He argues that Urban, far from being worried about the Muslim occupation of the Holy Land or the treatment of Christian pilgrims therein, and probably even less about the endangered Byzantine Empire and its slightly heretic Christians, pursued a consequent policy to strengthen the Papal power and influence that until his immediate predeccessor Gergory had hardly strechted outside the confines of Rome.

Asbridge argues further that Urban attempted to achieve this by bringing the European rulers and feudal lords into a moral dependency to the Papacy: firstly by finally concluding the process of "sanctifying violence", by authorising the employment of war and by reserving his right for such authorisation. It thus meant that a fundamentally pacifist Christianity ( see sermon on the mount) had finally changed into one that accepted violence as means and therefore could wage a "Holy War" .

Secondly by channeling the most violent forces of an inherently violent medieval society, namely the feudal lords of Europe, into an authorised and accepted outlet to release such violence, thereby offering salvation and relief from guilt that the good Christian knights of Europe had carried before when they had simply massacred each other or the peasantry.

Fighting wars, from being sinful, now offered a heavenly reward.

 

Interesting ideas on the intellectual preparations for the Crusades, nothing absolutely new, and is  Asbridge's detection of a remarkable shift in Christianity's self-understanding justified?

 

http://www.oup.com/us/catalog/general/subject/HistoryWorld/British/Medieval/?view=usa&ci=0195178238 - http://www.oup.com/us/catalog/general/subject/HistoryWorld/British/Medieval/?view=usa&ci=0195178238

 

But a more difficult question is: why did the knights go when the pope told them to?

They had not been particularly obedient to the pope so far, why would they now? Some might have gone for land or money, like Baldwin of Boulogne, but what made a man like Raymond of St Gilles, Count of Toulouse go? He was, for the time, an old man, the had spend most of his life recovering his ancestral lands and was connected to the Spanish court by marriage. What was there to gain?

 

Were they really so religious they were willing to risk bankrupting themselves and their families (for crusading was an expensive enterprise) for glory and heaven? If they were so religious, why had they not heeded the pope and his peace of God movement before?

 

The crusades did not abruptly tear the fabric of a pacifist Christianity, because in practice there was no such thing. Even before the crusades the christian fiefdoms incorporated crosses in the strategic loations of their forts, with built in chapels. So if a rival was to hit that section than that 'heretic' had desecrated the church and conveniently deserved God's wrath and punishment through their hands.

 

Pope Urban 2 had promised rivers of milk and honey in heaven, for those fell in fighting. A jihad really, but without the virgins. I wonder if he was aware of the similar muslim tradition. I think he was the first to introduce this heresy into the faith.