God’s Battalions: The Case for the Crusades by Rodney Stark (PDF)

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In God’s Battalions, distinguished scholar Rodney Stark puts forth a controversial argument that the Crusades were a justified war waged against Muslim terror and aggression. Stark, the author of The Rise of Christianity, reviews the history of the seven major crusades from 1095-1291 in this fascinating work of religious revisionist history.

User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐This book is a good beginning history of why Christians first went to fight in the Crusades.THE NEED FOR PROTECTION of CHRISTIAN PILGRIMSOn November 27, 1095, Pope Urban II gave a speech graphically detailing the torture, rape, and murder of Christian pilgrims and the defilement of churches and holy places committed by the Turks. “They destroy the altars, after having defiled them with their uncleanness. They circumcise the Christians, and the blood of the circumcision they pour into the vases of the baptismal font…They torture people…by perforating their navels, and dragging forth the extremity of the intestines, bind it to a stake; then with flogging they lead the victim around until the viscera having gushed forth the victim falls prostrate on the ground…What shall I say about the abominable rape of women? To speak of it is worse than to be silent. On whom therefore is the labor of avenging these wrongs and recovering this territory incumbent, if not upon you?”AN APPEAL FROM THE BYZANTINE EMPERORThis is the traditional explanation of how and why the First Crusade begun. Alexius Comnenus, the emperor of Byzantium, had written from his embattled capital of Constantinople to the Count of Flanders, requesting that he and his fellow Christians send forces to help the Byzantines repel the Seljuk Turks. These were recent converts to Islam who had invaded the Middle East, ambushed Christian pilgrims to the Holy Land, captured Jerusalem, and driven to within one hundred miles of Constantinople.ANTI-CRUSADER SENTIMENTS ARE A LATE DEVELOPMENTThis book counters more recent criticism that the long-ago crusades are helping to fuel modern Islamic fury. Not true. The author shows how Muslim antagonism about the Crusades did not appear until about 1900, when there was a reaction against the decline of the Ottoman Empire and against European colonialism in the Middle East. Anti-crusader feelings did not become intense until after the founding of the state of Israel in 1948.A very well-written and highly researched book.

⭐While the book starts off in a well balanced manner, shattering the laughable modern myths regarding the “unprovoked” nature of the crusade, the West’s so called “backwardness” in the Middle Ages and highlights the fact that the Islamic progress was due largely to partially assimilated cultures, many of which were ultimately destroyed, I feel that it really does abandon its objectivity towards the end.The first crusade is presented well, the background, the warriors, the journey, the battles and the outcome are all well documented and the fact that the crusaders basically applied the standard policy of the age at Jerusalem ( just like Saladin did a few years later) really sheds some objective light on this fascinating period. The book presents some other little known facts like the admiration of certain Muslim writers towards the way justice was served in a fair manner in the crusader kingdoms, the military superiority of the West alongside the agricultural advancements of the so called “Dark Ages” that ensured that westerners ate better food than any other group of people at that time.The highlight of the book, ironically, is not the presentation of the crusades but the background and the causes. For some reason, the downright cretinous claims of Voltaire and others who said that Islam was received with enthusiasm in the conquered areas are still popular in the West today. While the Balkan countries, Poland, Hungary still have plenty of reminders of hundreds of years of oppression, raids, child slaves and sex slaves at the hands of the Ottoman Empire, the moronic claims of certain 17th-18th century writers which were living in the most rich and advanced societies in the history of mankind and were surrounded by flourishing arts and sciences but for some reason wanted to ridicule those very societies by raising Islam on a pedestal…these claims still have traction today, and for this reason, books like this one are very healthy.Towards the end, as mentioned above, the book unfortunately abandons its myth shattering purpose and objective attitude and becomes fully apologetic.The 4th crusade in particular is presented as some sort of an accident where the crusaders were placed in an impossible situation and, despite the fact that they didn’t want to, they ‘had’ to sack the most advanced and rich city of the time…no mention of the fact the Venetians basically had been waiting for any excuse to raid Constantinople for a long time. The book mentions the low body count but conveniently ignores the fact that it was the greatest robbery of the age if we consider the total amount of loot that was carried away and ended up in Venice and other places. The book also fails to mention that the Church excommunicated a lot of people after this crusade…No mention of the dubious Northern Crusades or any of the subsequent degenerations of the original idea behind the crusading, the corruption of certain Knight Orders and of the fact that basically that very 4th crusade alongside the Zara fiasco basically ended the age of the knight wars and the beginning of the mercenary age in Europe. This made me drop a few stars off the score…but as mentioned above, it’s still a healthy read.

⭐Great book for anyone who wants to know about the Crusades. His research is incredible and his writing is beautiful.To put it in baseball terms this is more of a color commentary and less of a play by play. By the time you are done you will have an introductory knowledge of the Crusades, but the emphasis of the book is more on why and the mindset behind the Crusades.He also puts to rest most of the silly and slanderous notions that have arisen over the last century by systematically destroying them with facts. Stark does not gloss over the sins and atrocities committed by the Crusaders, but he certainly puts them in perspective.Once again if you want to know more than a Hollywood version of the Crusades, if you are looking for truth, if research and original sources mean anything to you and most of all if you just want a good read… then this is a great book for you.

⭐Most histories of the Crusades begin on 27th November 1095, with Pope Urban II standing on a wooden platform in the centre of the French city of Clermont-Ferrand addressing an assembly of Bishops and laymen. The pope had received an urgent request from the Byzantine emperor asking for help. Muslim forces had invaded Asia Minor, Syria and Palestine and had attacked Christian pilgrims and holy places. In response Urban urged the noblemen of Europe to mount an armed crusade, under the banner of the Cross, and march to Jerusalem. In God’s Battalions, Rodney Stark’s provocative, revisionist account of the Crusades, he begins – not with the pope’s appeal at Clermont – but 500 years earlier in the seventh century with the rise of Islam and the onset of the Muslim invasions of Christendom.According to Stark, recent Crusade historians have argued that during the Crusades “an expansionist, imperialistic Christendom brutalised, looted and colonised a tolerant, cultured and peaceful Islam” yet this is simply not the case. History can only be interpreted this way if one disregards events of the preceding five centuries. Once these are taken into account it becomes clear that, says Stark, “the Crusades were precipitated by Islamic provocations: by centuries of bloody attempts to colonise the West and by sudden attacks on Christian pilgrims and holy places”. Unfortunately, this reality has been largely ignored by the self-loathing, West-hating intellectuals who have framed the debate for the past 50 years.In God’s Battalions Stark challenges this new orthodoxy and explains why the Crusades were a perfectly rational response to Muslim aggression and that for ideological reasons peace with the Muslim world was never attainable except through abject surrender. He also takes aim at those who claim the Crusaders themselves were motivated by nothing other than greed and he explores the strong religious faith which inspired the knights to engage in what Stark describes as “penitential warfare”. His arguments are thoughtful, well laid out and convincing and at the end of each chapter he writes a short conclusion in which he summarises and reiterates the points he has made. He’s fair too and he never tries to pretend that the Muslims were any more [or less] brutal and tolerant than were the Christians and Jews as they all lived in a brutal and intolerant age.I enjoyed this book enormously and I found it to be a useful antidote to some of the more anti-Crusader, pro-Islamic histories of the period that are knocking around and I thought Stark’s underlying message about the dangers of considering historical events in isolation is something which has particular relevance today.

⭐Absolutely fundamental reading.Rodney Stark is masterful in writing history that is non partisan and simply accurate historically.He puts the lie to modernist revisionist “history” concerning the Crusades.It becomes abundantly clear through this work that is simply stuffed full of original references that the Crusades were far from what secularists have been saying for a century or so.The bravery, piousness and incredible fortitude of the Catholic Crusaders, when faced with overwhelming odds, constant betrayal by the Eastern Church and warring Saracens is probably without parallel in human history.If you care about the truth of history then read this book. I have read thousands on many subjects and this one is definitely in the top ten I have ever read.

⭐It makes the crusades come alive and directly addresses how the crusades have come to (I agree unfairly) be used as a scapegoat or bogey-man to appease modern-day ‘Islamic’ demands for historical validation, despite the incomparably greater (in depth, scope, precedence and duration) record of Mohammed-ordained territorial expansion and related supremacism.Well argued and approaches the crusades and crusaders from a humanist perspective. It incorporates their rather ‘secular’ sense of grievance, but takes care to try to understand the direct and indirect role of religious belief in their actions. Don’t expect it to be to everyone’s liking.

⭐Scholarly, copiously referenced and eminently readable, this is a book which should be more widely read. Elements of this more balanced account of the crusades occur in many sources but Professor Stark’s book marshalls a decent amount of the evidence in one place in a form accessible to ‘the rest if us’ who are not professional historians. The myths he debunks were all taught to me in school, are standard fare in textbooks and are taken for granted by most people in western countries and by most Muslims. They contribute to bloodshed. Replacing them with the findings of responsible historical research may be painful to those who are wedded to the myths but is a necessary part of a better future. Buy this book.

⭐I wasn’t sure what to expect when I ordered this book, but it definitely wasn’t what I found. It’s lively, funny and irreverent. A re-interpretation of all the dull history books you’ve read in the past. How accurately the crusades are portrayed is debatable, but isn’t that the point? No-one really knows. All historians include guesswork and hunches, albeit based on research and this is no exception. I’m pretty sure the facts are verifiable but this interpretation has none of the stamp of ‘blame’ that we have come to hear so often lately in the West. We can’t judge the past with the standards of the present and this book, very refreshingly, doesn’t.

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