The Life Argotic

I have always had an aversion to the crusader mascot that many christian schools use for their teams. Even before I knew much about the Crusades, I thought of it as quasi-colonialism and celebrating the forcing of faith through the use of the blade. But I was never fully able to put to words how I felt because I thought it was just me being picky about the topic. 

That changed recently while reading S. A. Chakraborty’s The Adventure of Amina al-Sariafi. Early in the novel, the protagonist begins to describe growing up and hearing about the atrocities that the “Franks” – The name used for all westerners in the book – had committed. It made me realize that I knew surprisingly little about how the Crusades are remembered outside of Western history. This got me thinking: What did the Crusaders actually do? Why don’t we talk about those events? And, if the Crusaders were so terrible in their bloodlust, why do we still use them as a mascot? 

The Crusades: Briefly

Popular discourses often reduce the Crusades to one of two narratives. In one narrative, they were defensive wars fought to protect Christian pilgrims and aid the Byzantine Empire. In the other, they were little more than colonial invasions motivated by greed and religious fanaticism. Initially, I fell into the latter camp. However, as with most things there is a lot of nuance. The Crusades were motivated by a mixture of religious fervor, political ambition, economic opportunity, and genuine fears about the shifting balance of power in the east.

According to scholars, the crusades began in the late 11th century after Byzantine emperors had been begging for help against Muslim invasions after Pope Urban II put out a call to fight for Christian and Christianity in the Levant where many would take pilgrimages to holy sites in places like Syria, Iraq, Jerusulum, and Antioch (Britannica, 2026; Holt, 2026). 

A pattern that emerges across the Crusades is that religious violence repeatedly expanded beyond its original justification. The call to Crusade by Pope Urban II and rhetoric of other religious figures such as Peter the Hermit ultimately led to the first bloodshed which is known as the Rhineland Massacres – A series of pogroms targeting Jewish communities along the Rhine river – that was committed by mostly religious zealots who didn’t have the money to continue on to Jerusalem. During the first Crusade in the levant, other notable brutalities were committed by the Christian warriors including cannibalism during the siege and the Massacre of Jerusalem where thousands of Muslims and Jews were slaughtered after the city was captured. 

One of the least talked about aspects are the Crusades that focused on the extermination of Christian sects like the Cathars. For example, during the 4th Crusade, Constantinople – a Christian city – was sacked and followed by days of pillage, rape, and murder. A few years later, Pope Innocent III declared that a sect of Christians in France were worse than Muslims and should be put to the sword, thus starting the Albigensian Crusade. In fact, no fewer than 10 campaigns were waged against Christians of other faiths because the biggest threat to the church was heresy. 

If our understanding of the Crusades is so much more complicated than the popular image of noble knights defending Christianity, why has the Crusader remained such an admired symbol and used as mascots?

The problem with mascots is that they are not history lessons. They are selective memories. They distill complicated historical figures into symbols of courage, honor, and perseverance while stripping away the context that made those figures controversial in the first place.  In using this particular mascot it normalizes the idea that the crusades and the Crusaders were the “good guys.” We often think about mascots uncritically as symbols of toughness and bravery. But the reality is not only more complicated, it is dark, grim, and bloody. While I don’t believe that every school that uses the Crusader mascot endorses Christian nationalism, by having a crusader as a mascot, schools are potentially suggesting that the universe is black and white, good vs. evil and that they are on the side of the good. Symbols carry history whether we acknowledge it or not. The Crusader has become detached from the massacres, forced conversions, and sectarian violence that accompanied the Crusades and transformed into a generic image of righteous heroism. That transformation deserves scrutiny, especially when the same imagery continues to be embraced by movements that define political conflict in explicitly religious terms. 

If we are willing to reconsider mascots and symbols associated with other painful histories, I think it’s reasonable to ask whether the Crusader should remain exempt from that conversation.