The crusades show that morality can be weaponised
Hear me out, the crusades show how powers weaponise morality for their own interests.
Like you can extract tons of behavioural patterns just by analysing crusades from a psychological angle (not that im a psychologist but still).
Lets start with some background context
So Jerusalem was under muslim control for many centuries before 1905. Christians went there for pilgrimage (similar to Mecca for muslims) because its the place where Jesus was crucified (sacrificed himself for our sins). Now Christian pilgrims were allowed under certain variable conditions. Around this time the Byzantine Empire was also losing power and Seljuk Turks were taking their land. So the emperor at the time (Alexios I) asked the Pope for military help.
Now the trigger that started the cascade of crusades (how poetic) was in 1905. The Pope (Urban II, wild name i know) called for a crusade at the Council of Clermont.
\\Historical and situational context i should mention at this stage:
1. Europe was crazy violent at this time
2. People were deeply religious and obsessed with sin, hell and salvation
3. The Pope was the highest moral authority. When he spoke, he wasn’t giving policy advice — he was defining what God wanted.
That's about it for the background.//
At this council, he didn't just ask for soldiers, he redefined violence itself by turning it from a moral failure to a moral achievement.
Eastern Christians were being persecuted
Holy sites were desecrated
This framing matters because people weren't told "go conquer land", they were told "Your people are under attack". That flipped violence from aggression to self-defence, which humans readily accept.
Now Jerusalem holds a lot of significance for Christians (mentioned at the start) because its where the "salvation history" climaxed. It was still symbolically Christian even after centuries of Muslim rule. So the argument became "If its holy for us it must belong to us." Now this is important because political ownership of the land transformed into moral ownership and history was overwritten by theology.
"Obeying God's will" removed moral doubts.
Urban II framed participation as:
This was really clever because once something becomes "God's will",
Questioning it = Sin
Refusing it = Cowardice
This destroys moral hesitation as people no longer ask "is killing wrong?" but rather "am i faithful enough to overturn my beliefs for God".
All this was effective, but the key psychological nail-in-the-coffin that really sold everyone was the promise of salvation. Medieval Christianity involved years of penance and repentance for sins. The offer of instant spiritual cleansing and remission of sins for those who went to battle had a radical effect on the people. It made atrocities feel righteous and violence feel like sacrifice.
Each group also had their own personal motives for participation:
Nobles → land, titles, power
Knights → purpose, glory, absolution
Peasants → escape poverty, divine reward
Church → authority, unity, legitimacy
What the Pope really did was align personal incentives (salvation, status, land) with institutional goals (power, unity, expansion) under a moral absolute (God's will). Once that happens, ordinary people don't need to be cruel, they just need to be convinced they're righteous.
Now, as we look at how the crusades went down, you can see the mask slipping completely by the fourth one. Ill try to be quick with this.
The Fourth Crusade reveals how moral justification can detach violence from its original purpose. Although the Crusade was officially launched to reclaim Jerusalem from Muslim control, financial dependence on Venice and political manipulation redirected the Crusaders toward attacking Christian cities, first Zara and ultimately Constantinople itself.
Even though the Pope explicitly forbade killing of Christians, The Crusaders sacked Constantinople in 1204, looting churches, killing civilians, and dismantling the heart of Eastern Christianity. This wasn't a moment of moral confusion but of moral substitution because the identity of being a “Crusader” replaced the mission of defending holy sites, allowing violence to remain justified even when its targets contradicted the original cause.
The episode proved that once violence is framed as righteous, it no longer requires a morally coherent enemy, only a convenient one.
This exposes how sanctified power can persist even after its ethical foundation collapses. (I'm so literate).
This pattern reveals a persistent feature of human behaviour: when morality is outsourced to authority and fused with collective identity, ordinary people can commit extraordinary harm while believing themselves virtuous.
It had tons of behavioural patterns you can draw parallels to in the modern context as well:
Moral Licensing (Violence becomes virtue)
Us vs. Them mentality + Collective Identity Compression under a common group (modern communalism) + dehumanisation (always precedes violence) invoking tribalism together
Authority outsourcing morality (people obey immoral systems not because they’re evil, but because they’re relieved of choice.)
Incentive Alignment disguised as faith
Narrative Immunity (Once a story becomes sacred, it becomes immune to evidence, this is how ideologies survive contact with reality)
The danger isn't religion, it's moral certainty combined with collective action. The crusades didn't happen because Christians are uniquely barbaric, it happened because of predicable human behaviour under moral cover.
Okay this was way longer than i imagined it to be lmao
