RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Crucifixion Crusades
d. in London Nov. 1, 1770. He studied at Marischal College, Aberdeen, and took the degree of M.A. (year not known). Indications of an unsound mind, from which he suffered more or less all his life soon became evident and he was in confinement for a short time. In 1722 he went to London and found employment as tutor in Hertfordshire and the Isle of Man tOl 1732, when he opened a bookseller's shop in London, also acting as corrector of the press. He began the Concordance in 1736 and issued it the following year in quarto. It was not a success pecuniarily; he lost his business, suffered another attack of insanity, and was again put in an asylum. After a few weeks he escaped and in Mar., 1739, issued a curious pamphlet relating to his confinement, with the title The London- Citizen exceedingly Injured, or a British Inquisition Displayed. He instituted proceedings for damages, pleaded his own cause (unsuccessfully), and published a report of the trial dedicated to King George II. He was again in confinement for a short time in 1753. In 1754 he became proofreader for the Public Advertiser (daUy newspaper); at the same time he was busy as general corrector of the press and labored diligently in revising the Concordance. The hard and regular work seems to have been beneficial to his health, and it was not necessary to send him again to the asylum. He supervised the printing of an edition of Matthew Henry's Commentary, and published a Compendium of the Holy Bible, Designed for Making the Reading more Easy (1750); he compiled a Scripture Dictionary, which was published in two volumes at Aberdeen shortly after his death; it is said also that he wrote prefaces for many books, and he prepared the verbal index for Bishop Newton's edition of Milton (1749). He issued second and third editions of the Concordance in 1761 and 1769, and received considerable profit from them. The explanations of Scripture terms (omitted in some editions) were published separately by the Religious Tract Society (1840); they are strongly Calvinistic. Many stories are told of Cruden's eccentricities. He thought himself divinely appointed as the public censor, especially in regard to swearing and Sabbath keeping, and took the title " Alexander the Corrector." He went about London with a sponge, erasing obscene words on walls and other things which did not meet with his approval. He appeared as candidate for parliament in 1754, applied for knighthood, sought to marry the daughter of the Lord Mayor of London, and paid unwelcome and embarrassing addresses to other young ladies. To promote his schemes he issued several extraordinary pamphlets. But notwithstanding all this he was kind-hearted, benevolent, fearless in the discharge of duty, a useful citizen, and a humble, devout Christian; and he was honored and respected where he was fully known. He was a member of an Independent church in London. He gives much information about himself in his pamphlets, particularly the three which he called The Adventures of Alexander the Corrector (1754-55).
Bibliography: His life by Alexander Chalmers, written for the Biographia Britannica (1789), was reprinted in the
5th edition of the concordance; a memoir by Samuel Blackburn was prepared for the first octavo edition (1823); another by William Youngman is found in some editions. Consult DNB, xii. 249-251.
CRUSADES.
The First Crusade, 1096-99 (§ 1).
The Second and Third Crusades, 1 147-49, 1189-92 (J 2) The Fourth Crusade, 1202-04 (§3). The Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh Crusades, 1228-70 (§ 4). Power of Papacy Increased, also Intolerance (§ 5). Devotion Stimulated, Absolution Extended (§ 6). The Renaissance and Reformation (§ 7).
The Crusades were expeditions of Christian Europe in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries for the recovery of the Holy Land. They are a part of the thousand years' conflict between Christianity and Islam; yet they constitute in themselves a complete phase of historical development. They came at a time when the wave of Mohammedan conquest had been at a standstill for more than four hundred years, and the old fanatic zeal of Islam had given way to the pursuit of worldly interests and the fostering of that high culture which still constitutes its title to historic fame. In Christian Europe, on the contrary, religious feeling had been gaining in strength. There was a movement of revulsion from earthly interests, even of actual hatred for them, and a passionate longing for the felicities of another world and for a more intimate union with God. In this spirit of piety which strove to attain material vision of the Deity must be sought the true causes of the Crusades. An age which laid so much stress on sacred relics would as a matter of course be extraordinarily susceptible to the influence of the greatest of all relics, the Holy Land. The many pilgrims of the eleventh century may scarcely be regarded as precursors of the Crusades; yet the motives that animated them throw light upon the character of the later and greater movement. Had not thousands of individuals experienced the yearning for the heavenly Jerusalem, statecraft would not have found it possible at a later date to enlist great hosts for the recovery of the earthly capital.
As early as 1074, when Asia Minor passed into the hands of the Seljuk Turks, Gregory VII. had projected a war against the infidels, having also for its object reunion with the Greek Church. The plan was thrust into the background by the conflict with the emperor Henry IV. Urban II. (1088-99), who next took up the idea, was animated not so much by the political considerations of Gregory as by actual religious impulse. From the Church should come the impelling force; on the secular powers rested the actual execution of the plan. Before this, Norman knights had engaged in conflict with the infidel, and the conception of a crusade against the Saracen was therefore no absolute novelty to the nations of the West. The Byzantine emperor Alexius I. was quite aware of this when he turned to Urban for aid against the Turks I. The First in 1094, and met with a ready re- Crusade, sponse from the general religious en- 1096-99. thusiasm, from the ambitions of the Church, and from the lust for adventure and conquest. When the Greek ambassadors arrived Urban was preparing for the Council of Clermont;
Crubades