§ 59. EFFECTS OF THE CRUSADES. 289
appeals to the piety and chivalry of Western Europe, but these were voices as from another age. The deliverance of Palestine by the sword was a dead issue. New problems were engaging men's minds. The authority of the popes — now in exile in Avignon, now given to a luxurious life at Rome, or engaged in wars over papal territory — was incom petent to unite and direct the energies of Europe as it had once done. They did not discern the signs of the times. More important tasks there were for Christendom to accom plish than to rescue the holy places of the East.
Erasmus struck the right note and expressed the view of a later age. Writing at the very close of the Middle Ages making an appeal1 for the proclamation of the Gospel by preaching and speaking of wars against the Turks, he said, " Truly, it is not meet to declare ourselves Christian men by killing very many but by saving very many, not if we send thousands of heathen people to hell, but if we make many infidels Christian; not if we cruelly curse and excom municate, but if we with devout prayers and with our hearts desire their health, and pray unto God, to send them better minds."2
§ 59. .Effects of the Crusades.
"... The knights' bones are dust And their good swords are rust ; Their souls are with the saints, we trust.1'
— COLERIDGE.
LITERATURE. — A. H. L. HEEREN: Versuch einer Entwickelung der Folgen der Kreuzzuyefur Europa, Gottingen, 1808 ; French trans., Paris, 1808. — MAXIME DE CHOISEUL-DAILLECOURT: De V influence des croisades sur Vetat des peuples de VEurope, Paris, 1809. Crowned by the French
1 Enchiridion militis christiani, Methuen's ed. 1905, p. 8 sq.
2 No appellation was too degrading to give to the enemies of the cross. The most common one was dogs. The biographers of Richard I. have no com punction in relating in one line gifts made by Saracens and in the next call ing them dogs. See Itin. Ricardi, etc. So Walter Map says sepulchrum et crux Domini prceda sunt canum quorum fames in tantum lassata fuit et sanguine martyrorum, etc., Wright's ed., I. 15, p. 229.
u
290 THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1049-1294.
Institute, it presents the Crusades as upon the whole favorable to civil liberty, commerce, etc. — J. L. HAHN: Ursachen und Folgen der Kreuzzuge, Greifsw., 1859. — G. B. ADAMS : Civilization during the M. A., N.Y., 1894, 258-311. See the general treatments of the Crusades by GIBBON, WILKEX, MICHAUD, ARCHER-KiNGSFORD, 425-451, etc., and especially PRUTZ (Kulturgeschichte der KreuzzUge and The Economic Development of Western Europe under the Influence of the Crusades in Essays on the Crusades, Burlington, 1903), who in presenting the social, political, com mercial, and literary aspects and effects of the Crusades lays relatively too much stress upon them.
The Crusades failed in three respects. The Holy Land was not won. The advance of Islam was not permanently checked. The schism between the East and the West was not healed. These were the primary objects of the Crusades.
They were the cause of -great evils. As a school of prac tical religion and morals, they were no doubt disastrous for most of the Crusaders. They were attended by all the usual demoralizing influences of war and the sojourn of armies in an enemy's country. The vices of the Crusading camps were a source of deep shame in Europe. Popes lamented them. Bernard exposed them. Writers set forth the fatal mistake of those who were eager to make conquest of the earthly Jerusalem and were forgetful of the heavenly city. " Many wended their way to the holy city, unmindful that our Jerusalem is not here." So wrote the Englishman, Walter Map, after Saladin's victories in 1187.
The schism between the East and the West was widened by the insolent action of the popes in establishing Latin patriarchates in the East and their consent to the establish ment of the Latin empire of Constantinople. The memory of the indignities heaped upon Greek emperors and ecclesias tics has not yet been forgotten.
Another evil was the deepening of the contempt and hatred in the minds of the Mohammedans for the doctrines of Christianity. The savagery of the Christian soldiery, their unscrupulous treatment of property, and the bitter rancors in the Crusading camps were a disgraceful spectacle