The Crusade : The Causes Of The Crusades

Although a topic of my past history classes has been the Crusades, I only come out of them with a vague understanding of the situation. So, I sought out to gain a greater understanding through the vision of the question, "Was the first crusade a success, and if so, what made it a success?" Using The Crusades: A Reader, specifically the writings and documents from pages 33-79, I will make a decision based on specific occurrences and their ultimate goal (CITE SOURCE WITH FULL CITATION).I plan on picking out important aspects of the first crusade and determine whether or not they contributed to the success or failure of it. Also, I will try to uncover the motivations and the organization that led to the execution of the plan to recapture the Holy Land. In short, the first crusade interests me the most because there were crusades afterward, signifying it must have been found successful in some understanding.

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 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 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.

A major turning point in Medieval history were the Crusades. The Crusades were a series of wars fought between the Christian Europeans and the Muslim Turks, which occurred between the years of 1096 to 1272. In this Holy War the Christians goal was to obtain the Holy Land from the Turks, in which they did not succeed. Although the Christians did not meet their goal, many positives did come out of their attempt. Due to the reason that they did not meet their goal, yet numerous positives came out of their effort, many refer to this as a successful failure.

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.

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.

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.

5. The first crusade was led by Godfrey of Bouillon in 1096. Bouillon and the other lords went from Constantinople to Antioch battling the Turks and eventually they gained control over Antioch. In the end they captured Jerusalem and made it into a Crusader State.

The first crusades was led by Godfrey of Bouillon and other French lords. The Crusades captured Antioch. In August 1098 the Crusades made it to Jerusalem. When Godfrey died, Baldwin became the first king of the Christian kingdom in Jerusalem.

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.

The First Crusade was launched by Pope Urban II in a speech at the Council of Clermont, France, on Nov. 27, 1095. Urban spoke of the need to help the Christian East, to "stop the abuse of the holy places, and stressed the moral duty of keeping the "Peace of God" at home."2 He appealed for volunteers to set out for Jerusalem. The response was overwhelming. With the cry "Deus vult!" ("God wills it"), thousands took the cross. Bands of poorly armed pilgrims, most of them inexperienced and poor, set out for Constantinople under Peter the Hermit and Walter the Penniless even before the army gathered. Some began by massacring Jews in the Rhine valley. Many perished on there way east, and the rest were destroyed by the Muslims when they crossed into Anatolia.

The precondition for discovering America consisted of events and circumstances occurring over centuries altering the social, political, economic, and technological landscape of the world. Events dating back as far as the crusades provided a global exchange of ideas and technology, which overtime provided the tools necessary to discover the New World.

According to Allen and Amt, a crusade “in its strictest sense, was a holy war called by the medieval papacy with the aim of gaining the Holy Land and, in particular, the city of Jerusalem.” This definition states that the goal of a crusade was to conquer a Holy Land. If that is the goal then in order to partake in a successful crusade one must fulfill that mission. In the case of the Fourth Crusade, which took place from 1202-1204, regaining control of Jerusalem was the objective at hand. The proclamation of a Fourth Crusade came from Pope Innocent III in 1198 when he became “determined to restore Christian control over the Holy Land.” The envoys even delivered a message to the Doge saying that they “have taken the sign of the cross to avenge the shame done to Jesus Christ, and to reconquer Jerusalem.” It was clear that the Fourth Crusade intended to capture Jerusalem. However, after years of battle, the Crusaders did not seize Jerusalem let alone reach it, leaving the Fourth Crusade to be considered a failure.

"Crusade," The word itself almost leaves a foul taste in a Christians mouth as they look back at those dark times in the Church's history. The Crusades are not a "dark time" in the Church's history. It is a time full of historical significance and it constantly gets overlooked and seen as a mistake. Perhaps, however, it is not a mistake, one could make a case for the Crusaders that they were only trying to protect the relics and sites they saw as holy. One thing that many Christians do not understand, however, are the motives behind these "holy" wars. If one asks a Christian today who the Pope was during the time of the first crusade, the one that started them all, many would not be able to.