Killing in the name of God has been an unfortunate part of the legacy of Abrahamic religions, and we might wonder how people across the millennia have rationalized this. No need for much Biblical exegesis here, because I am hopeful that readers would all fall into the “no sh*t, Sherlock” camp at the mere suggestion that an all-loving God would condone such behavior.
The Western Europen Crusades, then, which stressed taking non-Christian lands and putting them under their political control, were a horrible idea to start. But the Fourth Crusade of 1204, (shown here in a later Medieval painting) was hideous even by the standards of Medieval Christians. And the reason of course is that in that year, an armada of Western European Christians who signed on for a holy war to promote Christianity ended up sacking, ravishing, and destroying the famed city of Constantinople– which was the capital of Christendom.
How could this happen? The Crusaders had signed on to go to Jerusalem, but needed money for their fleet and took the side of a usurping prince who had fled Constantinople and promised the Crusaders whatever they wanted if they would support him. When the soldiers breached the walls of the ancient city, they ransacked the place for days. The eye-witness Nicetas Choniates recorded that “no one (in the city) was without a share in the grief. In the alleys, in the streets, in the temples, complaints, weeping, lamentations, grief, the groaning of men, the shrieks of women, sounds, rape, captivity, the separation of those most closely united . . . .”.
The reigning Pope had expressed his horror at the Crusaders’ brutality towards their fellow Christians, but he changed his mind once the Crusaders informed him that he had been made spiritual leader of the entirety of Constantinople’s environs.
The ability of people to justify their own hand in violence, and for those in power to sanction even the most absurd rationales, has deep roots in human history.
Source(s): From Fordham, Internetedieval Sourcebook, Nicetas Choniates: Alexi Ducae Imperium, ch iii-iv, in Recueil des historiens des Croisades, hist. Grec., 1, 397. Greek. Also read _The Fourth Crusade and the Sack of Constantinople,_, by J. Phillips, 2005, Penguin (although IMHO he characterizes the Crusade as a series of unfortunate events instead of an invasion by people deluding themselves about their moral rectitude).
