Donald R. McClarey
Cradle Catholic. Active in the pro-life movement since 1973. Father of three, one in Heaven, and happily married for 41 years. Small town lawyer and amateur historian. Former president of the board of directors of the local crisis pregnancy center for a decade.
Deus Vult.
Certainly, the divine assistance gave the “barbarians” the victory over the saracens.
This day, Our Lord carried me in His wounded (for my sins) hands over 300 miles of ice- and snow-bound roads.
I do not lift a finger without God’s (And Our Lady, my mother’s) prayers, intercessions, blessings and graces. It is impossible.
“Jesus loves you more than you will know . . . ” Simon and Garfunkle, “Mrs. Robinson.”
“…for contemporaries living in the medieval age one thing alone explained the spectacular triumph of the First Crusade ‘God’s omnipotent will.'”
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Even in today’s post-modern neo-paganism with militant Islam at the city gates will God’s omnipotent sovereign will accomplish what He has set out to do from the foundation of the universe.
While it is true that about 200 years later the Crusader states were gone and the Levant was firmly under Muslim control again, I often wonder how things might have progressed had there never been a First Crusade.
The Crusades may not have saved the Holy Land for Christians; but did they save Europe?
“I often wonder how things might have progressed had there never been a First Crusade.”
I think the Crusades bought Europe three centuries. A siege of Vienna by a muslim army in 1229 might have had a very different outcome than the siege of Vienna in 1529.