The Crusades: Crescent and the Cross, History channel Documentary
How can a religion of love, compassion and turning the other cheek be periodically hijacked for the purposes of Crusades? This is a history, which everyone of us needs to review as it has been said by famous Spanish American philosopher, George Santayana, ‘those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it!’
A spell binding three hour documentary by the History channel, a must see for every Muslim and Christian.
THE CRUSADES: CRESCENT & THE CROSS presents the epic battle between two Middle Age superpowers: the Christian Crusaders and the Muslims. Fought over two centuries, the conflict decided the fate of the Holy Land of the Middle East. Only a tiny strip of land, just a few hundred miles long, it contained the ultimate prize, the city of Jerusalem.
The documentary is driven by the key personalities of the First, Second and Third Crusades, the popes, kings, sultans and knights who, in the name of God, ruthlessly fought for land and power. Experience the murder, treachery, and bloodshed of this legendary chapter of history through the eyes of key historical figures such as Richard the Lionheart and Saladin, King Louis VII and Nur al-Din.
With breath-taking CGI-enhanced visuals, heart-pounding reenactments, and stunning footage from rarely-seen locations THE CRUSADES: CRESCENT & THE CROSS brings the first three Crusades alive for a new generation in conflict.
The Christian invaders were regarded as infidels. The Arabs were scorned as lawless pagans. The Westerners saw their quest as literally a sanctified crusade, while the Muslims launched their own holy war, called a jihad, in retaliation. Sound familiar? It should, because although the events depicted in the History Channel’s The Crusades – Crescent & The Cross took place nearly a thousand years ago, they are but a distant mirror to what’s going on in the Middle East right now. This two-part, three-hour program, released here on two discs (the second includes over an hour of bonus material), impressively details all three Crusades, starting in the late 11th Century, when Pope Urban II dispatched a huge force to reclaim Jerusalem, which had been under Muslim control for some 400 years. For the knights and others who made the journey, it was a noble spiritual quest, not to mention an escape from Europe’s petty wars and famines; in the end, the fact that many of them were greedy butchers who murdered Muslims, Jews, and even other Christians indiscriminately (sometimes even eating the flesh of the vanquished) detracted not at all from their conviction that they were acting in the name of God. Of course, so were the Muslims, who, after the bloody first crusade succeeded in seizing the holy city, mounted a massive counterattack under leaders like Nur al-din and his son Saladin, who managed to take back Jerusalem (from whence Mohammed was said to have ascended to heaven) and hold on to it through the failed second and third crusades, the latter led by England’s Richard the Lionheart.All of this is presented by way of techniques that will be recognizable to History Channel buffs. They include modern-day historians, who re-trace the routes of the crusaders and examine the ancient sites where the action took place, as well as actors who portray characters of the time (chroniclers, knights, and others); numerous re-enactments, aided by excellent cinematography and skillful use of CGI (whereby a few dozen extras could be made to look like many thousands), vividly illustrate the battles and other events that took place during this roughly 200-year period. Add to that a bonus documentary about the Knights Templar (the soldier-monks in charge of protecting the Kingdom of Jerusalem) and a decent “making of” documentary, and you have an absorbing, enlightening look at events that prove one thing above all: the more things change, the more they stay the same. –Sam Graham
The Crusades: The War for the Holy Land by Thomas Asbridge and Holy Warriors: A Modern History of the Crusades by Jonathan Phillips
Source: Guardian UK
The historian Marc Bloch, who died a martyr’s death when shot by the Nazis, observed that “once an emotional chord has been struck, the limit between past and present is no longer regulated by a mathematically measurable chronology”. Although we are approaching the millennium of the First Crusade launched by Pope Urban II in 1095, the spirit of this archetypal conflict between a militant Catholicism and its rival faiths in Iberia, Southern France, the Eastern Mediterranean and the Baltic lives on. After the terrorist attacks on 9/11, George W Bush said: “This crusade… this war on terror is going to take a while.” As Jonathan Phillips remarks, his incendiary comment was a propaganda gift to Osama bin Laden, who for years had been talking about Jewish-Crusader attacks on Islam.
Thomas Asbridge makes the same point. How can it be, he asks, that this language of medieval holy war has found a place in modern conflicts, as if there were some “unbroken line of hatred and discord connecting the medieval contest for control of the Holy Land to today’s struggles in the Near and Middle East?” He concludes that the crusades are a potent, alarming and dangerous example of the “potential for history to be appropriated, misrepresented and manipulated” for political ends. Together with Phillips, he points out that the Muslim idea of the crusade embodied in the Arabic term al-hurub al-salabiyya (“the wars of the cross”) only appeared in the course of the nationalist struggles in the 19th century. The crusaders’ Muslim contemporaries employed less emotive, more secular language: “the wars of the Franks”,
Both of these books take us back to the period in western history when belief in the afterlife was paramount. Philips describes a society “saturated with religious belief”, where fear of damnation was universal. Ordinary life was fraught with eternal hazards. Practically every church contained frescoes or sculptures depicting the horrors of hell – devils gouging out the eyes of screaming sinners, living humans skinned and eternally roasted – contrasted with the peace, tranquillity, and safety of heaven for the saved. The Church’s message was terrifyingly simple: there was no avoiding the consequences of sin. Urban II, an ambitious and ruthless Frenchman, launched the movement with a brilliant new formula: wipe the slate clean by going on the crusade. All the vicious and violent misdeeds that were occupational hazards for medieval warriors and their entourages would be cancelled. For the knightly classes the “neatest aspect of all is that they could continue fighting – only now their energies would be directed towards the enemies of God, rather than their fellow Christians”.
If we look at the history of the last 2000 years, the logical conclusion would be that the Popes are fallible for the reasonable and infallible for those, who have blind faith!
According to John Shelby Spong:
The infallibility of the pope is asserted in the face of historical evidence to the contrary and even in the face of that period of history between 1378 and 1417 when there were two ‘infallible popes,’ each excommunicating the other.
Ref. John Shelby Spong. Eternal Life, a New Vision, Beyond Religion, Beyond Theism, Beyond Heaven and Hell. HarperOne, 2009. Page 85.
Ev’ryone~ Jesus’s words will judge us in the last day, but, until then; we, saints of the most high God are mandated to live one another as he loved us, so; the world will know we’re his disciples and I’m glad to give a good report to day:28sep.23,Sat. that i am in this number.
Happily an humbly, i submit, in Jesus’s name; bc, i’m saved, sanctified the Bible way and not ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ. He’s my elder brother an his Father is my Father ~sisteregina k
Edited:Ev’ryone~ Jesus’s words will judge us in the last day, but, until then; we, saints of the most high God are mandated to love one another as he loved us, so; the world will know we’re his disciples and I’m glad to give a good report to day:28sep.23,Sat. that i am in this number.
Happily an humbly, i submit, in Jesus’s name; bc, i’m saved, sanctified the Bible way and not ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ. He’s my elder brother an his Father is my Father ~sisteregina k
🧕🏻
The Crusades: The War for the Holy Land by Thomas Asbridge and Holy Warriors: A Modern History of the Crusades by Jonathan Phillips
Source: Guardian UK
The historian Marc Bloch, who died a martyr’s death when shot by the Nazis, observed that “once an emotional chord has been struck, the limit between past and present is no longer regulated by a mathematically measurable chronology”. Although we are approaching the millennium of the First Crusade launched by Pope Urban II in 1095, the spirit of this archetypal conflict between a militant Catholicism and its rival faiths in Iberia, Southern France, the Eastern Mediterranean and the Baltic lives on. After the terrorist attacks on 9/11, George W Bush said: “This crusade… this war on terror is going to take a while.” As Jonathan Phillips remarks, his incendiary comment was a propaganda gift to Osama bin Laden, who for years had been talking about Jewish-Crusader attacks on Islam.
Thomas Asbridge makes the same point. How can it be, he asks, that this language of medieval holy war has found a place in modern conflicts, as if there were some “unbroken line of hatred and discord connecting the medieval contest for control of the Holy Land to today’s struggles in the Near and Middle East?” He concludes that the crusades are a potent, alarming and dangerous example of the “potential for history to be appropriated, misrepresented and manipulated” for political ends. Together with Phillips, he points out that the Muslim idea of the crusade embodied in the Arabic term al-hurub al-salabiyya (“the wars of the cross”) only appeared in the course of the nationalist struggles in the 19th century. The crusaders’ Muslim contemporaries employed less emotive, more secular language: “the wars of the Franks”,
Both of these books take us back to the period in western history when belief in the afterlife was paramount. Philips describes a society “saturated with religious belief”, where fear of damnation was universal. Ordinary life was fraught with eternal hazards. Practically every church contained frescoes or sculptures depicting the horrors of hell – devils gouging out the eyes of screaming sinners, living humans skinned and eternally roasted – contrasted with the peace, tranquillity, and safety of heaven for the saved. The Church’s message was terrifyingly simple: there was no avoiding the consequences of sin. Urban II, an ambitious and ruthless Frenchman, launched the movement with a brilliant new formula: wipe the slate clean by going on the crusade. All the vicious and violent misdeeds that were occupational hazards for medieval warriors and their entourages would be cancelled. For the knightly classes the “neatest aspect of all is that they could continue fighting – only now their energies would be directed towards the enemies of God, rather than their fellow Christians”.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/jan/03/review-of-the-crusades-by-thomas-asbridge-and-holy-warriors-by-jonathan-phillips
If we look at the history of the last 2000 years, the logical conclusion would be that the Popes are fallible for the reasonable and infallible for those, who have blind faith!
According to John Shelby Spong:
Ref. John Shelby Spong. Eternal Life, a New Vision, Beyond Religion, Beyond Theism, Beyond Heaven and Hell. HarperOne, 2009. Page 85.
Ev’ryone~ Jesus’s words will judge us in the last day, but, until then; we, saints of the most high God are mandated to live one another as he loved us, so; the world will know we’re his disciples and I’m glad to give a good report to day:28sep.23,Sat. that i am in this number.
Happily an humbly, i submit, in Jesus’s name; bc, i’m saved, sanctified the Bible way and not ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ. He’s my elder brother an his Father is my Father ~sisteregina k
Edited:Ev’ryone~ Jesus’s words will judge us in the last day, but, until then; we, saints of the most high God are mandated to love one another as he loved us, so; the world will know we’re his disciples and I’m glad to give a good report to day:28sep.23,Sat. that i am in this number.
Happily an humbly, i submit, in Jesus’s name; bc, i’m saved, sanctified the Bible way and not ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ. He’s my elder brother an his Father is my Father ~sisteregina k
🧕🏻