As I read through the different books and sections, I noticed a common trend. Almost every action that is taken by the Christians in this account is all willed by God. I am by no means voicing my opposition of the Crusades. I am just seeing a biased viewpoint. There seems to be a bias even in the way they interpret scripture. When the pilgrims start flooding in to avenge the deaths of the Christians who crossed the Arm of George, it is taken as a fulfillment of Scripture from the book of the prophet Isaiah.
"Fear not, for I am with you; I will I will bring your offspring from the east, and from the west I will gather you. I will say to the north, Give up, and the to the south, Do not withhold; bring my sons from afar and my daughters from the end of the earth," Isaiah 43:5-6.
Not sure if the verse was quoted in context. I would love to read some other writings showing the other viewpoints of the Crusades. Once again, not voicing a stance against or for the Crusades as a whole. I don't think I can make an educated opinion just yet. I will admit I have little knowledge of the Crusades, and getting to read about the different groups of pilgrims that arose does shed light on how different groups of the Christian faith were brought in and where the conflict started.
Okay. I'm done for tonight
P.S. I commented on Jacob's and Hannah's posts!!
Okay, so I'm totally with you. I knew absolutely nothing about the Crusades. I would very much recommend youtubing Extra History. It's those cute animated little history segments and they were very insightful (as well as entertaining and hilarious). An interesting thing that was pointed out to me is that there were chroniclers during this time in history and not "real" historians. Instead of reporting and recording history, these people wrote history like a book and gave very biased viewpoints of how things "should have" gone or how they "wanted" events to go. So I think that's definitely what we are seeing here with this biased positive viewpoint of the First Crusade.
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