MORAL EFFECTS

O1n principles of morals and politics the holy wars cannot be justified. Yet war became a sacred duty, and obligatory on every class of mankind. The fair face of religion was besmeared with blood, and heavenly attraction was changed for demoniacal repulsiveness. The Crusades encouraged the most horrible violences of fanaticism. They were the precedent for the military contentions of the church with the Prussians and Albigenses; and as the execrable Inquisition arose out of the spirit of clerical dragooning, the wars in Palestine brought a frightful calamity on the world. Universal dominion was the ambition of the Roman pontiffs; and the iniquity of the means was in dreadful accordance with the audacity of the project.

2The pastors of the church used anathemas, excommunications, interdicts, and every weapon in the storehouse of spiritual artillery; and when the world was in arms for the purpose of destroying infidels, it was natural that the soldiers of God should turn aside and chastise other foes to the true religion. Crusades with idolaters and erring Christians were considered as virtuous and as necessary as crusades with Saracens; the south of France was saturated with heretical blood; and those booted apostles, the Teutonic knights, converted, sword in hand, the Prussians and Lithuanians from idolatry to Christianity.

3The sword of religious persecution was not directed against Turks and heretics only. The reader remembers the sanguinary enormities that disgraced the opening of the First Crusade. Not only was this instance of persecution of the Jews the earliest one upon record in the annals of the West since the fall of the Roman Empire, but it is also true that that wretched people met with most of their dreadful calamities during the time of the holy wars.

4It is highly probable that the hatred which the Christians felt against them was embittered by that fierce and mistaken zeal for religion which gave birth to the Crusades; and as the chief object of those Crusades was the recovery of the sepulchre at Jerusalem, it was natural that the Christian belligerents should behold with equal detestation the nation which had crucified the Saviour and the nation which continued to profane his tomb. This conjecture is much confirmed by the circumstance, that the prevailing prejudice in the Middle Ages against the Jews was that they often crucified Christian children in mockery of the great sacrifice.

5If it be objected to this reasoning that the crusading Cœur de Lion befriended the Jews, we reply that the crusading king Edward I expelled them from England.

6The penalties which the church inflicted on its members, as the temporal punishments of sin, might have been unwarranted by Scripture, and were doubtless often awarded by cruelty and caprice. But the practice of prayer, fasting, and alms-giving, was in itself salubrious to the individual, and beneficial to society. It softened pride; it subdued the sensual passions; it diffused charity. Instead of these blessings, the slaughter of human beings was made the propitiation of offence; and the Christian virtues of self-denial and benevolence were considered an absurd and antiquated fashion. As the discipline of the church had been broken in upon for one purpose, it could be violated for another.

7The repentant sinner who could not take the cross himself, might contribute to the charge of the holy expedition. When offences were once commuted for money, the religious application of the price of pardon soon ceased to be necessary. Absolutions from penance became a matter of traffic, and holy virtues were discountenanced. For this reason, and for many others, the Crusades conferred no benefits on morals. The evils of a life free from domestic restraints, formed a strong argument against pilgrimages in very early ages of the church, and it does not appear that when the wanderers became soldiers their morals improved. The vices of the military colonists in Palestine are the burden of many a page of the crusading annalists.

8Something must be detracted from those representations in consequence of their authors’ prejudice that the vices of the Christians in the Holy Land effected the ruin of the kingdom. Yet enough remains to show that the tone of morals was not at a higher pitch in Palestine than in Europe. The decrees of the council at Nablus (Shechem or Neapolis) prove that a difference of religion, although a barrier against the dearest charities of life, was no impediment to a vicious sensual intercourse between the Franks and the Moslems. The Latins lived in a constant course of plunder on their Mussulman neighbours, and therefore on their return to Europe could not spread around them any rays of virtue.[82]