The purpose of the Christian Crusaders

Dear Madam - The Rev. Robert Robb in his “Thought for the Week”, Impartial Reporter, 18/09/14, incorrectly suggests that the purpose of the Christian Crusaders in the Middle Ages was to force Christianity on non-Christians at the threat of death. The ostensible reason for the Crusades was the opposite -- it was Western or Latin Christians assisting Constantinople/Byzantium Christians and other Eastern Christian churches who were under mortal threat and/or being over-run and wiped out by Muslim armies. Sadly, many Western crusaders had little understanding of Christianity or any real commitment to defending Christianity and due to their narrow sectarian and racist mind-set, as well as greed, they inflicted the most terrible crimes against Eastern Christians and effectively helped to nearly destroy Christianity in the East. For example writing of the sack of Constantinople or the New Rome by the fourth crusade in 1204, a witness recounts, in an extract, the desecration of the Great Church of Constantinople by the Western “Christians”: “ A common harlot was enthroned in the Patriarch’s chair, to hurl insults at Jesus Christ,; and she sang bawdy songs, and danced immodestly in the holy place --- nor was there mercy shown to virtuous matrons, innocent maids or even virgins consecrated to God --.” Moscow is considered to be the new Constantinople and Russia the restored Byzantium by many in Russia. That is why Russians were outraged when the Pussy Riot female punk band desecrated the Christ the Saviour Russian Orthodox Cathedral in Moscow in 2012.