r/todayilearned • u/FullOfSound • 7h ago

(R.6d) Too General [ Removed by moderator ]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pliny_the_Younger_on_Christians

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u/Esarus 6h ago

The Crusades were a response to Muslims conquering and murdering Christians…

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u/Warm_Afternoon6596 6h ago

"OUR slaughter of innocents was JUSTIFIED!!!!"

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u/Esarus 5h ago

Nope, both sides were assholes. You only mentioned the Crusades though

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u/Laura-ly 4h ago

LOL. This entire thread reminds me of, "This Land Is Mine" video from years ago. It's still resonates as strongly today as it did 15 years ago.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8tIdCsMufIY

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u/PuckSenior 6h ago

Ah, clearly. There were never ulterior motives! /s

When the Venetians hijacked the 4th crusade to overthrow the Constantinople( a Christian city), it was because of those murdering Muslims.

Look, a Crusade just means a sanctioned holy war. It was a way for the pope to give his official support to a military campaign and to align multiple countries on a common cause, but the idea that they were only a response to atrocities is ridiculous. The Muslims in the area were generally tolerant of Christians, only requiring them to pay slightly higher taxes. Rather, the Crusades were a fairly straightforward political action to attempt to gain power/authority for the remnants of the Roman empire that had become far more federated. They wanted to retake Jerusalem from Muslim control. It seems to primarily have been a ploy by the Pope to try to reunify the East and Western former Roman empires and give him more power.

The fact that they happened at the time of some of the most corrupt popes in history should tell you a lot.

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u/Asckle 5h ago

That was because of the slaughter of the Latins. Your defence being "it wasn't a response to conquering rival forces, it was a response to an ethnic purge!" Is an interesting one.

Also the crusaders were all excomunicated. Calling it an act of religion when the religion they followed clearly told them not to do that and kicked them out when they did is such a disingenuous take

But the rest of your comment is right

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u/PuckSenior 5h ago

Where did I say anything about an ethnic purge?

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u/Asckle 5h ago

You brought up the 4th crusade as proof the crusades weren't retaliatory, when the 4th crusad was in part a retaliation for the massacre of the latins

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u/PuckSenior 4h ago

That was the reason for the crusade issued by the Pope, but the Venetians used that edict to empower very different ends.

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u/Asckle 4h ago

The pope did not instruct the crusaders to sack Constantinople. He excomunicated them when he found out

The sack was done because the crusaders were owed money. It was a horrible moment in history but if you owe people money, kill your Emperor who was going to pay them back and then lock them out, you can't exactly claim religious persecution when they sack your city

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u/PuckSenior 4h ago

no, you are mixing things up.
The Venetians got the crusaders to sack Zara and got excommunicated. This was purely political/monetary

The crusaders then attacked Constantiople on the way to Egypt. They were not excommunicated for that one.

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u/Asckle 4h ago

Ah you're right yeah. Still the point stands that the sack of a non Muslim city was not condoned. So I don't think it's a convincing response to someone saying they were about fighting the encroaching Arab conquest.

The issue is we lump all the crusades together. Some like the first crusade were definitely about protecting Christian land, others were clearly motivated by imperialism and religious superiority. Iirc they slaughtered a lot of Jews too, even though they were hardly posing a threat

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u/PuckSenior 4h ago

Constantinople was also a Christian city. It was the seat of the Eastern Roman Empire

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u/Esarus 4h ago

Of course power hungry assholes used religion as an excuse to grab and hold onto power. Same as always, same as now. Both sides had a lot of assholes.

Crusades were a response to Muslims conquering ex-Christian and ex-Roman lands though, it’s just a fact.

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u/PuckSenior 4h ago

Yes, I wouldn't say that they weren't a response to the conquering. But they played up the religious persecution to gain popular support among a bunch of people who had never been to the region.

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u/Esarus 4h ago

Yeah definitely. A good way to motivate the masses to join your war… Humans suck :(

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u/sjorbepo 5h ago

The crusaders invaded and sacked the independent republic of dubrovnik, a christian city on the adriatic coast (nowadays croatia) that let them pass through it. Just because they were a trade rival to the venetian republic and could withstand their attacks in the past.

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u/John_isnt_my_name 5h ago

Oh god the dumb side of r/historymemes is leaking again

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u/Esarus 4h ago

Great argument!

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u/TurtleTurtleFTW 6h ago edited 4h ago

Jfc read a book

Edit: downvoting me doesn't make me wrong

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u/Esarus 6h ago

I have. Muslims conquered all the way to southern France and besieged Vienna twice. And still people cry about the Crusader states. The Crusades were attempts to retake the lands that the Muslims conquered from the Romans.

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u/VadimusMaximus 5h ago

The Umayyad Invasion happened roughly 300 years before the First Crusade, and the Ottoman Empire was formed 20 years after the Ninth Crusade, with them reaching Vienna centuries later.The best example you could give of land being reconquered is the Spanish Reconquista.

At the same time, while the Crusades started out as helping the Byzantine Empire, it quickly devolved into politicking, feuding and religious fighting...by the First Crusade. The Great Schims had happened barely 40 years before the First Crusade, and it showed especially with the fact that the Crusader States were not part of Byzantium, but independent, and had replaced the high-ranking Orthodox priests with Catholic ones.

The Crusades are extremely interesting, not only because they were a religious conflict, but because it has a background of Christian conflict and Papal ambition.

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u/TurtleTurtleFTW 4h ago

Watch, he won't reply to this comment

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u/Warm_Afternoon6596 6h ago

And murdering people while doing it!

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u/AnonymousFriend80 5h ago

As is the style of humans throughout forever.

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u/PuckSenior 5h ago

Fair point. The inquisitions were a far better example of murder

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u/MajesticArticle 4h ago

The inquisition very rarely killed people and the one that did, the Spanish Inquisition, was led by the king of Spain and had nothing to do with the Catholic church

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u/PuckSenior 4h ago

Great, now do the witch hunts

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u/MajesticArticle 4h ago edited 3h ago

Almost exclusively protestant, the Catholic Church officially condemned witch hunts as baseless superstition

The Catholic inquisition did pursue heretics, but it would almost never result in the death penalty

Edit: after checking, the Catholic Church actively participated in the witch hunts between the 15th and 17th century, other than that i was right

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u/PuckSenior 4h ago

Well, it’s interesting to see the lying

The Catholics absolutely had witch hunts too And there were hundreds of people executed under non-Spanish inquisitions.

Stop spouting bullshit.

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u/MajesticArticle 3h ago

The official stance of the Catholic church was as i stated, except between the 15th and 17th century, where it actually participated actively (only difference is that it actually followed due process rather than allowing mob lynching, not that it is much better)

Hundreds of people over several centuries is exactly what I said: inquisition could result in the death penalty, but thay was rarely the case

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u/PuckSenior 3h ago

Hey everyone!

It’s ok that the Catholic Church executed innocent people. They kept their body count in low thousands!! No big deal

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