August 22, 2025 • 58 mins
The Crusades are often remembered as heroic quests to reclaim the Holy Land — but the truth is far darker. From massacres in Europe and Jerusalem to the sack of Constantinople, faith was manipulated, and power was abused in the Pope’s name.Linksemail:beyondtheparadigm@yahoo.comBeyond the Paradigm - YouTubeinstagram.com/paradigm1979twitter.com/paradigm_79(1) FacebookSupport The Show patreon.com/BeyondTheParadigm buymeacoffee.com/beyondthep5Guest Link
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
M You're here because you know something. What you know
you can't explain, but you feel it. You felt it
your entirely.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Do you know what I'm talking about, Matrix?
Speaker 3 (00:28):
I had dreams that weren't just dreams.
Speaker 4 (00:35):
We accept the reality of the world with which were presented.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
It's as simple as that.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
Billions of people just living out their lives.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
Oblivious, they talks. You're good, hey, do you believe their world?
Speaker 5 (00:52):
You can deny all the things I've seen, all the
things I've discovered, not for once long, because too many
others know what's.
Speaker 4 (01:00):
Happening up there, and no one, no government agency has
jurisdiction over the truth. For the has A crossed the
(01:33):
Jordan with two hundred thousand men.
Speaker 5 (01:37):
He will make first for Karak and run out of
the chaff.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
My Lord, we must meet him before he reaches Karak.
I will lead the army. If you travel and die,
send words to mea alien to protect the villages. Assemble
(02:07):
the army.
Speaker 1 (02:15):
Alone.
Speaker 5 (02:15):
Welcome to Beyond the Paradigm. I'm your host, Paul Bracel.
Welcome back to all my regular listeners, and if you
are a new listener, you are very welcome here. What
can you expect from this podcast, or you can certainly
expect to have your worldview challenged.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
I've had my worldview.
Speaker 5 (02:31):
Challenged while doing this podcast for just over two years,
interviewing different people. Things are once thought weren't true, I
now think are true, and things that I once thought
were true, I now know are not true. But one
thing remains the same and constant always that I believe
that the Bible is the Word of God, and Jesus
Christ is the Son of God, and he is the Way,
(02:53):
the Truth, and the life, and nothing will ever change that.
Many different topics have been covered on this podcast. If
you new to this, We've covered UFOs various different episodes
on that topic, looked at the nepheline, We've looked at
different conspiracies, looked at false flag operations, multiple different topics.
I like to mix it up, keep it varied, keep
(03:16):
it interesting. But ultimately we're just seeking to get to
the truth, the truth of this world of ours, what's
going on? What lies have we've been told, Lies about history,
lies about medicine and vaccinations, all kinds of different lies.
We're seeking to expose, exposing darkness and pointing men to
(03:40):
the wonderful light. Of Jesus Christ, the Son of the
Living God. But before I get into the meet of
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Speaker 5 (06:43):
There's organizations out there that have thousands and thousands of
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(07:03):
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But this is the main sort of focus for me
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this is sort of my bread and butter. Now I
don't want to ramble on anymore because this topic today
(07:26):
is an extremely interesting topic and there's a lot to it.
Never going to cover every aspect of this topic, and
as you can see from the title, we're gonna be
talking about the Crusades. So when you hear the word
crusade or Crusades, what image fills your mind. Maybe it's
(07:48):
armored nights marching with crosses stitched on the cloaks. Maybe
it's the idea of brave Christian warriors reclaiming the Holy
Land from muzzle. And that's the story. Most of us
were given the Crusades as God's holy wars. But what
(08:10):
if that story isn't true? What if the Crusades were
not really Christian at all, but instead Roman Catholic campaigns
for power, wealth and control. What if these so called
holy wars were full of atrocities Christians or should I
say Catholics slaughtering Jews, Muslims, and Christians in the name
(08:36):
of religion. Well, on this podcast today, I'm hopefully going
to appeal back the layers of myth and we're going
to expose the truth about the Crusades, the real origins,
the bloody consequences, and the different voices that witness them.
And by the end of this episode, hopefully you'll see
why the Crusades were not Christ's mission, but they were
(09:00):
Rome's mission.
Speaker 1 (09:02):
So a little bit of.
Speaker 5 (09:03):
Context just before we go into the main thrust of it.
By the eleventh century, Christianity was already split Western Catholic
Church Rome versus Eastern Orthodox Church Constantinople. Europe was violent,
knights fighting petty wars, nobles warring over land peasants often
(09:27):
crushed in between, and the papers Is sought to unify
and redirect violence outward. In ten ninety five, the Byzantine
Emperor Alexios the First asked the Pope for merceriies to
defend himself and the people against the Saldruk Turks. Now,
(09:51):
one thing to notice is that this Alexios the Emperor,
he asked simply for trained soldiers, not like a last
movement but the Pope, which was Urban the Second, he
saw something bigger, and that the Council of Clermon. He
gave a speech that transformed a local Byzantine problem into
(10:14):
a sweeping holy war, an urban promise that anyone.
Speaker 1 (10:18):
Who took up the cross would.
Speaker 5 (10:20):
Receive remission of sins. For the first time in history,
killing in a battle was marketed as a path to salvation.
Now that's not Christianity, that's papal politics. And by November
ten ninety five, Pope Urban the Second stood before an
(10:40):
assembly not to preach peace, but to rally Europe behind
what was termed a holy war. Now I just want
you to listen. I we framed the moment using power, fear,
and ecclesiastical language. And this is the translation actually into English.
But obviously we know that he wouldn't have originally spoken
(11:03):
this in English. And this is the culture of Charterers
or the Council of Clermont, and it's the excerpt on indulgence.
So this is what he says, All who die by
the way, whether by land or by sea, or in
battle against the Pagans, shall have immediate remission of sins.
(11:25):
This I grant them through the power of God. With
which I am invested. Or what a disgrace if such
a despised and based race wish worships demons should conquer
a people which has the faith of the omnipotent God,
and he's made glorious with the name of Christ. With
(11:47):
that reproaches, will the Lord overwhelm us if you do
not aid those who with us profess the Christian religion.
Let those who have been accustomed unjustly to wage private
warfare against the faithful, now go against the infidels and
end with victory this war which should have been begun
(12:11):
long ago. Let those who have hitherto been robbers now
become soldiers. Let those who fought against their brothers and
relatives now fight in a proper way against the barbarians.
Let those who have been serving as mercenaries for small
pay now obtain the eternal reward. Let those who have
(12:34):
been wearing themselves out to the detriment of both soul
and body, now work for a double honor. So you
see the offer ear indulgence, basically forgiveness of sins through bloodshed.
Now that's not Christianity. That's not what's in the New Testament.
(12:58):
It was never preached. Jesus said, love your enemies, not
slow to them, and paradise. This was a Roman Catholic invention,
port theology, part propaganda. So there would have been those
that took up what they called the cross and engaged
in this crusade because they genuinely believed what the pope
(13:19):
said that basically this had grant them remission of the
sins and enter into the Kingdom of God that way,
And there was people that genuinely believed that. Obviously, there's
different reasons why many went on this crusade. That would
have been one of them. Some may have been seeking adventure,
you know, joining an order of knights like the Knights
(13:40):
Temporary with previously spoke about it would have been sort
of an exciting adventure to be part of that training
with those knights, becoming a knight, being part of this,
you know, this army that's marching towards Jerusalem. They would
have been going through different lands that they'd never seen
on these like epic journeys. So there would have been
(14:00):
those who were out for sort of excitement and adventure
and giving them sort of a purpose, maybe escaping.
Speaker 1 (14:09):
Their own mundane lives.
Speaker 5 (14:11):
But there would have been those that simply wanted to
go on this crusade because they wanted to commit atrocities.
They wanted to kill people. And there are people like that.
There are men like that. There's men in the army
like that, in every nation's army on the earth. There
were men who were there simply because they want to
kill people. Now, I just want to talk a little
(14:33):
bit about some of the atrocities. So the Rhineland massacres
of ten ninety six, and the background to this is
that the first Crusade hadn't even left Europe before it
turned into mass bloodshed. People's crusade bands made up of
peasants and low ranking knights under leaders like Count Amiko,
(14:54):
swept through the Rhineland and the target instead of Muslims
was the attack Jewish communities Inspire, Vorms, Manes and Cologne.
And the motive was these crusaders saw the Jews as
christ killers and thought purging them was part of cleansing Christendom.
And they also looted Jewish wealth to fund their journey
(15:17):
east and at Warms, the crusaded slaughtered about eight hundred
Jews at Minds. The archbishop tried to protect the Jews,
but was overwhelmed and families committed mass suicide rather than
be baptized at sword point. And in Cologne, many Jews
fled into hiding, some sheltered by sympathetic Catholic neighbors. And
(15:42):
chronicler Solomon boy Simpson said that they killed about eight
hundred souls, young and old, without pity, fathers and mothers,
with their sons and daughters crying aloud, perished together, slain
for the sanctification of the name. And why this matters
to talk about this is that it wasn't a side note.
(16:05):
It sort of set the tone. The First Crusade began
not in Jerusalem, but with pogroms in so called Christian Europe,
but as we know, it's Catholic Europe. Then there was
the capture of Jerusalem in ten ninety nine. So after
a five week siege, Crusaders broke into Jerusalem on July fifteenth,
(16:28):
ten ninety nine, and the defenders were a mix of
Fatimid soldiers and the city's inhabitants. Now the massacre took place.
Once inside, the crusaders showed absolutely no mercy. Muslims were
hunted through the streets and mosques, Jews fled to the synagogues,
which were set on fire with them inside. Reports described women, children,
(16:52):
and elderly cut down indiscriminately. They also went into the
Orthodox quarter slaughtered Orthodox Christians there, and one of the
primary source accounts by Raymond of Aguilaire's Crusader chaplain, said
that in the temple and porch of Solomon men rolled
(17:12):
in blood up to their knees and bridle reins. Just
imagine that blood up to the knees.
Speaker 1 (17:19):
Unbelievable.
Speaker 5 (17:20):
I couldn't even imagine the slaughter. It's just horrific to
even try and imagine it. The fultuous chartres. No one
has ever seen or heard of such a slaughter of Pagans,
for they were burned on pires like pyramids, and no
one save God alone, knows how many. In the aftermath
(17:42):
of this, the Crusaders created the Kingdom of Jerusalem and
installed Godfrey.
Speaker 1 (17:46):
Of Boullion as the ruler.
Speaker 5 (17:49):
Now this matters because the conquest was celebrated in the
West as a triumph of God's will, but remembered in
the East as butchery in God's name. There was also
the sack of Constantinople in twelve oh four, And the
background to this is it's the Fourth Crusade. It was
(18:09):
meant to reclaim the Holy Land, but instead, due to
the debt to the Venetian bankers and political intrigue, crusaders
diverted to Constantinople, which was the capital of the Byzantine
Christian Empire. And the seas took place on April twelve,
oh four, and crusaders stormed into the city and for
(18:32):
three days they plundered, raped and destroyed. And what I
want to say is that there is a time to kill.
There's a time when killing can be justified in sort
of just war, but rape is never ever justified.
Speaker 1 (18:50):
Ever.
Speaker 5 (18:50):
There is no circumstance at all ever where rape can
be justified. Sometimes in limited kings, killing can be justified,
not murder, of course, but rape is never justified. And
rapist should be put to death. It's as simple as
that a rapist should be executed. And these characters, these
(19:16):
crusaders were raping, plundering, and destroying this city for three days.
Churches were desecrated, including Hagio Sophia, were a prostitute reportedly
danced on the altar while drunk crusaders sang relics and
treasures were looted and taken to the West, and many
are still in Venice today. The Byzantine historian Nicotess Channiortes
(19:41):
wrote of murders, rapes, and indescribable sacrilege, and he said
this spurred neither the meek nor the aged, neither women
nor children, even the nuns were defiled. Nothing was held sacred.
Not since the world was created was there ever such wickedness.
(20:02):
And this matters. This we need to understand these atrocities
and why they matter. It's because the Crusaders on this one,
they didn't even make it to what's called the Holy Land. Instead,
they destroyed the greatest Christian city of the East, deepening
the Catholic Orthodox schism, and the division is still felt today.
Speaker 1 (20:24):
So let's just think.
Speaker 5 (20:25):
About this, right, Jews slaughtered before a Crusader ever saw
the Holy Land. Muslims cut down by the thousands in Jerusalem,
as well as Jews and Orthodox Christians. These Orthodox Christians
killed by Catholics Inconstantinople. And these were not just isolated incidents.
There were patterns of violence wrapped in the cloak of religion.
(20:49):
And if you judge a tree by its fruit. The
Crusades bore rotten fruit, not the Gospel, not the Kingdom
of God, just blood, gold.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
And empire.
Speaker 5 (21:34):
What were the real reasons for the Crusade? This is
a big and often debated historical question. It's actually a
massive question. So I'm going to try and unpack it carefully,
and it's very, very difficult. But what I would say
is is that because of these Crusades, people have a
dim view of Christianity. There's a lot of people that
(21:57):
see the Crusades as being Christian and that is the problem.
This is where the Catholic Church is so wicked because
they blocked the Gospel. I've said this before, and this
is one of the ways.
Speaker 1 (22:08):
Because of the way.
Speaker 5 (22:10):
They behaved in the Crusades, many people think this is
Christianity and it's not. So let's look at the reasons
and try to sort of get to the truth of
why they actually happened. So the Crusades, starting with the
First Crusade ten ninety six to ten ninety nine, they
were complex wars and there was many overlapping causes religious, political,
(22:33):
and economic, and the question of Muslim aggression is one
of part of the story. But it's not the whole picture,
so the background before the First Crusade, early Islamic conquest.
In the seventh and eighth centuries. After Mohammad's death, Muslim
armies rapidly expanded into the Christian majority regions or Catholic
(22:53):
majority regions or Orthodox whatever you want to call it,
including Syria, Ustein Egypt, North Africa, and Spain. And this
expansion brought formerly Byzantine Christian lands under Muslim rule. Christians
in Western Europe centuries later sometimes looked back at this
as the long standing loss to Islam Soljuk Turks in
(23:18):
the eleventh century. By the late ten hundreds, the Saujuk Turks,
which was a Muslim dynasty, had gained power in the
Middle East. They defeated the Byzantines at the Battle of
Manzikirk at ten seventy one, seizing most of Anatolia, which
is modern Turkey. And this was a critical blow to
(23:40):
the Byzantine Empire and it brought Muslim rule much closer
to Constantinople, and there was attacks on pilgrims and holy sites.
There were reports, some were possibly exaggerated, in Europe, of
difficulties pilgrims faced traveling to Jerusalem under Seldruk rule, including
harassment and occasional violence. In ten oh nine, the Fatimid
(24:05):
Kelliv al Hakim had destroyed the Church of the Holy
Sepulcher in Jerusalem, which was later rebuilt, and this left
a strong memory in the so called Christian world, and
there was the call for the Crusade. In ten ninety five.
Beresenting Emperor Alexius, communists asked Pop Urban the second for
(24:27):
military health, like I said against the cell Jus who
threatened Constantinople.
Speaker 1 (24:33):
Then there was Pope Urban's.
Speaker 5 (24:35):
Sermon Let's Say, which he framed the callers both a
defense of Eastern Christians and a mission to reclaim Jerusalem,
presenting it as a response to Muslim aggression and oppression
of Christians. Now we'd sort of need to interpret this
role of Muslim aggression so in port. Yes, from the perspective,
(24:57):
the Byzantium and the Latin Church, the Soldruk conquest, especially
in Anatolia, and the levant and perceived mistreatment of Christians
and pilgrims were real provocations, but that's not the whole story.
The Crusades were also shaped by European dynamics papal ambitions,
(25:18):
nightly culture, desire for land and wealth, and the religious
ideal of pilgrimage. Western Europe's aggression and expansionist energy played
a huge role too, and perspectives matter, So what Europeans
called Muslim aggression could be equally seen as part of
a normal ebb and flow of empires in the medieval world.
(25:42):
And from the Muslim side, the arrival of the Crusaders
looked like an unprovoked invasion of lands that had been
Islamic for centuries. So Muslim military advances, especially by the Soljuks,
were an important trigger for the First Crusade, but they
weren't the only cause. The Crusade arose out of a
(26:03):
mix of Byzantine weakness, papal politics, Catholic religious fervor, and
broader history of Islamic expansion. So urban the Second and
his successes, they wanted to assert supremacy over kings and
rival bishops, and the Crusades gave them leverage. And then
(26:25):
there was indulgences, which is basically spiritual bribery, which I said,
you know, remission of sins in exchange for war. There
was economic gain younger sons of noble sort lands, merchants
sought trade routes, and they were redirecting the violence because
knights were turning Europe into a battlefield. So the Pope
(26:45):
rebranded their violence into a holy cause. Now, the Crusades
were sold as a holy mission, but if you peel
back the rhetoric, they looked like the ultimate rebranding exercise.
Pope urban the second restless nights, hungry nobles, and greedy merchants,
and he gave them a new target. Fight for Christ,
(27:07):
he said, and you'll gain land, treasure, and eternal salvation.
And it worked. Tens of thousands touched.
Speaker 1 (27:15):
To the cross. But we need to be clear.
Speaker 5 (27:18):
This was not Christianity in action. This was politics, economics,
and manipulation draped in Christian language. So let's look at
some of the perspectives and nuances, and to truly understand
the Crusades, we have to step outside the narrow lens
of Western chroniclers and listen to voices that were silenced
(27:41):
or marginalized. The Crusades were hailed as holy wars in
the West, but across the lands they touched they were
experienced very differently. So let's have a look at the
Muslim perspective. First of all, so from the Muslim world,
the Crusaders or Francs as they were called, were often
(28:01):
seen as barbaric, alien, and terrifying. Ibin l Kalanese from
Damascus described them as unpredictable invaders, merciless in battle and
reckless in their violence. Unlike local armies who followed cords
of war, the Franks or Crusaders would often slaughter entire
(28:23):
populations without warning. Osama ibin Monique not certain and pronouncing
that correctly. But this guy was a Syrian nobleman and
a poet who interacted with Crusades for decades, offers of
a more personal perspective. In his memoirs, he mocks their
clumsy military techniques, their strange customs, and their ignorance of
(28:46):
local culture. Yet behind the humor is fear. He writes
repeatedly of their capacity for extreme cruelty of towns, seized,
women raped, and innocence executed. His stories reveal a deep tension,
fascination mixed with horror. The Franks or the Crusaders were
(29:07):
not just enemies. They were an unstoppable force that could
strike at any moment, he said. And consider this passage
from this Osama guy. They know not how to ride
with skill, yet they fall upon us with the fury
of lions. When they strike, non may flee, none may
(29:29):
hope for mercy. Their God, they claim, commands it. But
if this is devotion, then it is a devotion of terror.
So let's look at the Jewish perspective. So Jewish communities
of Europe, the Crusaders were a nightmare at home, not
a distant Holy war. Chroniclers from ten ninety six record
(29:51):
unimaginable horror in mines, worms and Cologne. Entire Jewish families
slaughtered and parents chose death over forced baptism. Children were
torn from the arms, or they were killed alongside them.
Like I said Solomon boy Simpson chronicling the Ryeland massacres,
(30:12):
I'll say again, they said they killed about eight hundred souls,
young and all. There was no pity fathers, mothers, sons,
daughters that were crying aloud. The old perish together. And
for Jewish communities, the Crusades were not about Jerusalem or
the Holy Land. There were an existential threat in Christian
Europe or Catholic Europe, a violent reminder that their neighbors,
(30:35):
motivated by religious zeal could turn on them with little warning,
and these events left deep scars that shaped Jewish collective
memory for centuries. The Byzantine perspective, so the Eastern Christians,
who shared the same faith but different traditions, were often
as alarmed by the Crusaders as.
Speaker 1 (30:56):
The Muslims were.
Speaker 5 (30:58):
Anna Commenini, daughter of Emperor Alexios and author of Alexiad,
provides a vivid account of her father's dealings with the
First Crusade. Now, according to Anna, the Crusade has arrived
as supposed allies against the Seljuk Turks. Yet they were unruly,
in subordinate, and dangerously unpredictable. They stole supplies, demanded excessive tribute,
(31:24):
and often ignored the emperor's commands.
Speaker 1 (31:26):
In her words, they.
Speaker 5 (31:28):
Are men of fierce temper, eager for gain, and know
not how to govern themselves. We can neither rely on
their loyalty nor temper their passions. For the Byzantines, the
Crusades were a mixed blessing potential military support against Muslim neighbours, yeah,
but at a terrible cost, and the Fourth Crusade a
(31:49):
century later would prove just how catastrophic. Allowing these armies
into the Byzantine lands could be What about a Protestant perspective?
Well centuries later, Protestant reformers looked back on the Crusades
with critical eyes. Martin Luther, for instance, he condemned the
wars as a corruption of true Christianity. In his writings,
(32:13):
he called indulgences for war heretical, which they are denounced
the pope for manipulating faith to serve temporal power. To Luther,
the promise of eternal salvation in exchange for participation in
violent campaigns was not divine.
Speaker 1 (32:31):
But it was a gross abuse.
Speaker 5 (32:33):
He saw the Crusades as a tool of the papacy
and not the mission of Christ. The wars, he argued,
had nothing to do with the true faith and everything
to do with the ambitions of church hierarchy. What about
sort of modern perspectives? While modern historians continue to debate
the crusades motivations and meanings, Stephen Runchman called them a
(32:58):
tragic misdirect, framing the wars as disastrous, violent misadventures fueled
by religious zeal and personal greed. Jonathan Riley Smith emphasizes
that many Crusaders were sincere. They believe deeply in their
faith and in the promise of spiritual reward.
Speaker 1 (33:16):
And I can.
Speaker 5 (33:17):
Imagine that is true. Like I said, we can't just
say that all the crusaders were barbarians and lunatics and murderers.
There would have been those that weren't, but they were
probably in the minority. Christopher Tireman stresses nuance. These wars
not purely holy wars, nor purely opportunistic raids. They were
(33:40):
a complex mixture of faith, feared ambition, political necessity, and
personal desire. The same man might fight for God one day,
for wealth the next out of social pressure another So
context matters and understanding these overlapping motivations is crucial, and
that's what we need to do. We need to have
(34:00):
a balanced view of these crusades.
Speaker 1 (34:05):
So what's the nuance.
Speaker 5 (34:07):
Well, not every crusader was a cynical opportunist, like I said,
Many genuinely believed they were serving God. But the faith
was manipulated and it was twisted by the leaders, you know,
the pope. There was ambition and political agendas. And when
we read Muslim chronicles Jewish accounts Byzantine historians, a different
(34:30):
truth emergers. The Crusades were not noble pilgrimages, but invasions, massacres,
and thefts. And then when the Protestant Reformers looked back
centuries later, they recognized what those who suffered firsthand already knew.
The Crusades were not christ mission, but they were the
Pope's mission. History, when examined from all sides, reveals far
(34:54):
more than trym some and victories. It reveals the human
cost of so called Holy wars.
Speaker 3 (35:02):
Mmmmm.
Speaker 5 (35:36):
The film Kingdom of Heaven starring Orland Or Bloom, is
an excellent movie in my opinion, and it's about the Crusades.
What I would say is, if you've not seen it,
you're not gonna hear the gospeling there obviously, but it
shows you, you know, sort of Catholic way of thinking
throughout the whole movie, and the superstitions you know of
(35:58):
the Catholic Church, the things that they teach, and basically
i'll just give you a brief bakdown of the film.
But there's this guy called Baileon played by Orland Or Bloom.
Now Baileyon was a real person, Baileyon of Ebeline.
Speaker 1 (36:12):
He was a nobleman.
Speaker 5 (36:13):
But in this film he starts off as a blacksmith,
and the character who is played by Liam Neeson, a
guy called god for who's a knight godfre you of Ebelin.
He turns up in France after coming back from you know,
the Crusades and basically tells Bailey under these his father
on long story short, baileyon ends up going over there
(36:35):
and he becomes the defender of Jerusalem, which is actually true.
He did defend Jerusalem and surrendered it to sella head
in There are other characters in there, a couple of
particularly odious characters who stand out for me Gee Dulision
and Renard de Chation, and you know, there's real characters
(36:58):
in there. King Baldwin the four, who's the leper King.
His sister Sabyla of Jerusalem, she's in there now, this
guid Elision character. He's a French nobleman and he came
to the Holy Land around the eleven seventies. He married
Sibylla of Jerusalem, who's the sister of King Baldwin the Fourth,
the leper King, which put him in line for the
(37:21):
throne because King Baldwin died, like I said, he was
a leper. He became King of Jerusalem in eleven eighty
six after Sabylla crammed him despite opposition from many nobles,
and his military role was in eleven eighty seven the
Battle of Hattin. He led the Crusader army against Salahadin
and he was disastrously defeated. The loss destroyed the Crusader
(37:45):
military power in the Holy Land, and he was captured
by Selahadin and he was later released and the aftermath
of that was the kingdom was lost, but he retained
some power and eventually apparently became the King of Cyprus.
Word Louisian dynasty rule for centuries. So these are some
of the clowns that were cutting about the Holy Land
(38:07):
at that time. And the actual you see this in
the film Kingdom of Heaven, this maniac guild Louision, he
becomes king. I'm not going to spoil the film for
you if you haven't seen it, but you see this
disastrous battle that he takes the Crusader who's on in
the film, but they're probably the most wicked character in
(38:27):
the film. And I can imagine there were men like
this out there, and indeed there was because this guy,
Reynold Deschation, he was.
Speaker 1 (38:36):
A real person.
Speaker 5 (38:37):
I think he's played by Brendan Gleeson in the film,
and he's a particularly wicked individual. So these are the
sorts of people that were cutting around at the time
in the Crusades. And basically his background is that he's
a French knight who came to the Holy Land in
the Second Crusade and he married Constance of Antioch, which
(38:59):
made him the Prince Savantioch. Though he was unpopular and
he was considered reckless and he had a reputation for ruthlessness.
He was known for cruelty, greed and aggression even towards
so called fellow Christians or Catholics and obviously the Eastern Orthodoxy.
He was famously he raided Cyprus, which was then part
(39:22):
of the Byzantine territory in eleven fifty six and he
was looting, mistreated civilians and this worship relations with the Byzantium,
and he constantly brought truces with Muslims, which enraged Salahadin.
Speaker 1 (39:37):
You see this in the film.
Speaker 5 (39:39):
He's absolutely brutal and his propagations of Salahadin, you know,
as Lord of Ultra Jordan after remarrying into the Ibilin family,
he raided Muslim caravans even during truces. So this is
how he was provoking Salahadin all the time. And he
threatened to attack Mecca and Medina by launching ships across
(40:01):
the Red Sea, a shocking move that outraged the entire
Muslim world. And these acts made him a personal enemy
of Salahaden. And at this battle which we talked about,
he was on with Gi DeLisi on this ridiculously stupid
battle that was fought in eleven eighty seven, the Battle
of Hatting. You know, the Crusaders were defeated and him
(40:26):
and Ghee of Louis On they were both captured. You
see this in the film. They both captured and he
was brought before Cellahaden, who reportedly offered him mercy if
he converted to Islam. Reynard refused, and Salahden apparently personally
executed him by beheading him, but he spared King Ghi
(40:49):
Luisi On. I won't say any more about the film
to do with these two characters, but what I would
say is that there were real people in the film.
Obviously there's been artistic licensing there. It is a good
film to watch, and I just thought i'd sort of
talk a little bit about that and some of the
(41:10):
characters in it who relate to real people, and you
know the brutality of these characters. So if you watch
the film and there's this Geieluisy on, there's Bailey on,
there's King Baldwin, the fourth Renalds just shout on. These
are all real people who was all existed at the time.
So you know, what I would say is you're not
(41:31):
going to hear the gospel. You're gonna hear a lot
of superstition in there. Baileyan apparently he goes up to
where Christ was crucified and then he's seen talking to
one of the other nights saying God doesn't speak to women,
and all these things and the superstition. They think if
they go to the Holy Land, you know, and they
don't stand on Mount Calvary where Jesus was sacrificed, where
(41:53):
he gave up hisself on the cross, that God will
speaks to him there. You see, they don't realize because
they've not been told, because the Roman Catholic Church has
kept them in darkness, that faith alone, in Jesus Christ
alone is how you were saved, and you can approach
God through Jesus Christ. You don't need to be stud
where Jesus was crucified or where he was buried. You
(42:15):
don't need to be in a particular place. You can
do it anywhere. So what about the actual legacy of
the Crusades. Well, obviously, like I've said, for example, if
you watch any videos on YouTube of people interacting at
speaker's corners, so Christians and Muslims, often times the Crusades
(42:36):
are brought up. Even today, the Crusades are brought up.
There's one particular Christian chap who is always debating Muslims.
But you hear him speaking about how the Muslims attacked
Christian this and Christian art, Christian Palestine, Christian Egy, Christian Spain,
and like I said, they weren't Christian lands. There were
(42:57):
Roman Catholic lands. And basically, some of these characters who
were going out debating Muslims so against Muslims that they're
blinded to the actual nuances, the actual different reasons, and
they just say that the Crusades were in response to
Muslim aggression full stop. So the legacy of the Crusades
(43:18):
is important because we're dealing with the fallout even today,
when we're interacting with Muslims or Jews or whatever. And
like I said, people who view the Crusades as Christian aggression.
This is the reason why I'm doing this episode today,
because it's important as Christians to be able to answer
people and say, well, i'ng on a second, the Crusades
(43:41):
were not Christian because the Bible teaches this, and this
is what the Porte was saying, and its opposite to
what the Bible's teaching. Therefore, the Crusades were not a
holy war at all. So they didn't end in twelve
ninety one when the last fortress fell, because their echoes
still haunts us today and they've hardened the split between
(44:01):
Catholic and Orthodox. They've left Jewish communities devastated. They set
the stage for centuries of Muslim Christian hostility, and to
this day, like I said, you know, it's talked about
and we still hear world leaders invoked the word crusade
to sell wars, to justify violence, to rally crowds. And
(44:24):
that's the poisonous legacy of Rome's so called holy wars.
So as we come to the sort of final segment
of today's episode, it's time to ask what were the
actual consequences of the Crusades. What can they teach us
about faith, power, and human nature? Well, there was political
(44:47):
and religious consequences, wasn't there? Politically? The Crusades reshape Europe
and the Middle East. The Crusade estates like Antioch, Tripoli,
and Jerusalem were established in foreign lands, creating new centers
of power and conflict. Yet these states were fragile, dependent
on constant reinforcements from Europe, and they were never fully secure,
(45:11):
and their existence fueled centuries of warfare, instability, and resentment
in Europe. The Crusades strengthened the power of the papacy temporarily,
but they also exposed deep flaws. Indulgences, force recruitment, and
the Church's control over armies left many questioning the moral
(45:33):
authority of the pope. For the reformers like Martin Luther,
these wars were proof that religious leaders could manipulate faith
for political gain. For the Byzantine Empire, the consequences were catastrophic.
The Fourth Crusade in particular, led to the sack of
Constantinople in twelve or four, a Christian city destroyed by
(45:57):
the Roman Catholics, and the Empire never fully recovered, opening
the door to the Ottoman expansion. Centuries later, there's been
cultural and social consequences and the Crusades They've left lasting
scars on multiple communities. Jewish populations in Europe who faced massacres,
(46:19):
forced conversions, centuries of so called anti Semitism tied to
the memory of Crusade of violence.
Speaker 1 (46:26):
In the Middle East.
Speaker 5 (46:27):
Muslim communities remembered the Crusaders as foreign invaders, brutal, unrelenting,
and destructive. And even amongst Christians, the war's fostered suspicion
and division. Eastern Orthodox Western Catholic became increasingly alienated, deepening
theological and cultural riffs that exist to this day.
Speaker 1 (46:51):
But it was an all destruction.
Speaker 5 (46:53):
The Crusades also accelerated cultural exchange. Europeans encountered advanced medicine, mathematics,
and architecture in the Middle East. Some scholars argue that
these encounters laid the grand work for the Renaissance, and
yet even here the benefits were born out of violence
(47:13):
and conquest. So let's sort of reflect on this now,
on faith and human nature. The Crusades challenge us to
reflect on the intersection of faith and power when deeply
held religious beliefs and manipulated by leaders for political or
(47:34):
personal gain. Devotion can be turned into destruction. Ordinary people, knights, peasants, women, children,
become instruments of that power and are often unaware of
the consequences of their actions. Modern perspectives can help us
grasp this complexity. Some crusaders truly believed they were fulfilling
(47:59):
divine word will, some sort of adventure, wealth or redemption.
Some were manipulated by rulers and the church. No single
narrative captures the full reality, that is the lesson we
must carry forward. History is multifaceted, and morality is often murky.
So what's the truth about the Crusads. Well, they were
(48:23):
neither wholly noble nor wholly evil, but they were catastrophic.
I would say they were more evil than noble, definitely
more evil than noble. There were wars fought in the
name of religion, yet they were driven by politics, greed,
and ambition. They left a legacy of death, division.
Speaker 1 (48:43):
And cultural trauma.
Speaker 5 (48:45):
And yet they all saw forced civilizations into contact with
each other for better or worse. A lot of the
time worse, but there was also times than it was
for the better and that's why I'm saying there wasn't
wholly evil, maybe majority evil, and I would definitely say that.
(49:05):
And the Crusades remind us that ideology, when combined with
unchecked power, lead to unimaginable suffering. And they remind us
that history is written from many perspectives Catholic, Muslim, Jewish, Byzantine, Protestant,
Christian who reflecting later, looking back, and the full picture
(49:27):
emerges only when all the voices are heard. And that's
why I said, we've been lied to about history that
we are taught in our schools in the Western world,
in the Western media, the things that they want us
to believe, because we're not given full pictures, we're not
given all the voices. We're not hearing all the voices,
and that's what we need to hear. Most importantly, they
(49:49):
remind us to question authority, to look beyond the official narratives,
and to understand that even so called holy wars are
fought by human hands with all flaws, fears and ambitions
that that implies. So it's time to settle this. The
Crusades were not Christian, they were Roman Catholic. They were
(50:14):
indulgences sold for blood. They were power dressed in piety.
There were atrocities committed in Christ's name, but never in
Christ's spirit. In the film The Kingdom of Heaven, which
I mentioned before, there's a scene in it where Baileyon
and this other knight I can't remember the other knight's name,
(50:36):
but he was one of the knights of Saint John.
And they're in this courtyard and there's people.
Speaker 1 (50:42):
Screaming and shouting.
Speaker 5 (50:44):
There's obviously different residents of Jerusalem in there, and there's
some knights templars and they're being hung. And the knight
of Saint John's says to bailey On, you know these
are being hung because they took part in a raid
on a Muslim carag and Baillion says to this night,
so they're being put to death for what the pope
(51:07):
commanded them to do. And the knight turns to him
and says, yes, but not Christ, I think. And that's
the reality. The Pope was commanding it, but Jesus didn't.
Jesus didn't command any of that. He didn't command the
killing of anybody in the Crusades. He didn't call for
(51:30):
the Crusades. A wicked pope called for them. Wicked popes
in succession, and wicked and evil men took great pleasure
in killing people during the Crusades. And that's the reality.
Violent men will always gravitate to anything that is violent,
(51:50):
and they'll use it. So for example, football, they might
be part of a hooligan gang. There could be all
kinds of things, but violent men, they love violence, don't they.
And when Jesus was in the Garden of Death, Semine
and Judas came. He came with a band of soldiers,
and Peter whipped out his sword and struck the ear
(52:11):
off the high priest servant. What did Jesus tell him
to do? He didn't tell him to carry on or
nice one, Peter, let's get amongst it and take these
characters out. No, he told him to put up his sword,
didn't he to put it away? That those that live
by the sword will die by the sword.
Speaker 1 (52:27):
And then what did he do?
Speaker 5 (52:29):
Jesus put the guy's ear back on, didn't he He
healed it, just put his ear back on and healed him.
And he because he said that my kingdom is not
of this world, because he's if they were, if it
were of this world, his servants would fight. But it's
not of this world. Now, that's not to say you
can't defend yourself. I'm not telling people they can't defend themselves.
(52:49):
There's some lunatics coming at you, or he's going to
hurt your family, defend yourself vigorously as well. Make sure
they don't hurt you or your family. But we're not
going out to war. We're not going into foreign lands,
you know, slaughtering Pagans, slaughtering Muslims and Jews and all
this type of thing, because the Kingdom of God is
(53:10):
not of this world. So we're not to go out
slaughtering people. We're to love our enemies. That's what Jesus said,
to love your enemies. Everything we do must be to
the furtherance of the Gospel, not to hinder and block
the Gospel, which is what the Roman Catholic Church does.
(53:30):
And if there is one lesson to take away, it's this.
Whenever faith is turned into a weapon for empire.
Speaker 1 (53:37):
The Gospel is lost.
Speaker 5 (53:40):
Only blood remains. We can't lose the Gospel. It can't
be lost under you know, masses of bodies. Because we
believe we're doing God's will. The Gospel must be proclaimed
and it should not be hidden, should be not blocked.
It shouldn't be lost by our behavior. The Crusades did
(54:02):
nothing to further the Gospel, only hinder it. So this
is why I would encourage Christians to study the true
history of the Crusades. Like I said, look at multiple
different sources. There are all kinds of sources out there,
you know, including books obviously manuscripts like primary sources. There's
(54:23):
YouTube videos, you know, different historians, as a guy called
Roy Casagrande, he's decent to listen to. He'll give you
sort of a balanced view of the Crusades. He's on YouTube.
So many resources available to you guys. So, like always,
I'm encouraging people to do their own research.
Speaker 1 (54:43):
That's what I do. Do your own.
Speaker 5 (54:46):
Research, and I would say do research on the Crusades
as Christians, because we need to defend the faith. We
need to defend ourselves from attacks by Muslims, Jews, other
people in the outside world that see the Crusades, see
the evil of them and say that these are Christian
crew said therefore Christianity is evil. We need to be
able to rebut that claim and show people that they
(55:11):
were actually nowhere near Christian They were contrary to the
teachings and the scriptures, the contrary to Jesus and what
he taught and what he was about and who he is,
the contrary to everything to do with the love of
Jesus Christ towards mankind.
Speaker 1 (55:29):
So that's it for this episode. I hope you've enjoyed it. Guys.
Speaker 5 (55:31):
It is a fascinating topic. They're fascinating periods of time.
You know, there is sort of romanticized views of these
periods of time, and like I said, there's films out
there what I've mentioned, in particular the Kingdom of Heaven.
Can't imagine what it was like when you see the film.
What I mean, when you're facing down an enemy and
they've got swords, You've got swords.
Speaker 1 (55:54):
I've been in the army.
Speaker 5 (55:55):
We had guns, but one of the things that used
to send shivers down people's spine was thinking about if
we had to fix bayonets and get up close and personal.
These guys were getting up close on personal with each
other in brutal combat. But what I would say is,
before I go, there is a combat that is continuing
every day, day in, day out, and every one of
(56:18):
us who's a Christian is engaged in this and this
is a spiritual battle, and it's more brutal than any crusade.
No one gets out alive. It only ever ends at death,
when we pass over into the next world. We're taken
up to be with Jesus. That's the only time. It
comes to an end, when we enter into the rest
(56:38):
of our Lord. So the crusades, brutal as they were,
they came to an end. The spiritual war is twenty
four to seven, three hundred and sixty.
Speaker 1 (56:49):
Five days a year.
Speaker 5 (56:50):
The Devil on all his angels are continually looking for
attacks on Christians. They're looking for ways to get in there.
They never sleep ever, ever, they don't get tired. So guys, pray,
read your Bible, stick close to the Lord. And as usual,
I'm Paul, and this is beyond the paradigm, my crazy.
Speaker 3 (57:17):
We don't use that word in here. S S S
(58:11):
S
Speaker 1 (58:14):
S.
M You're here because you know something. What you know
you can't explain, but you feel it. You felt it
your entirely.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Do you know what I'm talking about, Matrix?
Speaker 3 (00:28):
I had dreams that weren't just dreams.
Speaker 4 (00:35):
We accept the reality of the world with which were presented.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
It's as simple as that.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
Billions of people just living out their lives.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
Oblivious, they talks. You're good, hey, do you believe their world?
Speaker 5 (00:52):
You can deny all the things I've seen, all the
things I've discovered, not for once long, because too many
others know what's.
Speaker 4 (01:00):
Happening up there, and no one, no government agency has
jurisdiction over the truth. For the has A crossed the
(01:33):
Jordan with two hundred thousand men.
Speaker 5 (01:37):
He will make first for Karak and run out of
the chaff.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
My Lord, we must meet him before he reaches Karak.
I will lead the army. If you travel and die,
send words to mea alien to protect the villages. Assemble
(02:07):
the army.
Speaker 1 (02:15):
Alone.
Speaker 5 (02:15):
Welcome to Beyond the Paradigm. I'm your host, Paul Bracel.
Welcome back to all my regular listeners, and if you
are a new listener, you are very welcome here. What
can you expect from this podcast, or you can certainly
expect to have your worldview challenged.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
I've had my worldview.
Speaker 5 (02:31):
Challenged while doing this podcast for just over two years,
interviewing different people. Things are once thought weren't true, I
now think are true, and things that I once thought
were true, I now know are not true. But one
thing remains the same and constant always that I believe
that the Bible is the Word of God, and Jesus
Christ is the Son of God, and he is the Way,
(02:53):
the Truth, and the life, and nothing will ever change that.
Many different topics have been covered on this podcast. If
you new to this, We've covered UFOs various different episodes
on that topic, looked at the nepheline, We've looked at
different conspiracies, looked at false flag operations, multiple different topics.
I like to mix it up, keep it varied, keep
(03:16):
it interesting. But ultimately we're just seeking to get to
the truth, the truth of this world of ours, what's
going on? What lies have we've been told, Lies about history,
lies about medicine and vaccinations, all kinds of different lies.
We're seeking to expose, exposing darkness and pointing men to
(03:40):
the wonderful light. Of Jesus Christ, the Son of the
Living God. But before I get into the meet of
this episode, I just want to do a little bit
of housekeeping and just mention that the way you can
support this podcast, the number one way is to first
of all, follow the show and then leave the show
a rating. I do say this on every reintroduction. It
(04:00):
is so important to leave a rating because it's like
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as you can imagine, so we're fighting to get to
the top of the list or near the top of
the list on different topics or even when people are
just looking for a podcast of this type to look
for Let's face it, we all do it. We're quite lazy.
(04:21):
We might only look on the first page. People aren't
going to scroll and scroll and scroll for pages looking
for episodes. And that's why it's important to follow the
show and then rate the show. There's another way that
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(04:42):
You can't even go to a cafe and buy a
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(05:04):
does cost money in subscriptions to things like Zoom or
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Speaker 1 (05:21):
So need that subscription.
Speaker 5 (05:22):
So just bear in mind that all your favorite podcasts
out there, podcasters are incurring costs. There's things like artwork
when you have a change of your art work. I've
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just to make it sort of more professional. It does
cost money. So it is so appreciated that there are
(05:43):
some people that do make that monthly commitment. And there
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go on, buy me a coffee, and someone recently has
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you know the people that have sent your donation. Some
people do it anonymously and the actual name was someone
(06:07):
So whoever that person is, thank you so much. May
God bless you for your kind donation. Also, guys, just
want to remind you about my Instagram. I'm active on
there posting short videos, So if you could go on
there and follow me, I post all kinds of videos,
sometimes just a meme with some music. Have a look
on there and just see what you think. Give me
(06:28):
a follow, it would be appreciated. I've stopped really interacting
with Twitter and Facebook. To be honest, with your Twitter
is just an absolute waste of time, And to be honest,
most of these accounts are probably not even human beings.
Speaker 1 (06:42):
They're just bots.
Speaker 5 (06:43):
There's organizations out there that have thousands and thousands of
these bot accounts, and ultimately you probably end up just
starguing with bots all day on Twitter. So it's absolutely pointless.
So don't really bother with it anymore. So other than
listening to me on here or going on to my
ugbebe channel where sometimes I do post other content other
(07:03):
than these interviews, I don't post the monologues on there,
but I do post some short videos every the one. Again,
I've also got a Rumble channel and on Odyssey as well.
But this is the main sort of focus for me
is this audio podcast. This is how I started, and
this is sort of my bread and butter. Now I
don't want to ramble on anymore because this topic today
(07:26):
is an extremely interesting topic and there's a lot to it.
Never going to cover every aspect of this topic, and
as you can see from the title, we're gonna be
talking about the Crusades. So when you hear the word
crusade or Crusades, what image fills your mind. Maybe it's
(07:48):
armored nights marching with crosses stitched on the cloaks. Maybe
it's the idea of brave Christian warriors reclaiming the Holy
Land from muzzle. And that's the story. Most of us
were given the Crusades as God's holy wars. But what
(08:10):
if that story isn't true? What if the Crusades were
not really Christian at all, but instead Roman Catholic campaigns
for power, wealth and control. What if these so called
holy wars were full of atrocities Christians or should I
say Catholics slaughtering Jews, Muslims, and Christians in the name
(08:36):
of religion. Well, on this podcast today, I'm hopefully going
to appeal back the layers of myth and we're going
to expose the truth about the Crusades, the real origins,
the bloody consequences, and the different voices that witness them.
And by the end of this episode, hopefully you'll see
why the Crusades were not Christ's mission, but they were
(09:00):
Rome's mission.
Speaker 1 (09:02):
So a little bit of.
Speaker 5 (09:03):
Context just before we go into the main thrust of it.
By the eleventh century, Christianity was already split Western Catholic
Church Rome versus Eastern Orthodox Church Constantinople. Europe was violent,
knights fighting petty wars, nobles warring over land peasants often
(09:27):
crushed in between, and the papers Is sought to unify
and redirect violence outward. In ten ninety five, the Byzantine
Emperor Alexios the First asked the Pope for merceriies to
defend himself and the people against the Saldruk Turks. Now,
(09:51):
one thing to notice is that this Alexios the Emperor,
he asked simply for trained soldiers, not like a last
movement but the Pope, which was Urban the Second, he
saw something bigger, and that the Council of Clermon. He
gave a speech that transformed a local Byzantine problem into
(10:14):
a sweeping holy war, an urban promise that anyone.
Speaker 1 (10:18):
Who took up the cross would.
Speaker 5 (10:20):
Receive remission of sins. For the first time in history,
killing in a battle was marketed as a path to salvation.
Now that's not Christianity, that's papal politics. And by November
ten ninety five, Pope Urban the Second stood before an
(10:40):
assembly not to preach peace, but to rally Europe behind
what was termed a holy war. Now I just want
you to listen. I we framed the moment using power, fear,
and ecclesiastical language. And this is the translation actually into English.
But obviously we know that he wouldn't have originally spoken
(11:03):
this in English. And this is the culture of Charterers
or the Council of Clermont, and it's the excerpt on indulgence.
So this is what he says, All who die by
the way, whether by land or by sea, or in
battle against the Pagans, shall have immediate remission of sins.
(11:25):
This I grant them through the power of God. With
which I am invested. Or what a disgrace if such
a despised and based race wish worships demons should conquer
a people which has the faith of the omnipotent God,
and he's made glorious with the name of Christ. With
(11:47):
that reproaches, will the Lord overwhelm us if you do
not aid those who with us profess the Christian religion.
Let those who have been accustomed unjustly to wage private
warfare against the faithful, now go against the infidels and
end with victory this war which should have been begun
(12:11):
long ago. Let those who have hitherto been robbers now
become soldiers. Let those who fought against their brothers and
relatives now fight in a proper way against the barbarians.
Let those who have been serving as mercenaries for small
pay now obtain the eternal reward. Let those who have
(12:34):
been wearing themselves out to the detriment of both soul
and body, now work for a double honor. So you
see the offer ear indulgence, basically forgiveness of sins through bloodshed.
Now that's not Christianity. That's not what's in the New Testament.
(12:58):
It was never preached. Jesus said, love your enemies, not
slow to them, and paradise. This was a Roman Catholic invention,
port theology, part propaganda. So there would have been those
that took up what they called the cross and engaged
in this crusade because they genuinely believed what the pope
(13:19):
said that basically this had grant them remission of the
sins and enter into the Kingdom of God that way,
And there was people that genuinely believed that. Obviously, there's
different reasons why many went on this crusade. That would
have been one of them. Some may have been seeking adventure,
you know, joining an order of knights like the Knights
(13:40):
Temporary with previously spoke about it would have been sort
of an exciting adventure to be part of that training
with those knights, becoming a knight, being part of this,
you know, this army that's marching towards Jerusalem. They would
have been going through different lands that they'd never seen
on these like epic journeys. So there would have been
(14:00):
those who were out for sort of excitement and adventure
and giving them sort of a purpose, maybe escaping.
Speaker 1 (14:09):
Their own mundane lives.
Speaker 5 (14:11):
But there would have been those that simply wanted to
go on this crusade because they wanted to commit atrocities.
They wanted to kill people. And there are people like that.
There are men like that. There's men in the army
like that, in every nation's army on the earth. There
were men who were there simply because they want to
kill people. Now, I just want to talk a little
(14:33):
bit about some of the atrocities. So the Rhineland massacres
of ten ninety six, and the background to this is
that the first Crusade hadn't even left Europe before it
turned into mass bloodshed. People's crusade bands made up of
peasants and low ranking knights under leaders like Count Amiko,
(14:54):
swept through the Rhineland and the target instead of Muslims
was the attack Jewish communities Inspire, Vorms, Manes and Cologne.
And the motive was these crusaders saw the Jews as
christ killers and thought purging them was part of cleansing Christendom.
And they also looted Jewish wealth to fund their journey
(15:17):
east and at Warms, the crusaded slaughtered about eight hundred
Jews at Minds. The archbishop tried to protect the Jews,
but was overwhelmed and families committed mass suicide rather than
be baptized at sword point. And in Cologne, many Jews
fled into hiding, some sheltered by sympathetic Catholic neighbors. And
(15:42):
chronicler Solomon boy Simpson said that they killed about eight
hundred souls, young and old, without pity, fathers and mothers,
with their sons and daughters crying aloud, perished together, slain
for the sanctification of the name. And why this matters
to talk about this is that it wasn't a side note.
(16:05):
It sort of set the tone. The First Crusade began
not in Jerusalem, but with pogroms in so called Christian Europe,
but as we know, it's Catholic Europe. Then there was
the capture of Jerusalem in ten ninety nine. So after
a five week siege, Crusaders broke into Jerusalem on July fifteenth,
(16:28):
ten ninety nine, and the defenders were a mix of
Fatimid soldiers and the city's inhabitants. Now the massacre took place.
Once inside, the crusaders showed absolutely no mercy. Muslims were
hunted through the streets and mosques, Jews fled to the synagogues,
which were set on fire with them inside. Reports described women, children,
(16:52):
and elderly cut down indiscriminately. They also went into the
Orthodox quarter slaughtered Orthodox Christians there, and one of the
primary source accounts by Raymond of Aguilaire's Crusader chaplain, said
that in the temple and porch of Solomon men rolled
(17:12):
in blood up to their knees and bridle reins. Just
imagine that blood up to the knees.
Speaker 1 (17:19):
Unbelievable.
Speaker 5 (17:20):
I couldn't even imagine the slaughter. It's just horrific to
even try and imagine it. The fultuous chartres. No one
has ever seen or heard of such a slaughter of Pagans,
for they were burned on pires like pyramids, and no
one save God alone, knows how many. In the aftermath
(17:42):
of this, the Crusaders created the Kingdom of Jerusalem and
installed Godfrey.
Speaker 1 (17:46):
Of Boullion as the ruler.
Speaker 5 (17:49):
Now this matters because the conquest was celebrated in the
West as a triumph of God's will, but remembered in
the East as butchery in God's name. There was also
the sack of Constantinople in twelve oh four, And the
background to this is it's the Fourth Crusade. It was
(18:09):
meant to reclaim the Holy Land, but instead, due to
the debt to the Venetian bankers and political intrigue, crusaders
diverted to Constantinople, which was the capital of the Byzantine
Christian Empire. And the seas took place on April twelve,
oh four, and crusaders stormed into the city and for
(18:32):
three days they plundered, raped and destroyed. And what I
want to say is that there is a time to kill.
There's a time when killing can be justified in sort
of just war, but rape is never ever justified.
Speaker 1 (18:50):
Ever.
Speaker 5 (18:50):
There is no circumstance at all ever where rape can
be justified. Sometimes in limited kings, killing can be justified,
not murder, of course, but rape is never justified. And
rapist should be put to death. It's as simple as
that a rapist should be executed. And these characters, these
(19:16):
crusaders were raping, plundering, and destroying this city for three days.
Churches were desecrated, including Hagio Sophia, were a prostitute reportedly
danced on the altar while drunk crusaders sang relics and
treasures were looted and taken to the West, and many
are still in Venice today. The Byzantine historian Nicotess Channiortes
(19:41):
wrote of murders, rapes, and indescribable sacrilege, and he said
this spurred neither the meek nor the aged, neither women
nor children, even the nuns were defiled. Nothing was held sacred.
Not since the world was created was there ever such wickedness.
(20:02):
And this matters. This we need to understand these atrocities
and why they matter. It's because the Crusaders on this one,
they didn't even make it to what's called the Holy Land. Instead,
they destroyed the greatest Christian city of the East, deepening
the Catholic Orthodox schism, and the division is still felt today.
Speaker 1 (20:24):
So let's just think.
Speaker 5 (20:25):
About this, right, Jews slaughtered before a Crusader ever saw
the Holy Land. Muslims cut down by the thousands in Jerusalem,
as well as Jews and Orthodox Christians. These Orthodox Christians
killed by Catholics Inconstantinople. And these were not just isolated incidents.
There were patterns of violence wrapped in the cloak of religion.
(20:49):
And if you judge a tree by its fruit. The
Crusades bore rotten fruit, not the Gospel, not the Kingdom
of God, just blood, gold.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
And empire.
Speaker 5 (21:34):
What were the real reasons for the Crusade? This is
a big and often debated historical question. It's actually a
massive question. So I'm going to try and unpack it carefully,
and it's very, very difficult. But what I would say
is is that because of these Crusades, people have a
dim view of Christianity. There's a lot of people that
(21:57):
see the Crusades as being Christian and that is the problem.
This is where the Catholic Church is so wicked because
they blocked the Gospel. I've said this before, and this
is one of the ways.
Speaker 1 (22:08):
Because of the way.
Speaker 5 (22:10):
They behaved in the Crusades, many people think this is
Christianity and it's not. So let's look at the reasons
and try to sort of get to the truth of
why they actually happened. So the Crusades, starting with the
First Crusade ten ninety six to ten ninety nine, they
were complex wars and there was many overlapping causes religious, political,
(22:33):
and economic, and the question of Muslim aggression is one
of part of the story. But it's not the whole picture,
so the background before the First Crusade, early Islamic conquest.
In the seventh and eighth centuries. After Mohammad's death, Muslim
armies rapidly expanded into the Christian majority regions or Catholic
(22:53):
majority regions or Orthodox whatever you want to call it,
including Syria, Ustein Egypt, North Africa, and Spain. And this
expansion brought formerly Byzantine Christian lands under Muslim rule. Christians
in Western Europe centuries later sometimes looked back at this
as the long standing loss to Islam Soljuk Turks in
(23:18):
the eleventh century. By the late ten hundreds, the Saujuk Turks,
which was a Muslim dynasty, had gained power in the
Middle East. They defeated the Byzantines at the Battle of
Manzikirk at ten seventy one, seizing most of Anatolia, which
is modern Turkey. And this was a critical blow to
(23:40):
the Byzantine Empire and it brought Muslim rule much closer
to Constantinople, and there was attacks on pilgrims and holy sites.
There were reports, some were possibly exaggerated, in Europe, of
difficulties pilgrims faced traveling to Jerusalem under Seldruk rule, including
harassment and occasional violence. In ten oh nine, the Fatimid
(24:05):
Kelliv al Hakim had destroyed the Church of the Holy
Sepulcher in Jerusalem, which was later rebuilt, and this left
a strong memory in the so called Christian world, and
there was the call for the Crusade. In ten ninety five.
Beresenting Emperor Alexius, communists asked Pop Urban the second for
(24:27):
military health, like I said against the cell Jus who
threatened Constantinople.
Speaker 1 (24:33):
Then there was Pope Urban's.
Speaker 5 (24:35):
Sermon Let's Say, which he framed the callers both a
defense of Eastern Christians and a mission to reclaim Jerusalem,
presenting it as a response to Muslim aggression and oppression
of Christians. Now we'd sort of need to interpret this
role of Muslim aggression so in port. Yes, from the perspective,
(24:57):
the Byzantium and the Latin Church, the Soldruk conquest, especially
in Anatolia, and the levant and perceived mistreatment of Christians
and pilgrims were real provocations, but that's not the whole story.
The Crusades were also shaped by European dynamics papal ambitions,
(25:18):
nightly culture, desire for land and wealth, and the religious
ideal of pilgrimage. Western Europe's aggression and expansionist energy played
a huge role too, and perspectives matter, So what Europeans
called Muslim aggression could be equally seen as part of
a normal ebb and flow of empires in the medieval world.
(25:42):
And from the Muslim side, the arrival of the Crusaders
looked like an unprovoked invasion of lands that had been
Islamic for centuries. So Muslim military advances, especially by the Soljuks,
were an important trigger for the First Crusade, but they
weren't the only cause. The Crusade arose out of a
(26:03):
mix of Byzantine weakness, papal politics, Catholic religious fervor, and
broader history of Islamic expansion. So urban the Second and
his successes, they wanted to assert supremacy over kings and
rival bishops, and the Crusades gave them leverage. And then
(26:25):
there was indulgences, which is basically spiritual bribery, which I said,
you know, remission of sins in exchange for war. There
was economic gain younger sons of noble sort lands, merchants
sought trade routes, and they were redirecting the violence because
knights were turning Europe into a battlefield. So the Pope
(26:45):
rebranded their violence into a holy cause. Now, the Crusades
were sold as a holy mission, but if you peel
back the rhetoric, they looked like the ultimate rebranding exercise.
Pope urban the second restless nights, hungry nobles, and greedy merchants,
and he gave them a new target. Fight for Christ,
(27:07):
he said, and you'll gain land, treasure, and eternal salvation.
And it worked. Tens of thousands touched.
Speaker 1 (27:15):
To the cross. But we need to be clear.
Speaker 5 (27:18):
This was not Christianity in action. This was politics, economics,
and manipulation draped in Christian language. So let's look at
some of the perspectives and nuances, and to truly understand
the Crusades, we have to step outside the narrow lens
of Western chroniclers and listen to voices that were silenced
(27:41):
or marginalized. The Crusades were hailed as holy wars in
the West, but across the lands they touched they were
experienced very differently. So let's have a look at the
Muslim perspective. First of all, so from the Muslim world,
the Crusaders or Francs as they were called, were often
(28:01):
seen as barbaric, alien, and terrifying. Ibin l Kalanese from
Damascus described them as unpredictable invaders, merciless in battle and
reckless in their violence. Unlike local armies who followed cords
of war, the Franks or Crusaders would often slaughter entire
(28:23):
populations without warning. Osama ibin Monique not certain and pronouncing
that correctly. But this guy was a Syrian nobleman and
a poet who interacted with Crusades for decades, offers of
a more personal perspective. In his memoirs, he mocks their
clumsy military techniques, their strange customs, and their ignorance of
(28:46):
local culture. Yet behind the humor is fear. He writes
repeatedly of their capacity for extreme cruelty of towns, seized,
women raped, and innocence executed. His stories reveal a deep tension,
fascination mixed with horror. The Franks or the Crusaders were
(29:07):
not just enemies. They were an unstoppable force that could
strike at any moment, he said. And consider this passage
from this Osama guy. They know not how to ride
with skill, yet they fall upon us with the fury
of lions. When they strike, non may flee, none may
(29:29):
hope for mercy. Their God, they claim, commands it. But
if this is devotion, then it is a devotion of terror.
So let's look at the Jewish perspective. So Jewish communities
of Europe, the Crusaders were a nightmare at home, not
a distant Holy war. Chroniclers from ten ninety six record
(29:51):
unimaginable horror in mines, worms and Cologne. Entire Jewish families
slaughtered and parents chose death over forced baptism. Children were
torn from the arms, or they were killed alongside them.
Like I said Solomon boy Simpson chronicling the Ryeland massacres,
(30:12):
I'll say again, they said they killed about eight hundred souls,
young and all. There was no pity fathers, mothers, sons,
daughters that were crying aloud. The old perish together. And
for Jewish communities, the Crusades were not about Jerusalem or
the Holy Land. There were an existential threat in Christian
Europe or Catholic Europe, a violent reminder that their neighbors,
(30:35):
motivated by religious zeal could turn on them with little warning,
and these events left deep scars that shaped Jewish collective
memory for centuries. The Byzantine perspective, so the Eastern Christians,
who shared the same faith but different traditions, were often
as alarmed by the Crusaders as.
Speaker 1 (30:56):
The Muslims were.
Speaker 5 (30:58):
Anna Commenini, daughter of Emperor Alexios and author of Alexiad,
provides a vivid account of her father's dealings with the
First Crusade. Now, according to Anna, the Crusade has arrived
as supposed allies against the Seljuk Turks. Yet they were unruly,
in subordinate, and dangerously unpredictable. They stole supplies, demanded excessive tribute,
(31:24):
and often ignored the emperor's commands.
Speaker 1 (31:26):
In her words, they.
Speaker 5 (31:28):
Are men of fierce temper, eager for gain, and know
not how to govern themselves. We can neither rely on
their loyalty nor temper their passions. For the Byzantines, the
Crusades were a mixed blessing potential military support against Muslim neighbours, yeah,
but at a terrible cost, and the Fourth Crusade a
(31:49):
century later would prove just how catastrophic. Allowing these armies
into the Byzantine lands could be What about a Protestant perspective?
Well centuries later, Protestant reformers looked back on the Crusades
with critical eyes. Martin Luther, for instance, he condemned the
wars as a corruption of true Christianity. In his writings,
(32:13):
he called indulgences for war heretical, which they are denounced
the pope for manipulating faith to serve temporal power. To Luther,
the promise of eternal salvation in exchange for participation in
violent campaigns was not divine.
Speaker 1 (32:31):
But it was a gross abuse.
Speaker 5 (32:33):
He saw the Crusades as a tool of the papacy
and not the mission of Christ. The wars, he argued,
had nothing to do with the true faith and everything
to do with the ambitions of church hierarchy. What about
sort of modern perspectives? While modern historians continue to debate
the crusades motivations and meanings, Stephen Runchman called them a
(32:58):
tragic misdirect, framing the wars as disastrous, violent misadventures fueled
by religious zeal and personal greed. Jonathan Riley Smith emphasizes
that many Crusaders were sincere. They believe deeply in their
faith and in the promise of spiritual reward.
Speaker 1 (33:16):
And I can.
Speaker 5 (33:17):
Imagine that is true. Like I said, we can't just
say that all the crusaders were barbarians and lunatics and murderers.
There would have been those that weren't, but they were
probably in the minority. Christopher Tireman stresses nuance. These wars
not purely holy wars, nor purely opportunistic raids. They were
(33:40):
a complex mixture of faith, feared ambition, political necessity, and
personal desire. The same man might fight for God one day,
for wealth the next out of social pressure another So
context matters and understanding these overlapping motivations is crucial, and
that's what we need to do. We need to have
(34:00):
a balanced view of these crusades.
Speaker 1 (34:05):
So what's the nuance.
Speaker 5 (34:07):
Well, not every crusader was a cynical opportunist, like I said,
Many genuinely believed they were serving God. But the faith
was manipulated and it was twisted by the leaders, you know,
the pope. There was ambition and political agendas. And when
we read Muslim chronicles Jewish accounts Byzantine historians, a different
(34:30):
truth emergers. The Crusades were not noble pilgrimages, but invasions, massacres,
and thefts. And then when the Protestant Reformers looked back
centuries later, they recognized what those who suffered firsthand already knew.
The Crusades were not christ mission, but they were the
Pope's mission. History, when examined from all sides, reveals far
(34:54):
more than trym some and victories. It reveals the human
cost of so called Holy wars.
Speaker 3 (35:02):
Mmmmm.
Speaker 5 (35:36):
The film Kingdom of Heaven starring Orland Or Bloom, is
an excellent movie in my opinion, and it's about the Crusades.
What I would say is, if you've not seen it,
you're not gonna hear the gospeling there obviously, but it
shows you, you know, sort of Catholic way of thinking
throughout the whole movie, and the superstitions you know of
(35:58):
the Catholic Church, the things that they teach, and basically
i'll just give you a brief bakdown of the film.
But there's this guy called Baileon played by Orland Or Bloom.
Now Baileyon was a real person, Baileyon of Ebeline.
Speaker 1 (36:12):
He was a nobleman.
Speaker 5 (36:13):
But in this film he starts off as a blacksmith,
and the character who is played by Liam Neeson, a
guy called god for who's a knight godfre you of Ebelin.
He turns up in France after coming back from you know,
the Crusades and basically tells Bailey under these his father
on long story short, baileyon ends up going over there
(36:35):
and he becomes the defender of Jerusalem, which is actually true.
He did defend Jerusalem and surrendered it to sella head
in There are other characters in there, a couple of
particularly odious characters who stand out for me Gee Dulision
and Renard de Chation, and you know, there's real characters
(36:58):
in there. King Baldwin the four, who's the leper King.
His sister Sabyla of Jerusalem, she's in there now, this
guid Elision character. He's a French nobleman and he came
to the Holy Land around the eleven seventies. He married
Sibylla of Jerusalem, who's the sister of King Baldwin the Fourth,
the leper King, which put him in line for the
(37:21):
throne because King Baldwin died, like I said, he was
a leper. He became King of Jerusalem in eleven eighty
six after Sabylla crammed him despite opposition from many nobles,
and his military role was in eleven eighty seven the
Battle of Hattin. He led the Crusader army against Salahadin
and he was disastrously defeated. The loss destroyed the Crusader
(37:45):
military power in the Holy Land, and he was captured
by Selahadin and he was later released and the aftermath
of that was the kingdom was lost, but he retained
some power and eventually apparently became the King of Cyprus.
Word Louisian dynasty rule for centuries. So these are some
of the clowns that were cutting about the Holy Land
(38:07):
at that time. And the actual you see this in
the film Kingdom of Heaven, this maniac guild Louision, he
becomes king. I'm not going to spoil the film for
you if you haven't seen it, but you see this
disastrous battle that he takes the Crusader who's on in
the film, but they're probably the most wicked character in
(38:27):
the film. And I can imagine there were men like
this out there, and indeed there was because this guy,
Reynold Deschation, he was.
Speaker 1 (38:36):
A real person.
Speaker 5 (38:37):
I think he's played by Brendan Gleeson in the film,
and he's a particularly wicked individual. So these are the
sorts of people that were cutting around at the time
in the Crusades. And basically his background is that he's
a French knight who came to the Holy Land in
the Second Crusade and he married Constance of Antioch, which
(38:59):
made him the Prince Savantioch. Though he was unpopular and
he was considered reckless and he had a reputation for ruthlessness.
He was known for cruelty, greed and aggression even towards
so called fellow Christians or Catholics and obviously the Eastern Orthodoxy.
He was famously he raided Cyprus, which was then part
(39:22):
of the Byzantine territory in eleven fifty six and he
was looting, mistreated civilians and this worship relations with the Byzantium,
and he constantly brought truces with Muslims, which enraged Salahadin.
Speaker 1 (39:37):
You see this in the film.
Speaker 5 (39:39):
He's absolutely brutal and his propagations of Salahadin, you know,
as Lord of Ultra Jordan after remarrying into the Ibilin family,
he raided Muslim caravans even during truces. So this is
how he was provoking Salahadin all the time. And he
threatened to attack Mecca and Medina by launching ships across
(40:01):
the Red Sea, a shocking move that outraged the entire
Muslim world. And these acts made him a personal enemy
of Salahaden. And at this battle which we talked about,
he was on with Gi DeLisi on this ridiculously stupid
battle that was fought in eleven eighty seven, the Battle
of Hatting. You know, the Crusaders were defeated and him
(40:26):
and Ghee of Louis On they were both captured. You
see this in the film. They both captured and he
was brought before Cellahaden, who reportedly offered him mercy if
he converted to Islam. Reynard refused, and Salahden apparently personally
executed him by beheading him, but he spared King Ghi
(40:49):
Luisi On. I won't say any more about the film
to do with these two characters, but what I would
say is that there were real people in the film.
Obviously there's been artistic licensing there. It is a good
film to watch, and I just thought i'd sort of
talk a little bit about that and some of the
(41:10):
characters in it who relate to real people, and you
know the brutality of these characters. So if you watch
the film and there's this Geieluisy on, there's Bailey on,
there's King Baldwin, the fourth Renalds just shout on. These
are all real people who was all existed at the time.
So you know, what I would say is you're not
(41:31):
going to hear the gospel. You're gonna hear a lot
of superstition in there. Baileyan apparently he goes up to
where Christ was crucified and then he's seen talking to
one of the other nights saying God doesn't speak to women,
and all these things and the superstition. They think if
they go to the Holy Land, you know, and they
don't stand on Mount Calvary where Jesus was sacrificed, where
(41:53):
he gave up hisself on the cross, that God will
speaks to him there. You see, they don't realize because
they've not been told, because the Roman Catholic Church has
kept them in darkness, that faith alone, in Jesus Christ
alone is how you were saved, and you can approach
God through Jesus Christ. You don't need to be stud
where Jesus was crucified or where he was buried. You
(42:15):
don't need to be in a particular place. You can
do it anywhere. So what about the actual legacy of
the Crusades. Well, obviously, like I've said, for example, if
you watch any videos on YouTube of people interacting at
speaker's corners, so Christians and Muslims, often times the Crusades
(42:36):
are brought up. Even today, the Crusades are brought up.
There's one particular Christian chap who is always debating Muslims.
But you hear him speaking about how the Muslims attacked
Christian this and Christian art, Christian Palestine, Christian Egy, Christian Spain,
and like I said, they weren't Christian lands. There were
(42:57):
Roman Catholic lands. And basically, some of these characters who
were going out debating Muslims so against Muslims that they're
blinded to the actual nuances, the actual different reasons, and
they just say that the Crusades were in response to
Muslim aggression full stop. So the legacy of the Crusades
(43:18):
is important because we're dealing with the fallout even today,
when we're interacting with Muslims or Jews or whatever. And
like I said, people who view the Crusades as Christian aggression.
This is the reason why I'm doing this episode today,
because it's important as Christians to be able to answer
people and say, well, i'ng on a second, the Crusades
(43:41):
were not Christian because the Bible teaches this, and this
is what the Porte was saying, and its opposite to
what the Bible's teaching. Therefore, the Crusades were not a
holy war at all. So they didn't end in twelve
ninety one when the last fortress fell, because their echoes
still haunts us today and they've hardened the split between
(44:01):
Catholic and Orthodox. They've left Jewish communities devastated. They set
the stage for centuries of Muslim Christian hostility, and to
this day, like I said, you know, it's talked about
and we still hear world leaders invoked the word crusade
to sell wars, to justify violence, to rally crowds. And
(44:24):
that's the poisonous legacy of Rome's so called holy wars.
So as we come to the sort of final segment
of today's episode, it's time to ask what were the
actual consequences of the Crusades. What can they teach us
about faith, power, and human nature? Well, there was political
(44:47):
and religious consequences, wasn't there? Politically? The Crusades reshape Europe
and the Middle East. The Crusade estates like Antioch, Tripoli,
and Jerusalem were established in foreign lands, creating new centers
of power and conflict. Yet these states were fragile, dependent
on constant reinforcements from Europe, and they were never fully secure,
(45:11):
and their existence fueled centuries of warfare, instability, and resentment
in Europe. The Crusades strengthened the power of the papacy temporarily,
but they also exposed deep flaws. Indulgences, force recruitment, and
the Church's control over armies left many questioning the moral
(45:33):
authority of the pope. For the reformers like Martin Luther,
these wars were proof that religious leaders could manipulate faith
for political gain. For the Byzantine Empire, the consequences were catastrophic.
The Fourth Crusade in particular, led to the sack of
Constantinople in twelve or four, a Christian city destroyed by
(45:57):
the Roman Catholics, and the Empire never fully recovered, opening
the door to the Ottoman expansion. Centuries later, there's been
cultural and social consequences and the Crusades They've left lasting
scars on multiple communities. Jewish populations in Europe who faced massacres,
(46:19):
forced conversions, centuries of so called anti Semitism tied to
the memory of Crusade of violence.
Speaker 1 (46:26):
In the Middle East.
Speaker 5 (46:27):
Muslim communities remembered the Crusaders as foreign invaders, brutal, unrelenting,
and destructive. And even amongst Christians, the war's fostered suspicion
and division. Eastern Orthodox Western Catholic became increasingly alienated, deepening
theological and cultural riffs that exist to this day.
Speaker 1 (46:51):
But it was an all destruction.
Speaker 5 (46:53):
The Crusades also accelerated cultural exchange. Europeans encountered advanced medicine, mathematics,
and architecture in the Middle East. Some scholars argue that
these encounters laid the grand work for the Renaissance, and
yet even here the benefits were born out of violence
(47:13):
and conquest. So let's sort of reflect on this now,
on faith and human nature. The Crusades challenge us to
reflect on the intersection of faith and power when deeply
held religious beliefs and manipulated by leaders for political or
(47:34):
personal gain. Devotion can be turned into destruction. Ordinary people, knights, peasants, women, children,
become instruments of that power and are often unaware of
the consequences of their actions. Modern perspectives can help us
grasp this complexity. Some crusaders truly believed they were fulfilling
(47:59):
divine word will, some sort of adventure, wealth or redemption.
Some were manipulated by rulers and the church. No single
narrative captures the full reality, that is the lesson we
must carry forward. History is multifaceted, and morality is often murky.
So what's the truth about the Crusads. Well, they were
(48:23):
neither wholly noble nor wholly evil, but they were catastrophic.
I would say they were more evil than noble, definitely
more evil than noble. There were wars fought in the
name of religion, yet they were driven by politics, greed,
and ambition. They left a legacy of death, division.
Speaker 1 (48:43):
And cultural trauma.
Speaker 5 (48:45):
And yet they all saw forced civilizations into contact with
each other for better or worse. A lot of the
time worse, but there was also times than it was
for the better and that's why I'm saying there wasn't
wholly evil, maybe majority evil, and I would definitely say that.
(49:05):
And the Crusades remind us that ideology, when combined with
unchecked power, lead to unimaginable suffering. And they remind us
that history is written from many perspectives Catholic, Muslim, Jewish, Byzantine, Protestant,
Christian who reflecting later, looking back, and the full picture
(49:27):
emerges only when all the voices are heard. And that's
why I said, we've been lied to about history that
we are taught in our schools in the Western world,
in the Western media, the things that they want us
to believe, because we're not given full pictures, we're not
given all the voices. We're not hearing all the voices,
and that's what we need to hear. Most importantly, they
(49:49):
remind us to question authority, to look beyond the official narratives,
and to understand that even so called holy wars are
fought by human hands with all flaws, fears and ambitions
that that implies. So it's time to settle this. The
Crusades were not Christian, they were Roman Catholic. They were
(50:14):
indulgences sold for blood. They were power dressed in piety.
There were atrocities committed in Christ's name, but never in
Christ's spirit. In the film The Kingdom of Heaven, which
I mentioned before, there's a scene in it where Baileyon
and this other knight I can't remember the other knight's name,
(50:36):
but he was one of the knights of Saint John.
And they're in this courtyard and there's people.
Speaker 1 (50:42):
Screaming and shouting.
Speaker 5 (50:44):
There's obviously different residents of Jerusalem in there, and there's
some knights templars and they're being hung. And the knight
of Saint John's says to bailey On, you know these
are being hung because they took part in a raid
on a Muslim carag and Baillion says to this night,
so they're being put to death for what the pope
(51:07):
commanded them to do. And the knight turns to him
and says, yes, but not Christ, I think. And that's
the reality. The Pope was commanding it, but Jesus didn't.
Jesus didn't command any of that. He didn't command the
killing of anybody in the Crusades. He didn't call for
(51:30):
the Crusades. A wicked pope called for them. Wicked popes
in succession, and wicked and evil men took great pleasure
in killing people during the Crusades. And that's the reality.
Violent men will always gravitate to anything that is violent,
(51:50):
and they'll use it. So for example, football, they might
be part of a hooligan gang. There could be all
kinds of things, but violent men, they love violence, don't they.
And when Jesus was in the Garden of Death, Semine
and Judas came. He came with a band of soldiers,
and Peter whipped out his sword and struck the ear
(52:11):
off the high priest servant. What did Jesus tell him
to do? He didn't tell him to carry on or
nice one, Peter, let's get amongst it and take these
characters out. No, he told him to put up his sword,
didn't he to put it away? That those that live
by the sword will die by the sword.
Speaker 1 (52:27):
And then what did he do?
Speaker 5 (52:29):
Jesus put the guy's ear back on, didn't he He
healed it, just put his ear back on and healed him.
And he because he said that my kingdom is not
of this world, because he's if they were, if it
were of this world, his servants would fight. But it's
not of this world. Now, that's not to say you
can't defend yourself. I'm not telling people they can't defend themselves.
(52:49):
There's some lunatics coming at you, or he's going to
hurt your family, defend yourself vigorously as well. Make sure
they don't hurt you or your family. But we're not
going out to war. We're not going into foreign lands,
you know, slaughtering Pagans, slaughtering Muslims and Jews and all
this type of thing, because the Kingdom of God is
(53:10):
not of this world. So we're not to go out
slaughtering people. We're to love our enemies. That's what Jesus said,
to love your enemies. Everything we do must be to
the furtherance of the Gospel, not to hinder and block
the Gospel, which is what the Roman Catholic Church does.
(53:30):
And if there is one lesson to take away, it's this.
Whenever faith is turned into a weapon for empire.
Speaker 1 (53:37):
The Gospel is lost.
Speaker 5 (53:40):
Only blood remains. We can't lose the Gospel. It can't
be lost under you know, masses of bodies. Because we
believe we're doing God's will. The Gospel must be proclaimed
and it should not be hidden, should be not blocked.
It shouldn't be lost by our behavior. The Crusades did
(54:02):
nothing to further the Gospel, only hinder it. So this
is why I would encourage Christians to study the true
history of the Crusades. Like I said, look at multiple
different sources. There are all kinds of sources out there,
you know, including books obviously manuscripts like primary sources. There's
(54:23):
YouTube videos, you know, different historians, as a guy called
Roy Casagrande, he's decent to listen to. He'll give you
sort of a balanced view of the Crusades. He's on YouTube.
So many resources available to you guys. So, like always,
I'm encouraging people to do their own research.
Speaker 1 (54:43):
That's what I do. Do your own.
Speaker 5 (54:46):
Research, and I would say do research on the Crusades
as Christians, because we need to defend the faith. We
need to defend ourselves from attacks by Muslims, Jews, other
people in the outside world that see the Crusades, see
the evil of them and say that these are Christian
crew said therefore Christianity is evil. We need to be
able to rebut that claim and show people that they
(55:11):
were actually nowhere near Christian They were contrary to the
teachings and the scriptures, the contrary to Jesus and what
he taught and what he was about and who he is,
the contrary to everything to do with the love of
Jesus Christ towards mankind.
Speaker 1 (55:29):
So that's it for this episode. I hope you've enjoyed it. Guys.
Speaker 5 (55:31):
It is a fascinating topic. They're fascinating periods of time.
You know, there is sort of romanticized views of these
periods of time, and like I said, there's films out
there what I've mentioned, in particular the Kingdom of Heaven.
Can't imagine what it was like when you see the film.
What I mean, when you're facing down an enemy and
they've got swords, You've got swords.
Speaker 1 (55:54):
I've been in the army.
Speaker 5 (55:55):
We had guns, but one of the things that used
to send shivers down people's spine was thinking about if
we had to fix bayonets and get up close and personal.
These guys were getting up close on personal with each
other in brutal combat. But what I would say is,
before I go, there is a combat that is continuing
every day, day in, day out, and every one of
(56:18):
us who's a Christian is engaged in this and this
is a spiritual battle, and it's more brutal than any crusade.
No one gets out alive. It only ever ends at death,
when we pass over into the next world. We're taken
up to be with Jesus. That's the only time. It
comes to an end, when we enter into the rest
(56:38):
of our Lord. So the crusades, brutal as they were,
they came to an end. The spiritual war is twenty
four to seven, three hundred and sixty.
Speaker 1 (56:49):
Five days a year.
Speaker 5 (56:50):
The Devil on all his angels are continually looking for
attacks on Christians. They're looking for ways to get in there.
They never sleep ever, ever, they don't get tired. So guys, pray,
read your Bible, stick close to the Lord. And as usual,
I'm Paul, and this is beyond the paradigm, my crazy.
Speaker 3 (57:17):
We don't use that word in here. S S S
(58:11):
S
Speaker 1 (58:14):
S.
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