About the Crusades

Hence, what we see today is the dominant Church of Rome mainly because over 400 years they exterminated all those who were not aligned to the Church of Rome. But what if Constantine had chosen another model of Christianity instead of Paul’s version? Well, then I suppose, today, the Church in Rome would not be a Catholic Church.

NO HOLDS BARRED

Raja Petra Kamarudin

One of my favourite movies is ‘Kingdom of Heaven’. I have probably watched that movie three or four times and have no problem watching it again.

But that is the thing about western movies. It makes villains into heroes and heroes into villains. Basically, it all depends on how the director wants to portray things. John Wayne was the goodie who could shoot dead 20 ‘red skins’ with his six-shooter.

It did not occur to me then that a six-shooter has only six bullets -- so how could he kill 20 red skins without reloading his gun as he utters ‘the only good Injun is a dead Injun’?

Nevertheless, we would clap and cheer as the Injuns ‘bite the dust’ without thinking that the ‘white skins’ were actually the baddies who took the red skin’s land by force and drove them into reservations.

And that also goes for movies regarding the Crusades, ‘Kingdom of Heaven’ being one example.

Do you know that there were probably twenty or more Crusades for almost 400 years from 1096 to the mid-1400s? And not all Crusades were Christians versus Muslims or fought in Jerusalem, as we are being led to believe. There were also many Crusades where Christians exterminated Christians in the power struggle being fought to determine which version of Christianity is the correct version.

And to ensure that they met their objective of exterminating ‘the teachings of the devil’, they had to embark upon ‘ethnic cleansing’ so that there were no remnants of deviants and heretics who would threaten ‘the religion of God’.

Ironically, Jews and Muslims were not regarded as followers or practitioners of the teachings of the devil. Only those Christians who did not follow Rome or the Pope were. Hence Jews and Muslims were spared (except in Jerusalem) while fellow Christians suffered the brunt of the Crusades.

And these Crusades were fought in Europe, not in the Middle East or Jerusalem. And history now refers to this Crusade as the Inquisition although in the beginning it was called a Crusade. And the Inquisition was basically an attempt to eradicate heresy (a.k.a. devil worshipping).

Heresy was a concept introduced by the Church of Rome, which was set up by Emperor Constantine. Constantine wanted Christians to follow the model of Christianity established by Paul as in the New Testament rather than that of the Gospels because they considered the teachings of Jesus as being too Jewish.

Although Paul was as Jewish as Jesus, Paul lived his life outside Judaea around the Mediterranean region and hence was more influenced by the Greek and Roman religions while Jesus was more inclined towards the Essene philosophy, to which the Nazarenes were attached.

Historians even go so far as to say that Paul created a new religion with Jesus as the earthly godhead, which in the year 44 in Antioch, Syria, became known as Christianity.

Thereafter, the doctrine of Paul got assimilated into Christianity and became the official religion of the Roman Empire. Subsequently, the Church Fathers decreed that Christians who still followed the Nazarene model would be considered heretics who should be put to death.

It was not until a thousand years later, however, that the crime of heresy was ‘formalised’ after the 1229 Synod of Toulouse.

The Church was worried about the emergence of influential groups that were undermining Rome. One of these groups was the Waldensians. One of the teachings of this group was that people should give away their wealth and live a life of poverty. They also translated the Gospel into French, which was forbidden.

The problem with Latin was that only a handful of church leaders could read the Gospel while the masses would remain in ignorance.

Eventually, the Church ruled that the Waldensians were followers of the devil and at the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 they were declared heretics who practiced devil worshipping.

The Cathars, too, who had translated the Bible into their own language, suffered the same fate. The Cathars, who came from the Italian-German region of Lombardy, Tuscany and the Rhineland, were non-conformists. They believed that one can preach religion without a licence and that there was no need for priests and churches like what the Catholics have (just like what Jesus, too, believed). Hence they regarded themselves as the true followers of Jesus and not followers of the ‘contaminated’ Roman religion.

The declaration of heresy and devil worshiping against the Cathars was upheld by King Phillipe II of France and Pope Innocent III. In 1209, 30,000 soldiers under Simon de Monfort, wearing the red cross of the Holy Land, invaded Languedoc and exterminated the Cathars.

This became known as the Albigensian Crusade.

The slaughtering went on for 35 years at the cost of 30,000 lives, Catholics included (because they could not differentiate between Cathars and Catholics so better that all of them perish). Many were burned alive at the stake. And the same thing happened in other parts of Europe such as in the Netherlands and as late as the 1500s in England.

Hence, what we see today is the dominant Church of Rome mainly because over 400 years they exterminated all those who were not aligned to the Church of Rome. But what if Constantine had chosen another model of Christianity instead of Paul’s version? Well, then I suppose, today, the Church in Rome would not be a Catholic Church.

No, this piece is not about theology. It is about history. And that is what history tells us.