But the defence of a military expedition to invade the country of the infidels presents another question. In this respect, however, the Crusades are easily justified on every principle of justice and policy. Xenophon relates, that all the world admired the spirit and policy of Agesilaus, in determining to meet the barbarians on their own territory, rather than to wait till they had invaded Greece, when he would have to meet them on the defensive.1 Precisely similar was the case of the Crusades. When St. Bernard and the Popes called upon the princes of Christendom to take the Cross, it was to save Europe, and to prevent the Crescent from dispossessing the Cross. There is not a point of history more clearly established than this, by the concurrent testimony of all real historians. Hence has the memory of the Crusaders been ever dear to all great men who loved Christianity. Thus Dante sees the Cross placed in the planet Mars, to denote the glory of those who fought in the Crusades.2 Raumer even says, that for importance and efficacy nothing can be compared to the victory of Charles Martel, but that of the Greeks of old over the Persians. And it is with justice, indeed, that the first Sunday in October is kept by the western Christians as a festival of perpetual thanksgiving to God for the victory of Lepanto. How grateful should Christians feel to the Roman pontiffs for their watchful solicitude! That illustrious pope, Pius II., had reason, when he said in his celebrated speech in 1463, which was repeatedly interrupted by the tears of the assembly, that the following of the Cross would prove the sincerity of their devotion. "Now let your faith, your religion, your piety, be brought to the light. If it be a true, and not a feigned charity, follow us. We will set you an example, that you may do what we are about to perform but we will imitate our Master and Lord, Jesus Christ, the pious and holy Shepherd, who did not fear to lay down his life for his sheep, and we will lay down our life for our flock, since in no other way can we bear assistance to the Christian religion, that it be not trodden down by the Turkish men. We will mount the ship, though old and broken down with sickness. 'And what can you do in war?' some one will say. An old man, a priest, op2 Parad. xix. 1 Agesilaus, c. i. 6 pressed with a thousand maladies, will you go into battle?" We will imitate the holy father, Moses-we will stand on the lofty prow, or on the top of some mountain, having the divine Eucharist before our eyes, that is, our Lord Jesus Christ, and we will implore from him salvation and victory for our fighting soldiers: Cor contritum et humiliatum non despiciet Dominus. It cannot be preserved unless we imitate our predecessors who maintained the kingdom of the Church: nor is it enough to be confessors, to preach to the people, to thunder against vices, to exalt virtue to heaven: we must approach to their standard who offered up their bodies for the testament of the Lord. For our God we leave our own seat and the Roman Church, and we devote to the cause of piety these grey hairs and this weak body. He will not be unmindful of us; if He will not grant us a return, He will grant an entrance to heaven, and He will preserve his Primal Seat and his reproachless Spouse."1 If, however, this danger and this necessity had not existed, it is certain that the Crusades would have deserved much of the censure that the moderns have been pleased to pass upon them. There is a remarkable chapter in L'Arbre des Batailles, where the author inquires, whether it be lawful to make war upon the Sarassins; and he concludes thus: "Tout premierement je prouve comme guerre ne se peut ou doit ottroier contre les Sarrazins ou mescreans. La raison est telle: tous les biens de la terre a fait Dieu pour creature humaine indifferamment, tant pour la mauvaise comme pour la bonne, car Dieu ne fait mye le souleil plus chault ne plus vertueux pour l'ung que pour l'autre, et fait porter a la terre des mescreans bons vins, bons bleds, et bons fruits, comme des Chrestiens. Et leur donne science et scavoir naturel de vertu et de justice. Et si leur a donne empires, royaulmes, duchies, contes, et leur foy, et leur loy, et leur ordonnance. Et si Dieu cela leur a donne, pourquoy leur osteroient les Chrestiens? item plus fort nous ne devons ne pouvons selon la saincte escripture contredire ne offencer ung mescreant de prendre la saincte foy ne le sainct bapteme, mais les devons laisser en la franche volonte que Dieu leur a donnee. Car par force ne doit homme estre contraint a la foy croyre." În like man 1 Commen. Pii Papæ II. lib. xii. p. 336. ner, St. Thomas Aquinas, writing in the thirteenth century, at the very time of the Crusades, says, that "we ought not to oblige the infidels to embrace the faith; but that it was lawful for Christians to oblige them not to injure religion by their persuasions or open persecutions, and that it was on that ground the Crusades were adopted."1 It cannot, however, be denied that crimes and weakness were associated with these religious enterprises. This it was which afflicted the Popes, and St. Bernard, and Godefrey of Bouillon, and Tancred, and St. Louis. These crimes brought on their own punishment; and the Crusaders, like the Greeks of old, ἐπεὶ οὔτι νοήμονες, οὐδὲ δίκαιοι πάντες ἔσαν· τῷ σφέων πόλεες κακὸν οἶτον ἔπεσπον.2 Raumer is shocked at the terrible description of Jerusalem taken by storm, when cruelty was seen to accompany humility and the hopes of heaven. Without doubt humanity shudders at such scenes. Vinisauf, describing the slaughter of the Turkish army, pursued by Richard I., exclaims, with much feeling, "O quam multum distans et dissimilis quæcunque contemplatio claustralium juxta columnos meditantium, horrendo illi exercitio militantium !" Better that the last magnificent line of Tasso had been never written, and that the Crusaders had thought, like Hector, when he said, χερσὶ δ ̓ ἀνίπτοισι Διὶ λείβειν αἴθοπα οἶνον But human nature is like infernal nature in moments such as these; and it should rather excite our admiration that in this instance the interval was so quickly succeeded by a return to the sentiments of humanity and devotion. The faults and crimes, however, of the Crusaders have been enormously overstated, while their virtues have been ungenerously passed over in silence. What an example of purity of heart is given by Raumer, when he relates that the Archduke Frederic of Suabia, who died in the third Crusade, the same which was fatal to the Emperor Frede ii. 2, 9, 10. a. 8. 3 Il. vi. 266. 2 Odyss. iii. ric I., refused to follow the advice of his physician, saying, "malle se mori quam in peregrinatione divina corpus suum per libidinem maculare."1 Impious novels, professing to be "tirés de l'histoire des Croisades," ascribing the basest character to the glorious names of Christian antiquity, and representing the infidels as far surpassing the Christians in every virtue, have contributed not a little to a false opinion of these great heroes. Mr. Hammer in his dissertation on the gallantry of Saladin, and of his brother Malek Adel,2 censures, indeed, the author in the Gesta Dei per Francos3 for being prejudiced against Saladin; but on the other hand, he blames the writers of historical romances for representing these two princes as gallant knights, Saladin in the Amours of Eleanore de Guyenne, and Malek Adel in the Crusades by Madame Cotin. He says that he wished to find authority for their gallantry; and after searching through his manuscripts without meeting with a single trait of the gallantry of Malek Adel, he still resolved to believe him a pattern of chivalry; "but what was my astonishment," he continues, "when finally, in a classical historian of these times, I found facts which proved incontestably that this famous Malek Adel not only had none of the superior qualities ascribed to him, but that, on the contrary, a ferocious soldier and merciless conqueror, he failed in the most simple duties due to women, even in the land of harems and barbarians; that far from being the flower of Arabian knights, he shamefully illtreated females, and has constantly passed among the Easterns for a man who forgot, in the most interesting situations of his life, all that unfortunate beauty had claims to! It is the same," he continues, "with respect to his brother Saladin. Without refusing the justice which is due to their warlike and political virtues, history has no less proclaimed them both as two barbarians, shewing on the most essential occasions the total want of condescension and respect for the most weak and beautiful portion of the human race." But grave historians deserve a more severe reproof for their shameful want of honesty in regard to the Crusaders. Not to notice the cruel haste of Fleury, the great French 1 Vol. ii. p. 438, note. 2 Mines de l'Orient, vol. i. p. 141. 3 p. 1152. historian Velly thus remarks: "On se croisa donc à l'envie; les uns par libertinage, les autres par un faux zèle de religion, ceux-ci pour se faire un nom, ceux-la pour changer de place, quelques-uns pour se soustraire aux importunités de leurs créanciers, quelques-autres pour aller chercher dans un pays étranger une fortune plus favorable que celle dont ils jouissoient dans leur patrie.' Poor Millot must needs publish another motive, namely, "en profiter pour séduire les femmes des Croisés."2 Raumer adds another, "to escape from a bad wife," der Pein eines bösen Weibes zu entgehn. Now all these writers raise this monstrous superstructure on the basis of William of Tyre, who, however, by his very first words, dispels the horrid image which they hold up; for he says, nec tamen apud omnes erat in causa Dominus."3 Why have they omitted these words? and why, in translating what follows in William of Tyre, do they pass over in silence all the motives which were generous and honourable, such as is implied in this sentence, "quidam ne amicos desererent?" If a Crusade were undertaken in the present age, what worse motives could be ascribed to the men that would engage in it? And surely in the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries there were other motives that might have actuated the warlike youth of Europe? Camoens at least thought so in a later age, when he said, If youthful fury pant for shining arms, Spread o'er the Eastern world the dread alarms; The Saracen, thy faith, thy nation's foe.* Does our philosophy teach us only to regard the vices of these men, and to take no account of their virtues? to overlook those who, like the intrepid Brançon, thought themselves too happy "de mourir pour Jesus Christ,”5 like Jakeline de Mailliacus, a Knight Templar, who, upon the advance of Saladin into Palestine, in a battle near Tiberiad, rushed into the midst of the Sarassins, and as Vinisauf says, "mori pro Christo non timuit ?" Have we no sympathy for those who endured the hunger at Antioch, I Tom. ii. p. 441. 2 Hist. des Troubadours, ii. 503. |