Medieval crusades focus of Loudonville museum talk

LOUDONVILLE – The Cleo Redd Fisher (CRF) Museum in Loudonville continues their Speaker Series with a look at the crusades that defined the Middle Ages, and their modern legacies. The program is slated for Monday, March 20, at 7 p.m.

In all, eight major crusade expeditions—varying in size, strength and degree of success—were waged between Christians and Muslims for control of the Holy Lands. The first crusade was ordered by Pope Urban II at the request of the Byzantine Empire, which was losing territory to the expanding Islamic Empire. The costly, violent and often ruthless conflicts enhanced the status of European Christians, making them major players in the fight for land in the Middle East. The legacy of those crusades still defines and impacts world events today. In a sermon in Moscow last year, the Russian patriarch of the Orthodox Church proclaimed that “sacrifice in the course of carrying out your military duty cleanses away all sins.” The Russian church’s overt endorsement of the military conflict in Ukraine recalls the medieval papal indulgence that was granted to crusaders who died en route to the Holy Land.

The CRF Museum welcomes Alex Novikoff, who will first explore the crusading origins of a theology of violence—how and why it developed, and how the Muslim world responded. He will explain what a crusade was and was not. Novikoff will then look at how the ideology of crusading has continued to resonate down the halls of history, from colonialism, to Al-Qaeda, to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Novikoff teaches medieval history at Kenyon College and history and comparative religion at Franklin University Switzerland. He is the author of "The Medieval Culture of Disputation: Pedagogy, Practice, and Performance," the editor of "The Twelfth-Century Renaissance: A Reader," as well as the author of numerous articles on medieval intellectual history and interfaith relations. A recipient of the Berlin Prize from the American Academy in Berlin and an elected fellow of the UK’s Royal Historical Society, he lectures widely across North America, Europe and the Middle East. More recently, he was a featured in the CNN documentary "Jerusalem: City of Faith and Fury."

This program is free and open to the public. The event will be held in the lecture hall of the Cleo Redd Fisher Museum, located at 203 E. Main St. in Loudonville. Doors open at 6:30 p.m., while the event begins at 7 p.m. For more information, visit CRFMuseum.com or call the museum at 419-994-4050.