Material on the Crusades

The Crusades like all historical events was recorded by both it’s participants and non-participants. The best sources eyewitnesses that record from a secular view. Most accounts written by the clergy tend to have more religious explanation than recorded events. Robert the Monk’s writings declaring that nearly every event in the Crusades involved some sort of divine intervention shows how writing an events history affects the future. People who read these accounts started to believe that the Crusades were more than just a religious pilgrimage. They started believe that this was god’s war on earth.

Material on the Crusades varies from nearly five different languages and two different religions. This is an enormous mass of material. The reason for this is mainly because of the Crusades’ religious influence. At the time of the Crusades clergymen wrote nearly all written documents. Clergymen and the rich were the only literate people in Western Europe. Having this advantage the church can write what they want about what happened in the Crusades. This makes religious accounts on the Crusades nearly useless when looking at the Crusades’ history.

Considering that religious texts on the Crusades were perverted to portray interests of the church, one can resort to the text written in the Middle East. Though most of this text was biased against Western Europeans, it still serves as a better source than religious ones. Middle Eastern accounts also help compare other accounts and prove their legitimacy. When researching the Crusade’s it is my opinion that the researcher’s problem lies not with the amount of material that exists, but with the researcher’s ability to narrow a topic.