appropriated them for the rites of its own religion.

And then the most monstrous charge:

They destroy the altars, after having defiled them with their own uncleanness. They circumcise the Christians, and the blood of the circumcision they either spread upon the altars or pour into the vases of the baptismal font… On whom, therefore, is the task of avenging those wrongs and of recovering this territory [lost by the Byzantine Christians] incumbent, if not upon you? You, upon whom above other nations God has conferred remarkable glory in arms, great courage, bodily energy, and the strength to humble the hairy scalp of those who resist you…

Repossessing Jerusalem for Christianity was from the first the focus of the Crusade. Urban II had called western Christianity to arms:

Let, therefore, hatred depart from among you, let your quarrels end, let wars cease, and let all dissensions and controversies slumber. Enter upon the road to the Holy Sepulcher; wrest that land from the wicked race, and subject it to yourselves.

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