Compare And Consequences Of The Crusades

Many have priorly stated that history repeats itself time and time again. This can be seen throughout history but, especially so during the Crusades. This paper will discuss the parallels between the First and Fourth Crusade. We will also take a brief look at the aftermath of the Fourth Crusade and how it compares to the aftermath of the Second Crusade.

The Crusades of the High Middle Ages (a.d. 1050-1300) was a period of conquest or rather, reconquest, of Christian lands taken from Muslims in the early Middle Ages. It is an era romanticized by fervent Christians as the time when Christianity secured its honorable status as the true religion of the world. The affect of the Crusades is still with us today. It sailed from Spain and Portugal to the Americas in the fifthteenth century aboard sailing ships carrying conquistadors who sought new territory and rich resources. They used the shield and sword of Christianity to justify a swift conquest of mass territory and the subjugation of the indigenous peoples; a mentality learned, indeed,

The Crusades was a horrific time. Many people had lost their lives, friends, even family. The Crusades were a battle over the holy land, Jerusalem. The Crusaders, people who had fought in the Crusades, were Christians. They wanted the holy land because they believe that’s where Jesus had died and rose. They had fought against the Muslims who were defending themselves against the Crusaders. The Crusades had its positive outcomes as well as its negative results. Some may wonder, were the results of the Crusades more Positive or Negative? I strongly believe the outcome was mostly negative mainly because the Crusaders didn’t win the holy land, lots of lands were destroyed, and so many people lost their lives in the battle of the Crusades.

According to an article published in 2009, it is believed that there were a numerous effects of crusades:

The Crusades were a group of Christians that Pope Urban II started back in 1095. They also had 9 Crusades, or 9 times when they would attack to get the Holy Land, against the Muslims and Jews, but mostly against the Muslims. During those battles there were both positive and negative. Were the results of the Crusades more positive or negative? The Crusades were more negative than positive because they worsen their relationship with the Jews and Muslims, or religious hatred, they destroyed and betrayed their closest ally, and their towns or cities were difficult to handle.

The Crusades were one of the most prominent events in Western European history; they were not discrete and unimportant pilgrimages, but a continuous stream of marching Western armies (Crusaders) into the Muslim world, terminating in the creation and eventually the fall of the Islamic Kingdoms. The Crusades were a Holy War of Roman Christianity against Islam, but was it really a “holy war” or was it Western Europe fighting for more land and power? Through Pope Urban II and the Roman Catholic Church’s actions, their proposed motivations seem unclear, and even unchristian. Prior to the Crusades, Urban encouraged that Western Europe fight for their religion but throughout the crusades the real motivations shone though; the Crusaders were power

The brief campaign of the thirteen-century Children’s crusade was not technically a crusade in the sense that medieval Europeans understood the term and lasted only a few months during the year 1212. It lacked Papal sanction and its participants marched without the customary indulgences granted to those engaged in warfare to defend the Faith. Uncharacteristic as it was, the Children’s Crusade was a revealing chapter in medieval history, as it exemplified the depths of crusading zeal along with the unrestrained behavior of which enthusiasm and faith are capable. The children’s crusade was nothing less than a destructive movement that preyed on those in its paths, much like the earlier crusades had done. It was during the late august of 1212, that rows of zealous children and the priest guiding them had stood on the dockside of Marseilles awaiting for a parting of the Mediterranean to permit passage to the holy land. The children marched unarmed, in some notion of converting the Muslims seems to have taken place of the usual crusaders zeal for battle.

The crusades that occurred from the 11th through to the 13th centuries were a series of a number of military campaigns. The Papacy sanctioned these campaigns. Originally, crusades were Catholic endeavors that were undertaken to recapture the Holy Lands (McKay et al., 2014). However, through time, some of the wars were against the other non-catholic Christians. The wars that were directed against non-Catholics were inclusive of the fourth crusade, which was against the Constantinople. The Aligensian crusade was

he subject of the crusades is still a very controversial topic that spans across various time periods and has religious, social, and political implications. The first crusade started off as a widespread pilgrimage that ended as a military expedition resulting in the recapture of Jerusalem in 1099. The crusades initiated from a call from help from Alexius for the protection of Constantinople and the recovery of Anatolia. For centuries textbooks have repeated with routine regularity, that the immediate cause, of the Crusades was the Turkish conquest of the Near East, which apparently was a very real threat to Christendom, that had to be countered by military action. With this in mind, the primary purpose of this essay is to identify the various reasons that contributed to the start of the first crusade, while disproving the fact that the first Crusade was a response to a military threat. In discovering the true cause of the first crusades it is necessary to examine it from all aspects from the start to the finish.

The First Crusades and the Islamic empire were both extremely strong and successful empires. These empires took charge and conquered other empires. There are many similarities and differences to why these empires and their military forces were so successful.

Patrick Geary’s “Readings in Medieval History” contains four accounts of the invasion of the Middle East by the Europeans in 1095 A.D. These accounts all cite different motives for the first crusade, and all the accounts are from the perspective of different sides of the war. The accounts all serve to widen our perspective, we hear from the Christian and Middle Eastern side of the conflict. Fulcher of Chartres claims, Pope Urban the Second urged all Christians to intervene in the “East” at the council of Claremont, saying it was a sign of “Strength of good will”. (Readings in Medieval History, Geary, page 396).

The Crusades hold a place in the canon of Western history as valiant wars against the infidel in the East, motivated by an unparalleled pious zeal. Whilst revisions to this history have considered more mundane and ordinary motives, such as a want for land or an attempt to reinforce the Peace of God movement, there is something to be said of the religious motivations of the crusaders. The words ‘conquest’ and ‘conversion’ seem ideologically charged – with conquest being what is done by temporal rulers to physical land and people, and conversion being what is done to the spiritual self, by someone who does not have anything material to gain from the action. However, it can be argued that these lines can be blurred; I wish to present the case of conquest being religiously charged, and the idea that any subsequent conversion is of little importance. By examining the geographical targets of various crusaders, I will conclude that they were more interested in conquest than conversion: but this was not necessarily for earthly reasons alone.

In The middle of the Eleventh Century The tranquillity of the eastern Mediterranean seemed assured for many years to come, but little did the people know what was ahead . This, thus embark us on a journey back into the First Crusade. In this paper I will be discussing the events that lead up to the first in a long line of crusades. I will also be mentioning the lives of some of the crusaders through letters that they wrote. The crusades were a time of confusion for most people, yet today we look back at them as a turning point.

Everyone knows the story of the Crusades. Two centuries of wanton slaughter, pillaging and destruction, all born of misguided religious fervor. However, the truth is a very different story. The truth is that religious fervor, while definitely one of the causes of the Crusades, was not the predominant one. Rather, political and economic reasons contributed far more to the continuation of the Crusades than religion ever did, especially during the later wars.

Through the deliverance of a speech the former Pope Urban II incited Catholics all over Europe to take action in reclaiming the Holy city of Jerusalem from the Muslims in the Middle East. It was in this year,1095, that the beginning of the first, of nine, Crusades and thus the first series of religious wars between the Catholics and Muslims begun. The focus of this paper will remain on the Third Crusade (1189-1192 A.D)- more specifically the actions of ‘Islam’s Warrior Hero’ Ṣalāḥ ad-Dīn Yūsuf ibn Ayyūb who was better known to the English as Saladin- Sultan of Egypt. How did one individual gain the respect of both his Muslim followers and his enemies- the Catholic Europeans? Throughout history Saladin has been portrayed as a charismatic, honourable, virtuous and chivalrous man by the historians and chroniclers of the Middle East and Europe. Even the Europeans who sought to dislike this man due to his religious affiliations could not, as he encompassed all the qualities in which a great leader and a good ‘Christian’ was thought to possess.