I think the Crusaders behaved the way they did, because no matter what they did they could repent and ask forgiveness and all would be well. The Crusaders were relentless and would do anything with little to no regard to the enemy’s wellbeing. The Christians were very violate in their means to obtain the territory and treasure. In the first crusade the Christians were needing to obtain Jerusalem. They felt that the city needed to be in Christian hands and not in Muslims hands. The society in Europe was very brutal and religion was taking very seriously. The Crusaders were looked at as people who would do anything to protect their religion from those that believed differently. The crusades were pretty much a religion war that lasted for two
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
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.
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 crusades were a series of 4 religious based wars, that took place from 1095-1291, in which Western Christians (most notably from Italy and France) invaded the Mediterranean and Middle East in an attempt to recover the holy city of Jerusalem from the Muslim people, who were seen as the enemy. From the Christian point of view, the crusades were a holy war done to reunite Christian loyalty and faith, and also to recover Jerusalem and to protect the Christian faith and people from the spread of Islam. However, the Christian retelling of this event is the most common, and there is very little showing the Muslim perspective, or for that matter, Middle Eastern perspective, including Jewish and Orthodox Christians, who also suffered greatly at
The Crusades were launched in 1095 by Pope Urban II who acquired enthusiastic and zealous responses to his conquests. A zealous preacher known as Peter the Hermit obtained audiences on his journeys throughout France, Germany, and the Low Countries to begin a campaign. Although the campaign was awfully flawed, it still showed how much interest there was in the crusading idea. Therefore, a year later the French and Norman nobles organized a more respectable expedition that began instituting Christian values into conquered territories. However, the successes of the crusaders encouraged Turks, Egyptians, and other Muslims to set aside their differences in order to expel European Christians from the eastern Mediterranean.
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 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 Crusaders faced a multitude of obstacles. They didn’t have a consistent or widely accepted leader, no consensus about the relations with the churchman who went with them, no clear definition of what the pope would do during the crusading and no agreement with the
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.
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
Crusades, military expeditions, beginning in the late 11th century, that were organized by western European Christians in response to centuries of Muslim wars of expansion. The Crusaders attacked non-Christians in Northern and Eastern Europe, and they led bloody massacres against the Jews and heretical Christians in their own territories, and tried to move Muslims of the Iberian Peninsula and out of North Africa. There were also campaigns towards the heretics, pagans and Muslims of Europe as Crusades. As well as taking Palestine, ruling the Holy Land from the citadels. The crusades were seen as a means of redemption for participants sins.
At least the Muslims didn't savagely murder Christians, which was the strategy for the Christian crusaders. How did the Christian crusaders re-conquer the territory they considered to be theirs? The Islamic leaders slowly lost control over their lands due to internal factional differences. Therefore, the Christians were able to make advancements towards the campaign of the re-conquista, the conquest.
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.
Though has model was logically coherent and later accepted to be valid, they were persecuted by the Catholic Church because their system was in conflict with the Bible. In addition, crusades epitomize Christian fundamentalism. Crusades were a series of military campaigns, sanctioned by the Catholic church that took place during the 11th through 13th centuries. Originally, they were Roman Catholic endeavors to capture the Holy Land from the Muslims, but some were directed against other Europeans, such as the Fourth Crusade against Constantinople, the Albigensian Crusade against the Cathars of southern France and the Northern Crusades. People were forced to convert to Christianity, if they refused, they were put to death[3].Thus