St. Francis and the Crusaders Today

St. Francis and the Crusaders Today

About a decade ago I taught a course online at UA on the first half of the history of the Christian church. We probed deeply into the Judaic roots of Christianity and arrived all the way at the doorstep of the Reformation in the sixteenth century.

The survivors in this course took away a good sampling of how Christianity came into being and evolved over the first 1500 years. Given the breadth and depth of the course, it could be no more than a sampling.

At the end of the course, one of the questions they had to address was how the Church—speaking of the Roman Catholic Church in the main since this was before the Protestant Reformation—could have produced both a St. Francis and the Crusades at the same time.

It was a question meant to provoke some thought based on what they had read or heard in the module lectures, more of the former than the latter.

Here’s what one of my students wrote. I thought it was very perceptive.

“Although the methods of the crusaders and St. Francis were different, they still shared the same intent. They both showed their love and devotion to their religion, just in different ways. The crusaders were told that they would be forgiven from all their sins if they fought in the name of God, and they were also told that this is what God wanted them to do. They thought it was God will and that fighting in the crusades would eventually lead them to salvation. One the other hand St. Francis did not believe in violence, instead he preached love and charity. He lived a very simple life and gave all his wealth away to live a holy life. Despite his different lifestyle from the crusader, they still share the common interest of showing their devotion to Christianity and did what they thought God wanted them to do.”

I thought upon reading the above that Amanda captured the dichotomy in behavior almost perfectly. Each did what they thought was their Christian best.

Francis was devoted to peace, poverty and living the very words of his master. He was a peacemaker and totally committed to love, redemption, forgiveness, and living as Jesus. Instead of shunning lepers for example, he embraced them shocking his contemporaries by his seeming repudiation of the world. He gave away all his possessions and begged for a living. His father thought he had lost his mind.

The Crusaders, on the other hand, embraced their calling with an equal passion, to recapture the Holy Land from the infidel followers of the prophet Muhammad. Promised eternal life and forgiveness of sins, they struck terror into the heart of Islam and recaptured Jerusalem and ruled it for over a hundred years. The image of a Crusader was of a knight in armor, sword in hand, sworn to defend the faith and destroy his enemies.

Painting by Frederic Schopin (1804-1880) depicting the First Crusade — Battle delivered under the walls of Antioch between the crusaders led by Bohemond and the army of Karbouka, general of the Sultan of Persia, June 1098

It is perhaps little wonder that American troops in the Middle East in the past two decades are referred to sometimes—disparagingly—as Crusaders by radical Jihadists. It is imbedded in their cultural and religious memory when Christian warriors pushed hard on their faith and their people.

Francis tried at one time to reach the Holy Land to preach the message of Jesus to the infidels. He got as far as Egypt where he was received with respect by the Muslim Sultan for Francis’s reputation of being a great man of God had preceded him.

It wasn’t all blood and thunder between Muslims and Christians, and there was even a halcyon period of several hundred years in Spanish history in this same era when Muslims, Christians, and Jews co-habited some kingdoms in Spain in peace, if not equality.

Today, in this country, contempt and hate of one people for another seems to be the common thread uniting politicians, and even academics. Palestinians are extolled for their virtue and sanctity, Jews and Israelites condemned for promoting hatred and racial and ethnic, not to mention, religious differences.

In the attempt to recognize everyone in this country as equal, we sometimes ignore that differences—some huge and some subtle—also distinguish our people and our world. We are not all alike. Christians still believe and worship differently from Muslims and Jews, although the origins of all three are described in the “same book,” the Bible.

But very basic differences distinguish them. At the core of these differences is the Christian recognition of Jesus as savior and the son of God, not simply a prophet in a long list of prophets as Jews and Muslims believe.

To be at peace with everyone is a wonderful ideal. But as Christians you are called to live apart, following Jesus, that a St. Francis understood quite well, or, alternatively, a King Richard the Lionheart believed as a mission in his life.

Modern Christians, flirting with universalism and embracing all, regardless of creed or beliefs, might do well to read of Francis and Richard, two different expressions of Christendom, but both equally valid in propagating and defending the faith in their times.

And for those of you–masked to hide your identities–marching and shouting indecencies against Jews and the state of Israel, shame on you for two very valid reasons: your ignorance of the past and your gross religious intolerance in the present.