What Are The Effects Of Religious Beliefs, Such As The Crusades?

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.

According to an article published in 2009, it is believed that there were a numerous effects of crusades:

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

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 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.

Throughout history, religion has always been a factor for many events, but was the purpose of the Crusades in the 11th-13th centurys purely religions devotions, or political gain? Evidence from Pope Urban II, a quote from Patrologia Latina, and a speech by the Islamic leader Saladin show just how much of a factor religion was during the Crusades. These people come from different backgrounds and histories, yet they still believe in one thing- is was "Gods will" to partake in the Crusades. Pope Urban II was the main reason that Christian soldiers journeyed to the Middle East to fight in the Crusades. Being in such an influential position, people were bound to follow his word regardless of wealth.

The Crusades were caused primarily by religious devotions because of how members united. According to Document 2 “ all these members of Christ, so different in speech, origin, and nationality.” This

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 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.

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.

Religious factors in the first crusade were significant and can be argued as a reason for the campaign’s success. However, it is more down to a combination of different factors to why it was so successful, when compared to the later more unsuccessful Crusades. The time of the First Crusade, medieval Europe was a place of hardship, with frequent famine and plagues with many wanting to escape the idea of normal life. With the start of the First Crusade many responded with extreme enthusiasm and it really highlighted the religious hysteria in Europe at the time. What was to follow was a campaign built upon the foundations of Christianity, which would lead to the persecution of another religion and the deaths of thousands of Muslims, Jews and Christians alike. Religious factors are the reason for the success of the Crusade and can be seen to be the reasons for continuous successes throughout the campaign.

As most of these border disputes were between Catholic and Protestant princes, Western European were no strangers to holy war. The Crusades, however, were nothing like the battles between royalty. In 1096 the First Crusade united most of Europe against a common enemy, any non-Christian peoples. Strangely enough, the reasons people went and fought in the Crusades varies a great deal. While the Pope mainly wanted to gain control of Europe by sending away Princes and other trouble makers, the Princes sought to gain renown, treasure, and better claims to the throne. Other people, like peasants were often dragged into the fray by local rulers looking to make an army. If these poor folk desired anything, it was to be absolved of sin, or to go back home and farm; too bad they couldn’t grow pumpkins. In any case, the consensus in Europe was that the crusades were needed so the Holy Land of Jerusalem could be cleansed of evil. This however, was most certainly not the most popular

The Seljuk Turks had been attacking the Byzantines for many YEARS. The Western church, when called on by their Eastern Christian brothers, sent their men to aid in defense from the invasions of the Turks. The Crusaders’ additional motive of regaining the Holy Land was not the first goal in their minds; they originally wanted to aid their allies in the East. The Europeans had to fight the potential tyranny, just as the Americans did against the tyrant, Hitler. The Americans fought for their belief, and although some fought for religious purposes, most did not; they fought to help the Jews and prevent the Nazi’s from taking over the world. Likewise, the Crusaders fought for their beliefs, and although some killed the Turks because of their religion, most did not; they fought to stop the invasions into the Byzantine Church’s land. The Eastern Church may have eventually been oppressed by the Turks if they had not fought back and asked for allies, much like the Irish against the British. This is an often-overlooked reason, for why the Crusades were necessary; they did not fight merely because they wished to have the Holy Land, they fought for their Christian allies in the

For centuries, religion has played an important role throughout history by having the power to unite individuals, towns, kingdoms, or even countries. By giving people something to believe in, it gives them a “purpose in life”, because life without purpose would be boring and dull. An example of this unity was the Christian Crusades during the Middle Ages. The Crusades were a chain of Christian military campaigns against the Turkish Muslims that occupied the holy land, Jerusalem, which lasted from 1095 to 1291. These Christian crusades all started because of Pope Urban II’s call to unify all Christians from France and the Holy Roman Empire and to retake Jerusalem from the Muslims.

The great series of western holy wars were the Crusades, which lasted from 1095 until 1291 CE. The aim was to capture the sacred places in the Holy Land from the Muslims who lived there, so it was intended as a war to right wrongs done against Christianity. The first Crusade was started by Pope Urban II in 1095. He raged at the capture of the holy places and the treatment given to Christians, and ordered a war to restore Christianity. He said that the war would have the support of God.