Frankish Culture

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 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 Pope had all of the power and that led to mass amounts of people going to war for the Pope. In document 4 by the Islamic leader, Saladin, he states that his people should try to retake Jerusalem to get back their holy land and to please God. The people are trying to please their gods and to give their homage to their god. That would show a religious view for the Crusades and their brethren. Document 5 by the Jewish chronicler, Solomon bar Samson, shows that there was a religious aspect to the Crusades, mind it be extremism. The crusaders would see a pack of Jews on the way to the Holy Land and they would give the Jews two choices: 1. they could kill them to avenge the death of Jesus Christ or 2. They could incorporate them into their faith and acknowledge the offspring of promiscuity. Document 7, an excerpt from “In Praise of the New Knighthood” by St. Bernard of Clairvaux, tells of the two-fold war that was being fought by the Knights Templar and the Knights Hospitallers. It was a normal killing people war, and it was a spiritual war. You are protected by the armor of faith and an armor of steel. Next, I would have liked a document from Pope Nicholas IV about how the Crusades had to stop. That would have filled in the ending to the story of the Crusades.

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

1. Just in case you guys don’t about the history of why the crusades are happening, it’s all about Jerusalem and the Holy Land, or Palestine, have a complicated history. The Holy Land sits at the intersection of three continents, near the birthplace of some of the world’s oldest civilizations. It also borders the Mediterranean Sea, a major artery of conquest and trade. The region is valued as much for its location as for its religious history. The location itself may have been reason enough for people to settle there. In turn, those people developed civilizations that gave rise to the religions that have spent centuries competing for the sacred soil. The three competing monotheistic faiths-Judaism, Christianity, and Islam-met in Jerusalem. Despite their common roots, the differences among the three religions-and their peoples-often sparked conflict.

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 Crusade influenced the Middle ages in many ways, such as: adding to the Church’s control over Europe and their wealth, increased the Pope’s, or papacy’s, power, caused men and supplies to be requested frequently which resulted in many deaths (both muslim and christian), knights and barons sold their manor and lands or died which caused feudalism to become rocky in Europe, brought about the code of chivalry, people developed new ideas and began to grow smarter in what is called the “Age of Learning,” led to the discovery of new countries in the undiscovered areas of Asia, and commerce and trade grew due to the necessities that the Crusaders asked for.

The Crusades were military campaigns during the time period of Medieval England fighting against the Muslims. The Crusades had eight attempts and it lasted from 1095-1289. During the Crusades the Muslims and the Christians were the main religions focused on. Christianity and Islam are both a religion and also a life style that groups of people fought for during the Crusades. Christians during the crusades had the upper hand against the Muslims. The Muslims had it hard during the Crusades because they were the ones being attacked. During the crusades we find lots of information about Christians and Muslims. The Christians and Muslims during the crusades based on text in Discovering the Global Past “Yet ultimately both Christians and Muslims were willing to spread their respective faiths by force” both Christians and Muslims were similar in that the fought for same reason which is their religion. Both the Christians and the Muslims have the faith

The modern book source which proves the most useful in discussing the causes and consequences of the First Crusade is Crusades: The Illustrated History, by Thomas Madden. Madden is an extremely reliable source, as he is considered to be an authority on the Crusades, with a BA, MA, and PhD in history.

The First Crusades was a military group that was started by Christians in Europe who wanted to gain back the Holy Land that was being occupied by the Muslims. Pope Urban II preached a sermon at Clermont Ferrand on November 1095. Most histories consider this speech to be the spark the fueled a wave of military campaigns to gain back the Holy Land. This speech was meant to unite the Europeans and to gain back what was taken from them. The holy land was a small area on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea. The First Crusades was a very successful military expedition that was driven by religious faith to reclaim Jerusalem and other holy places that fell under Muslim control. driven by religious faith. They wanted to gain back the Holy Land that was once theirs. Arabs and the Muslim Turks otherwise known as the Seljuk Turks were the Muslims that invaded and conquered land rightfully occupied by the Christian’s. Many European men, women, and children joined the Crusades and fought in the Middle East. Pope Urban II granted forgiveness of all sins to those who died in battle thus assuring them ascendancy into heaven. Which gave those who volunteered to fight assurance. Nobles and peasants responded in great numbers to the call and marched across Europe to the capital of the Byzantine empire. Having the support of the Byzantine emperor helped make them a stronger army. The Crusaders took over many of the cities on the Mediterranean coast and built a large number of fortified castles across the Holy Land to protect their newly established territories. Soon after seizing power the Seljuks face a very different challenge to Islamic civilization. It came from Christian Crusaders. Knights from western Europe who were determined to capture portions of the Islamic world that made up the holy land of biblical times. Muslim political division and element of surprise made the first of the Crusaders assaults, between 1096 and 1099, by far the most successful. Much of

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 Jews that fled were quickly captured and were either forcibly baptised or murdered (“Jews and the Crusades”). These attacks resulted in a bitter relationship between Christians and Jews for hundreds of years for unnecessary persecution and killing. This shows that the Crusades were a turning point because it ruined relationships that affected their interactions for hundreds of years. A third effect of the crusades was the influx of many new ideas into the European culture from Muslim culture.

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.

The Crusades: A Short History, written by British Historian Jonathan Riley-Smith, offers a broad overview of this part of the medieval era, but he also explores how historians have attempted to explain these events in modern terms. Riley-Smith also makes sure to note all major contributors to the Crusade movement and their personalities. Numerous scholars have wondered whether this was a political or religious mission. This helps to spark the question of why people would leave their homes and their families to risk their lives invading a land that was thousands of miles away for religious reasons. In his book, Riley-Smith makes this era come alive for the modern reader. He does

Medieval lives were controlled completely by one thing – Christianity. Christianity was part of a person’s live from before they were born until after they died. Christianity rocketed through Europe, serving as a unifying cause for many things – such as the crusades. The crusades were the battle between the Christianity and Islam, over Christendom – the holy land. The crusades lasted for over 200 years but had limited success, ultimately ending in 1291 with the fall of acre. When looking at the relevance and significance of the medieval period, it is good to look at specific medieval topics - like the Crusades. The Crusades were an phenomenon which is obviously interesting in its own right, due to the reasons behind