For the last 924 years, the Holy Sepulcher of our Lord has never been desecrated again. Today in the preconciliar calendar of the Roman Rite, is the Feast of the Re-dedication of this holiest of places of Christendom. St. Bonaventure’s feast was celebrated on July 14th, but moved to the 15th under Paul VI, a disaster which has caused Catholics everywhere to forget their glorious and heroic ancestors in the Faith. Today is a special honor and glory of the Catholics of France who comprised the majority of security forces in this even which changed world-history forever.
These forces were under command of the Papal Legate appointed by Bl. Urban II. As his reward, God called him to Himself a week later. Along with St. Pius V who organized the victory at Lepanto, Urban II is one of the greatest popes in the history of the Church, for having cared for the defense of persecuted Christians.
From Wikipedia …
On 14 July 1099, the Crusaders launched their attack. Godfrey and his allies were positioned towards the Northern wall of Jerusalem, and their priority was to break through the outer curtain of the walls of the city. By the end of the day they penetrated the first line of defense. On the South Raymond of Toulouse’s forces were met with ferocious resistance by the Fatimids. On 15 July the assault recommenced in the Northern front; Godfrey and his allies gained success and the Crusader Ludolf of Tournai was the first to mount the wall. The Franks quickly gained a foothold on the wall, and as the city’s defenses collapsed, waves of panic shook the Fatimids.
In the southwest area the Provencals managed to storm the city walls, which later led to the Crusaders calling the gate they built in this area, Beaucaire Gate.[15]
Aftermath
Crusaders enter Jerusalem
Not wikipedia …
The Crusaders having given more than a week for all non-combatants to leave with all their possessions unmolested, the city of Jerusalem was left with only a small military force. Upon entering the city, the defenders were told to surrender, but they took up arms and fought all day July 14th and night in the city. Subsequent Islamic and Jewish authors invented the myth of a wholesale massacre of the population. And in fact, all those who participated in killing non-combatants were excommunicated by the Papal Legate, and his action was approved by the successor of Bl. Urban II.
Even the Wikipedia article if you read it to the end, shows, that all eye witnesses agree that Jews and Muslims who surrendered, were allowed to leave the city freely, if they paid a fine for their crime of holding out against the Crusaders. Those who did not were under the military authority of Catholic Forces, and therefore there was no question of murder or slaughter, but just sentences for the crimes of desecrating the holy places and resisting the Christian authority in Jerusalem. This kind of justice shocks the minds of Freemasons and unbelievers, who have perpetrated worse things upon Christians in the last 1300 years. But wikipedia won’t mention that.
The reality of Medieval Warfare
What Wikipedia is egregiously silent upon were two aspects of medieval warfare which made the assault and taking of Jerusalem quite unlike anything in modern times.
The first of which was that the First Crusade was not a modern army, which exercises pure military authority, under the jurisdiction of a government with separated powers, wherein the executive, judicial and legislative authority are distinct from the military.
Rather, the First Crusade was composed primarily of Knights Banneret, each of whom had full sovereign authority to take lands, wage wars, judge prisoners, arrest criminals, establish laws over his own domains, etc..His men at arms, whether on foot or horse, and all his equipment of war and supporters, were under his direct command. These knight bannerets in turn associated themselves in alliances or in direct relationships of fealty with higher lords, and or directly with the Papal Legate, whom the high lords generally obeyed.
Thus the decision to arrest, capture, judge and execute combatants, was solely the under the authority of the knight banneret. No legal or judicial review was even contemplated.
Second, the Middle Ages was an era of pure freedom in regard to the right to bear and use arms. The concept of armed and un-armed among a group of persons who refused to surrender a city when invested by an army did not exist. In fact, even children and women. were allowed to carry arms. Nor is there any testimony that the Muslim women and children, who are alleged to have been executed or slain during the siege, were unarmed and did not menace or attack the Crusading forces with swords, knives, slings, or bows and arrows.
Thus, the non eye-witness accounts from Christian chroniclers cannot be understood in a modern context. Their emphasis on the number of defenders killed, captured and executed does not mean what a distorted modern revisionism would want it to mean. It is merely the boasting of an age, where military valor and victory were praised in the face of a host of enemies of enormous size, and the rigor of justice imposed lauded, as a sign of the righteousness of decision in the face of horrendous crimes.
Hence, the Myth-Lie that the First Crusade, when taking Jerusalem, slaughtered the civilian population is just that, a contrived and distorted retelling of history, to blood-wash it in the eyes of those moderns seeking reasons to justify their own crimes against Christians of present times, more than 30 million of which, when unarmed were slain by Marxists, Nazis, and Freemasons.
