Read this book review by my aforementioned friend. The book reviewed is revisionist on the pro-Church side, which he debunks. But, here’s his main point about the reason for the Crusades:
As odd and unpalatable as it may be to modern people, the primary motivation of Crusaders seems to have been religious piety. It was usually a form of piety that modern observers find bizarre and was often one informed by myth and a weird idealism that we find hard to reconcile with modern Christianity or with any modern ideas at all, but the evidence is overwhelming that it was genuine and highly motivating.
For the record, he (the blogger) is an atheist but considers most post-Enlightenment ideas about post-Rome Christianity (anti-science, anti-reason, anti-everything considered by modern societies to be really, really good) are mostly myth.
I think the more knowledgeable someone is in a particular subject, the more critical they will be of a movie based on that subject. When we feel like we are experts about a subject manner, we tend to nitpick and be very critical about every little mistake or inaccuracy. I know I certainly feel this way when watching a movie about subject matters which I believe I am pretty knowledgeable in. I can’t imagine the amount of dismantling occurring from a scholar of the subject.
But it’s important to realize that it’s a movie, and movies are meant to entertain the masses. It is expected that Hollywood will take certain liberties with facts and history in order to put together a more entertaining experience.
I think the more knowledgeable someone is in a particular subject, the more critical they will be of a movie based on that subject. When we feel like we are experts about a subject manner, we tend to nitpick and be very critical about every little mistake or inaccuracy. I know I certainly feel this way when watching a movie about subject matters which I believe I am pretty knowledgeable in. I can’t imagine the amount of dismantling occurring from a scholar of the subject.
Yep. And I don’t think it requires any sort of ‘expertise’, just a basic familiarity will often make movies ridiculous. Bad gunfighting physics is the only one I can really tolerate anymore, just because I grew up on it; but I can hardly watch any movie that purports to be historical or science fiction because they are neither.
But it’s important to realize that it’s a movie, and movies are meant to entertain the masses. It is expected that Hollywood will take certain liberties with facts and history in order to put together a more entertaining experience.
True, but the same is true of Robert Ludlum novels; they’re still garbage. Those of us with an interest in actual espionage or history are going to find that they sacrifice actually interesting history for woo-woo flashy crap; what’s the point of rewriting a cheesy action movie to take place in 10,000 B.C.? I’d much rather see a movie about the real Neolithic age.
Or how about that god-awful Troy movie? “Let’s change major plot points arbitrarily and rewrite the end.” Yeah, because your unionized hacks are better than Homer. What a train wreck Hollywood is.
I too believe that the main idea was to contain the Turks. As late as in the XV century there where talks of another crusade to take back Constantinople, which would have been headed by the Hungarians or, after the death of Janos Huniad, by ourselves. We had a nice 10-year truce with the gallant Turks and renounced it to take part in this crusade, which failed to materialize after the reignin Pope died. Of course the Turks proceeded to invade Albania afterwards.
Or how about that god-awful Troy movie? “Let’s change major plot points arbitrarily and rewrite the end.” Yeah, because your unionized hacks are better than Homer. What a train wreck Hollywood is.
Aye, that movie had to have been made by Satan (who also directed 300 and the “Norse” like remake of Clash of the Titans.)
HBO’s Rome is pretty freakin cool though. They do have to condense history for budgetary and dramtic reasons, but still.
Why is Hollywood so certain that making a serious, non-ridiculous movie would not be profitable? It seems like lots of high-brow, quasi-accurate movies did very well; such as the insanely long Cleopatra or Gone with the Wind. While not remotely historical (and barely Biblical) the Ten Commandments, Spartacus and A Man for All Seasons were pretty stellar, too. Or is it just that there is no one left in Hollywood capable of making them if they wanted to?
Crap, and all of those movies were made in the 60s, I think.
HBO’s Rome is pretty freakin cool though. They do have to condense history for budgetary and dramtic reasons, but still.
HBO has been better than Hollywood for about twenty years. It would be interesting to speculate why that is.
To stop the westward expansion of the Ottoman empire. The Christians and Muslims fought over Constantinople for five centuries. It eventually fell into Muslim hands (and became Istanbul) in 1453. The Crusades helped solidify papal power and later contributed to the vestigial powers of the Holy Roman Emperor. With the eclipse of the Crusades, both the papacy and the Holy Roman Empire saw a loss of what little remaining power they had left to the national monarchs.
You can kind of think of the role of the papacy in the crusades as analogous to NAFTA of today. While it cost the member monarchs money (at times, a lot of money) and men, it kept the Ottoman empire at bay. Better the devil you know, just look at what happened when the Muslims invaded the Iberian peninsula of Spain way back in the 8th century… it took the Spanish the better part of a millenium to completely drive them out! What do you think the Spanish Inquisition was all about (OK, not all about, but extinguishing the last embers of Mohammed in Spain was one of the important purposes of the Spanish Inquisition). The other continental powers were highly motivated by this to hold the Eastern front.
“But it’s important to realize that it’s a movie, and movies are meant to entertain the masses. It is expected that Hollywood will take certain liberties with facts and history in order to put together a more entertaining experience.”
Yes, but some viewers take period pieces as somewhat accurate, and it snowballs over time. Then things like Draper-White are perpetuated. I don’t blame filmmakers, I just blame people who forgo critical thinking.
@Marko: My history knowledge in this whole area is still more of an outline sketch but I’m reading Van Creveld’s immensely informative Rise and Decline of the State and I’m just now going through this section of European history. The events you’re discussing occurred during the Fourth Crusade. The Wikipedia entry says,
“The Fourth Crusade (1202–1204) was originally intended to conquer Muslim-controlled Jerusalem by means of an invasion through Egypt. Instead, in April 1204, the Crusaders of Western Europe invaded and conquered the Christian (Eastern Orthodox) city of Constantinople, capital of the Eastern Roman Empire (Byzantine Empire). This is seen as one of the final acts in the Great Schism between the Eastern Orthodox Church and Roman Catholic Church.”
So, it looks like this was an attempt by the Western powers to bring Eastern church back into line after it had separated during the Great Schism when Rome was weakened by problems with the papal succession (best illustrated by the on-again, off-again papacy of Benedict IX).
Rose Wilder Lane’s take on this, in the chapter entitled “The Second Attempt” in The Discovery of Freedom (starting on p. 98 in the PDF), is worth reading.
Wow, this is really great stuff… I always found this “Dark Ages” stuff completely incomprehensible, especially with the Ottoman empire in North Africa and Middle East flourishing in commerce, art, science and so on. The theory Lane puts forth here, that European scientists fled the suppression of science in Europe into Ottoman cities, where they were free to continue teaching and researching, is nothing short of eye-opening. Thanks for the pointer!
“The theory Lane puts forth here, that European scientists fled the suppression of science in Europe into Ottoman cities, where they were free to continue teaching and researching,”
Sorry, this sounds like garbage. There was no suppression of science in Europe, there was just trouble getting anything done post-Rome when you’re being invaded constantly and all you have is a crumbled infrastructure and system of defense.
Scientists probably “fled” to the eastern empire because that’s where the learning was: the Nestorian and Byzantine scholars saved all those Greek and Roman texts from being eaten away by moths.
Yeah, cuz the early Catholic church was super tolerant of any ideas not consistent with its view of orthodoxy on any subject (whether natural philosophy or theology proper).
The theory Lane puts forth here, that European scientists fled the suppression of science in Europe into Ottoman cities, where they were free to continue teaching and researching, is nothing short of eye-opening
I don’t think that is the best way to look at it at all. There wasn’t much of a collapse to begin with. The west was simply never up to par with the east (and for the record they dealt with less plague and barbarian invasions, as well as having less at stake during such things). For the most part we are talking about a more sparsely populated land of barbarians and semi-barbarians with pockets of civilization that are slowly integrating themselves into the world economy.
I also wouldn’t be surprised if Spain and Italy were fairly integrated into the world economy (can’t say for sure, as it is a bit out of my field). I think the division of “east and west” kind of throws people off. I see why it is done (The Roman Split) and it makes some sense in some ways, but people get a little to focused on it, and treat it a bit too monolithic.
There were also language problems. Greek was pretty much lost until the 15th century in the West. And also, those Greek texts that were “preserved” for “our” benefit don’t matter in the way most people think they do. They weren’t some true holy documents or anything. The east lost A LOT of texts, but the documents could have been Carthaginian, Persian, or whatever. We just care about the Greeks for no good reason. There is no reason to put some sacred mythology around the Greeks just because a few fashionistas in Rome did, or even worse that fashionable teenage rebellion spirit of the 19th Century. That’s right, Nietzsche’s fascination with the Greeks was probably little more than a more elitist form of Scandanavian teens fascination with Death Metal.
It may be better to look at some type of Italian depression or something like that? But even than I think many Italians were flourshing just as well as anyone else by what the 1100’s? I can’t comment much on this though.