Of crusades and crusaders

The aristocratic English accent once known to linguists as "U" (for "upper class") has all but disappeared in the British Isles, where stockbrokers and college lecturers aspire to sound as much as possible like Mick Jagger or Austin Powers. The phenomenon of the "smooth accent" is now mainly archival, accessible in old Claude Rains movies. But one can still hear it live in the mellifluous voices of certain post-colonial elites of the Middle East and the Asian subcontinent. Listening to a crack-of-dawn BBC broadcast a few days ago I was startled into semi-sentience by the amazingly pukkah voice of the Saudi ambassador to the Court of Saint James. He was making a generalization about the many American and European pundits who had been on the airwaves in the last 10 days. "They know approximately as much about Islam," opined the ambassador in purest Oxonian, "as a Saudi camel knows about eating strawberries." That remark was rhetorically memorable and, for me, a person who knows too little about Islam and much else to begin to make sense of recent events, rather shaming.

Many of these same pundits have been harsh in their criticism of President Bush's use of the word "crusade" — subsequently declared "inoperative" — to denote his proposed struggle against world terrorism. That was perhaps an unhappy linguistic choice. It was culturally insensitive and, as I hope to explain, historically unapt; but remember that Mr. Bush is a both a Texan and a politician and thus a member of two groups inconspicuous in their attention to the mot juste. It was after all the famous, now nearly sainted Texan Speaker of the House, Sam Rayburn, who way back in the 1950s uttered the immortal opinion that the Arabs and the Jews ought to get together and settle their differences "in a good Christian fashion."

Still a medievalist would have to say that many of Mr. Bush's critics themselves appear to know slightly more about the Crusades than, say, a Texas steer knows about "Turendot." The Crusades were by no means the extension of confident "imperialist" power or an early feint at "globalization" — two ideas I have found in the press. They were the defensive reaction of a waning power in rapid contraction. Their original pretext was the Saracen pollution of "holy places" in Palestine, but the redress of that grievance was soon lost sight of; and after the fall of the brief Latin Kingdom of Palestine, when it was abandoned altogether, very little was constant about crusading zeal except the fanaticism and violence with which it turned against Orthodox Christians, Jews, Cathars and, eventually, even Catholics who happened to be political enemies of the pope.

Among the characteristics of the Crusades were the following: They were a response of an insecure and intolerant society in which established religion and secular power, while often in competition, were in effect symbiotic. The idealistic 'theory' of the crusade was pathetically vulnerable to hijacking; for example at the beginning of the 13th century, the Fourth Crusade, which set out to war against Egypt, found it more convenient to sack Christian Constantinople instead. The nature of the warfare conducted often, in fact characteristically, violated the religious principles which ostensibly motivated it. The Crusaders were egged on with promises of Heaven by charismatic ascetic noncombatants like Peter the Hermit and Saint Bernard. We have undoubtedly seen manifestations of the 'crusader mentality' in recent days, but I must ask you whether the term better fits Condoleeza Rice or sheik Omar Abdel Rahmen?

The First Crusade occurred in the final decade of the 11th century. The 'movement' was utterly spent by the late 14th century, except, alas, in Iberia, where a sort of pseudo-Crusade lasted for another 100 years, long enough to culminate in the monumental injustices of 1492 and to spill over into the commerce between Iberians and the natives of Africa and the New World. The very word "crusade" is a retrospective one. The first "crusaders" called themselves "pilgrims" and their undertaking "The Pilgrimage." In modern usage "crusade," except when used in an explicitly historical context, means little more than an actual or imagined righteous cause, and the word as often as not is tinged with irony: "Crusading DA Vows to Close Girlie Shows." Dwight Eisenhower's war memoir, "Crusade in Europe," though not ironic, is hardly a monument of religious fanaticism. Since I am among other things a Christian, I cannot be wholly dispassionate about a homicidal fanatic, supported by millions of apologists and well wishers, who has repeatedly declared the legitimacy and necessity of "a war against Jews and Christians." But let us approach the problem with the tools of modern rationality rather than those of medieval religion. We saw enough "crusading" on September 11, 2001, to last out the new century. John V. Fleming is the Louis W. Fairchild '24 professor of English. He can be reached at jfleming@princeton.edu.