Holy Wars, Empires, and the Portability of the Past: The Modern Uses of Medieval Crusades

Abstract

On 12 June 1798, Napoleon Bonaparte took control of the islands of Malta. The Knights Hospitaller surrendered with little fight, and the independently recognized polity of the Knights of St. John, the last bastion of the medieval chivalric orders, fell. Founded in the Middle Ages as a military order created both to carry the sword against Islam and provide shelter and medical care for pilgrims to the Holy Land, the Knights had by the end of the eighteenth century become an anachronism. The Ottoman Empire, the last of the great Muslim powers of the Mediterranean, had long been considered little more than a pawn in larger political struggles on the Continent. The practical application of crusading as church policy had long fallen out of favor. As a military force, the Order was no longer of any consequence. The Grand Council that directed the Order consisted for the most part of Maltese or Italian nobles of little formal training in the strategy and tactics of “modern” warfare. Historians of the late eighteenth century had come to the conclusion that the crusades of the Middle Ages were little more than the fanatical hate mongering of an unenlightened time. As Edward Gibbon wrote: “The principle of the crusades was a savage fanaticism; and the most important effects were analogous to the cause…. The belief of the Catholics was corrupted by new legends…. The active spirit of the Latins preyed on the vitals of their reason and religion…. The lives and labours of millions, which were buried in the East, would have been more profitably employed in the improvement of their native country….”

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