The Envision of God in the Crusader Idea and Its Effect on the Crusades

Abstract

The historiography of the Crusades is an extension of Western Europe's desire to reach its own ideal history. The vacuum of authority following the fall of Rome led the Catholic world to create a new world order for itself. With its religiously referenced starting point, the Crusades offer God's promise of salvation and victory to the Crusaders. According to the Crusader idea, the hand of God will ascend to the earth through the Crusaders and the state of God will be established in Jerusalem through the Crusades. With this idea, the Crusader idea constructed a new world order for itself and placed God at the top of this order. The aim of this article is to analyse how and in what way the envision of God was dealt with in Crusader thought. The lack of such a study based on Crusader sources in the literature reveals the importance of this article. Through the methodological analysis of Crusader sources, the conception of God in Crusader thought and its reflections have been tried to be understood. As a result, the Crusaders's positioning of God in a mobilising position helped the Crusaders to invent their autonomous God and establish the God State; it also formed the basis for the transformation of the Crusaders into a nation chosen and God.