Crusades 1 Crusades The Crusades were military campaigns sanctioned by the Latin Roman Catholic Church during the High Middle Ages through to the end of the Late Middle Ages. In 1095 Pope Urban II proclaimed the first crusade, with the stated goal of restoring Christian access to the holy places in and near Jerusalem. Many historians and some of those involved at the time, like Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, give equal precedence to other papal-sanctioned military campaigns undertaken for a variety of religious, economic, and political reasons, such as the Albigensian Crusade, the The Byzantine Empire and the Sultanate of Rûm before the First Crusade Aragonese Crusade, the Reconquista, and the Northern Crusades. Following the first crusade there was an intermittent 200-year struggle for control of the Holy Land, with six more major crusades and numerous minor ones. In 1291, the conflict ended in failure with the fall of the last Christian stronghold in the Holy Land at Acre, after which Roman Catholic Europe mounted no further coherent response in the east. Some historians see the Crusades as part of a purely defensive war against the expansion of Islam in the near east, some see them as part of long-running conflict at the frontiers of Europe and others see them as confident aggressive papal led expansion attempts by Western Christendom. The Byzantines, unable to recover territory lost during the initial Muslim conquests under the expansionist Rashidun and Umayyad caliphs in the Arab–Byzantine Wars and the Byzantine–Seljuq Wars which culminated in the loss of fertile farmlands and vast grazing areas of Anatolia in 1071, after a sound victory by the occupying armies of Seljuk Turks at the Battle of Manzikert. Urban II sought to reunite the Christian church under his leadership by providing Emperor Alexios I with military support. Several hundred thousand Roman Catholic Christians became Crusaders by taking a public vow and receiving a plenary indulgences from the Roman Catholic Church.[1][2] The crusaders were Roman Catholic Christians from various kingdoms of Western Europe, yet who all lived under the feudal system, which resulted in every attempt to form a unified central command for leading the Crusaders into failure. With hundreds of Crusaders who were aristocrats and motivated by the fame, greater wealth, and upward mobility they expected to gain from the Crusade, the very idea of a feudal lord giving up command over loyal man-at-arms to a single commander, (along with all the potential glory), especially when that commander was another nobleman, was an unthinkable and insulting proposition. This lack of a central command resulted in frequent quarrels between feudal nobleman, church leaders and courtiers leading to intra-faith political factions and shifting alliances as hundreds of capricious feudal lords jostled for political advantage and influence within the Crusade, which at times led to rather bizarre situations, including the time when the Crusaders invited the Islamic Sultanate of Rûm, whose army accepted and joined forces with the Christians during the Fifth Crusade. The impact of the Crusades was profound and judgement of the conduct of Crusaders has varied widely from highly critical to laudatory. Jonathan Riley-Smith identifies the independent states established, such as the Kingdom of Jerusalem and the Crusader States, as the first experiments in "Europe Overseas". These ventures reopened the Mediterranean to trade and travel, enabling Genoa and Venice to flourish. Crusading armies would engage in commerce with the local populations while on the march, with Orthodox Byzantine emperors often organizing markets for Crusader forces moving through their territory. The crusading movement consolidated the collective identity of the Latin Church under the Pope’s leadership and was the source of heroism, chivalry, and medieval piety. Crusades 2 This in turn spawned medieval romance, philosophy, and literature. However, the crusades reinforced the connection between Western Christendom, feudalism, and militarism that ran counter to the Peace and Truce of God that Urban had promoted. The crusaders often pillaged the countries through which they travelled in the typical medieval manner. Nobles often retained much of the territory gained rather than returning it to the Byzantines as they had sworn to do. Encouraged by the Church, the Peoples' Crusade prompted the Rhineland massacres and the massacre of thousands of Jews. In the late 19th century this episode was used by Jewish historians to support Zionism. The Fourth Crusade resulted in the sacking of Constantinople by the Roman Catholics, effectively ending the chance of reuniting the Christian church by reconciling the East–West Schism and leading to the weakening and eventual fall of the Byzantine Empire to the Ottomans. Nevertheless, some crusaders were only poor people trying to escape the hardships of medieval life in an armed pilgrimage leading to Apotheosis at Jerusalem. Terminology Crusade "Crusade" is a modern term, from the French croisade and Spanish cruzada, that was applied to the medieval military expeditions only in retrospect. The French form of the word first appears in the L'Histoire des Croisades written by A. de Clermont and published in 1638. By 1750, the various forms of the word "crusade" had established themselves in English, French, and German.[3] The Oxford English Dictionary records its first use in English as occurring in 1757 by William Shenstone.[4] The crusades were never referred to as such by their participants. The The Battle of Ager Sanguinis, medieval miniature original crusaders were known by various terms, including fideles Sancti Petri (the faithful of Saint Peter) or milites Christi (knights of Christ). Like pilgrims, each crusader swore a vow (a votus) to be fulfilled on successfully reaching Jerusalem, and they were granted a cloth cross (crux) to be sewn into their clothes. This "taking of the cross", the crux, eventually became associated with the entire journey.[5] They saw themselves as undertaking an iter, a journey, or a peregrinatio, an armed pilgrimage. The inspiration for this “messianism of the poor" was the expected mass apotheosis at Jerusalem. Numbering Historians consider that between 1096 and 1291 there were seven major crusades and numerous minor ones. However, some consider the Fifth Crusade of Frederick II as two distinct crusades. This would make the crusade launched by Louis IX in 1270 the Eighth Crusade. In addition, sometimes even this Crusade is considered as two, leading to a Ninth Crusade. The Crusades A pluralist view of the Crusades has developed in the 20th century inclusive of all papal-led efforts, whether in the Middle East or in Europe.[6] This takes into account the view of the Roman Catholic Church and medieval contemporaries such as Saint Bernard of Clairvaux that gave equal precedence to comparable military campaigns against pagans, heretics and many undertaken for political reasons. This wider definition includes the persecution of heretics in Southern France, the political conflict between Christians in Sicily, the Christian re-conquest of Spain and the conquest of heathens in the Baltic. Countering this is the view the Crusades were a defensive war in the Middle East against Muslims to free the Holy Land from Muslim rule. Crusades 3 Political Crusades Popes frequently called crusades for political reasons and crusades were also declared as a means of conflict resolution amongst fellow Roman Catholic Christians. Pope Innocent III declared a crusade against his political opponent Markward of Anweiler in Sicily. Only a few people took part, and the need for the crusade ended in 1202 when Markward died. This is generally considered the first "political crusade"[7] Between 1232 and 1234 there was a crusade against the Stedingers, peasants who refused to pay tithes to the Archbishop of Bremen. The archbishop excommunicated them, and Pope Gregory IX declared a crusade in 1232. The peasants lost the Battle with Altenesch on 27 May 1234 and were destroyed.[8] Emperor Frederick II was the object of several political crusades called by a number of popes. In 1240 Pope Gregory IX deposed and preached a crusade against him for his opposition in Italy. In 1248 Pope Innocent IV's[9] crusade against him was transferred in 1250 to his son, Conrad IV when he died to little effect. Crusades were called against Frederick's illegitimate son Manfred, King of Sicily, from 1255 through 1266,[10] and Conrad's son, Conradin, in 1268 with the urging of Charles of Anjou.[11] Two crusades appear to have been called against opponents of King Henry III of England – one from 1215 to 1217 and the other from 1263 to 1265 with the first enjoying the same privileges as those given to crusaders on the Fifth Crusade. The second got as far as having papal legates being dispatched to England with the power to declare a crusade against Simon de Montfort, but Montfort's death in 1265 ended this.[12] The Norwich Crusade of 1383, also called the Despenser's crusade, which was a military expedition that aimed to assist the city of Ghent in its struggle against the supporters of Antipope Clement VII was really an extension of the Hundred Years War, rather than a purely religious enterprise.[13] Saracen Before the 16th century the words "Muslim" and "Islam" were very rarely used by europeans. During the crusades the term widely used for Muslim was Saracen. In Greek and Latin this term had a longer evolution from the beginning of the first millennia where it referred to a people who lived in desert areas around the Roman province of Arabia who were distinguished from Arabs. The term developed to include Arab tribes and by the 12th century had become an ethnic and religious marker synonymous with "Muslim" in Medieval Latin literature.[14] In the romance The King of A 12th-century Byzantine manuscript illumination depicting Byzantine Greeks punishing Cretan Saracens in the 9th Tars, Saracens are black-skinned while Christians are century.