Crusaders giving up pork. Even dressing like their Muslim neighbours (the wealthier ones) and living in eastern style houses with gurgling fountains. It’s enough to make a European Catholic in the Middle Ages gag. But apparently, some crusaders in the Holy Land went kosher or halal – influenced perhaps by the Jewish and Muslim faiths.
Crusaders going native in Jerusalem
It seems that many of the first wave of the crusaders who invaded and slaughtered the good people of Jerusalem, once they had settled down, went a bit native. So much so that they even stopped eating pork.
A story told by an Arab chronicler who went to dinner at the house of a “Frank” – their word for all crusaders – related that he boasted at having dumped all his old culinary habits and even hired some Egyptian cooks.
Pork never enters this home, he noted. This disgusted many knights in the west who felt that their compatriots in the east had got a bit effete and heretical in their manners. Why, they were probably feasting on dates and almonds every day.
But what was the real reason? Were the crusaders being influenced by their Muslim and Jewish neighbours? There is no law against pork in Christianity despite the dietary laws stated in the Old Testament. But in Judaism and Islam, pork is not kosher or halal respectively.
When the Templars were eventually put on trial in 1307, one accusation was that they had got too close to the Muslims. Could this aversion to pork have been used as evidence to support that allegation?
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