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Christianity's top 11 most controversial figures | Pope Urban II
The 11th century Dr. Death
By Tom Phillips Published 06 September 2010
Born Otho de Lagery circa 1035 in Champagne, France, Pope Urban II managed to fill his eleven year papacy with an unprecedented amount of war-mongering.
Urban II initiated the First Crusade at the end of the 11th century with a rousing recruitment campaign. In March 1095 Urban II received an ambassador from the Byzantine Emperor Alexios I Komnenos (1081-1118) asking for help against Muslim Turks, who had taken over most of formerly Byzantine Anatolia.
The Pope promised the crusading hordes eternal salvation as their reward for taking the Holy land form the infidel. When the First Crusade reached Jerusalem in 1099 one the greatest of massacres in history was undertaken, an act for which the papacy only apologised in the late 1990s.
Tens of thousands of Muslims and Jews - man, woman and child - were slain in cold blood. Urban himself died just fourteen days after the crusade had come to it's conclusion, however not in time for the news of Christian victory to reach Italian shores.
Heralded as a Catholic legend, Urban was known for his diplomatic finesse and searing ambition. His role in one of the most gruesome chapters in world history - the man who can be credited as the founder of inter-religious war on a mass scale as we know it today - Urban cannot be left out of the top three most controversial Christian figures.
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2 comments
Felix
A significant point about the Crusaders is that they didn't just massacre Moslems and Jews in Palestine.
Some of them never got that far. Instead they had all the blood-letting they needed, virtually exterminating the Jews of the Rhineland.
Others of them, caused havoc amongst their fellow-Christians in the Byzantine Empire, at one point sacking Constantinople.
Even by the standards of 'Holy War', they were a throughly bad lot.
However, Urban may have done Europe a service by exporting so many members of its barbarous warrior caste. In fact, he may have known exactly what he was doing.
Tom Phillips "the man who can be credited as the founder of inter-religious war on a mass scale as we know it today -"
The man who should get the credit for being the founder of inter-religious war on a mass scale should of course be Mohammed not Pope Urban.
Muslim armies in the space of a hundred years were able to establish by jihad the largest pre-modern empire until that time.
Prophet Mohammad died in 632 and was succeeded by Caliph Abu Bakr, who established sovereignty by conquest over Arabia after a series of campaigns known as the Ridda Wars.
Once his authority in Arabia was consolidated, he initiated a war of conquest in the east by invading Iraq, then a province of the Sassanid Persian Empire; and on the western front, his armies invaded the Byzantine Empire
In April 637, the Arabs, after a long siege captured Jerusalem, which was surrendered by Patriarch Sophronius.
In the summer of 637, the Muslims captured Gaza, and, during the same period, the Byzantine authorities in Egypt and Mesopotamia purchased an expensive truce, which lasted three years for Egypt and one year for Mesopotamia.
Antioch fell in late 637, and by then the Muslims occupied whole of the northern Syria, except for upper Mesopotamia, which they granted a one-year truce.
At the expiration of this truce in 638–639, the Arabs overran Byzantine Mesopotamia and Byzantine Armenia, and terminated the conquest of Palestine by storming Caesarea Maritima and effecting their final capture of Ascalon. In December 639, the Muslims departed from Palestine to invade Egypt in early 640.
etc etc
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muslim_conquests
After 400 years of Islamic military expansion Christianity pushed back mainly to secure the pilgrim route to Jerusalem that was then being blocked by the Muslims prior to that time it had been open.
"The Pope promised the crusading hordes eternal salvation as their reward for taking the Holy land form the infidel. "
Strangely echoes the promise of paradise offered to the Muslim hordes for fighting jihad in the name of Allah 400 years earlier Mohammad.
Maybe the NS could put these issues into context for once it would make a pleasant change.
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