Free Holy Warriors by Jonathan Phillips Page B

such as the Cathars of southern France, along with political opponents of the papacy, including Emperor Frederick II of Germany. This conceptual flexibility helped to extend the appeal of crusading both geographically and intellectually; it also enabled the idea to remain “live” and relevant for centuries after the end of Christian control over the Holy Land in 1291. Eventually, of course, crusading did decline, and into the seventeenth century it was widely regarded as a distant and barbaric concept of little value. This came to change during the nineteenth century, a situation prompted by the emergence of European overseas empires, particularly in the eastern Mediterranean. Thus, in sharp contrast to the decline and dismissal of crusading during the Age of Enlightenment, the relentless ambition of imperialism and colonialism, coupled with the cultural phenomena of Romanticism and Orientalism, overlapped and combined to produce a dramatic revival in imagery and ideas descended from crusading. How far this derivation was accurate is something further to ponder. The momentum and diversity of the “crusading” theme carried on into World War I, especially with the British involvement in Palestine; and then, with a more sinister aspect, into the alliance between General Francisco Franco and the Catholic Church in Spain during the Civil War and beyond. As a historian of the twelfth century, I have found tracing the centuries-long legacy of crusading to be a hugely exciting and enjoyable experience, and my debt to scholars of later periods such as Norman Housley, Eric Christiansen, Adam Knobler, Elizabeth Siberry, Jonathan Riley-Smith, and Eitan Bar-Yosef is considerable. My synthesis has also tried to pull in work beyond these studies—hence, for example, the discussions of nineteenth-century Italy and General Franco.
    The sheer flexibility of crusading imagery in the language and culture of the West is remarkable. At one end of the spectrum lie, for example, the comic-fiction heroes Batman and Robin, “those relentless crusaders for law and order;” or the legendary time-traveling television character Dr. Who, described by one of its actors as “an intergalactic crusader.” 2 “Crusades”—or an appeal for a good cause—have been launched for entirely worthy, secular reasons: former U.S. president Bill Clinton made a widely reported call for a crusade to reverse the epidemic of obesity in 2005 and 2006; crusades for fair play in sport or to end hospital waiting lists are also familiar to us. In some quarters, however, metaphor can creep dangerously close to reality and politicians have learned to be wary of the word. In early 2007, during his last months as prime minister, Tony Blair was asked on the BBC Radio 4
Today
program if he saw himself as “a crusader” for social reform. Deftly, but determinedly, Blair avoided taking the bait and simply stated that he was concerned to improve social justice; given the issue of his own spirituality and Britain’s controversial involvement in Iraq it was vital for him to sidestep any notion of accepting the label “crusader,” whatever the context.
    The closest—and most uncomfortable—overlap between crusading metaphor and reality was in September 2001 as President George W. Bush spoke of the continued efforts to find the associates of those responsible for the horrific attacks of 9/11: “This crusade . . . this war on terror is going to take a while.” As I listened to his comments two thoughts came to mind: first, a feeling of real anxiety at the backlash an American president’s use of the word “crusade” was likely to produce; secondly, I started to wonder why, exactly, had he used it in the first instance. What images was he trying to conjure up? After all, other than the First Crusade’s capture of Jerusalem in 1099, the vast majority of crusading expeditions, to the Holy Land at least, had failed—often pretty ignominiously. Why, then, over nine