Barbarism in the Crusader Mentality

“But I say to you, do not resist evil. Whoever slaps you on the right cheek, turn the other cheek too”

(Matthew 5:39).

In this article, we will read about the grave consequences of the use of religion in politics, the brutality, barbarism and cannibalism experienced in the Crusades, from the Crusader sources themselves.

The Crusades, which started as a way out of all these crises as a result of the political, economic and social crises in Europe in 1095, is a movement that still maintains its influence today. The brutality of the enraged masses everywhere they passed during this movement is embarrassing for humanity.

You have heard it said that you will love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I say to you, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who insult you. If it hits you on one cheek, turn the other cheek. Do not withhold your cloak from the one who took your cloak. Give it to anyone who asks for something from you, do not ask for it back from the one who took your property. Treat people the way you want them to treat you. “If you love only those who love you, what praise does that give you? Even sinners love those who love them. If you do good to those who do you good, what praise does it earn you? Even sinners do that. What praise does it earn you if you lend it to those you hope to receive back? Even sinners lend to sinners on condition that they take back what they have given. But you love your enemies, do good, lend without expecting anything in return. (Luke 6:27-36)

Despite these very clear commandments in the Bible, how religion is abused as a result of political and economic ambitions, and the resulting brutality, barbarism, and even cannibalism is shameful.

Beginning of the Crusades

Eastern Roman Orthodox thought saw Christianity not as a religion of intervention, but rather as a defense and preferred the path of diplomacy. War was generally not tolerated, and those who died in the war were not considered "martry". As a result of long negotiations, it was accepted that Christians could fight to protect their homeland, and those who died on this road would be martyrs.

After the victory of Manzikert in 1071, after the conquest of Iznik in 4 years and the occupation of all Anatolia, Eastern Rome requested mercenary aid from the Pope in 1074. Emperor VII. This request of Mikhail Dukas (1071-1078) was given to Pope VII. Gregorius (1073-1085) welcomed it, but could not send aid. The Pope sent the Patriarch of Venice Dominicus to Istanbul as an ambassador. Patriarch Dominicus reported to the Pope, seeing that the current weaponry of the Eastern Rome was very weak after Manzikert, Anatolia was almost completely occupied by the Turks, the pilgrimage and the silk road were under the control of the Turks, and the weakness of power in Anatolia and the Great Seljuk States. 

Pope II, who was elected after the death of Gregorius. Urbanus (d. 1099) evaluated the Emperor's request for help again in 1094. Considering the socio-economic problems in Europe, the pope-emperor struggles, the military weakness of the Eastern Rome, and the power problems in the Seljuks, he did not miss the opportunity that the previous pope could not take into account.

Pope II. Urbanus, the crusader historian, was, in the words of John France, "a very skilful diplomat." On 27 November 1095 he convened the Council of Clermont. He had diligently invited the lords and clergy to attend the meeting. Pope II. Urbanus, in his speech at the consul; Explaining that as a result of seven wars, the Turks occupied Roman lands from the Mediterranean to the Strait of Saint George (Istanbul) with a burning invasion, they killed many people, captured many of them, destroyed churches, and destroyed the Kingdom of God. He said that if they were conquered, they would continue their conquests. He started the Crusades by saying that "everyone must join this holy war in order to exterminate this evil race from Christian lands before it is too late, and that those who died in this holy war will be martyred and the sins of those who remain will be forgiven". The coat of arms of the Cross was distributed to those who participated in the expedition.

This call, which completely contradicted the statements in the Bible, was spread in waves by the preachers all over Europe.

The first and irregular army gathered as a result of the propaganda made by the preacher monk Pierre l'Ermite (d. 1113) and his assistant priests, departed from Cologne on 20 May and reached Istanbul on 1 August 1096 via Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Sofia and Edirne. . They came as far as Iznik, looted the villages here, and started the massacre without saying family and children. Anna Komnena, the daughter of the Roman Emperor, narrates in her book Alexiad that they put babies on skewers and fry them in the fire. This army was almost completely destroyed by the armies of Kılıçarslan I near İznik.

Pierre l'Ermite was in Istanbul, and when the army he gathered disappeared, he went as far as Antakya with the regular army that came from behind. The regular army, which was filled with grudge and hatred, first started brutality with the Jews against them. Pope II. The regular large army, which set out against the Turks, whom Urbanus saw as "the enemy of God, the Evil race", killed the Jews in Mainz as "the first murderers of Jesus" and plundered their goods. On the basis of this hatred of Jews is the fact that usury caused great persecution. Fearing Count Emicho in the city of Mainz, a group of 700 Jews took shelter in Ruthard, the bishop of the city. Count Emicho began a terrible massacre by raiding the bishop's house. Albertus Aquensis narrates that "the uncircumcised killed each other by choosing to die with their own hands rather than being killed by their swords, and even the mothers cut the throats of their suckling children" in the massacre he described by saying "how terrible it is to transport". Count Emicho's army will disperse in Hungary, and as a result of their outrages, all of them will be put to the sword by the Hungarian army.

The regular army had thrown the heads of the soldiers of Kılıçarslan, who were martyred in the siege of Nicaea, to the castle with catapults to demoralize the Seljuks. The brutality experienced during the siege of Antakya is such that it will be the subject of a separate article. Even if the crusaders besieged the castle and took it with the promise of safety, they did not keep their word and killed everyone who surrendered, and they pierced the bellies of the captives in search of gold and jewellery. Crusader chroniclers state that their boots were soaked in blood up to their knees.

In the Gesta Francorum et aliorum Hiero soliminatorum, the atrocities of the Christians at the siege of Antioch and their eating of human flesh are briefly and concisely described as follows: some failed to meet their needs. So they slit the stomachs of the dead, because they hoped to find Byzantine gold in the bowels of the Muslims. And others cut the flesh of the dead into slices and cooked it for food.

The siege in Ma'ararratur ra'man will reach a much more advanced dimension. Fulcherius Carnotensis describes the cannibalism of the crusaders as an agonizing situation: When the siege lasted twenty days, our people suffered from extreme hunger. I speak with trembling and trembling, because many of our people were disturbed by the insanity caused by extreme hunger, where they sliced ​​and chewed pieces of the buttocks of the Saracens (Muslims) who had just died, cooked and chewed them, and when they were not sufficiently cooked in the fire, they ate it with a savage mouth. And so the besiegers suffered more damage than the besieged ones.

A group of delegates representing the Tafurs visited the tent of the preacher monk Pierre l'Ermite, with their king with them, and according to one rumor, they wanted his donkey to be given to them to eat, and according to another rumor, they wanted to get advice on how to satisfy their hunger. Concerned to save his donkey or to regain his long-lost dignity with the crusaders, Pierre l'Ermite advised them to eat some of the dead Turks. He said that this proposal was in accordance with Christianity by quoting from the Bible (Note).

The Tafurs, who accepted Pierre l'Ermite's advice without hesitation, went down to the banks of the Orontes River, where a Turkish contingent had been massacred a short time ago, although they numbered more than ten thousand, and took the many corpses there to eat. Meanwhile, the Turks, who smelled the meat while it was cooking, and wondered what meat these wretched wretches might have fried, witnessed the horrific scene from the Antakya walls and cried out in pain. Realizing that they were being watched by the Turks, the king of the Tafurs ordered his men to go to the cemeteries and bring out a few more Turks for a grisly feast, to further anger them.

While confirming the cannibalism, Raimundus Aguilers also cited the hunger of the Christians as a compelling reason: meanwhile, there was such a starvation in the army that people hungrily ate the bodies of many newly stinking Muslims, many of whom had been dumped on the city's grounds for two weeks or more. These events frightened many people of our race as well as foreigners. So many of us returned.

German Historian Albertus Aquensis, on the other hand, confirmed the cannibalism of the helpless crusaders and tried to express that they were compelled to do so: The hunger that grew around these cities became so painful that the Christians were not afraid to eat the corpses in the face of the famine they experienced. They cooked on fire not only the Muslims or Turks they had killed, but also the dogs they had captured.

Even the sentence, "Some of us could not meet their needs and went hungry. Some of us, hoping to find Byzantine gold in their intestines, slit the bodies of the dead, and some of them cut the flesh of the dead and cut it into pieces and cooked it for food" should be enough to see the limits of the brutality.

The author of Historia Ierosolimitana states that "the agony of hunger around this city has reached such enormous dimensions that it is strange to say, let alone do it, that the Christians did not avoid not only the killed Turks and Sarazans, but also the dogs they caught by cooking it in the fire" and how the Crusaders did not only treat people and nature but also animals. states that they committed a massacre.

Fulcheris Carnotensis declared that these incidents took place during the siege, and conveyed the Crusaders' state of taking meat from the corpses with the following words: "During this siege, our men suffered terribly due to insanity caused by severe hunger and cut pieces of meat from the thighs of dead Muslims lying around. These pieces were cooked and eaten, and had enough. they savagely devoured even meat that wasn't fried".

Willermus Tyrensis, on the other hand, stated that the Crusaders started cannibalism after the siege and described the events as follows: “After the capture of the aforementioned city (…) there was such a famine in the army at the same time that they used filthy creatures like wild animals as food. It is also said that they starve, if it is to be believed, of human flesh, and that many of the unfortunate folk have died because they ate such filthy and vile things unnaturally.

The following words of Radulf von Caen, a Norman knight who also wrote down what he saw, show the truth once again: “It is a shame to convey what I have learned and heard from the perpetrators of this shame, because they said that they had to eat human flesh due to lack of food. Adults of disbelievers (Muslims) were cooked in pots, while children were skewered and fried. The Christians looked like wild animals, like dogs frying and cooking people as they hungrily devour this meat.”

Western culture is based on cannibalism. Raoul de Caen writes: 'Our people cooked adult pagans in pots and got the children in bottles to cook them on the grill'. For nearly 1000 years, Western culture has lived with this sin and its consequences. The results have even become part of the language. The name of Gottfried von Bouillon, one of the leaders of the cannibals, is used as a kind of soup. Bouillon should be erased from cookbooks and replaced by the old veggie stew.”

Historian Radulfus Cadomensis described what was done as "Our soldiers cooked adult Muslims in cooking pots, skewered the children and ate them by grilling". Later, the Crusaders excused themselves in a letter to the Pope: The reason was hunger. IV. The crusader otdusu, who set out with the pretext of saving Jerusalem in the crusade, seized Istanbul, raped even the Orthodox nuns, and plundered every metal item in a way that will not be similar in history. The Crusades still remain as an open wound between the Christian and Muslim worlds, despite the centuries that have passed.

It does not seem easy to solve the problems from the past between the two groups belonging to different beliefs and civilizations. This may be a situation arising from the nature of both civilizations. However, cannibalism and other atrocities committed by Christians during the crusades are still alive in the memories of Muslims. Unless the Christian world apologizes for the cannibalism and other inhuman crimes committed during the crusades, the hatred of Turks and Muslims towards them will remain alive and Westerners will always be remembered as man-eaters. His mentality and solidarity with the Crusader consciousness continues today.

In 2001, we witnessed the US president saying "This is a Crusade" for the invasion of Iraq. On March 15, 2019, we saw that a fanatical Christian entered mosques with automatic weapons in Australia, killing fifty-one Muslims, including a Turk, and wounding as many. This fanatic named Brendon Tarrant, after the incident Pope II. He issued a proclamation inspired by Urbanus' Council of Clermont. In the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war, we see that the whole of Europe has embraced people fleeing from Ukraine. We must be careful that this humanitarian attitude is not shown to those fleeing Syria, and that attempts to establish a European army are not established as a new Crusader Army.

Note:

You will eat the fruit of your womb, the flesh of the sons and daughters that the Lord your God has given you, from the affliction of your enemy during the siege. Even the softest, most sensitive man among you will not pity his own brother, his beloved wife, his surviving children; He will not share the meat of his children, whom he eats, with any of them. For there will be no food left in your cities, because the enemy oppresses you during the siege. Even the softest, most sensitive woman among you - the one who does not want to put her feet on the ground because of her softness and sensitivity - will spare her beloved husband, her own son, daughter, placenta and the children she will bear. Because during the siege, the enemy will secretly eat them out of poverty and poverty in your cities. (Torah, Law, 28: 53-57)

The other day this woman said to me, "Give me your son, let's eat today, and tomorrow we will eat my son." So we cooked and ate my son. The next day I said to him, "Give me your son so we can eat." But he hid his son (2 Kings 6: 24-33).

References:

Aachen, Albert of. History of the Journay to Jerusalem, Volume 1: Books 1-6. The First Crusade, 1095-1099, Translated by Susan B. Edgington, London and New York: Routledge, 2016.

Aguilers, Raimundus. Haçlılar Kudüs’te Bir Papazın Gözünden İlk Haçlı Seferi. Yayına Hazırlayan Süleyman Genç. İstanbul: Yeditepe Yayınevi, 2019.

Anna Comnena, Alexiad Anadolu’da ve Balkan Yarımadası’nda İmparator Alexios Komnenos Dönemi’nin Tarihi Malazgirt Sonrası, Çeviren BilgeUmar, (İstanbul: İnkılap Kitabevi, 1996)

Fulcherius Carnotensis, İ Fulcher of Chartres, A History of the Expedition to Jerusalem 1095-1127. çev. F. Rita Ryan. Konoxville, 1969.

Ralph of Caen, The Gesta Tancredi of Ralph of Caen. A History of the Normans on the First Crusade, trans. Bernard S. Bachrach and David S. Bachrach, Aldershot, 2005.

Tyre, William Archbishop of. A History of Deeds Done Beyond The Sea, Volume Two. Translated and Annotated by Emily Atwater Babcock and A. C. Krey. New York: Columbia University Press, 1943