The condescension modern man has for the medieval has blinded us to the lessons to be learned. Medieval man had a different way of speaking about things which to us seems nonsensical because we have lost sight of his cultural or factual reference. But we should not assume that he was an idiot or that his mind worked differently from ours. In fact his mind was often more disciplined, logical and candid than ours.
There are several versions of Urban’s Exhortation to the the Troops, each of which may be considered an after-the fact elaboration. However, the retellings coincide in essential respects: the crusade, --a penitential “bearing” of the Cross for those who bore arms -- was a charitable war, willed by God, to succour needy brothers and rescue them from a foreign invasion of Roman territory.
Modern historians have penetratingly discovered that the “real” motive for the Crusades was an attempt to relieve demographic and economic pressures in Europe. But this was nothing unknown to the medieval contemporaries who, beneath the patina of justice and charity, are themselves astonishingly frank about the material motives of the war:
Fulcher of Chartres
"You have seen for a long time the great disorder in the world caused by these crimes [of robbery, pillage and violence]. It is so bad in some of your provinces, I am told, and you are so weak in the administration of justice, that one can hardly go along the road by day or night without being attacked by robbers; and whether at home or abroad one is in danger of being despoiled either by force or fraud. Therefore it is necessary to reenact the truce, as it is commonly called, which was proclaimed a long time ago by our holy fathers. I exhort and demand that you, each, try hard to have the truce kept in your diocese.
Robert the Monk
Let none of your possessions detain you, no solicitude for your family affairs, since this land which you inhabit, shut in on all sides by the seas and surrounded by the mountain peaks, is too narrow for your large population; nor does it abound in wealth; and it furnishes scarcely food enough for its cultivators. Hence it is that you murder one another, that you wage war, and that frequently you perish by mutual wounds. Let therefore hatred depart from among you, let your quarrels end, let wars cease, and let all dissensions and controversies slumber. Enter upon the road to the Holy Sepulchre; wrest that land from the wicked race, and subject it to yourselves.
Gesta Francorum & Balderic Bishop of Dole
Listen and learn! You, girt about with the badge of knighthood, are arrogant with great pride; you rage against your brothers and cut each other in pieces. This is not the (true) soldiery of Christ which rends asunder the sheepfold of the Redeemer. The Holy Church has reserved a soldiery for herself to help her people, but you debase her wickedly to her hurt. Let us confess the truth, whose heralds we ought to be; truly, you are not holding to the way which leads to life. You, the oppressors of children, plunderers of widows; you, guilty of homicide, of sacrilege, robbers of another's rights; you who await the pay of thieves for the shedding of Christian blood -- as vultures smell fetid corpses, so do you sense battles...
"We say this, brethren, that you may restrain your murderous hands from the destruction of your brothers, and in behalf of your relatives in the faith oppose yourselves to the Gentiles. [i.e. them heathens o'er yonder] Under Jesus Christ, our Leader, may you struggle for your Jerusalem, in Christian battleline...."
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Each of these sources confesses the same salient facts: the Truce of God had not worked; the lusty population was exceeding space and sustainibility resulting in criminality, for all of which reasons it was better to go kill Infidels than good, decent Christians at home.
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