The Corruption of History by Modernist Relativism and Critical Ideology

The Corruption of History by Modernist Relativism and Critical Ideology

The BBC’s recent drama King and Conqueror, together with its commentary in History Extra, illustrates how modernist relativism corrupts our understanding of the past. The Norman Conquest, remembered by medieval chroniclers as an act of providence, oath, and papal sanction, is reduced to melodrama and politics. Sacred kingship becomes weakness, sanctity becomes myth, and papal banners become propaganda. Even Saint Edward the Confessor is stripped of holiness and remade as neurotic.

This is the method of modernism. As St Pius X warned, modernist historians “write history only to justify their own prejudices,” dissolving truth into subjective experience¹.

From the Conquest to the Crusades
The distortion evident in King and Conqueror is not unique. The Crusades, undertaken as penitential pilgrimages under papal command, are now habitually recast as colonial wars driven by greed and xenophobia. Steven Runciman’s mid-twentieth-century history set the tone, and The Guardian has since echoed this view, warning against “conservatives rewriting the history of the Crusades for modern political ends”². Israeli historian Joshua Prawer went further, comparing the Crusader States to apartheid systems³. Such categories were foreign to the age itself, which saw liberation of the holy places as a spiritual duty.

Colonisation and Evangelisation
A similar reframing is applied to the Spanish missions in the Americas. Saints such as Toribio de Mogrovejo and Rose of Lima are largely forgotten, while evangelisation is retold as cultural erasure. Even medieval Europe is treated as a colony unto itself: the Reconquista is labelled “Islamophobia,” the Norman Conquest “ethnic displacement,” and Charlemagne’s Christendom “cultural imperialism.” These interpretations erase the categories of Christendom: oath, sacrament, and providence.

Feminism and Historical Femininity
The History Extra commentary highlights Emma of Normandy, Edith of Wessex, and Matilda of Flanders as “political actors in their own right.” While true, the framing is thoroughly modern. They are praised only insofar as they resemble today’s feminist ideal of wielding masculine power. Their actual roles — queenship, motherhood, intercession, and sanctity — are minimised. Contemporary scholarship reinforces this distortion: the British Library’s Medieval Women exhibition presented fifteenth-century women “leading armies and performing surgery,” celebrated because it mirrors modern feminist ideals⁴. But the Marian model of authority — exemplified by St Margaret of Scotland or Blanche of Castile — is ignored.

Critical Race and Identity Theories
Critical race theory extends this flattening further. Christendom, which transcended ethnicity in baptism, is reinterpreted as exclusionary. The Bayeux Tapestry is described not as a sacred record of divine judgement but merely as “propaganda for a conquering elite”⁵. Populist appropriations in the modern West show the same corruption from another direction: Pete Hegseth’s American Crusade, for example, exploits Crusader imagery for nationalist ends, which The Guardian rightly condemned as anti-Muslim distortion⁶. In both cases, history is bent to ideology.

The Reduction of Holiness
Most striking is the modern refusal to acknowledge sanctity as a real category in history. St Louis IX of France, canonised for piety and justice, becomes in modern writing a “fundamentalist.” St Junípero Serra, who defended indigenous converts, is condemned as an oppressor. Edward the Confessor, revered for chastity and holiness, is presented in the BBC drama as weak and feeble. Holiness itself is explained away as myth or propaganda.

The Catholic Understanding of History
Against such distortions, the Catholic tradition insists that history is not a meaningless flux of power but the theatre of divine providence. Pius XI in Divini Illius Magistri declared that to remove God from education is to mutilate truth⁷. Medieval chroniclers bore the same conviction: Orderic Vitalis saw the Conquest as God’s judgement on perjury and ambition⁸, while William of Poitiers recorded papal sanction as decisive for William’s cause⁹.

Conclusion
From the Norman Conquest to the Crusades, from queenship to sainthood, the pattern is the same. Modernist relativism and critical justice theories deny sanctity, providence, and divine authority. They impose alien categories of race, gender, and power. The task of Christians is to resist these distortions, to recall that history bears witness not to ideology but to Christ the King, in whom all times and ages find their fulfilment. 🔝

1. Pius X, Pascendi dominici gregis, 1907.
2. Jonathan Phillips, “The Conservatives’ rewriting of the history of the Crusades for modern political ends,” The Guardian, 7 February 2015.
3. Joshua Prawer, The Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem: European Colonialism in the Middle Ages, 1972.
4. Alison Flood, “British Library exhibition shows 15th-century women led armies and performed surgery,” The Guardian, 24 October 2024.
5. “Emma of Normandy,” History Extra, 24 August 2025; cf. Independent, features on Bayeux Tapestry loan (2026).
6. Martin Pengelly, “Pete Hegseth’s book exploits Crusader imagery for anti-Muslim ends,” The Guardian, 28 November 2024.
7. Pius XI, Divini Illius Magistri, 1929.
8. Orderic Vitalis, Historia Ecclesiastica, Book IV, c. 1125.
9. William of Poitiers, Gesta Guillelmi, c. 1070.