The Cross and the State

On the face of it, medieval crusading appears to have little to do with the creation of modern secular Europe. The crusades were a form of Christian holy war characterized by demonizing rhetoric, spiritual enthusiasm, religious ceremonies, ecclesiastical institutions, political objectives, social climbing and status-seeking. They speak of a society at once intensely local – region, city, lordship – yet ideologically wedded to universals: church, faith, empire, papacy. Yet from the growth of the idea of a nation specially favoured by God – familiar even today as in ‘One Nation Under God’ – to techniques of mobilizing political consent and fiscal exploitation, crusading fed into the establishment of states in which public religion became the servant, not the arbiter, of the civil community.