Karen Armstrong and Thomas Madden’s respective presentations of the Crusades, seem to present two extreme positions – either the crusaders are intolerant fanatics blindly killing people groups who were never aggressively antagonistic in return; or the Arabs are the fanatics, and the crusaders are selfless soldiers fighting a purely defensive war. Of the two pieces, Armstrong’s analysis of the Crusades is more overtly driven by a modern political agenda, but the belligerent extremes of both Madden and Thompson’s arguments – instead of a more multifaceted analysis that acknowledges reasonable points of the other positions – make both pieces equally unhelpful in understanding the Crusades.
Without presuming to make emphatic declarations about …show more content…
Instead, even from this short excerpt, it is all but clear that Armstrong intends to attack the West backing Israel in the Arab-Israeli conflict as a new manifestation of “the same spirit of aggressive righteousness as had inspired the first Western offensive against [Muslims]” (Armstrong, 374). In contrast, Madden sees the current political climate as an opportunity to “set the record straight on the Crusades” (Madden, 1), but only as that opportunity. He criticizes the popular assertion that Armstrong articulates – that “the present violence…has its roots in the Crusades’ brutal and unprovoked attacks against a sophisticated and tolerant Muslim world” (Madden, 1). Madden sets up a more objectively academic premise by refusing to correlate the Crusades with the modern Arab-Israeli conflict and analyzing the Crusades as its own period, set in a unique global power structure and social …show more content…
Madden uses sweeping language – such as “in every way” – throughout the article to make definitive statements that wholeheartedly defend the crusaders’ goals, claiming they embarked on the Crusades “as an act of love – in this case, the love of one’s neighbor” (Madden, 3). But although the First Crusade may have been called by Pope Urban II in response to the Byzantine Empire’s request for aid against the Turks, the idea that every lord went out simply of the compassion of his heart for the Byzantines seems highly suspect. The Orthodox Byzantines were fellow Christians, but they viewed the westerners with no small amount of disdain, Catholic or not, as evidenced by Anna Comenina’s disgust for the Franks in her writings. And in turn, despite the popes’ continued willingness to keep believing that the Orthodox church would bridge the schism, Catholic crusaders viewed the Byzantines with increasing distrust as the Crusades went on, culminating in several crusades led against the Byzantine Empire. Madden’s impassioned defense of the crusaders’ unselfishness and the notion that that attitude “remain[ed] central to the eastern Crusades for centuries”
Without presuming to make emphatic declarations about …show more content…
Instead, even from this short excerpt, it is all but clear that Armstrong intends to attack the West backing Israel in the Arab-Israeli conflict as a new manifestation of “the same spirit of aggressive righteousness as had inspired the first Western offensive against [Muslims]” (Armstrong, 374). In contrast, Madden sees the current political climate as an opportunity to “set the record straight on the Crusades” (Madden, 1), but only as that opportunity. He criticizes the popular assertion that Armstrong articulates – that “the present violence…has its roots in the Crusades’ brutal and unprovoked attacks against a sophisticated and tolerant Muslim world” (Madden, 1). Madden sets up a more objectively academic premise by refusing to correlate the Crusades with the modern Arab-Israeli conflict and analyzing the Crusades as its own period, set in a unique global power structure and social …show more content…
Madden uses sweeping language – such as “in every way” – throughout the article to make definitive statements that wholeheartedly defend the crusaders’ goals, claiming they embarked on the Crusades “as an act of love – in this case, the love of one’s neighbor” (Madden, 3). But although the First Crusade may have been called by Pope Urban II in response to the Byzantine Empire’s request for aid against the Turks, the idea that every lord went out simply of the compassion of his heart for the Byzantines seems highly suspect. The Orthodox Byzantines were fellow Christians, but they viewed the westerners with no small amount of disdain, Catholic or not, as evidenced by Anna Comenina’s disgust for the Franks in her writings. And in turn, despite the popes’ continued willingness to keep believing that the Orthodox church would bridge the schism, Catholic crusaders viewed the Byzantines with increasing distrust as the Crusades went on, culminating in several crusades led against the Byzantine Empire. Madden’s impassioned defense of the crusaders’ unselfishness and the notion that that attitude “remain[ed] central to the eastern Crusades for centuries”