The Crusades

Garrett Lambur
A topic we really haven’t talked about in class but still intrigues me, The Crusades, killing those who live in the holy lands because we haven’t ever lived there but we want to. A real estate agent could have made a killing back then. Yeah, bad joke. But I find the idea of the Crusades interesting. Its purpose was to take back the holy lands so that European Christians could visit them and so that the Catholic Church could hold them. I understood the drive behind attempting to take these lands back, they hold incredible religious significance but not until we discussed the idea of the access mundi did the significance really click for me. I do not know the history of the idea of access mundi within the world so I cannot say if the Church back followed the idea under that name.

Access mundi is still a strange concept for me. I have a hard time grasping the concept that because a religious event took place on this spot that it becomes a closer place to the other side. The idea that a place becomes more important because something important happened there completely clicks for me. But the idea of being closer to the other side or other world just doesn’t really click for me. Yet people have been following this idea for a long time as can be seen in the Crusades. Though they may not have called them access mundi, I have no idea if they did or didn’t, they seemed to take the idea of access mundi very strongly. Strong enough to send thousands of soldiers from across Europe in an attempt to take back these access mundi in the holy lands.

Another strange thing about the Crusades, it was a religious idea that brought together the many different arguing factions within Europe for a common goal. This was not readily done, the Europeans loved to fight amongst themselves as seen in the War of the Roses between France and England. It was quite a feat for them to come together after a common goal that was brought by Christianity though sad that it brought about much death and suffering.