Crusader chroniclers celebrated massacres they claimed to condemn.

Evidence

The massacre so complacently described by the Gesta was in fact the worst mediaeval ‘profanation’ of the Holy Land known to us. It is the same occasion which the Conquéte, expressing the popular attitude, unblushingly describes - the looting and raping and the indiscriminate massacre: De Turs et de paiens font grant carpenterie Tex ia sa seror, ou sa fille, ou sa mie, Que por peor de mort I’a en I’estor laissie. — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 2113

Categorization

• XREF: Parallels to the mismatch between declared pious motive and actual conduct worth connecting to how legitimizing rhetoric covers exploitation.