Reasons Of The Crusades

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,

In 1095, Pope Urban II called for an army to go to the Holy Land, Jerusalem. This was what was later known as the ‘First Crusade’. A crusade is a religious war or a war mainly motivated by religion. The first crusade consisted of 10’s of thousands of European Christians on a medieval military expedition to recover the Holy Land from the Muslims. This doesn’t mean that the first crusade was just motivated by religion. Throughout this essay, I will be suggesting the main reasons of why people went on crusades and which different people went for specific reasons and why.

The Crusades were great military missions developed by Christian nations of Europe for the purpose of rescuing the Holy Land of Jerusalem from the hands of the Moslems. Jerusalem was extremely important to the Moslems and Christians at this time. Many religious events happened there, and many landmarks of both religions were located in Jerusalem. There were many Crusades some more significant than others, but in general the Crusades were very important to the spread of Christianity and religious based knowledge. The Crusades are an example of religious rebellion that is timeless and universal throughout the world.

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

During this essay, I will be discussing the Crusades and what led the European Christians to participate, what goals they were trying to achieve by participating.

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 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.”

Going against modern day religious beliefs, in 1095AD the Christians went to war to claim the holy city of Jerusalem, massacring the Muslims in a bloody attempt to worship their God. Pope Urban II’s speech at Clermont inspired by claims made by the Byzantium Emperor encouraged the Christians to partake in the First Crusade in an attempt to liberate Jerusalem. The religious and economic factors were the most relevant to cause this crusade, with some influence from desired political gain and little from social factors unrelated to religion. The immediate consequences were positive for the Christians and negative for the Muslims, but the First Crusade launched an ongoing conflict between the Christians and Muslims which had positive and negative consequences for both sides. There are a number of relevant modern sources which examine the causes and consequences of the First Crusade, but, while there are many medieval sources, they do not explicitly discuss the causes and consequences of the war. In order to fully comprehend the First Crusade, it is necessary to analyse the religious, economic, and political factors, as well as the short-term, long-term, and modern consequences.

The origin of the Crusades is rooted in political upheaval. The mid seventh century to the mid tenth century CE saw a gradual expansion of Islam (Riley-Smith 1). Half of the Christian world was conquered by Arab armies. This included countries in which Christianity had been established for centuries, such as Egypt, southern France, southern Italy, Sicily, Spain, Syria, and Turkey (Riley-Smith 2). By the late tenth century, Europe and the Middle East were divided into Christian and Muslim hemispheres of influence. Christian pilgrims from Europe regularly visited the Muslim-controlled Jerusalem. These pilgrimages were very popular.

Every society in every age long for order, beauty, and truth. The crusades were a series of several military campaigns, usually sanctioned by the Papacy. The Crusades were an age that longed truth. They were originally, the Roman Catholic endeavors to re-capture the Holy Land from the Muslims. The violent and often ruthless conflicts propelled the status of European Christians, making them major players in the fight for land in the Middle East. The movement is best remembered for the causes that the participants and routes of major crusades, last the effects of the crusades and the highlights of the major of the crusades.

With total autonomy to kill and plunder as they please alongside a godly, miracle-like victory in their first ever attempt in a series of holy wars, the Crusades stand out as a key point in the history of both Christianity and the medieval world as a whole. It is undeniable that religious devotion played a factor in the Crusades; in an era where Europe was a land of chaotic violence, a quick chance to absolve oneself from any sin was immensely appealing. Yet from the wars' very origin to their ways of recruiting and actions on the battlefield, this apparent devotion that is the heart of the Crusades is repetitively contradicted. The holy wars would never have reached the height they did – or

The Crusades were Holy Wars during the 11th century that intended to expand Christian territory. The Crusades began when Christians initiated military campaigns to take control of the Holy Lands around the city of Jerusalem. Ever since the fall of the Roman Empire, Christianity had been so strong that people were able to spread it through campaigning. Different people from the time period of the Crusades have varying viewpoints on it, a few of which being that the Crusades caused fear and destruction, the violence of the Crusades were justified because of religious reasons, and that the Crusades were not only harmful to Muslims, but Jews and Christians.

During the 11th century, as the crusades began, Europe’s main religion, Christianity, divided into Catholicism and Eastern Orthodox. During this period of divergence in Europe, Islam flourished. Trade helped spread religion and languages throughout Asia & Africa, while Europe paled in comparison. Given the situation that Europe was in at the time of the crusades, it’s easy to call into question the motivations behind the crusades. The first crusade, supporting the Byzantine Empire, was called for by Pope Urban II, in an apparent combination of Christian Europe behind the image of the Cross. While the results and advantages for Europe springing from the First Crusade may suggest otherwise, the Crusades were called together solely to further

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.