The Crusades took place in the Middle East between 1095 and 1291. They were used to gain a leg up on trading, have more land to show hegemony, and to please the gods. Based upon the documents, the Crusades between 1095 and 1291 were caused primarily by religious devotion rather than by the desire for economic and political gain.
Another aspect that contributes to the statement that the crusades were not motivated by religious factors is that the crusaders wanted more land. Many Crusaders wanted to govern their own piece of land in a new area, so they decided to fight being guaranteed a piece of land; in this era land equaled money, the more land you had, the wealthier you were—religion didn’t get you very far. By having a new plot of land, in a new area the Crusaders would be able to rise above their social status and experience a newfound wealth that would be next to impossible back in their homeland. Through this, we can see the prime motivation of the Western European’s commencement of the crusades was their aspiration for land. Even Pope Urban II, an example and leader for all the people, wanted to fight just to get the Holy Land back. So if the prime example for the people, a leader that everyone looked up to was demonstrating greed and voracity then it would only be natural for his people to follow. Not only did Pope Urban II and officials express tremendous amounts of self-indulgence, but they very well knew what was going on beforehand; the selection mentions that they worked to “prepare” the people for a crusade by changing conditions within their society and economy. The changing of economic aspects portray that the Crusaders were unhappy with their current state of wealth and the easiest way to fix that was to
There are many myths when it comes to the crusades. I have found through research that the Crusades did not happen extemporaneously or as a result of one individual event. In this paper I will examine a number of features that came together to create the political, social, religious, and economic environment that enabled the "crusading spirit" to take cause and spread throughout Europe. The crusades had been military campaigns during the time of Medieval England against the Muslims of the Middle East. In 1076 the Muslims had captured Jerusalem which happen to be the holy of holy places for Christians. This was due to the fact Jesus had been born in Bethlehem and spent most of his life in Jerusalem. He was crucified on Calvary hill,
The mentality was that Christian crusaders were to Islam/Judaism at any costs. It doesn’t matter even if it was achieved through violence or war. During the course of the crusades, the death toll was high for Christians and Muslims. In few crusades, innocent people including women were raped and slaughtered. These victories lead to conquering kingdoms for Christianity but they were all unsustainable especially in the middle east.
One of the motives for European Christians, was religious, they wanted to liberate the Holy Land from Muslim occupation and control. The Pope promised that anyone who went on Crusade would be absolved of all his or her previous sins, and anyone who died while on Crusade would automatically go to Heaven. In a society where the prospect of eternal Hellfire was a very real belief of everyday life, this was a powerful motivation.
The Crusades were a bloody war that the church deemed holy and necessary for salvation of the knights soul. The Crusades are a highly controversial and very dark stain on the Catholic church and Hierarchies past. The war was brought to the church from there Roman allies who they had tense dealings with. The where seeking aid in the fight against the muslim turks. The church decreed there act holy and justified. The people who were under the churches thumb had no objections to the slaughter that their beloved God had suposably justified.
The Crusades, a series of wars, are an extremely important part of history in the 12th century, occurring during the Middle Ages. The Middle East or the Holy Land was always a place that Christians traveled to to make pilgrimages. The Seljuk Turks eventually took control of Jerusalem and all Christians were not allowed in the Holy City. As the Turks power grew, they threatened to take over the Byzantine Empire and Constantinople. The Byzantine Emperor, Alexius I, asked Pope Urban II for help and Pope agreed, hoping to strengthen his own power. He He united the Christians in Europe and In 1095, Pope Urban II waged waged war against muslims in order to “reclaim the holy land.”
The Crusades were an unpleasant event that happened for many reasons. It was established in 1096 and thankfully ended in 1291. The cause for why the Crusades had a more negative result is because most people died from participating or majorly hurt. This is because Document 6 states “The city was savagely taken with many lives lost” meaning that people had died. So, the continued fighting that took place because of the Crusades had a huge negative impact on the many people that lost their lives. In addition, Document 1 states “In Europe, crusaders sometimes turned their fury against Jews, massacring entire communities.” Which meant that full families including children were slaughtered, killed and destroyed because the crusaders were mad at
Three of the world’s most powerful religions had gone to war during the Crusades, the same war that is responsible for an estimated 1.7 million deaths. The Crusades were a series of Christian military expeditions that lasted through nine Holy Wars. The first crusade, in 1095, was called upon by Pope Urban II in an attempt to stop the Muslim expansion to the Holy City of Jerusalem. Through this, the Christian, Catholic, and Muslim churches will go into a time of warfare as an attempt to both show their religious superiority and have a religious expansion. The western side of Europe was the most significantly impacted by the Crusades because of the 4th Crusade, the foreign influence from the East, and Europe’s economic relations with the world.
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
The Crusades were the epic battles for the holy city of Jerusalem, first controlled by Constantinople. In the beginning, everything was at peace with the holy land, when a group of people entered and took over Jerusalem. Soon, in 1095, Pope Urban II called on all the Christians in the land to fight for the city, so that they could take it back. He said that to anyone who fought or were killed in battle, their sins would be pardoned. Therefore, there were many Christians who took themselves and their families to fight for Jerusalem. The first battle must have been very bloody. A man named Raymond d’Aguiliers had accounts of the crusades, having followed the Crusaders and recorded everything he saw. He says it was an extraordinary sight, stating
The Crusades was a very important moment in human history, it showed the clashes between religions for land that most people considered to be sacred or holy. There isn’t one Crusade but rather a series of them, but we’ll be looking primarily at the First Crusade, Second Crusade, Third Crusade, and a little bit of the Fourth. It all starts in Rome (Nov 27th 1095) where Pope Urban the Second receives an important message from Byzantine Emperor Alexios the First where he pleads for help in supressing the Turkish troops. After receiving the message the Pope (standing in a field outside the city of Clermont) calls for the public to join the military excursion to the Middle East, and swiftly declares a Crusade with the primary objective of securing holy sites [Jaspert, Nikolas. The Crusades]. What followed was a large migration of troops from France and Italy on August and September of 1096. The
However, this didn’t mean that they were merciful, for example one Jew was captured and led to a church where the crusaders tied a rope around his neck and there they said “You can still be saved; will you change your faith?” When he didn’t cooperate, they cut off his neck. The Crusaders were so brutal that they were thought to be just as guilty to God then other religions. For example an abbot of Cluny wrote during the second crusade, “What is the good of going to the end of the world at great loss of men and money to fight the Saracens, when we permit among us other infidels who are a thousand times more guilty towards Christ than the Mohammedans?” He describes here how the Mohammedans were a lot less guilty towards Christ then the Christians who were in the Crusades themselves for killing innocent
The first crusade started in autumn of 1095. Pope Urban II initiated the first crusade by calling upon his Christians to reclaim the city of Jerusalem. The Crusade was also meant to seek revenge on the followers of Islam. The followers were accused of committing crimes against “Christendom”. Pope Urbans crusade was made possible by the work of St. Augustine on Christian Violence in the past. Many Christians joined the crusade because the Pope promised rewards for the afterlife. After the fourth century, Christianity underwent a transformation when it fused with the Roman state for which warfare was essential. St. Augustine and Pope Urban enabled violence to be an option for Christians and it can be described in this quote, “For the first time in Christian history, violence was defined as a religious act, a source of grace.” After the Pope’s Christian tour, many Christians were ready to destroy everything that stood in their way.
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,