Perspectives Of The Crusades

Every event may be viewed from a number of perspectives. During the crusades there were many different perspectives that are demonstrated through the texts vividly. There are perspectives from the Islamic world, Jewish world, Eastern Christian world, and from the Latin Christendom. The Islamic perspective is represented by the two documents: The Book of Contemplation and Arab Historians of the Crusades. The Jewish perspective was shown by The Chronicle of Rabbi Eliezer bar Nathan and Mainz Anonymous, or Narrative of the Old Persecutions. The Byzantium perspective is shown by The Alexiad and the Latin Christendom perspective is shown by The Crusades: A Reader and Pope Urban II, “Speech at Council of Clermont 1095”. With the many perspectives

The Chronicle of Rabbi Eliezer bar Nathan was written to the Jewish community to show the massacres and the havoc the crusaders brought upon the Jews. The Crusaders are mentioned multiple times as the enemies because of their chaos and destruction they have done. They caused many Jewish families suicides and homicides amongst them and because of these actions they were mainly interpreted or perceived as the enemy and were mentioned or referred to as the enemy throughout the chronicle, “the enemies arose against the poor and oppressed people in the town of Mehr” (Bar Nathan, 88). The narrative also showed how forceful the Franks were to try to get the Jews to convert to Christianity and worship what they believe in. Mainz Anonymous, or Narrative of the Old Persecutions is narrative that has no chronological date of origin and place of origin. The author of this narrative is also unknown. The narrative, just like The Chronicle of Rabbi Elizer Bar Nathan shows the torment and struggles brought upon the Jews and how they dealt with. The author displays how the “errant ones”, “burghers”, or the Crusaders have no remorse towards the Jews. One example is the killing of Isaac, Son of Daniel. The “errant ones” and the “burghers” tried to force Isaac to change the God in which he worshipped in to a different idol. Isaac refused because his

Pope Urban II, ”Speech at Council of Clermont 1095” is a document of multiple versions written by many different men who were present of the speech given by Pope Urban II. In the Robert the Monk version, Pope Urban II calls the Persians or the Muslims a foreign people and “a generation that not set their heart aright and whose spirit was not stedfast with God” (Urban, Robert,79). He gives a biased feeling towards them saying that they were filling the holy land of Jerusalem with their filth and wreaking havoc amongst the rest of the Christians living in Jerusalem. He believes also that the other cultures have reduced the city to a “pollution of paganism” (Urban, Baldric, 30). He convinces the Christian world that the Muslims are a “wicked race” and that they need to deliver the land from them and take it back. Pope Urban says how the non-Christian religions are led by the antichrist and he refers to them as the anti-Christians. He sometimes refers to them as Gentiles at times. Pope Urban speech is more or less a hate speech towards other religions so he gives the idea that the Christian religion is superior to the other religions and must only be the only religion practiced everywhere. “Look now, we are going to seek out our profanity and to take vengeance on the Ishmaelites for our messiah, when here are the Jews who murdered and