First Crusade And The Idea Of Conversion Summary

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Allan Cutler’s journal article “The First Crusade and the Idea of Conversion” is the first part of an ongoing compilation of tales regarding the First Crusade. Cutler’s grammar is excellent and his writing style is simplistic and easy for the reader to understand. The author list innumerable sources for such a short article, unfortunately, he does not provide much historical fact based data. Cutler continually makes assumptions about his premise and asks the reader to do the same.
Cutler in trying to describe what he contends to be “One of the greatest moments in history.”
Implies that Peter the Hermit attempted to convert Kerbogha to Christianity. However, Cutler’s states that scholars have questioned, “whether we can know anything at all about what went on between Peter and Kerbogha.” The author attempts to prove that conversion was a primary topic during Peter the Hermit’s embassy with Kerbogha. He cites four early primary sourced documents. Regrettably, there is nothing to support Cutler’s premise that the First Crusade was not only a mission of war, but also one of religious conversion. Cutler determined that “it will not be possible…to reconstruct what really happened …show more content…

Cutler cites author R. I. Burns Speculum XXXV, 338, n. 5 as a primary source document in which Urban II encouraged Archbishop Bernard of Sahagun, to “labor zealously to convert Muslims to the Christian faith.” Nevertheless, in an effort to tie Pope Urban’s speech at the Council of Clermont (1095) the author stated that out of five accountings of the speech three of the five hinted towards Urban’s desire for conversion. Here again, Cutler is unable to provide support for his thesis. He cites a correspondence-dated 1088 between Pope Urban and the Archbishop of Toledo, but Cutler does not provide any specific details about the communication in regards to conversion of